What can you do in the next 9 months to help you start your career happiness journey?

This article is about helping you take some action towards a goal or new focus in your career.

Your goals could include:

?changing your career completely.

?Moving to a new country and starting afresh there.

?Getting a new role with more seniority and more responsibilities with better pay and benefits.

?Or embarking on your dream career as a freelancer or starting a business venture. 

If you feel blocked with your career let’s look at some things to help you move forward with this so that by the end of the year you have taken some specific action to get you to where you want to be.

1.Why do you want it? - Everything starts with your why so it’s important to think about what you want more of in the next 9 months? Is it a new job, new career, starting a business or something else? Before you think about what you want more of, maybe address why you want it? I would advise taking some time out to journal about what your why in conjunction to career happiness and then coming back to this why whenever you feel like giving up. For example, your why could be you want to change your job because you feel what your currently do isn’t fulfilling you anymore and want to add more value and make a difference to others.

2.Plan your journey – Having a plan helps you stay accountable to your new path of career happiness. If you are thinking about changing your career it’s important to think about what each step will be and map out a plan of what each step would look like. There may be certain obstacles in the way, but your why needs to be firm in keeping you going.

Where could you be by the end of 2018 to at least to move forward into 2019? Write down a step by step process of what your plan looks like and think about how you can create your new career in this way.

3.Visualise how long will it take realistically – It’s important to be realistic about your goal by the end of the year. If you know you want a pay rise in your current career and it’s not happening right now. Think about how long its going to take you to find a new job? If you think after 4 months you may offered a new job consider, the notice period and visualise the month you want to be in your new role and the pay you would be receiving.

4.Make actionable goals and where do you want to be by the end of 2018? – I always advise my clients to have clear goals and understand and craft what they really want. If you know there are certain things you need to do like applying for a course or registering for self-employment, don’t put it off make a clear goal of when you are going to do this by and act. You may still have no idea of what to do, so would a sabbatical help? There may be emotional or work blocks stopping you from moving forward. If you do know what you want, start planning those SMART goals and start acting on this now.

5.Review your plan in January 2019, how far have you come and what did you do? – What does your career happiness plan look like in 2019? Support from Counselling may help you clear your emotional blocks. Activities like exercise, journaling and working on your mindset may help those of you who are seeking clarity. Also, what have been your successes in the last 9 months when you review things? Write down a list of what you think you have achieved and reflect on how far you have come.

These tips above should give you the encouragement you need to plan the next 10 months of 2018. If you are still struggling and think you need more bespoke support, please contact me at [email protected]