3 Ways to Get Your Career Moving in the Right Direction

• Get clear about your values, motivations, and goals

You've probably heard many experts say that setting goals is essential to success in any aspect of life. Goals and their related objectives serve as a roadmap for planning and decision-making. But, I find that people have difficulty with goal setting because they are not really clear about what they want to accomplish. Often, when asked about their career and personal aspirations, I hear, "I want to be happy and live a comfortable life, " or "I want to work for a company that appreciates my contributions," or "I want to do something different from what I'm doing now."

Those are all great sentiments, but very vague and difficult to work with. Work on making those sentiments more concrete. What, specifically, does happiness and living a comfortable life mean to you? In what ways to you want a company to recognize your contributions? What exactly do you want to do more of or less of?

Once you become more clear, you can begin to take steps to obtain greater alignment between your goals and present situation. A great book I highly recommend is Second Acts by Stephen Pollan. In the book, he discusses the process for transitioning careers and provides helpful exercises.

• Take stock of your recent accomplishments

Accomplishments reflect what you're good at. However, what you are good at and what you enjoy doing may not be the same. Many people build careers on their skills without giving much thought to how they want to apply skills that they most enjoy using in a meaningful way. To get some clarity in this area, inventory your recent accomplishments by looking at the contributions you've made to your organization during the last 6 months. You can get clues from your performance appraisal, feedback from clients, co-workers, and staff. If you are active in other organizations, look there, too. What you do in your free time "without pay" can also provide many clues to your most satisfying skills.

Once you've compiled a list, try to identify themes around your accomplishments. Are your accomplishments clustered around leadership, management, organization and planning, presentation, financial management and analysis, writing, communication, sales, marketing, etc?

Marcus Buckingham, who has been featured on Good Morning America, has a great book on skills titled, Now! Discover Your Strengths.

• Explore your options

Now that you've gotten some clarity about your values, goals, and accomplishments, think about how you can leverage them in new, more satisfying ways. Many people stop here because they feel that making a career change will require too many sacrifices they are not ready to make. They have financial and personal obligations to consider. They are reluctant to engage in a full blown job search. They are not interested in returning to school for additional education and training.

However, career adjustments do not have to involve major life changes and decisions. In her book, Up Is Not The Only Way, Beverly Kaye discusses ways to achieve greater career satisfaction without leaving your job or organization.

Note from Markell: Making a career change can feel overwhelming. If you'd like to learn more about steps you can take to explore career paths and how to use your skills in a more meaningful way, download my free audio program, Fast Track Your Career: Three Steps for Finding Work You Love. In the audio program, I discuss the 3 step process I use with my clients confidently move forward in their careers. Click this link to download the free audio program: http://tinyurl.com/lh7bps

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Markell Steele is a career counselor, owner of Futures in Motion, Inc. and author of Fast Track Your Career: Three Steps for Finding Work You Love. She helps frustrated job seekers find career direction so they can get the job they want in less time with less stress. Follow her on twitter to get daily job search and career transition tips- http://twitter.com/futuresinmotion

Find more career and job search articles at http://www.futures-in-motion.com/article_archive.php. Contact Markell at http://www.futures-in-motion.com/contact_us.php.

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