Career goal setting

One of the toughest issues in career choice and career goal setting and planning is identifying what is it you want. Even when it seems that you know what you want, you may still have doubts on if your career choice is right. Reaching clarity in those issues may be the most important thing you can do in your career planning and goal setting.

Here are a few career goal setting guidelines that can help.

Most people, even very successful ones, have some periods in their career path when they seem unsure about their career choice and goals. It is totally human to feel that way. Often, such periods just come and go. For example, they come when you face some owhervelming obstacles on your way. It is all over as soon as you get through the obstacles. That situation by itself is not a problem of choosing career, only a test of your perseverance.

But what if those doubts persist, if they always live somewhere in the background of your thoughts? If it just does not feel right? If this is the case, then it is time to look more carefully at your career choice and occupational goals and objectives.

In most cases the answers are inside you, though not that easy to find. Yet, you can see a much clearer picture of your ideal job or career choice as soon as you free yourself from certain psychological traps.

The psychological blocks easily hide in your thinking, they often have quite deep roots, and you cannot just switch them off. And letting them stay hidden and ignored is a big mistake that can cost you career satisfaction and life happiness.

Barbara Sher, a well-known therapist and career counselor, has been digging deeper into those psychological blocks in career choice and career goal setting with many of her clients. What she found is that in most cases the clients were "locked in an internal battle and didn't even know it". Yet, as soon as those inner conflicts are uncovered and understood, it is relatively easy to take care of them. Barbara Sher has identified the typical inner conflict scenarios, such as "On the wrong track and moving fast", "I've lost my big dream", or "I want too many things", just to name a few of the many. She put together those situations and her experience of dealing with them in her book I could do anything if I only knew what it was. How to discover what you really want and how to get it . The book has become the New York Times bestseller.

Finally, after you clarify what it is you want, in you career goal setting and planning you can use, for writing job objectives and goals, the same general goal setting principles that I discuss on other pages of this site.

Listen to Finding Your Passion
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