How To Take Responsibility Of Your Professional Growth

Growth.

Everyone talks about it, right? But it is almost impossible to find a recipe to follow and after that to declare:

Ok, I am good enough. I can stop now.

In most of the cases, the beautiful things in life are not coming just following some recipes. They do not come without making efforts or without dragging you out of your comfort zone. This is being said by a person who most of her life waited some magic to happen. Yeah, that’s me. It would be so nice and easy if everything would happen without having to pass through all the painful process of growing up.

But let’s face it, where would be the fun in that?

The truth is that only when you embrace all your fears, you start to grow.

I have read recently many articles about the Millennials and what make them happy at work. Seems that companies are making efforts to impress them.

How?

By creating dreamy work environments, by offering them lots of opportunities to decouple after spending hours in front of a computer, by creating the context to follow their dreams. However, lots of people when you ask them “hey, how’s your work?” their answer is “meh, it’s okay … can be better”.

Your work can be as good as you want it to be, or as bad as you let it be.

Only you have the power to dictate the direction your professional growth to follow. But how can you do that?

Be active, be present, be open. Be curious.

Let’s make curiosity our daily drug, shall we?

Never lose a holy curiosity. — Albert Einstein

If you think you have learned a lot about your work domain, let me tell you that you never reach the end of a domain. Once in a while you find something new. Maybe it is an aspect that you missed in the past, maybe it’s a new tool you can use to ease your work, maybe it’s a new process. There is always something new that worth to be investigated.

Be open to listening and be open to communication. Initiate challenging discussions with people doing the same work as you do. Find people writing about the domains you are interested in. Read.

Find a mentor and let you be challenged. You will be surprised of how many new ideas will be born from all these kind of activities.

Be fearless.

Don’t be afraid to take new responsibilities. You might fail, but you also might win. Even when the situation is not so easy to be defined as being black or white, you definitely have something to learn from every situation you are part of.

Don’t be ashamed to speak to someone who has a higher role than you have, any new discussion can bring something new. Don’t be afraid to speak about your goals and about what you would like to do with your career. Don’t be afraid to say no to challenges that don’t thrill you.

Staying and waiting for someone to observe your needs and to do so to accomplish them, it might be a waste of time.

Take initiatives.

Instead of waiting for things to happen, you can make them happen. By doing the following.

First, put a little effort in defining your dream.

• What do you like to do?
• What motivates you?
• What would you like to hear from others?
• What are the things do you know best?
• Would you like to share them with others?
• What keeps you away from taking action?
• What is your deepest fear or worst nightmare with regards to your profession/workplace/career?

Then, remember the things that made you choose the career or the path you are on, I am sure there is something that thrilled you at some point. Take advantage of that and start creating the opportunities to pursue what you love. Create new connections, start chasing the people who are already doing the thing you are afraid of, ask questions. Give yourself the chance to fail, to learn and do it again with the new preconditions.

Every time you think to take some action and you are afraid of it, of being judged or so, ask yourself the following: “which would be the worst thing that might happen if I do that?”. I am sure that after you’re giving yourself the answer to this, you are going to proceed with your idea.

Working at least 8 hours per day can be stressful and when your time spent at work does not bring you joy, becomes painful.

It is always a matter of choice. Circumstances are always neutral, you are the one giving them importance. Choose wisely!

Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash.