What is your motivation for re-evaluating your career and the way you are living your life? Perhaps there is a specific event(s) that you feel the need to confront such as a job loss. Perhaps you no longer feel connected to your career. Or perhaps you are realizing the need to be more mindful about how and with whom you are spending your time.
When your career and life is in flux your thoughts are spinning and you fixate on the negative. You desperately feel the urgency to figure out what’s wrong and take action to course correct. This is typical. The best antidote, however, is to slow down, pause, and take a close look at your career and life.
The first step toward the future is revisiting the past. This begins with a simple yet crucial exercise, mapping out your career and life arc. This will help you visually see where you have been and where you are headed. Getting started is simple.
Plot the arc of your life on a piece of paper or use my free workbook. By decade, identify your key milestones? What are your career successes? What are your personal triumphs? What was the impact of each milestone on your life? Rate them on a scale from one to ten based on positive impact. Recall as many significant experiences as you can. Next, think about what you were doing and with whom? How was your arc trending ten years ago? How is your arc trending to today? Why?
With this exercise you get reacquainted with your best self and past successes. The more you can isolate and uncover insights about your finest experiences the more apt you are to recreate them in future.
If you have any questions about this exercise, you can check out my book Amplify Your Career and Life or contact me at [email protected].