Utilizing Your Internal GPS

The development of your career is a journey that involves learning, growing, acquiring new skills and knowledge, and discovering the capacity you have to complete your job requirements. Along the way you are likely to make mistakes, while also making choices and decisions that are of great benefit to your career and professional development. When you make a mistake you either keep moving forward or you give it a label such as failure and decide that that is going to prevent you from doing well or trying again.

It doesn't matter how many times you have found success, it is natural to remember and dwell upon times that were not so successful. Most likely a reason for this is a case of the “shoulds,” which is simply a way of thinking that can be reprogrammed. It is easy to look back on a situation or event and think about what should have been a better response or better outcome; however, you only know that now because of what you learned through this experience. At that moment in time, you made a decision or choice based upon what you believed was the best use of the knowledge that you had then. Of course emotional reactions and feelings can certainly cloud or influence our judgment; however, there again you would not come to a full realization of the impact of those thoughts and feelings until you have gone through the experience and learned a valuable lesson. More than ever this reminds us that we can develop and utilize our internal GPS, which I'm calling your guided powerful self-belief.

There are many popular phrases that you will find in self-help books, magazines, and online articles that address our state of mind and our ability to be happy in this journey. Those sayings include "you can choose to be happy" or "happiness is an inside job." The question is, how do you internalize these popular sayings? You do this by developing a strong self-awareness. It begins by first understanding what you have control over and what you do not. For the most part you cannot control circumstances in your external career environment. You can do your best on the job, interact effectively with others, contribute to your team, and receive strong performance evaluations. But you cannot control ranking systems, job offers, responses to a resume that has been sent out, interview outcomes, or how your organization determines if you align with its culture and mission statement. What you can control is your own job performance, your career development, your well-being, your attitude, and more importantly how you choose your thoughts and what you believe about yourself.

To develop your strong GPS or guided powerful self-belief, you must start by recognizing what strengths, talents, and abilities you possess. When you consider those skills and write them out on paper, you are developing a strong self-awareness that can result in positive thinking. Often we feel discomfort in our career when we are unable to control external circumstances. We then question are abilities and our talents. But everyone can feel good about who they are right now by remembering what skills you have acquired throughout your career and what you have accomplished in this journey. When you see the value in what you offer, without comparing yourself to anyone else, then you can easily address any area of development that you have recognized and want to work on. You will then convey confidence when you talk about yourself or send out your resume or talk to others in your present working environment. When you realize the full value of your strengths you will be undeterred when you have learning lessons along the way, because you will value that opportunity to experience something new and to have grown because of the experience.

Today is the day, fine tune your GPS and move forward in your career.

Wishing you the best,
Dr. J