The next step
- At October 29, 2011
- By Nathan
- In Career Planning
0
Reaching your carefully chosen career destination will often involve taking 10,000 or so small, make that very small, steps. The distance is just too great for most mere mortals to make in a single bound.
Oh, it would be nice to wake up one morning and discover that aside from winning the lottery, loosing 50 pounds, and becoming fluent in French, etc. you had also magically acquired your desired career. But down here on Earth…things don’t usually work out that way. So in order to take the next step it is necessary to identify the steps you have already taken, and hence the next appropriate step to take.
If you are feeling lost in life it is that much more important to slow down and try to determine where you are at in relationship to where you want to be. A mall style mental map with nice bright letters indicating “You are Here” could come in handy while trying to escape from your career wilderness. Similarly, picturing a GPS system tracking some poor soul spinning in circles year after year could provide the much-needed inspiration to stop. Which reminds me that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again with the same predictable and unsuccessful result.
Being busy, even if this just means aimlessly running here and there, can suggest a sense of direction and accomplishment – from a distance. Some people may lack in direction what they make up for in speed and still live out their days being constantly affirmed by casual acquaintances. And yet what good is all the activity if it just means going nowhere in particular really fast?
It may be tempting for some reading this to mistakenly assume, employing religious language, that neglecting their own responsibility is somehow synonymous with trusting in God. But this isn’t an either/or situation it is rather both/and. Confidence in God, in Christ, is critical along life’s way and so is a Christian-based emphasis on personal initiative. Those who make a point of not planning will, in all likelihood, just find that they are eventually forced to plug themselves into somebody else’s plan.
So where are you at right now? Lacking a clear vision of your destination? Unclear exactly where you are along the way? Why not take an hour or even a whole day in the not-to-distant future to sit down and carefully consider your next step.
© Career & Life Direction 2011. All rights reserved.
