Top 5 Signposts
To Your Best Career Choices

Making the best career choices is not about predicting the future. It is about who you are being as you make the decision. The most fulfilling results emerge from full and continuous self-expression.

When you look to the future you are entering the world of imagination. An awareness of possible consequences is useful, but not definitive when choosing a career. What is real and definite is the experience you are having right now.

The most powerful decisions are made by focusing on who you are being in the present, not what may or may not happen in the future. Watch out for these 5 signposts. These are the ‘right now’ experiences that point you to your best career choices:

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1) Element of Risk

The best career choices bring new experiences together with the opportunity to learn and grow. Any option without these qualities will lead to a stagnant career not a fulfilling one.

New experiences required you to step out of your comfort zone. This introduces an element of risk because there is some uncertainty about the outcome.

The nature of the risk involved is a personal choice. However, the best career choices do necessarily involve an element of uncertainty as they expand your perception of what is possible for you.

2) Expansive

Have you come across the term ‘dead-end job’? These are never a good option; they do not lead anywhere you want to go!

The best career choices are expansive. They are like a breath of fresh air; they open up new opportunities and contribute to your longer term vision.

Sometimes menial work is necessary as a means to an end. However, the decision of an aspiring photographer and a no-hoper, to work in a supermarket, is wildly different. One has vision and is working for an expanded their career, the other is playing small.

3) Self-Expressive

Do you like balancing spreadsheets? For some people it is a joy. For others like me, it is a headache! There are lots of good careers, but for most of them you are unsuitable.

The best decisions are motivated by your top careers values. When your choices express what is most important to you the resulting career will be the most fulfilling.

4) Uncompromising

Often the mind artificially creates paradoxes around career decisions. A common one is that you can either be wealthy or a good person. If being wealthy and good are both important to you then this choice can be parallelizing.

The best career choices do not ask the question ‘Which one?’. They ask ‘How can I have both?’.

You may not know how to have both right now. However, you will never find out if you settle for one or the other. Being uncompromising is trusting that you can find a way to choose everything that is important to you, and then figuring out to make it work.

5) Inspired

If you are inspired by a new decision your belief and excitement will rub off on other people. They will want to be around you and support you.

In contrast when you play small you make no contribution to others. It is like you are living your life on mute.

Compare the ‘being-ness’ behind these decisions:

1) I am going to become an engineer because I love understanding how things work and then taking on the challenge of improving them.

2) I am going to become an accountant because it is a steady career and a safe option

You can learn a lot by observing who you are and how people respond when you talk. Your best career choices will bring life to a conversation; whilst your worst will deaden the exchange.

The Worst Career Choices

Consider the signposts pointing in the opposite direction. The worst career choices are made by being safe, small, soulless, compromising and dull.

What impact would embracing this way of being in your career have on your life experience?

Are you a ‘Lost Soul’?

I took The Self-Test shortly after deciding to train as a Life Coach. One of my friends gave this feedback:

“Before, when you were applying for various jobs, you did seem to be a bit of a ‘lost soul’ … I think your decision to pursue life-coaching has taken quite a weight off your shoulders and it's a very good thing that you have found your ‘vision’”.

Her observation was spot on. During the decision process I spent a lot of time designing careers designing careers to create my ideal lifestyle. However, at this point the future plans only existed in my imagination. What she noticed was a shift in who I was being in the present.

I went from:

• ‘Lost soul’ to the risk of looking bad, if my plans did not work out, and the risk of the financial investment to fund my training, (Risk)
• Frustration to taking action to open up new possibilities, (Expansive)
• Confused to clarity about who I really want to be in my career. (Self-Expression)
• Playing small to facing the fears brought up by choosing an unconventional career path. (Uncompromising)
• Stuck to pursuing my dreams (Inspiring)

It is inspirational to see anybody embrace those signpost experiences and live life fully. The details of what they are seeking to achieve for the future are secondary.

Personally I was transformed and fulfilled by my decision. Not because of the possible future it might lead to, but by whom I am being having committed to the decision.

Who will you be?

Who you are being as you make your decisions is the biggest factor in creating a fulfilling career. Your future plans may or may bear fruit. It is the decision to pursue your career objectives that will lead to fulfilment. The best career choices are made by looking for these five signposts in your present experience.

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