Building carreer

Translation trap: You’ve worked hard to get to where you are, yet the happiness you thought you’d find eludes you. You have all the hallmarks of success, but you feel like you have lost your way because your role doesn’t fulfill or inspire you. Nor does it align with your purpose. At the same time, you worry about changing directions because you believe that your current job is all you know.

5. 
   Adrenalin trap: You run your life on adrenaline, not taking enough time to care for your mind, body, and spirit. You are run-down and overworked. You say to yourself, “I’ll take a break tomorrow,” but tomorrow never comes. You have forgotten that putting your self-care needs first is a critical act of leadership and crucial for a sustainable career.
   

Avoiding these traps (and getting out of them) involves making deliberate trade-offs, and deciding on those trade-offs will become easier when you are clear on what matters to you. This brings me to part two: figuring out your purpose. 
Part 2: Define your purpose.
Your purpose is your “why” — the reason you do what you do. For some of us, it may be to lead a happy and healthy life. For others, it may be to create a life filled with learning and passing on those lessons. Purpose can center around study, experimentation, and trying new things. It can involve serving our communities, taking risks, or venturing into the unknown. Whatever our purpose, research shows that we can find meaning in our work by putting our why at the center of our decision-making.
So, what’s your purpose? Answering this question isn’t easy, and there’s no magic formula. It is an iterative process that involves some soul searching. To start, pay attention to what matters to you and motivates you.
Ask yourself: Why do I do what I do?
When you answer this question consider both your personal and professional life. This holistic approach is essential because you can’t divorce your work from the rest of your existence. A decision you make personally will affect you professionally (and vice versa).
If you feel the answer isn’t apparent, dig deeper and ask yourself:

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  What matters to me?
  
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  What and who inspires me?
  
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  When have I been the most motivated?
  
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  What difference do I want to make through my work?
  
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  When have I been most proud of who I am as a person?
  

Write down your responses and look for themes or common threads. If you are more of a visual thinker, you might even try creating Pinterest boards for each question. The objective is to capture your thoughts, feelings, moods, and impressions. Your ideas don’t need to be perfectly formed, so long as they have meaning. Over time, ideas will percolate, bubble up, and the obvious answers will spill over. When that happens, you will know you have hit on something. It will feel right.
Once you know your purpose (which, by the way, can shift and change over time), you can be more intentional about dropping the habits that don’t serve you (your career traps) and doing things that bring you closer to it. When picking a job or career path or saying yes to a new project, for example, you can ask yourself, “Does this align with what really matters to me? Does it get me one step closer to living a life aligned with my purpose?”
If the answer to those questions is yes, you know you are ready to move forward.
Part 3: Document your unique skills and create your selling statement.
Say you want to get a job that will stretch you and it aligns with your purpose of always learning. To get that job, you will need to demonstrate to your prospective employer what makes you a good candidate, and more so, better than others who may be vying for that job.
Take some time to identify unique skills or your Unique Selling Point (USP) — the things that, combined, make you better than your competition and would make any hiring manager pick you.