When I Don’t Know What I Want, I Suck

by | Oct 24, 2016 | Career Development, Coaching Advice

For months I’ve been contemplating this big blog post about the importance on setting intentions for guiding your career development and life (without having to rely on coaches and other expensive experts.) After all, I wandered in the wilderness for decades before I got a clue, continually saying to myself “I don’t know what I want….” But the topic of “Career Planning” seems so big, that the blog post just eluded me. Then I watched a TV show.

I was watching The Good Wife* and one of the characters, Will Gardner, was having one of those moments of cluelessness I’d experienced many times. He was lost in his own thoughts trying to think about what to think when Alicia asked if he was ok. He turned to her and said:

When I know what I want, I’m great. When I don’t know what I want, I suck” – Will Gardner, The Good Wife

OMG. That’s it! That’s exactly how I’d felt all those years. I was achieving great things in some areas, but in others felt completely lost. I had achieved all the family success I could dream of but when it came to my career, I wasn’t networking very effectively inside or outside my companies. Even though I had a huge network, I “sucked” at networking for career advancement because I wasn’t able to explain to others what I thought my own career success looked like. (This wasn’t Will’s problem, by the way. Quite the opposite.)

“I don’t know what I want” – Really?

Even after I went out on my own, this inability to be very specific about my career goals hindered me in landing new business, investing in my own development and feeling accomplished when I did achieve many of my goals. Even when everyone looked at me and thought I was very successful (which I was), I didn’t always feel all that successful because I didn’t feel directed.

Then I started working with intentions and things started to make sense. Intentions helped me get clearer on what I wanted. I got a lot better at focusing my own energies and talking to other people about my objectives so they could help me. I felt like “I sucked” less often. As I introduced my coaching clients to Intentions, they used them for all kinds of things I hadn’t thought of, like describing their work-life balance needs and dream jobs. Over the years intentions have helped my clients achieve more, too. What I learned during that time was how critical it is to crystalize and express your goals holistically. If you leave your goals floating without form in your head, they tend to stay in your head and manifest much less often in your life.

But the question that Will, and I (and probably you) so often wrestle with is, “What do you I want?” The more I asked myself this questions, though, the more the answers started to play off each other until the question became less important.

Work and life are blended and play off each other

One of my big ahas while refining the kind of career-life intentions that I work with clients on today was in noticing that when I compartmentalized my career goals as separate from my life goals, both got harder to achieve. I had fallen victim to the “have it all” mentality that exhausts so many women (and parents, really). Instead of looking at how I could develop career and life intentions that complimented each other, my work and life goals competed with each other. So I mashed together “what I wanted” through a process of evaluating both my career and life goals as distinct but related. The tool I give my clients now helps them review “where they are and what they want” along both areas and then guides them in developing Career-Life intentions together, but as distinct. For many, looking at these buckets as closely related but separate helps them break the log jam of “should I focus on my work or my life?” and move forward with confidence and clarity.

In reality, we’re always tweaking, evolving and second-guessing our goals as we make progress towards them but I finally feel like I don’t suck at it any more. And that’s a big relief.

What about you? Do you have a clear view of how your career and life are coming together? Or how you want them to in the years ahead? Don’t stumble around in the dark like I did. Stop saying to yourself, “I don’t know what I want” or “I suck” and set your intention to get a career plan that respects your life, and visa versa.

Take charge of your career development to get the job that supports your work and your life. Check out the tools and resources in the Career Advice area of the site.

 

Guide to Women in Leadership

Organizations with women in their executive suites regularly out-perform others. Yet rising female executives (and their mentors) are frustrated at how hard it is to break through the glass ceiling. In this extensive guide, Executive Coach Dana Theus shares her tried and true strategies to help women excel into higher levels of leadership and achieve their executive potential.

Dana Theus

Dana Theus

Dana Theus is an executive coach specializing in helping you activate your highest potential to succeed and to shine. With her support emerging and established leaders, especially women, take powerful, high-road shortcuts to developing their authentic leadership style and discovering new levels of confidence and impact. Dana has worked for Fortune 50 companies, entrepreneurial tech startups, government and military agencies and non-profits and she has taught graduate-level courses for several Universities. learn more

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