YOUR SOUL WANTS TO THRIVE AND GROW
By: Clementina Alegrett
Tags: Employee Motivation, Purpose, Newwork, Leadership, Career Development

YOUR SOUL WANTS TO THRIVE AND GROW

Powerful questions that help you find your why and craft a career that lights your fire

Garry Ellis

“What lights you up?” Is probably the question I most ask my clients when we start working together. Many of us can agree with Tony Robbins when he stated in his book “Awaken the Giant Within”, that “the quality of your life is a direct reflection of the quality of the questions you are asking yourself.” So, this suggests that if we change the questions we ask ourselves, we can have a huge impact on the quality of our life. Isn’t that interesting?

The same happens with our career. There are thought-provoking questions that can lead you towards finding your raison d’etre. As a career coach my mission is, on the one hand, to help professionals identify their strengths, talents and skills and on the other hand, help them design a roadmap of their competencies, experience and expertise, in order develop a strategy in favour of crafting a career around them that feels very much on purpose.

We all want a career that energises us, as much as a Duracell PLUS-powered bunny, where we feel enthusiastic, vibrant and alive, happy to get hands-on with our day to day tasks and duties. At the end of the day, work is going to fill a large part of our lives: on average we will spend 90.000 hours of our life at work. The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you consider is great work and, for this, we need to love what we do. So, if you haven’t found that yet, do not settle and keep looking.

Is what you are doing right now bringing you joy, fulfilment, and satisfaction?

If you are feeling stuck, you are probably not doing what lights you up. Therefore, I will leave you some insights as to how to start answering these questions. Clues about what lights us up are all around us, and they can be very important for your next career move. This should help you get close enough to get you back on the right path.

What specific tasks have you done in the past, or in your current job, that you really, really enjoy? Which activities do you find the most engaging? What are the kind of tasks you dislike most and don’t look forward to? Ideally you focus on the ones you most like, and probably are better at and focus less on those you dislike.

What can you talk or read about for hours and not get bored? Imagine you decided to start a blog or a podcast. What would your first 3 posts or episodes be about?

Look back on the last time you felt in a state of flow. What were you doing?

What is on your bucket list?

As I said, these answers are clues and they are all around us, reason why it is so important to be aware of them as they rise. It is highly probable, for many of you, that you have yet not asked yourself these questions. It can feel strange at first. We were taught to play safe and be pragmatic, get a stable job with a steady income and contribute to our pension for retirement. Furthermore, our brain craves comfort, familiarity and stability, hence we settle to avoid threat and uncertainty. And we more or less give up and surrender, retreating right back into our comfort zone.

Here is another interesting fact:

Around 80% of the people will have never really thought about what their purpose is. And then I ask myself: how can you work towards a way of being, if you have not yet defined what that actually is and looks like for you. Do you follow?

For me purpose is not an abstract thing or something external that you achieve nor something you spend your life striving to reach, but rather the way you choose to live every day aiming to feel aligned with the things you most value.

Everyone has been given a set of gifts, I call them natural talents, that are unique and this shapes your essence. Often our own limiting beliefs plus our fears end up squashing your authentic self and make us forget what we can offer. This is why I invite you to rediscover those unique gifts that light you up and inspire you.

Ultimately, ask yourself how you can serve others by doing what you most enjoy and what comes to you naturally. Think about it. What is the best that can happen in the process? I’d love to hear some of your reflections.