How to find which job fits you (Part 2)
The answer to the most important question “What do I want to do with my life?” lies within you. We all have an inner voice that leads us and that it is never wrong. However, due to the way we have grown up, due to the limits that the society is putting and due to our fears we often tend to ignore or silence this voice.
This is exactly how we end up doing a job that is not satisfying us, that frustrates us and that makes us angry, miserable or unhappy. It leads us to become rude, violent, ruin our relationships, our health, victimize ourselves, cry and most of all forget to smile, laugh and enjoy life.
Here I want to stop and tell you something important. If you have currently hit that frustration wall you can get unstuck or if you do not want to hit this wall you can prevent it, or at least learn how to get unstuck at any time during your life. Here is how to do it:
First, you need to understand who you are. You are not a one-dimensional person. You have so many sides as are your needs, your beliefs, your values and your desires. You are the collection of all those experiences that you have lived and survived and all those people who passed from your life until now and that are going to keep coming. You are part of all those books and movies and podcasts and videos you have read or watched. You are much more than all the above, but somehow, you were conditioned not to allow yourself to be genuine.
Then you need to start digging and make the effort to find answers to the following questions:
1. Which are your most important values?
Try to write down as many as you can. Feel free to use Google search if you need some inspiration. Some of them are honesty, integrity, equality, family, wealth, peace, etc.
2. What do you want to get from your job?
Make a list of things and try to put them in order starting from the most important to the least important.
3. What price are you willing to pay to get your dream job and live your dream life?
It is very important to understand that anything we do in our life has a price.
If you choose to do just a job that pays the bills for example, you will have to compromise with your career development; you will have to keep gulping the orders and the demands of your boss or your clients.
If you choose to do a job that has a long career path with high compensation, you will probably have to travel, spend less time with friends and family and most probably work a lot of extra hours.
Finally, if you choose to follow your heart, find your dream job and live your dream life, you will still have to pay a price. The price will be that you will have to go against the norm. You will have to follow a different path than the majority of people. Fight most of the time with your own self and keep discovering your own limits. You will have to deal with uncertainty and peoples’ fixed perceptions.
Even if you choose not to work and become a stay at home parent, you need to be ready to pay a price. The price to be financially dependent on your partner or your close relatives, the price of regretting that you didn’t follow a career, or not always playing the first role in the decision making of the house for example.
4. What are you good at?
Write down all your skills, education, hobbies, anything that you are good at, even if you think it’s irrelevant to the work of your dreams.
5. What do you love doing? What is your passion?
Write down all the things that while you are doing them you lose time and you don’t realize how the hours pass. Even if, again, they seem irrelevant to your dream job.
6. What do you hate doing? Write down everything that you absolutely don’t want to do in your work.
7. With whom do you want to work every day?
Try to think and write down with what kind of people do you want to work with. For example, open-minded, honest, innovative, understanding, good-hearted, disciplined, inspiring, organized, etc) or you would rather not work with. Would you maybe prefer to work alone?
8. What skills or knowledge would you like to develop?
It’s very important for you to keep learning and growing so as you don’t reach stagnation.
9. What impact would you like your work to have in the world?
Whom would you like to help? What problem would you like to solve? Do you want to see immediate results of your work or you prefer working hard for years and months, but contribute with something really unique and specific?
10. Would you like to travel for work? If yes, how often?
Try to be specific. For example, 1 day per week within the country or within Europe.
11. Is it important for you to have a base or not?
Would you like to live your life in one city or country or you wouldn’t mind to change and live in different places around the world?
12. Would you prefer working from home or you prefer commuting to work?
If you choose commuting, how much time are you willing to spend for that daily?