Happy with your day-to-day job? Employee stress and burn out can cause unhappiness. After all, you are at work some 8 hours a day or more. That is a very long time to be unhappy.
If you genuinely feel that you’re at an unwanted career, here are 6 great ways to find your ideal career:
Brainstorm on paper – Start with a pencil and a notebook to jot down what you want in the form of a question. And then next, just list as many answers as you can. E . g ., you may choose to writing “What should I be doing with my time and life?” Then after that stay seated for a half hour to an hour writing down answers . This is an exercise that you can perform repeatedly, perhaps once a day, until you find the right answer (at least on paper).
Ask 3 close friends – Sometimes people close to us know us as compared to ourselves. While meeting with one of your friends, let them know that you’re in a crossroad in your life or career. Ask their advice on what they think you enjoy doing. You might be surprised at how easily they can narrow down the skill sets that you like using over and over and come up with a good suggestion.
Sit down with close coworkers – Not always obvious but your boss and coworkers see you in a different light. Think about this for a second, people at work know your abilities as a professional. Compile all the answers you get from them and look for a pattern.
Call a headhunter – Professional men and women have a resume. From time to time you’ll be able to catch a job placement specialist during their slow times and speak to them about your skills and expertise. These have happened to me before and the people seem open to talking with people. The advice they’ve given me are usually good.
Consider taking a career assessment test – Keep this in mind: all professions require different career paths. For example, information on nursing career have a different training process from a railroad engineer. In the age of the Internet, there are websites with services where you might be able to take one of these tests for a fee. But using my ‘headhunter’ tip above, many headhunters have this software and will let you take the test in their office. These are simple tests asking you to answer a series of questions about what you like, don’t like, want to do professionally. If you take one, you will likely receive hints of what you want to do.
Jot down ideas, like in a journal – It’s always good to browse for what you liked doing or what made your day. Keep your eyes peeled for patterns. Also, what you don’t like is as critical as the things that you do not like. For example, if you hate an overwhelming boss, then you might want to start your own business. If you hate nosy coworkers you’d probably prefer your own office.
Discovering what you really want to do with your life can be puzzling, yet very critical to you. We spend 1/3 or more of waking hours working. So figuring out the right career is important to keeping that 1/3 of our lives happy and productive.