It's a new year which means it’s a great opportunity to start fresh with a plan for designing a life and career you love. Whether you have your future mapped out or join the 42% of survey respondents who don’t have a solid plan, we want to help you refine your vision and overcome self-limiting beliefs with these immediate steps you can take to design a career plan for life-long success versus just short-term advancement.
Define Your Vision
Everyone is trying to figure out how to live a life of meaning and purpose while being a leader at home, work and in the world. This may feel overwhelming. To get started thinking about your greater purpose, answer this question: “The world would be better if….”
Example: The world would be better if women were better supported.
Use Post-It Notes with keywords to help you identify and outline those things that speak to you. Your passions are found in the things that move you.
Play the Decade Game
According to Executive Coach and author of the Decade Game Master Class, Carolyn Buck Luce, “a decade is a beautiful planning period. We overestimate what we can get done in a year but we under-estimate what we can get done in a decade.”
In the decade game, there is no wrong decision. A career plan is to determine what’s your real job and what do you want to become brilliant at, then figuring out how your next moves will help you grow and experience what you need to become that.
There are 87,600 hours in a decade. If you sleep 8 hours a night, that leaves about 50,000 remaining hours outside of sleep that you have to invest. It takes 10,000 hours to make an exponential leap in an area, think of all you can do!
Focus on Your Unique Strengths
People often bring work skills to their personal lives but tend to forget the skills necessary to be successful professionally are life skills, not technical skills. If you’ve been in the workforce for a while, you have the skills to be successful in any job you take.
When interviewing for a job, ask what’s tricky about this job? What are the most important skills for this job? Why is this role hard?
In doing this you’ll hear more about the dynamics necessary to be successful in the role and can repackage your own skills to gain the confidence you need.
Connect with Others
If you’re feeling stuck, find three new people you haven’t connected with and build a professional relationship with each of them. It’s important to hear other people’s career stories. And, while sharing your own, you’ll learn more about what drives you through the emotions and themes that surface when talking about yourself.
Don’t Wait to Be a “Great Girl.”
Most women would agree that they were raised to be “good girls” under a society of rules and gender expectations for behavior. Unchallenged, you may find yourself living someone else’s story. Remember, don’t give away your power to make others more comfortable. To be all we can be, it’s critical to become comfortable with power, boundaries and saying no.
The good girl archetype is just a story. Someone else’s story. Create your own.
Embrace Ambition
Harness your power as a force to guide you and embrace your ambition as a natural desire to grow and learn. Advocate for yourself and surround yourself with others to advocate for you. And, don’t be afraid to ask for opportunities that allow you to grow in experiences and value.
Finally, as you dive into discovering your “WHY” and “HOW,” remember that transformation begins on the inside. On your journey, focus on finding outlets that help you relieve stress and bring you clarity as you plan for your future.
Resources
Author Hour Podcast: Hear Carolyn Buck Luce talk about her latest book.
EPIC!: The Women's Power Play Book will help you unravel that conditioning and reclaim your destiny. Learn to create a life by design, not by default, through a unique framework of inspiring case "herstories" and provocative exercises you’ll play like a game, equipping you to craft the best next chapter of your life.
The Decade Game can help you uncover your purpose, recover your power and discover your destiny at home, at work, and in the world.
Join us for our next TONE Talk on Friday, January 27 at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT
Negotiation: How To Get What You Want with Susie Tomenchok and Emily Smith