adminfrustration coming from that has spread to other facets of life.
Your career or the path you decide to take has a bearing on your life in general. Much of your life will be spent at work, the most productive time to be precise. If you are not happy with your work, it means that most of your life becomes a mess. Just a little calculation, you wake up every day maybe at six in the morning and by eight you are in the office. By five you go back home and mostly you will be up for three more hours until eight. After that you sleep and return to the cycle until it’s a Friday.
For most, Saturday is a workday as well. For those in the Diaspora, everyday you are at work.
This is a cycle that you follow throughout the year and basically the rest of your life. You spend most of your life at work and if that work does not bring you some kind of joy, satisfaction and fulfilment, then you are in a fix. You are likely to be one of those people who will suffer depression, stress and live a miserable life, of course sometimes with a huge pay cheque coming at the end of every month.
For many people, work has become some kind of social and financial prison where they spend the bulk of their time and get paid at the end of the month.
It’s a sad reality but today the bulk of stress recorded in research is work related. The point of breakthrough is as I always say where your vocation meets your vacation.
This is the point at which work becomes a source of joy, when you have fun and get paid. But this point is difficult to reach for many people.
Poor career development and planning has cost not only companies fortunes due to poor performance but also economies and nations. Many people are under-deployed to use the words of Dr Myles Munroe. He believes that the challenge we have today is not necessarily that of unemployment or underemployment, but that of under-deployment.
Many people are doing what they are not supposed to be doing. Very few people follow their calling and this is the mother of most frustrations. Today I will be basic and explore with you the four pillars to effective career planning and development.
Pillar 1: Efficacy awareness
This is the awareness of the things you can do. Many of us underestimate ourselves hence settle for mediocre professions or choose a career path we believe to be easy, on the other hand some of us overestimate our capacity and settle for professions that do not match our abilities. We over-stretch ourselves, we suffer to get things done and that leads to a stressful life.
The key is to know both what you can and what you cannot do. Understand your abilities. Some people have verbal abilities, some mathematical abilities, some acuity abilities, some mechanical abilities, some technical abilities, and some artistic abilities.
When you know your talents, your gifts and your natural abilities and match them with the requirements of the professions your wish to advance yourself in, life becomes easier, but it’s not enough.
Pillar 2: Personality awareness
Your personality is key in planning your career path. What traits do you have? Where can they be more useful, in what industry, in which company, in which culture, in which country? When your personality is ill-matched with your profession, the result is ill-performance.
Take, for example, an introverted person as a marketer, a serious person as a comedian, an aggressive person as a social worker. Trait matching is key in your future planning. Understand the kind of person you are and ask yourself if that industry will suit you, which company will suit you or that working environment will suit you. Failure do so may result in a stressful work life.
Pillar 3: Understanding your values
Your value system determines most of your attitude. Your values are at the very core of your behaviour and most times we act in line with them though we may not be aware of it. When your chosen industry matched your value system, you become a star, but when it conflicts them, challenges arise.
A conflict begins to brew inside of you and that triggers stress. Take, for example, somebody hates cigarettes because of their Christian background working in a tobacco company, while another part of them may be saying, “you are sinning against God because you are helping produce cigarettes”, the other saying it’s just work. Or even a marketer who is anti-gay being given a promotional consultancy by a gay organisation.
Cognitive dissonance results out of such work situations and it results in stress. Understand your values and align them with your career aspirations. The harmony you achieve within will energise you to greater performance. What is your value system?
See the next edition of The Marketer for the remaining two pillars and a bit more wisdom. Hope you were inspired. Be the best. Just be the best!
- Pascal Nyasha is a motivational speaker, leadership and life coach and business consultant. He is the author of the inspirational book, “Reaching New Horizons”, and founder of The Leadership Institute. For feedback: First Floor, The Movie Centre, Strathaven Shopping Centre, Strathaven, Harare. Call: 0773 003 912 or email: [email protected]. Connect with Pascal on Facebook.
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