How can I recognise “This is it! This is my dream job! This is what I am supposed to do now! – this is one the most common worries of my clients and a question I was recently asked by Iulia Istrate, the founder of Skills for Mars, in our online interview.
When it comes to recognising your dream job – one thing is clear:
It’s about finding what dream job means to you!
You’re a human being, a professional with a unique combination of talents, skills, values, needs and desires how you want to make a difference. It’s really your job to figure out how you want to spend decades of your working life. Because nobody else knows better than you.
Sounds easy but it’s often not that straight forward in real life. If it was, wouldn’t we all have jobs we love?
In this series of blogs I’m writing about 3 signs that I’d highly encourage people I work with to explore and define for themselves when they’re searching for their dream job.
3 signs to recognise your dream job
Apart from the practical and common criteria, such as finding a job taht society needs and that brings you money, here are 3 signs that can help you move away from a horrible, dull and unfulfilling job:
- Find a job that energises you and that gives you joy
- Find a job that makes sense to you and that gives you purpose
- Find a job that you’re willing to do even while facing difficult situations
In today’s blog you’ll learn more about the first part – job that gives you energy.
At the end of this blog you can sign up to my newsletter and catch the other two articles that I will be publishing in next few weeks.
It’s a job that energises you and that gives you joy
In other words it’s a job that lights you up. It has nothing to do with how difficult or easy, how simple or sophisticated a job is. It has also nothing to do with what other people think about this job.
It has everything to do with how that job makes you feel, how much it brings you alive.
The challenge with figuring out which job you love is that you can’t access it through your logical thinking. When searching for job that you love you’ll be questioning yourself:
How do I know it’s right for me? How do I know this is it?
My simple tip is here – you will recognize it and feel it.
Just as you feel love and appreciation for a human being, for a certain place or for your hobby, you can feel passion and love for your job. That appreciation, joy and flow of energy will remain even when the novelty of your job wears out or when you’re going through challenging times.
Recognising what brings you joy in your career may not be a new concept for you, but it’s definitely a concept that is hard to sustain in real life.
Have you noticed how much you may be focusing on everything that doesn’t work or that makes you feel bad? That’s why it’s helpful to stop focusing on what makes you feel bad and horrible and instead start journaling about activities, situations and people that energise you and that bring you joy.
Have you lost motivation in your job? Again focus on what brings you energy and how to do more of what lights you up in your day-to-day work.
What if I can’t define a job that gives me joy? Where do I start?
Good question.
If you’re finding difficult to figure out which job or activities bring you joy, you can start to explore your passion and talents.
From my experience I can tell it can take my client between 3-6 months to gain clarity on what their passion and talents are and how to use them to identify their dream job. This is still worthwhile compared to years of staying in a job that isn’t a good fit.
Your areas of passion and talents will be represented by activities that you find natural, fulfilling and energising. Often so much that you may not recognise their potential to include them into our careers.
My second tip is to get out there and volunteer.
You may find it difficult to experience and “feel” what your dream job is from your sofa or office desk. Especially if you are often stuck in your head, overanalysing while trying to figure our the best solution.
Get out there and explore the world. You don’t need to resign and loose your income to discover what your dream job is. Use what you have – your time. As little as you have free and available. Shortlist 2-3 different jobs that you’d love to try out or that are a good fit for your talents and give it a go for a few hours a month. It doesn’t matter if you volunteer once a week or twice a month. What matters is that you’ll be able to experience possible jobs that can lead you to your dream job.
My last tip when searching for work that you’d love is let go of perfection.
Finding work that you’d love doesn’t mean that everything that you desire will happen when you expect it or that everything will be perfect. No job is perfect. And that in my view is the beauty of finding and doing work that you love – you focus on what matters most – what you love about that job – and then let go of everything else that takes your focus away from it.
One of my most favourite parts of career coaching is helping people infuse joy and passion back to their working lifes. Here is what Caroline thought after 2 sessions:
Adriana is a very good trainer, knowledgeable and listened well.
Her workshop helped me to reignite enthusiasm and passion for my job.
Want to catch my articles and discover what to look for when finding work you love?
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Author: AdriAna Kosovska
Professional and certified coach & founder of ZERO TO DREAM JOB ACADEMY
I work with employees, managers and organisations that care about
Dream job & Career Development | Stress reduction | Talents development |
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