How can we achieve career success? What are the 5 obstacles that get us misaligned?
The 5 Obstacles that disturb the trajectory of our careers success are:
1. Not having the right knowledge/wisdom of my key strengths or what I am good at
2. Identifying with the wrong sense of who I am and not being self aware of my true essence
3. Identifying with the pride of my position/title and all great things that come with it
4. Getting attached to the fame & pleasures of success in my jobs/titles
5. Not challenging yourself due to fear of failure & believing status quo is success
Let's analyze and understand how to overcome our 5 obstacles to career success.
The 5 Obstacles
Not being Self-Aware is the same as not having the right knowledge or wisdom of my key strengths. If we don't know who we are, how can we be successful in our professions? How do we become self aware of who we are? To do this you have to tap into your intuitive strengths. This becomes hard for those that have constantly been taught by others on what they should do or what they should become. For the ones that have lost their inner compass due to conditioning and influences by family, friends or peers - ask yourself the question what am I naturally good at? Then leverage this strength in your profession - some of us are good at organizing things, some are good at presenting, some at taking care of everyone else around. Wouldn't it be great if we can tap into our careers based on our strengths. Become self-aware by understanding your 3Doshas blueprint of strengths and then leverage your strengths for success.
Confusion is the state of being unclear in one's mind about something and kicks in when we have a lack of understanding of something. What is success and who defines success - let's not be confused about who should measure our success. If the environment around us measures our success based on certain KPIs (key performance indicators) we start putting too much value on other people's KPIs of success. Each one of us has some KPIs that we measure ourselves by but confusion kicks in when our KPIs are muddled by someone else's KPIs. If I measure my career success based on someone else's KPIs I will naturally be confused about what success means. We become unsure because we think we know, whereas in reality, we don’t. So spend the time in stillness and come up with your own KPIs of success - have full clarity on what these KPIs are for your success and constantly evolve them based on your own definition of success vs. someone else's definition.
Narrative of our accomplishment with I-ness. The stories we tell ourselves and others of what we have achieved in interviews, our opinions and others endorsements of our achievements. Because at times we don't know what we truly want in our careers, we identify with the story about ourselves and put a veil on the true essence of our potential. We start to identify so strongly with our stories of accomplishments, we focus on concocting a story that sounds so good about our accomplishments that we lose our true self in it. Own your narrative and change your narrative anytime for greater success - don't let someone else endorsement or your I-ness limit you.
Comfort Zone is a place or situation where we feel fully secure. Once we have attained some success and pleasant experiences we get attached to the fame we achieve in these experiences. We then ask ourselves should I take more risks or just stay put in my comfort zone. Naturally we want to stay in environments that feel secure so why rock the boat. This soon becomes an obstacle as the environment around us changes which in turn feels like a threat to our comfort zone. Environment will always change and we should build a journey mindset where we enjoy success along the way vs. wanting to reach success as a destination and stay there forever.
Fear of Failure is developing a habit where we don't want to go backwards and no longer want to take on challenges if there is any chance it will not be successful. Once we develop these thought patterns it becomes hard for us to change and we get stuck in our comfort zones. This is when we start believing that status quo is the best option. Our success gets limited because we make our status quo our comfort zone and limit our growth with new experiences. Lets not limit ourselves and lets push ourselves as we don't know what lies ahead or to what heights our journey will take us. Get over the hump and push yourself through!