So you're ambitious, right? And successful. And you're also stuck. And you ask yourself, how did that even happen? I'm such an ambitious person. I'm a go-getter. Why can't I get past this hurdle? I did ask myself that question plenty of times throughout my career. My name is Kai and frankly the answer only becomes a little bit more obvious now that I look at it from the outside in. So in today's video we look at the reasons why people become stuck and what their unintended consequences are. And of course whether leaving the job and starting something completely new is the answer. The other thing I learned is that ambition or success can leave you feeling a little bit isolated or misunderstood. Here you are. You are supposed to be happy. People look at you. You are successful but that doesn't matter to you. What matters is that the career that you're in makes a difference. That the work that you do matters. This is where I formed this community here because the lovely thing to me at least is that we can choose to do what we enjoy doing. But we do need courage to do that and align our careers with our lives. And that is what most topics here on this channel are about. It's the first time for you here. Welcome. Glad to have you. Back to the topic at hand. What makes people feel stuck at work and the number one reason is that they stop caring. You can argue that must have to do with some fundamental shift in attitude. Something that you cared about before you no longer do. So something shifted fundamentally in your mind. And something that was important to you no longer is. And sometimes that might be the case. But very often that's not the true reason. The true reason lies in the little ancillary things, the topics that we have to go through every day in our lives and our work lives that get us from caring to stop caring. Maybe you don't like the way things are done in your work. And you are unable to change it. Maybe you don't like your coworkers, your colleagues or your boss. Maybe something else is going on in your life. And so temporarily your priorities have shifted and your mind is somewhere else. So you stop caring that much about the work topics or you feel that you put so much more effort and work into the workplace than the colleague next to you. They get the same money, they get the same recognition and yet you do all the work that makes you resentful and you stop caring. Now we have this idea that all we have to do is change jobs or change careers and then we care again. But our brains work differently. We've sent our brain a message that not caring is okay. It's no longer that important. And so we go to the next job or we even change careers and we find ourselves in the same situation and we still don't care. So if leaving the job or changing careers isn't the answer, what is? When I talk to a career coach a while ago, I was very stuck on the idea of leaving everything behind, changing everything, doing something completely different, starting a new. And that might be a very good path for some of us. And I link at the end of this video a playlist that has all the various different options, how we can change careers so you can watch that too. But when I talk to her, she also alerted me to the idea that most things in life are not that revolutionary. There are mostly evolutions of what already exists and our careers are no different. So I set down and analyzed why I thought I would feel stuck in my career and to me two big items stood out. The first one is purpose and I can already see you rolling your eyes. Here is another one. There is a million YouTube videos on finding your passion, finding your purpose. But you know what? There are also a million ways that we lie to ourselves. We have this idea that passion is some noble cause, something where we have to make the world better. And that can be the case, but it doesn't have to be some of our purpose or passion can be incredibly selfish. Money, power, fame, recognition. You may say that sounds horrible or maybe you don't because finally somebody is saying what you are thinking all the way through anyway. But either way, the more honest we are with ourselves, what motivated us, what incentivized us to get into the job or the career that we are pursuing right now. The more chance we have to reconnect to that purpose and that isn't to say that we can't choose what our passion, what our purpose is, we can choose but we can't choose anything that we don't understand. So the first thing that we have to do to evolve in our career again is to reconnect to that purpose, to that raw idea of what incentivized us in the first place. Find out during your workday the things that you feel strongly about. Some of them you will have very strong positive, some of them you will have very strong negative emotions too. And think also back to the time when you started out. You most likely did more of the things that aligned to your purpose and you can do that again. The second thing I noticed is that my work became more and more influenced by what other people associate with it. I was a risk manager so I managed risks. I was a chief operating officer so I looked at processes and operations. Both of them were leadership functions so I led teams. Both of them were senior executive functions so I lived up to that picture that's associated with it more or less. And all of the things were something that to a degree I really enjoyed. There is one thing though that I thought less and less about and that is what are my strengths. As our life progresses and work becomes increasingly complex and successful we turn on the autopilot and keep going. When you want your career to evolve again have a fresh look at your portfolio of work. Is it really aligned to your strengths? And if it's not you inadvertently fell into the common trap of just doing what the job is instead of creating the work that you are meant to do. I'm not suggesting that sticking it out in the job that you're in right now is the solution. Certainly not suggesting that changing jobs is a better solution. What I do know is that when you find out a little bit more about your motivation and incentives and your strengths you are in a far better position to find the right answer. Maybe it's a simple perspective change in the job that you have right now. That helps you play towards your motivation. Maybe you need to change jobs in the field of work just to play towards your strengths and maybe in some instances it does mean to change careers. I know that everybody wants to convince you what's best for you. Especially if you are successful there will be also loud voices to say don't do anything too drastic you will risk everything that you've achieved and that can be scary but what's even more scary to me at least is not growing altogether. This is why I'm so glad that you are part of this community. Thanks for joining and there's more food for sort in the video up here. I'll see you over there. Of course also in the next video. Take care.