Once you have your personal mission statement completed, put it where you can see it daily. Write it on your bathroom mirror. Put it in your phone. Make or purchase something that symbolizes it and keep it on you or around you. Take the object and infuse it with the idea behind the mission statement. Be creative and put it where YOU know it will be a constant reminder of what you must do.
Determine Your Course: Career Planning
You may be asking yourself why is there a section on career planning in a book about school? At the end of the day, the reason you are investing your time and money into school is to learn something that will help develop your career. You are looking to be certified and apply what you learned to a job that will give you a long-standing return on your investment. Essentially, you are preparing yourself for your next step. Getting an idea of what your next step will be is crucial to ensuring that you are investing your time and money properly.
Know Yourself
Identifying a career starts with you.
1.What are your interests?
2.What are your skills?
3.What type of environment do you want to work in?
Going to school just to get a job, a better job, or any job is one of the worst decisions you can make in life. According to a 2012 article in The Atlantic, 53 percent of college graduates are either jobless or underemployed1. Therefore, if your goal is to just get a job or a better job then you have 50/50 chance of making that happen, even after four years of school.
If you attend school just to get away from your family and get a job, you will most likely spend a lot of money and waste a lot of time doing something that does not improve your life. The chances of you working a job you dread going to five out of the seven days of your week will be high. If you think about it, you’ve seen people who love what they do come home disgusted on occasion, although it’s nowhere near the agony of people who hate what they do in general. If it is guaranteed that you will get annoyed from time to time in your career anyway, why not make it about something that you are inspired by and willing to fight for?
Get paid to do what you love.
Think about how you choose your mate. Relationships require a lot of work. Whoever you deal with is bound to irritate you at some point. Yet we pick the person who gives us more of what we want and in turn we deal with their negative traits.
Use the same logic with your career: go for what you love.
Doing what you love is good for you and your employer. When you love something, you care about it. You are more engaged in doing it well. Employers want engaged employees. They know that an engaged employee will perform better than others will2. Those employees will champion the company and make a good impression on customers.
Think about it. Which doctor would you want to operate on you?
1.One who doesn’t care about your health but just wants a check?
2.One who loves what they do and will do everything in their power to make sure you get the best treatment?
Obviously, the right answer is number two. People who love what they do are usually better at it. They see their work as a reflection of themselves. They also want others to love what they love so they give their best.
The first step to figuring out your dream job is to identify your interests.
Exercise F2.1 – Identify Your Interests
Get a notebook, a few sheets of paper, or open a new word document. Take out at least 20 minutes of your time, distraction-free. Take your time and list anything and everything that has ever interested you.
Think back to when something caught your interest. Review childhood memories, interesting conversations, times where you had a lot of fun, or when you cared enough to learn more about something. Even if it was just a small inclination, write it down without a filter.
If you can’t come up with at least 20 things, then you are thinking too hard about this exercise. Just list the things you like. This is your list of interests, not anyone else’s.
Be honest with yourself when you identify your interests. Do not settle for things you are halfway interested in. Focus on the things that brighten your eyes—those that make you lose track of time. EVERY single thought or interest you have probably has an at least million-dollar industry behind it. To prove that point, look at your current environment right now. Try to find something that doesn’t have a million-dollar industry behind it. The chairs, walls, floor, concrete, paper, the ink on this book—all of these things that make up your world were created by working people. Someone has dedicated their entire career to laying the foundation for your interests. You can develop it even more and get paid to do it!
Next, let’s get an idea of your skills. Skills are the things you do well. The key here is to focus on the things you do well and enjoy doing. When you get a job, you will be doing things. Ideally, you want to spend as much time as possible doing the things you enjoy and do best.
Exercise F2.2 – Examine Your Skills
Get a notebook, a few sheets of paper, or open a new word document. Block out at least 10 minutes of distraction-free time. Write down your skills. All the things you do well. Think about what others have complimented you about. What work have you been proud of? What have you done that gave you a sense of accomplishment? What positive affect do you have on people, places, or things? Go back through the subject you were good in during school. What assignments did you do well? What were you involved in that made you feel good about your work?
Just list everything.
Another key component to finding your dream job is your environment. Figuring out the best environment to nurture your development is hard if you have not traveled much, held a few jobs, been involved in a few organizational activities, or experienced other people’s workspaces. The more experience you have in a variety of work environments, the easier it is to determine the best one for you.
A work environment consists of the people, the workspace, timeframe, and geography. Take some time to figure out what works for you. Outside of your willpower, the environment is the greatest influence on your well-being and future. It is critical to be in an environment that contributes to developing who you want to be. No environment or group is perfect, but it is obvious when something either diminishes or contributes to what you are about. When someone realizes this and considers how much time they have wasted in toxic, unproductive situations, they get angry with themselves for letting it happen. Take that anger and transform it into energy toward finding the right environment.
Exercise F2.3 – Paint the Environment Where You Will Blossom
Sit back and dream. If you lived in the perfect world, where would you spend your working hours? Who would be the people you worked around? How would they treat you? Would you do most of your work on your own or with a team? How far would you have to travel for work? Where would your job be? Downtown? On the outskirts of town? At home? In a cubicle? Would you move around a lot?
Think back on all the environments where you have worked or have seen someone else work in. What did you like? What didn’t you like? Get a sheet of paper and make a big T on it. On one side, list all the things you would want in a job environment and on the other list all the things you do not want in your job environment. List everything.