Career Enhancement

What is it that you do uniquely well? Do your core values for yourself and your family fit with what you are doing, where you are putting your energy, what you are developing, and where you are focusing/immersing yourself?

In your career, as well as in your life, to achieve full capacity and happiness, all of you must be going in the same direction. For career and personal success to achieve its fullest potential, the inside and the outside must match: strength, motivation, passion, strategies and goals must be consistent with who you are and be an extension of who you are -- not to define yourself, but to be defined by you. The application of focus and direction on your potential and goals with all of you going in the same direction allows expansion of strength and measurable results to achieve your vision.

Investing in your core values is synonymous with the pursuit of simplicity. Your decisions are your self statements, not statements about anyone else. Simplicity includes not taking things that others say personally, but recognizing that they, too, are making self statements; discerning internal versus external point of reference; owning rather than blaming your decisions and their results; creating reality rather than believing in fate. Change does not happen, you create it.

Your assumptions and beliefs drive your behavior. Coming to the end of the past is not enough: you have to have a purpose, a dream consistent with your internal ideal in order to have hope. A game plan and goal actualize hope, the confident expectation that something good can be created. You move toward what you picture in your mind. Pinpoint focus and laser precision of that picture allow the pathway of a plan and the flexibility of strategy to have a context and meaning.

What you believe to be true about yourself will become true. What you believe will work well can be changed to become that which works well. Change may involve new ways of thinking, doing, being, and growing.

If you let someone recommend a solution or strategy for you, unless you fit it to your situation and ideal, you will be getting a suit tailored to someone else. If you want to change your life, your performance, and your career, change your mind first. At times, however, you may simply look for patterns in your behavior, find out what is working, and create that more often, and that will change your mind.

Dr. David Krueger offers the following 18 caveats to career enhancement in this article published at http://www.evancarmichael.com/:

1. When your head and your gut (what you think and feel) both agree, and act accordingly, you won’t go wrong.
   
   
2. Having a definition of success and an internal ideal of “good enough” are essential for satisfaction.
   
   
3. Rich is knowing you have enough.
   
   
4. Long-term goals are necessary to keep perspective, while short-term goals are necessary to sustain enthusiasm and tolerate frustration.
   
   
5. Respect the boundaries between work and private life.
   
   
   
6. Develop your emotional and interpersonal expertise as well as your technical expertise.
   
   
   
7. Thinking, feeling, and imagining are all active forms of doing something.
   
   
   
8. A potential space between urge and action is where judgment resides.
   
   
   
9. You’ll never do anything important that will feel comfortable in the beginning.
   
   
10. Assess what reaching a goal will do.
    
    
11. Just having a choice can make choosing the same thing feel very different.
    
    
12. Growth and change are hard. The only thing harder is not growing or changing.
    
    
13. Recognize your own limits in order to achieve success.
    
    
14. Admit mistakes in order to cut losses.
    
    
15. Be willing to seek suggestions, critiques, and advice and not to take it personally.
    
    
16. Distinguish lack of information and organization from unconscious conflict.
    
    
17. Planning and strategy are essential components of a plan.
    
    
18. Examine the process that gets you to a good result. Examine the process that gets you to a bad result.

[Dr David Krueger, M.D. is an Executive Mentor Coach, and CEO of MentorPath, a coaching firm tailored to the needs of executives and professionals. Dr. Krueger is author of 15 books on success, money, wellness, and mind-body integration. ]

Choosing a career is a hard decision to make. The decision and choice you make will impact you for most of your life because it sets a course for you for decades.

How do you make such a choice?

First, realize that since you make that choice you can always make another one. In other words, you are not locked into a single career for life. You can change your mind and your direction at any time.

Whether you change your mind or stick with your original decision, you will want to advance and refresh your job and career often. It's called Career Enhancement and should be a part of any career plan and path.

Most professions require constant enhancement of skills called continuing education. Professional organizations typically advertise programs and allocate credits for enhancement courses.

If you are not in a professional organization set up your own career advancement program. It can be a simple class taken once a year or a complete program over several weeks. What ever your choice study your options and make judicious choices.

After completing a class, update your progress and resume regularly. Keep a log of your classes, instructors and where you attended them. The real value in this will unfold as you prepare for your annual review, ask for a raise or promotion or search for a new job.

It comes down to setting goals, planning a path to those goals and accomplishing them. Even if you are alone on your path you can grow in your career.

Finally, take action. Make the first step toward your career enhancement goals even if you feel uncertain. Action opens all kinds of unseen opportunities and clarifies issues once you get going forward. Set your sights high, aim for your goals and take action to move ahead towards successful career enhancement.