10 Steps to Choose The Right Career

Why was it so important for us to learn that 2+2=4, and not equally important to learn the best way to make personal choices? Think about it, how many choices do you make in a day vs... how many times you need to use 2+2=4? Wouldn’t it have been nice to learn, early on in life, a process to make great choices for ourselves and not leave this valuable lesson to chance?

When it comes to your career, you want to be sure that you make the most powerful choice possible or else you'll be searching again and again!

Here are ten steps to help even the scales. Before we start, as always, you need to know what you really want in order to use this process. If you don’t know, you will end up making choices that don’t work for you. Remember, no number of steps or processes can help us if we aren’t honest with ourselves about who we are and what we want.

Here is some pre-work that you will need to do before you can move forward:

-Identify your values – What do you hold most dear? Is it family, integrity, faith, wisdom, peace, friends, love…Push yourself to articulate those things that you can not live without. Now write them down.

-Define what personal freedom means to you – Write your own definition. Use you values to help guide you through this definition.

-Define the career that supports your values and definition of personal freedom.

Your values and you definition of personal freedom become your benchmark for making choices.

Now the 10 Steps

1. Identify how you feel right now – Think about the circumstances that have brought you to this point of choice. If you feel worry or maybe confusion, let it go for the time being and move to step two. Keep moving.
2. Identify your absolute best outcome…BE HONEST…This is not: “I want to work for myself, but I won’t be able to meet my bills.” This is: “I want to work for myself. I will need to find a way to make my bill payments.”
3. What are all of your options / choices? Ask others for additional support and options, separate fact from fiction- push yourself – come up with ten – prioritize according to what is important and valuable to you.
4. Test each option / choice against your values and personal freedom definition – stay focused. Test each remaining option / choice against your absolute best outcome. Which choices are in alignment? Which ones are not?? Eliminate the ones that are not.
5. Let go…give yourself space while looking for signposts. Take time to notice what the universe puts in front of you. Victor Frankel had a tough choice, he could go to the United States during WWII and continue teaching or he could stay and help his parents. He struggled for some time with this choice. One day he went to his parents house and on the table there was a piece of a tablet from temple that had been destroyed. Victor asked his father what the tablet was and was told that it was one of the ten commandments. Victor then asked his father which one and his father said, “Honor they mother and they Father.” Victor chose to stay and help his parents.
6. Make your choice. Ask yourself, what would it cost you if you did not follow through on this choice? Identify how you feel about your choice.
7. Accept full responsibility for your choice – Don’t spend energy on, “I wish I had”. There is no going back, only going forward by continuing to make choices.
8. Break through fear to deliver your choice – If your choice has an impact on someone else, deliver your choice with compassion.
9. Let go and learn from your choices, know that you have made the best choice you could at this time.
10. Re-evaluate how you feel now that you have made your choice – you should feel empowered, if not, go back and evaluate your other options.

Give it a try and see how you do!