Regarding career, words like ambition and talent get thrown around a lot, and we may start thinking one is less than the other. When, in fact, it’s the combination of both and other factors that make one successful in a chosen career, and here is why. You’ve got to have the drive (ambition), but all the drive in the world may not be enough without talent and other components. Therefore, you must be ambitious, talented, skilled with requisite potential, and more to succeed.
This article will spotlight the importance of self-discovery and how it dovetails into career building regardless of stage or age. There is a need to understand specific keywords in career wellbeing to set a solid foundation. These words are:
Potential: Inborn or untapped qualities known as raw or natural gifts.
Skill: Acquired knowledge or the technical know-how to perform tasks.
Talent: skilled potential, i.e., a combination of potential and skill.
Career: Major activities performed daily over a long period or lifetime.
Ambition: Set goals or dreams desired to achieve success.
Success: Achievement of purpose or goal.
These six words are not standalone concepts; they are intricately linked in an unending cyclic chain, which will be elaborated on next week because understanding this connection is essential for appreciating the complexity and sequence of career wellbeing. With all these in mind, career wellbeing enables you to experience fulfilment from your job, business, or whatever occupies most of your waking hours daily, ensuring no other aspect of your life suffers. Career wellbeing, therefore, represents the alignment of passion with a portfolio to achieve dreams and goals without any aspect of life suffering. As daunting as this may be, the secret to achieving it lies in creating your interconnecting wheel. This ‘wheel’ is a metaphor for balancing and aligning potential, skill, talent, career, ambition, and success. When these elements are in harmony, your career wellbeing is enhanced.
“Career wellbeing, therefore, represents the alignment of passion with a portfolio to achieve dreams and goals without any aspect of life suffering.”
Studies have shown that low career wellbeing levels may be due to a lack of proper alignment of these six elements or complete disregard for their natural sequence. When these elements are juxtaposed instead of having them in a mixed bag as a recipe for career wellbeing, an anomaly ensues, which affects every other dimension of wellness. Even though your career is defined by the major activities you carry out daily over a long period of time or lifetime, Finding a way to get well paid or rewarded for this chosen career or job is up to how well you have enhanced, empowered, and distributed your talent. It’s crucial to align these elements to take control of your career.
Read also: Key principles to boosting career wellbeing
About ten years ago, if an undergrad indicated an interest in taking some specialised parenting courses, she would probably not be taken seriously. Interestingly, proper parenting and having the suitable toolkits to perform well may be a passion to pursue. For such an individual, her career success may be measured by how her children turn out. Which could make other parents (potential clients) subscribe to her services. My point here is that because we are currently in an information era where almost everything sells, there is no reason people should be doing what they don’t enjoy to earn a living, let alone experience career wellbeing issues.
As much as we disagree that university degrees are overrated, discovering one’s potential at a very early stage or age and ensuring the acquisition of relevant skill sets to develop such potential into talent is critical to anyone’s success later in life. Even in adulthood, interests change occasionally, which means you constantly need to reinvent the wheel to remain happy with your career. This type of happiness is achievable through relevance and continuous improvement. For example, a technology enthusiast studying medicine may just be wasting money and time, except he can marry the two interests in a way that would give him fulfilment and good earnings. The key is to keep evolving and adapting to the changing landscape of your career.
In this country, diplomas and degrees were once the requirements for getting good jobs and earning a decent living. Then, it moved to masters abroad and now PhD. Sadly, all these don’t amount to job satisfaction, prevention of burnouts, or significant financial breakthroughs. Families still suffer in one way or another due to absent parent(s). Aside from family issues, these qualified people are trained to be the best for businesses or companies that are limited in number, amongst other issues.
The advent of information technology has, however, made it possible for us all to eat our cakes and have them at the same time. Information technology has opened up new career opportunities and made pursuing a career that aligns with your passion and talent easier. Now, people can choose what to do, enjoy doing it, and make a living off it regardless of their educational backgrounds.
A CALL TO ACTION
On a scale of 1-10. How well are you fulfilled with your job or business at no cost to the other aspects of your life? How well have you established a good life-work balance? How do you avoid burnout, create time, and make enough money for yourself and your family? Please email your responses to [email protected].
Olayinka Opaleye is a Wellbeing Specialist and Corporate Wellness Strategist. She can also be reached via Tel: 09091131150 or by clicking on www.linkedin.com/in/olayinkaopaleye.
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