Unlocking Your Path to Career Fulfilment: A Guide to Finding a Career You'll Love
3 min read
TLDR: For a career that you love, understand your personal values, your passions, your strengths and skills, your priorities and listen to those who know you best. It’s never too late to live an authentic life.
As I write, the average life expectancy of an Australian is 81.3 years for a male & 85.4 years for a female. That means that assuming a retirement age of 67 and an average 40 hour working week, the average Aussie currently spends about 21% of their working lives at work – express this as a percentage of our waking hours (assuming 8 hrs sleep/night) then that jumps to 31%. For nearly 50 years you’ll spend nearly a third of your conscious time at work – and that’s conservative - many of you will, of course, not be working a standard 9-5 work regime. Of course, I’m not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing – it can be incredibly positive if you love what you do.
I love helping people. If I’d known that at the age of 21 as I do now, I would probably have taken a very different career path. Subsequently, my career as an Exec, most often as a Sales Director, has morphed into a realisation that the thing I love most in my roles has been the people, more specifically, helping people overcome personal and professional hurdles to realise their latent potential. I found my niche in the business space because my love of developing a team is exactly what is needed for long-term consistent commercial success – I did it to feed my need, to pursue my values and it just happened to be harmonious with the more-often-than-not great teams I’ve worked with and leaders I’ve worked under to help us deliver our business KPIs.
I would suggest then that having a career that you love, rather than tolerate, one that feeds your intrinsic needs rather than simply keeps the bank manager at bay is, and should be, justifiably high on many peoples’ wish list. The reality however, is that according to a recent McKinsey poll, 55% of employees are either actively or mildly disengaged from their work for one or more reasons.
After remuneration, a lack of meaningful work, a post-Covid lack of workplace flexibility, a lack of personal and career advancement and a lack of physical or psychological safety in their workplace are the next most often cited factors for this dissatisfaction. Instead, individuals are seeking careers that, in addition to alleviating financial pressure, align with their passions, values, and aspirations in a safe and supportive environment.
How then, given the somewhat fundamental nature of our need to work, feeding as it can into all five levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (but especially into level 2 - ‘Safety & Security’) do you find a career that you truly love?
In this blog I’ll explore five key steps to unlocking your path to career fulfilment.
Understand Who You Are: Understanding Your Personal Values
I believe that a significant majority of people never truly understand what really drives them, makes them fulfilled, happy and whole. The foundation of finding a career you'll love begins with understanding who you are at your core and what these drivers are. After all, if you don’t know who you are at heart, how do you know where you’re best suited? It’s like taking a random shaped wooden peg and hoping it fits the square hole in the toy you had as a child – you might get lucky, but you probably won’t.
Take the time to identify your personal values – the principles and beliefs that guide your decisions and actions. Reflect on what matters most to you in life, both professionally and personally. Are you driven by creativity, innovation or social impact? Do you value autonomy, collaboration or work-life balance? Are you altruistic, have a need for competency or crave harmony? Don’t confuse what you’re told about yourself by others with what deep self-reflection tells you about yourself – they are not necessarily the same.
Understanding your personal values will help you align your career choices with what truly matters to you, both in the workplace and in the other areas of your life.
Know Your True Worth: Identifying Your Skills and Strengths
Another essential step in finding a career you'll love is knowing your true worth. Take time to understand your skills, strengths, and unique talents. What are you naturally good at? What do others consistently praise you for? Identifying your strengths will not only boost your confidence but also help you narrow down career options that play to your strengths.
Identify Your Life Priorities: Balancing Work and Personal Life
Career fulfilment is more than a monthly salary and security as I highlighted earlier – it’s a lot more complex than that and encompasses many aspects of one’s life. Take the time to identify your life priorities and identify what balance between work and personal life works for you. What are your long-term goals and aspirations? What kind of lifestyle do you envision for yourself? What flexibility do you need to be satisfied? What level of remuneration do you need? By aligning your career choices with your life priorities, you'll create a sense of harmony and fulfilment that extends beyond the workplace.
Seek Alignment: Finding a Career that Aligns with Your Passions
As Mark Twain said, “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Finding a role that you’re passionate about means never (or rarely) having that Sunday night feeling – or even worse, the Monday morning blues. It turns a chore into a pleasure.
You passions will likely differ from your personal values. Aligning your passions with what the business, organisation or endeavour that might ultimately be your new calling stands for is key to ensuring that the match is a strong and long-term mutually beneficial one. Consider factors such as company culture, mission, and values. Seek out the opinions of those that work or have worked there and from recruitment companies that are affiliated with the space that they’re in. Seek out reviews on the many organisational review sites. At interview ask questions that talk to your passions and values - it’s a two-way process after all and it’s imperative that both parties establish not just that you can do the role competently but that you’ll be happy, motivated and fulfilled in the execution of it.
Use the Insights of Those that Know You Best
Self-awareness is key, but sometimes we have ‘blind spots’ to what’s in front of us and decisions that we might make. This is where those that are closest to you, know you best and have your best interests at heart can play a significant role. By being appropriately vulnerable, authentic and open to the opinion of others’, this ‘network of confidantes’ can provide valuable insight into what a fantastic next career move or role for you might be. Each of them, whether they be a partner, family member, close friend or work colleague has a unique insight into who you are and may be the person who offers up an opinion that is the catalyst for your long-term benefit and satisfaction that may otherwise be missed by you.
Conclusion
Finding a role you love is a journey of self-discovery and exploration. By understanding your personal values, knowing your true worth, identifying your life priorities, cultivating self-awareness and seeking the opinions of those we trust you can unlock your path to career fulfilment. It’s never too late to do just that.
I wish I’d understood what truly motivated and made me happy at a much earlier age. Whilst I’ve enjoyed most of my career, it’s fundamentally because I was able to nurture those aspects of it that truly made me happy – the people development aspects. Too many people feel stuck on a career ladder, wishing they were elsewhere simply because they made decisions earlier in life that they feel obligated to pursue. Life’s too short and we spend too much of our waking time working not to enjoy it.
If any of this resonates with you and you’d like an initial chat to talk through your career path and future strategy, help with understanding your personal values and/or better understanding your strengths and potential next steps, please reach out. It could be the catalyst to an amazing next phase in your life.
