3 ways to feel unstuck in your career for 30-year-old professionals
The best thing that happened to me was my boss demoted me. I became unstuck and realized that all I accomplished since graduation was wasting time going after things I was truly excited about.
I made a mistake when I graduated from college.
Since transferring to the University of Oregon after my freshman year, I had always worked full-time at AT&T while taking a full-time class schedule. When I graduated, I was still working in the retail space, and my manager approached me about becoming an assistant manager. Not having a different plan, I said yes, and over the next few years, I went through the corporate management track.
The best thing that happened to me was my boss demoted me.
The meeting happened over three years after I had graduated from college, and as I reflect on that moment, the reality is it was the best thing that could have happened to me.
I became unstuck and realized that all I accomplished since graduation was wasting time going after things I was truly excited about.
When I was 30 years old, I went through the book What Color Is Your Parachute?, and it helped me get focused on the actual work I was meant and always wanted to do. Here are 3 ways you can feel unstuck based on what I learned through that book.
1. Write stories from your past professional experiences and find common themes
Write at least seven stories about your past working life where you remember doing things you liked.
Search your database for moments that made you smile, where you were doing tasks that were good. Make each story a page or two, and once you're done with one, read through it and highlight verbs and skills you used. Repeat until you have your seven stories, and then start extracting the words you highlighted.
What commonalities did you find, and how are they linked?
2. Compare your past experiences into a 'like' and 'disklike' list
Take the things you liked from your past experience stories and put those into a list of 'likes.'
Now, go back through your stories and pinpoint anything that made you feel ick or pain -- the things you dislike. Put those into a separate column next to your likes under the header 'dislikes.' Brainstorm the opposite of each dislike and write those in a third column across from the corresponding dislike.
What do you notice about the words in the third column compared to your 'likes' column? Anything similar? Circle or highlight those.
3. Be choosy when comparing outcomes one-on-one
Start comparing each like to one another.
Look at your first like and compare it to each other like down the list, one-by-one. Decide which of the two you like better, put a tally mark next to that word, and move to the next comparison. Repeat until you've compared every single word to one another, and then write a new list of likes in voted order -- with your most tally-marked word at the top followed by the next and so on.
Deeply think about the top words on your new list and use those to guide you into your next professional choice.
What options exist out there where you can do as much of your top choices as possible?