How To Create Your Own Career Landscape

At this time when the media is full of negativity about the economy and job prospects, it is very easy to get drawn into a state of doom and gloom.

Go ahead and do that if you want to, but if you do, you should probably stop reading now because this is about creating a positive career outlook. 

This is a time to think: What if? 

• What if I didn’t have to stick with this career for ever?  

• What if I could spend as much quality time as I want with my family? 

• What if I could….. 

I am not here to sugar-coat the situation. There are a great many tragedies in this pandemic, both in the direct health impact on people infected, and in the consequential changes in all of our lives.  

However, whilst acknowledging this, we must also look for the opportunities and the positive things.

“Every cloud has a silver lining” has been a popular, if almost throw-away phrase for donkeys years, but as with all such sayings there is a well of depth and wisdom to them.  

What could be the silver linings for you? 

Here’s a good place to start.

What do you imagine your career and life will be like in 6 months time? 

Notice what your immediate reaction to that question was and particularly what your immediate feeling was. 

Was that feeling:

• Fear
• Anxiety
• Sadness
• Worry
• Frustration
• Apathy
• Resigned
• Anticipation
• Excitement
• Joy
• Uncertainty
• Something Else?

Whatever your feeling was, take one minute only to get into that feeling and imagine what your career/life is like in 6 months. 

What picture did you paint for yourself? 

Was it something that you can look forward to and is it something that makes you smile? 

If you were scoring it on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is perfect and 0 is awful, where does it come in? 

If not, and even if it is actually, now would be a great time to start re-imagining your future as something different and/or better than what you have now. That feeling was just information, telling you that something is or isn’t right for you. Now you’re aware of it you can change it.  

Start by looking at your current role (or most recent if you’re not working at the moment) and notice which are the things you want to keep in terms of the environment, the people, the skills you are using, the hours, the values of the organisation, and anything else that’s important to you. Also think about what you don’t want to keep, or would like to be different.  

Complete the Career Clouds worksheet which I’ve created for you.

Use this new worksheet to discover what an ideal role will look like for you and reference back to it time and time again to check your are on the path that best suits you.

Download yours here: Your Career Clouds Worksheet 

This will help you to see what an ideal role will look like for you and allow you to compare how closely what you are or have been doing matches that cloud.  

If, in 6 months, if your career landscape met all your criteria, and any others that would make your career as good as it possibly can be, how do you feel now about your career and the future? Where would it now score on that scale of 0 to 10? 

The thing then, of course, is whether you’re going to look at the information and thinking you’ve just done but then carry on as you were, leaving things to chance, or, whether you are going to take action towards making that cloud into your new career map.   

You do have a choice, and it’s one that only you can make.

The Career Fog Kit List from last week’s blog, Skills You Need To Navigate Any Career Fog, will give you some more ideas.   

For Instant access to click here.

Whatever you do, commit to taking at least one action to improve your career today. 

Taking that first step is all you have to do to start on that journey.