Is This Pattern At Play In Your Career?

This was one of the final lessons I needed to learn before heading out into my own business.

I’d been seeking validation of my value from someone else, a Manager, and it wasn’t forthcoming. Quite the opposite in fact. When I realised that I wasn’t going to get it from a source that had provided it throughout most of my career, I suddenly had to turn to a difference source – myself. I started to ask myself what really gave me a sense of feeling valued? At the time I was working in recruitment, and the answer was it was the clients and candidates I was helping. The thanks I received from them and how that made me feel. This was something I had control over, not the feedback, but investing in helping others to get the outcomes they wanted. That’s what gave me a true sense of feeling valued. I think this self acknowledgement of what value I gave to people, gave me the confidence to then step out into my own business and help others.

But back to the pattern…

I’m always looking for the learnings in what ever is going on in my life. Whenever a challenge comes along, I would ask myself ‘what is this here to teach me, develop within me‘ and ‘how is this challenge trying to get me back on my path?’. After asking these questions for long enough, I started to notice a pattern.

Whatever I was seeking outside of myself, life would deliver me the opposite, so that I would have to develop that characteristic within myself.

When I then applied that theory to the various challenges across all areas of my life – love, self acceptance, feeling worthy – it rang true. There were examples of life delivering me the opposite of what I was seeking and I could then see what I needed to work on.

So whenever you wonder why you’re not getting what you’re asking for in life or in your career, ask yourself the question ‘what am I seeking outside of myself’ and then you will see what life is mirroring back to you, that you need to develop within yourself.

Whenever you are triggered by something within your career, it is an opportunity to learn more about you, and grow. The key is to be proactive in pursuing your career purpose, rather than wait for a wake-up call. So if you’d like to start to get clear on your career purpose, take a look here.

(Remember to get your copy of Careers Awakening: How To Align Your Career With Your Soul Purpose here.)