No career direction? Align your Values and Goals!

If you feel that you have no career direction and you wonder if it is time for a change, here is how to align your values and goals to make a smart choice.

Values are your foundation

Let me share a secret with you. Just a few years ago, the topic of ‘30 and no career direction’ was clearly troubling me. I knew I was intelligent and well-qualified with a degree in my pocket, yet I felt ashamed, like a failure when I thought once again I am so bored with my job, I need a change.

Surely there was something wrong with me, I thought. Maybe I’m simply not made out of the same stuff that others seem to be made out of. To cut a long story short, it seemed impossible for me to fit in and do a routine job day after day. Despite what they told me at year-end reviews and team-building weekends, I wasn’t making a difference. Not really. Not a lasting one that would change people’s lives, anyway.

One balmy spring morning, I was looking out of my office window onto the bustling street below. People were expressionlessly hurrying to their next appointment, others to get back to their desks, to execute another menial task. That very moment I began daydreaming about making a difference to a few of those lives. What if I could be the one to put a smile on their faces and a passion in their hearts?

What if I could become a consultant, I thought, feeling an unfamiliar rush of excitement. I did not know how to be a consultant, and questions like ‘what does it take to be a consultant’, started to arise. All I felt, at that giddy moment, was that I owed it to myself to find my passion and meaning in life.

A well-known business mentor, who was hired to motivate us at a recent corporate function, told us that figuring out our personal values in life is the first step to work satisfaction. He was probably hired and instructed by our toothy CEO to keep us complacent, I assumed.

Despite my skepticism, the idea about the importance of aligning values with ambitions, dreams, and hopes floated around my head and started to make more noise. I know that if I wanted to explore the idea of how to become a consultant seriously, I needed to know and understand my own unique personal values before anything else. Here is what I did.

How to identify your values

I started exercising regularly, made sure I got enough healthy food and sufficient sleep, and did a short mindfulness meditation session every other day. These simple routines, especially when combined, are supposed to relax a person’s body and rejuvenate the mind. The results showed rather quickly. I became less irritable and worrisome, friends kept telling me. A relaxed mind doesn’t hold onto the clutter and debris of daily worries and weariness, as when the brain is flushed with stress chemicals. Remember that I said I wanted to help people become happy and purposeful? This was my first clue to formulating my values.

What I did then was simple.

I carried a small notebook around for four weeks. In my gym bag, on the train and at meetings. Even when going out in the evening, I didn’t want to miss a single insight. I wrote down everything and anything that made me happy. The smallest gesture. Words of thanks. Big accolades. Laughter and tears of joy.

Once a week, I planned a quiet time without distractions. I sat down on my porch with a cup of herbal tea for about 30 minutes to review my journal entries from the previous few days.

Do you know what I found?

I discovered the little things that consistently made me feel happy and proud. Positive and hopeful. Grateful to be alive. I wanted to make the world a better place for as many people as I could. That is what made me, and continues to make me happy the most. I had discovered my core value!

Goals should ignite your passion

I knew I had to take these core values to another level. Where I could apply it to make consistent improvements. To learn new knowledge and skills, and to be able to make it a daily reality. To develop and organize resources to support my new-found vision.

Yes, a core value is like a vision. It is where you want to see yourself and others. But, one always needs a structured and systematic plan to get there. This is where goals come in. Having goals is the blueprint of a roadmap towards your vision.

In other words, goals transform your starry-eyed dreams into reality! Having goals that can be deconstructed into realistic and specific plans is the first step to success.

The process sounds pretty simple and straightforward, right? Even though, I found that I needed to be diligent and dedicated in setting, monitoring, and adjusting targets that will lead me to fulfill my values.

To use a metaphoric illustration, my vision and values are the fireplace that will light and heat up the whole room. Goals are the match needed to ignite the firewood, to which, with my constant attention, twigs are added to keep stoking the fire.

These are me keeping my plans in motion by learning, developing skills, organizing resources, and navigating risks, to keep the passion for reaching my goals and vision burning high.

I also realized that goals must have certain qualities to help me stay motivated to invest the effort required to achieve success.

Do this to set smart goals

Coaches are all in agreement that goals have to be “SMART”. SMART is an acronym that represents the criteria of a good goal, namely, to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. Even though I know you’re probably already familiar with this concept, I wanted to use it here, not to bore you but to make a very relevant point.

Specific means that you state exactly what you want to accomplish. Let’s say your goal is to become wealthier. As a goal, it is not very specific, right? In fact, it is so vague that it does not point you in any direction that suits your values and interests. You can win the lottery, but you then could gamble and stand the risk of becoming poorer all together.

But, let’s say you decide to look at, like I did, how to become an independent consultant, grow your business, and earn more money. It is aligned with your core value to help people and your vision of becoming wealthier. Because it is still a high-level goal, you calculate that signing up 10 customers in the next six months is a good start from which to establish your practice and grow.

So, signing up customers in your consultancy business is a specific goal.

You made it measurable by looking at the number of customers, targeting to reach 10 in the first period. You can measure your progress in this time and beyond.

Achievable means that you believe your goal is reasonable. In your current job, you have a good network that you think you can harness in order to attract customers.

Relevant refers to having a goal that is relevant to your life. As you want to help people become wealthier, and be your own boss, you are happy that your goal is relevant.

Having a timely goal means that you attach a target date or deadline to it. You want to attract 10 customers within six months from now, so the final criteria of a SMART goal applies too.

Overall, your goal is SMART, aligned with your core values, and a step into the direction of your vision. Your goals, values, and your vision all fit together in a seamless system. It’s time now to put your shoulder to the wheel!