The Real Meaning of Career Success - Part 1

I've been blogging a lot lately about careers, passions and dreams. Why am I doing this?

The answer is simple - because they are so important.

For some lucky people, there is the dream, and then all the 'doing' simply follows the dream, without deviation. The dream doesn't change, or if it does, it just becomes bigger and stronger. I'm sure you know at least one person who has a career that fits like a glove, that is just so perfect for them that you wonder how they got it so right!

Unfortunately, for most of us, the path to career success is rarely simple or straightforward. For a start, many people don't have a dream (or at least they don't think they do). This usually manifests as 'I don't know what I want to do when I grow up.'. In career parlance, this means the person has not yet 'discovered' or 'tapped into' what they want to do.

At this point I would just like to reiterate what I said in my last blog post (This was not a gratuitous remark to end the post nicely). We are all in fact already engaged in our careers, but we might not realise it yet.

I know this sounds complicated - but it needn't be, there are always clues.We just have to learn how to identify the clues.

For some people, the clues lie in their childhood dreams. Often our childhood dreams are dismissed as silly, or as 'a phase we are going through'. So, a girl might have spoken about her wish to become a doctor, but was told she was not smart enough, or that she lacked discipline. Even worse, she might have been told, either directly or indirectly, that only males could become doctors. Fast forward and bring this child back to her forty-something reality, and she might realise that she has missed her vocation; that she really should have been a doctor, and now it is too late.

Let's stay with this case study for a while. Do you think this woman - let's call her Marta - has led a false life? Do you wonder that she might have been unhappy? She probably has, at least to a point. Does she feel unfulfilled? Most definitely. She has lived a life, and a lot of it has been good. But, there was something missing.

Something she has searched for from time to time, and the need to work out what was wrong was evident when Marta (not her real name) came to see me a while back. She was not getting along with her boss. She was being bullied, felt trapped, and she wanted to make a big change. She had started out as a nurse (did you see that coming?), and after thirteen years or so had done the rounds of the nursing jobs, including a number of settings, and found her way into policy administration. She was working on cases in which patients were suing hospitals, doctors and nurses for malpractice. She was good at her job, and everyone liked her, but she hated going to work with a passion. On the day she came to see me, she talked about how she could not get out of her car for about 20 minutes the previous day, she just sat in the basement, numb, unable to face the day ahead.

This was, I told Marta, a wake-up call. Her body was telling her she must not do this any more, that she was becoming ill. She felt 'weak and a failure'. I said she was strong and successful. She didn't believe me - not that day, anyway.

Over time, Marta and I explored a whole pile of things: why she wanted to become a doctor all those years ago, what her good work days had been like, and what happened during the bad times.  Where and when she felt happiest, and what would make her sad. We explored her 'success' signs, which were when she stood tall and felt in control. We explored her hobbies (she was a very good artist, but had also let this joyful activity slide over the years).

Eventually, we got down to Marta's core 'career success factors' - the ability to be technically excellent and to 'see bodies restored' (her words) though medical intervention. This had made her a competent but unhappy ward nurse, but a great administrator. There was something about this job that wasn't right, though, she said she felt too time-pressured, to process information in time for deadlines meant she could not be thorough. Her her current job was also lacking in 'challenge' - her key career motivator.

Whether she knew it or not, Marta had been building towards her next, big career step for many years. She had developed an incredible knowledge of the latest tools and technologies, just from reading medical journals. Now all she needed was to undertake specialist training and get her new job working alongside doctors in an oncology unit. This job involved high level technical expertise and had not existed until recently, so how could she have dreamed it up all those years ago? Unfortunately, being bullied had made her feel unfit for any role - she had stopped dreaming, and even looking out for other roles.

Had Marta become a doctor, she may have been just as frustrated in her early career. (This often happens, especially in the medical field where high achievers get stuck doing boring, repetitive tasks while waiting for their chance to get into what they really need to do.)She may have become disillusioned with all the chores of a junior doctor, the role wasn't actually anything like she imagined, she now realised, but her 'doctor dream' provided us with the platform from which to develop a solid career plan.

Sometimes, what we call career success doesn't come early in life. The only crime is if we give up too early, and stop being engaged.

What was holding Marta back? Right now, it was, simply, that she needed to give herself permission to move past this stage, to take control and move forward. And the other thing? This was the first time anyone had actually encouraged her to talk about her dreams, rather than pouring water on them. Is it really that simple?

On jobs and careers, passions, needs and happiness: The story continues

Do a job you love and you will never work a day in your life.

This oft-quoted saying has been attributed to many great people, including Confucius. It is a fine saying, but it might make it sound like having a career is easy. From my own experience, and from that of people I know to have careers, this is far from the truth.

Jobs can be hard: you might have to work hard, for long hours, or your job might involve heavy labour. Some jobs are physically demanding, others mentally and intellectually so. Sometimes, jobs are hard because of difficult bosses or competitive, destructive work colleagues. Sometimes they are hard because they are repetitive or boring, or worse, because you feel undervalued or bullied.

Careers are hard for different reasons. When we practice a career, we are effectively backing ourselves. If we succeed or fail, we are responsible. When jobs go wrong, we can easily find a scapegoat (this doesn’t actually result in making us feel better about ourselves, though). We can move from job to job, always finding a person, a system, or something else to blame. When we have a career (which is self-driven), we can’t really blame anyone but ourselves - the buck stops with us.

However, the good news is we can’t really go wrong with a career, because a career is for life, it may permutate and change as we evolve, but it can’t go wrong, as long as it is allied with our true purpose. There might be failures. The actual performance of a career involves challenges and risks that you can avoid by simply having a job.

It is rare, but some people are fortunate enough to have a job that is perfectly aligned with where their career is at that point. This has happened to me twice in my life. (You can tell if this happens as both the rewards and the challenges are intensified). I lost both of these jobs during restructures. Fortunately, while this impacted significantly on my position and temporary earning ability, my career was intact and I was already looking forward to the next phase in my life.

A career is a choice we make. It might start with a vocation, a calling, a passion or it might be something more mundane – a need to do something small, that becomes bigger as we do it. Often, people fall into a job and then realise it gets into their soul, their psyche – they want to have an impact, not simply ‘do’ it. (This is what happened to me, but it took a long time for me to realise it).

A career in action involves bringing something into existence, making it better, or overcoming something you perceive as negative or wrong. It is always values-driven. This can be in any area of life, even if you clean toilets for a living. I had a client a while back who did just that; she reported a hygiene problem to the centre management. She didn’t leave it there; she also had a well-thought out and inexpensive solution. She was told a week later that her services were no longer required. We worked together for a long time; this woman went on to become a consultant, working with local government to make public toilets safer. It was a hard road, with lots of submission writing (she required assistance with this as she was not educated in Australia and had difficulties with the language), TAFE studies, and creative ways of getting to talk to the right people. Does she regret any of this? Not for a minute. She is now highly sought-after for input into a range of safety concerns.

So, if you feel that a career is something only other people can have, that you don’t have the space or time for it, think again – carefully.

Don’t just take my word for it. There are loads of passionate careerists out there, in a wide range of situations.

Last week I hijacked some words written by Daniel Reeves, a musician. I didn't ask him to write them, – I didn’t even know Daniel until very recently –  they fell onto my facebook page like a gift; a truly honest and heartfelt message about having a career, though he doesn't even use that term. I'm hijacking some more words from that post this week:

My dream is like many songwriters’ dreams would be, to spark inside someone the experience that music gave me this morning. To have someone stop for just a moment, to have a look at the big picture, to who they really are, where they really are and to be thankful for who they are. 

So I think it’s important to always do what you love, love what you do and most importantly, believe in yourself. We are a product of our experiences so just remember that when you’re at an age where you can’t do much and the majority of your life is spent inside, you will have lots of time for thinking. So you may as well pack as many good memories in there as you can.

If you are unsure about your own career, don’t worry, you are already having it. You might not be actioning it fully yet, it might need some work, but it is there, waiting to be tapped. Stop, sit still and listen to your inner voice – it won’t steer you wrong.

On jobs and careers, passions, needs and happiness

How can you tell if you have a job or a career? Can you have both?

Well, yes you can. A job is something you do. A job is a transaction – you provide something (your labour) and in exchange you receive payment (money and perhaps other benefits).

Many people who have jobs say they have careers – perhaps they climb the corporate ladder, or become highly skilled at what they do. But unless they would do this without any external reward, they don’t really have a career.

A job is what you do. It is always negotiable. A career is who you are. It is not negotiable.

You are welcome to dispute this. I am sure many of you will. You might say, but I need money to survive, to pay the mortgage, to pay for the kids’ school, etc. But, how much money do you need to do these things? How much do you really, really need? Chances are, you are sacrificing a career for nothing - careers provide an income as well, even if it is not in conventional ways.

Many people who say they have careers are not really happy. This is a real shame. Now I am not saying that if you have a career, every day will be like heaven on a stick. It won’t, and that is life. But if you really have a career, the days that aren’t so good – the days that challenge your determination, that question your ability, that push you on to greater success (on your terms) – these are the days that are most important of all.

A career is not something you drop after you leave the office (I don’t mean taking work home that you haven’t finished, because you are really doing two people’s work). A career is something that you carry with you – it is aligned with your purpose, your soul, and you find yourself doing things that continually reinforce who you are, even when you are ‘off the job’.

Everybody has a career, because everyone has a purpose, a raison-d’etre. When this is aligned with your job, it is an amazing thing. You might not be consciously aware of it, but if you are developing and exhibiting your career on a daily basis, you are most likely content with life most of the time. You are probably less competitive too, and more willing to share your knowledge with others, because careers are not selfish.

Another thing about career is that it is driven internally. People give you a job. You develop your career. Can you see the difference?

Can everyone have a career? Yes they can. In a developed country, we all have a choice. 

I have had jobs I have loved, and jobs I have hated, and some that were just OK. In my younger years I looked for jobs that matched my interests and suited my needs at the time. I enjoyed working in the inner city area before I had my kids, and commuting an hour each way was no problem. When we got into family mode, I looked for a job closer to home. I moved up the ladder and was happy enough.

I didn’t have a notion of career until I was in my forties. It was a culmination of a lot of things. Losing a job I loved and enjoyed going to, the collapse of my industry, finding a new talent, and a lot of soul searching and trying out of jobs that just didn't cut it.

I’m glad I found out what my career was. It changed my outlook on life completely. I no longer worried about whether I was ‘good enough’ in other people’s eyes, I set my own benchmarks. I have allowed myself to take risks, to succeed and to fail, and to label all of these as ‘experience’.

I’m glad I have a career, because at this stage of human evolution, jobs come and go quickly, and provide the least stability experienced since the Great Depression since the 1930s (except this time the instability is not going away). In this climate, losing a job is extra hard – there are financial consequences, of course, but the greatest barrier is related to the loss of identity that having a job brings.

We live in a time of constant and dramatic change. Life, and work, is unpredictable. Other than saving for a rainy day (something that is becoming more and more imperative), we have to face the fact that the future holds no guarantees. It is best if we all take the view that no job is safe; there is no course, no profession, no organisation that will provide us with a livelihood for the rest of our working lives.

 So, to the main point of this post: 

Having a career is excellent insulation against the vagaries of the labour market. It is the new 'essential' quality. It also helps you look at things more objectively, to be less beaten back when things go wrong. It is a reason to keep going, to find new ways of doing what you love, to be joyful about your life.

Let me explain.  Or rather, let someone else.

I’ve been given permission to quote a young man who has, in my humble opinion, a fine career – Daniel Reeves, a musician. Maybe you have heard of him? Maybe not. It doesn’t matter, his happiness does not hinge on acceptance by others (but do go and see him if he happens to be playing in your town, you won't regret it). Daniel expresses the true sense of career in these words:

I’ve spent half my adult life working on roads and the other half has been spent driving them. Although I have nights where I’d just love to crawl into my own bed and have the pleasure of a peaceful and uninterrupted 8 hours sleep, to reach in the fridge to grab my food instead of an esky in the back of the car, or when I stop at a road side shop and hope that the food hasn’t been in the warmer for hours and that I remain healthy for my show later that night. It really doesn’t matter if my change room is a bunch of trees on the side of the road before I get into town after spending all day driving, or when I visit my life’s possessions at a storage shed to grab what I accidently packed into the wrong box instead of getting it from my room. The journey and the experience of entertaining people by playing music is always so rewarding, whether I play a song that makes people dance or whether I play a deep and meaningful song that at some point or another has kept someone strong enough to move forward and keep going. The journey is always rewarding and full of rich life experiences. 

As a musician you soon realise there’s nights where there’s big crowds and nights where there’s not so big crowds. Nights with much applause, and nights with only the dishwasher humming along behind the pub bar after you strike the last chord of your song. But the journey and the experience are always calling. No matter how uplifted and on top of the world you are, no matter how tired and exhausted you are, there’s this life force of its own, this world of noise and beauty which just keeps driving you along.

Sometimes my wallet is over flowing with cash and other times it’s praying for rain. Like any role in life, there’s the good and then there’s the other side that goes along with it. But I could never swap how rich and rewarding this life experience is. 

My wish for everyone reading this post is that hasn't already done so - find your career – it really is a blast!