Are You Boxed Into Your Career?

Are you among the millions of Americans who dread setting off for work each morning? Have you become bored, feeling there are no new frontiers to conquer in your current occupation? Are you yearning to be free of a daily drudge, but feel you have no choice but to persevere to the bitter end? Do you think that finding work you love to do is just a fantasy of wishful thinking? Are you boxed into your career?

If the above questions in any way describe your feelings about your work life, chances are you have built a box around yourself and you can’t find your way out. Perhaps you have a family to support, bills to pay, commitments to honor. Each objection you use to rationalize why you stay in a dead-end or deadening job is actually a wall of your self-constructed career box.

At The IMPACT Group Career Center, the career consultants work with many clients who begin the career transition process with deep feelings of disenchantment about former or current work and workplaces. The feeling is easily identified, but the roots of the feeling have been left unexplored. Through a battery of in-depth assessments, the career consultant guides the client through the internal maze until he/she is able to recognize that occupation which is a perfect fit. Without the vision gained through self-assessment a career is relegated to luck.

Dozens of books have been written about career planning. Some that may assist you in doing a career self-assessment include: "The Crystal-Barkley Guide to Taking Charge of Your Career" by Nella Barkley and Eric Sandburg; or, "Discover the Best Jobs for You! Tools and Strategies for Career Success" by Ronald L. Krannich and Caryl Rae Krannich.

Another resource for career self-assessments is the Internet. For a fee, you can access the Campbell Interest and Skill Survey at www.usnews.com/ usnews/edu/beyond/ciss2.htm. A wide variety of free personality, intelligence, attitude, lifestyle and emotional health tests can be accessed at www.queendom.com.

Having discovered the perfect career through an assessment of skills, abilities, interests and goals, it is now necessary to identify the walls of your self-constructed career box. Draw a box. Draw yourself in the middle of the box. Label each side. Some of the following questions may help get your started:

• Has your lifestyle become inflexible?
  
  
• Have status, recognition, perks and bonuses become defined as necessities?
  
  
• Do geographical boundaries determine where you must work?
  
  
• Does a lack of training or education hold you back?
  
  
• Has your job become your identity?
  
  
• Are you unsure how to position yourself for a career transition?

When you have finished, you will have a graphic picture of the variables that have you boxed into your career. To get out of your career box, you will need to remove at least one of the sides.

Actually knocking down any side of the box, any wall, to create your own opportunity for career fulfillment may be absolutely terrifying to you and to all of those who rely on you. And yet, deep inside yourself you do recognize that doing work you love is both a right and a necessity.

In "Your Signature Path," Geoffrey Bellman adapts the quadrant of "The Doom Loop" by Dory Hollander, Ph.D. by designing a quadrant to help you determine which possessions in your life are essential and which possessions you can eliminate. Following instructions in the book will allow you to create your own quadrant. With the completion of this exercise you are well on your way to knowing which side of your self-constructed career box you can prepare to remove.

Attainment of goals is by choice, not chance. Make a plan that safeguards the sacreds in your life and creates the possibility of achieving satisfying and fulfilling life work.

• Do you have enough money saved to fulfill your financial obligations for the length of time it will take to achieve your new career? If not, evaluate your assets. Develop, and stick to, a budget that will give you this financial freedom for the interim phase.
  
  
• Do you have the right kind of training? If not, research the local educational and training resources to learn who offers the best, or the most efficient, or the most practical programs. Set a date to begin. Remember, you can always get to your educational objectives one course at a time.
  
  
• Does your current job have a changeable travel schedule that prevents you from making an educational commitment? Check out a weekend university. It may be just the program you need. Or get the dates for the completion of a certificate program. Negotiate with your boss a schedule that will allow you to attend.

Each moment of life you are choosing what you will and won’t do, what you want and don’t want, what you like and don’t like. Is there any real reason why this constant choosing cannot be focused on your commitment to achieving your "dream" job?

You, too, could soon be making that transition that will lead to work you love to do. Will YOU take the steps of transition to get out of your self-constructed career box?