Six Mistakes to Avoid on the Quest for a Purposeful Career
I made numerous mistakes on my journey to find a more fulfilling career. After speaking to many people, I realized some are quite common, and with enough awareness, entirely avoidable.
#1: Thinking… and thinking… and thinking about what you want to do.
There’s only so much thinking you can do before you have to start experimenting. Even if you only have a vague idea of what could be the right path for you, or what area you might be curious about, set up a small project to try it out or make it more tangible. It will shift your energy, activate your creativity, give you new ideas, and clarify what you like and don’t like about this potential direction.
#2: Thinking what to do without doing the deep mindset and identity work to transform your human.
In order to get to a different level of truth in your career choice, you have to get to a different level of truth in understanding yourself. You have to dig into your perception of your abilities, values, and identity to release yourself from the conditioning that has shaped both who you are and where you are in your career and life. It’s difficult to get a breakthrough from the same mindset and beliefs that got you to where you are. It’s even more difficult to change yourself without intentionally putting in the work to do so.
#3: Not allocating time for your pursuit intentionally and consistently.
Whether you keep your day job, quit your job to free up all your time to experiment, or play somewhere in between, life constantly gets in the way. Your current career, health, home, and family are always in flux and need attention. The demands on your time expand to fill whatever free time you have. If you don’t actively allocate time to work on your projects and mindset, and then protect that time religiously, nothing will happen. Finding a career path that lights you up is an amorphous and challenging project in the best of circumstances. If you don't make it a non-negotiable you'll make little progress with good intentions alone.
#4: Staying in a job that’s emotionally exhausting.
If your job takes away your will to live, you’re not going to be in the right frame of mind to be curious, excited, or experimental. If just getting through the workday drains all your energy, you’ll never make progress on your pursuit. Either find a job that’s more bearable, or better yet, work on changing your attitude towards the one you already have. What if you didn’t care about what your boss said? What if you didn’t want to do the perfect job, and were satisfied with doing a good enough job? Can you delegate work to people who will see it as a growth opportunity? Can you imagine your colleague as a six-year-old when they go on a rant instead of taking offense? It’s not easy, but working on seeing your job as a short-term source of income rather than an instrument for proving your worth can release a lot of pressure and shift how you show up for yourself—and how people respond to you.
#5: Expecting to make money too early.
If you expect a new pursuit to make money quickly, for instance, because you quit your job and only have a few weeks or months to find something else, you’ll likely compromise on a career that isn’t your true heart’s desire. It’s common for people to delude themselves into thinking that they like a certain path because it’s an easy path to monetization even when it’s hardly their dream career. Finding a pursuit that lights you up AND makes money very quickly is quite rare, and I would caution you against counting on it to immediately materialize. By all means, make the money from a project you can monetize, but be honest with yourself and don’t stop experimenting until you find the type of work that feels 100% right. Otherwise, you’ll soon be back to square one. What’s a good indicator that you’re on the right path? You’ll do it for free.
#6: Using other people as your compass.
The people in your life know the version of you that got you this far. They won’t always be the people who encourage you to become a more expansive version of yourself unless they’re going through a growth journey themselves. The people closest to you might be more inclined to protect you from the scary sh*t you need to do to grow than to push you toward it. They might unconsciously prefer to maintain the status quo in your relationship. After all, if you grow, you may outgrow them. If you seek advice from the people around you, always question whether the person giving the advice sees your potential, or reaffirms your limitations.
Go inward. Get uncomfortable. Get going.
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