Career TOOLBOX #1: Entering Opportunities – Getting To Your Career Baseline

As this article is being written, according to the United States Department of Labor, national unemployment is at 10%*. While this double-digit statistic frightens economists and everyday citizens alike, the present is the most perfect time to take a step back, reflect on your professional aspirations and make decisions that will help you navigate your career into something meaningful and fiscally fruitful.

In the words of Leandro Margulis, a second-year Yale MBA, “The opportunity cost of pursuing your dreams right now is very low.” In these chaotic times, since, with some exception, no one is really knocking on anyone’s door, there’s very little for you to give up in order to follow your true calling.

Determining one’s occupational path is never simple. When we are in high school, the parental insistence to attend a quality college and determine an employable major corners us into a pressure cooker, driving decisions that may negate themselves in the future, when we have greater self-reliance.

However, even with a certain freedom, financial obligations, often in the form of debt – school loans, car loans, credit cards – deepen the dependence on chasing jobs-for-money vs. jobs-for-passion. And, the older we get, the growing responsibilities we may bear – mortgages, children, parents or those pesky students loans – create the ball-and-chain effect where work’s become not only the necessary prison to responsibly care for our life’s overhead, but also the access provider to the ever-eroding health care system.

To be clear, I’m not advising anyone to spontaneously quit a job that six other candidates are currently fighting for on this very day. Nor can I, or anyone else, determine your tolerance for risk. However, I am encouraging you to step back and think about what makes your heart happy, how you currently earn your paycheck and determine the gap between the two.

If you are professionally content, you are one of the few. Congratulations. If, looking back fifteen years, you envisioned something completely different, now is your time to take action.

The first thing I ask my clients is “What did you used to lose yourself in when you were four years old?” Because your inner four-year old knew what you wanted to do and what made you curious. The next thing I ask is, “Make a list of ten things you love to do, not taking money nor skill set into consideration.” Then, “Make a list of ten things at which you are very good.” Finally, “Take the two lists and create a Venn diagram – see what overlaps.” This is your first indication of what is possible.

You now have your Career Baseline – the starting point of an intricate process that will help guide you to your life’s calling. Take a deep breath and prepare yourself with all the energy-infusing support you know. The path won’t be easy. Nothing worth anything good ever was.

*First written in December 2009.  As of May 2013 the unemployment rate is  7.6%.

Reprinted with permission and gratitude from CoolCleveland.com.