Career Success: Step # 1: Your own definition of success

This is Post #2 from a Series of 6 Posts
Previous post in the series: To Win, first be willing to Win!


Before you go about defining your success criterion, you must choose a profession that revolves around your core talents. Look within, be mercilessly honest with your core talents and make your talent list. Do not hesitate to take help from your parents, teachers, colleagues, friends and well wishers as they have observed you closely and will be aware of your strengths and your shortcomings. Add their answers to your talent list and then identify your core talents from this list. After identifying your core talents, determine the professions where you can put your core talents to use.

When you are playing with and around your strengths, you often win. In this case, your talent drives your success.

If you do not find a profession that can leverage your core talents, then choose a profession that you truly care for. Think about any jobs or skills that you may not be very good, right at this moment, but you truly enjoy doing.

When you care deeply for something, your drive to achieve is intrinsic (internal) and an intrinsic desire is very strong because it is an extension of your belief system, it is something that you really want to achieve deep inside.

So, choose your profession with care, choose the battles that you can win.

If you choose a profession where you neither possess the talent nor you care deeply for it, your interest and your drive to succeed must be enormous, else it can be extinguished easily.

If the foundation of your desired success is someone else's achievements, more often than not, you are only focusing on the end result and not on the real work that this person has been put in to be successful. When you set out to achieve something in line with someone else's accomplishments, at some point in time, you end up facing the real work or effort. When this happens, you might actually get demotivated in the process and give up. Giving up is bad for achieving success.

When you were younger, you may have come across a saying - "You can take the horse to the water, but you cannot make it drink". To succeed, the word success must mean something to you. In other words, the success that you desire, must be motivating to you.

The definition of success is typically a long term goal, and may look like;
  • being a renowned automobile designer, 
  • being a pilot with the world's largest airline or 
  • being a web designer at Google or 
  • being a renowned artist etc. 

Go ahead, define in your own words - What is success? (define success as it applies to you, keeping in mind the profession of your choice).
Next post in the series: Step # 2: Breaking down your success targets
Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Talent: The education system Funnel! (Post #1 of 4)

This is Post # 1 from a Series of 4 Posts Note: This post is not to criticize our education system or various professions, rather, it is intended to highlight the need for a student or for an early to mid-level career professional to do a bit more. Read on to find out... Looking closer at our education system, I find that it is a Funnel first and a Learning System later. More often than not, it is a system where we Learn how to Learn ! We are exposed to a historical account  of a subject's evolution first, irrespective of whether it is an Arts course or an Engineering course. As far as technology is concerned, the students are also exposed to the technical details that enable them to solve problem simulations. In the end, it is left to the student to apply their learning in the real-life scenarios when they take up jobs. Another observation I made was that very few people apply very little of what they learn in their graduation course as they progress in their career...
Read more

Talent: Talent-based education system (Post #3 of 4)

This is  Post # 3  from a Series of  4 Posts Previous post in the series :  Talent: Determining Talent (Post #2 of 4) The need of the hour is an Education System that focuses on the Talent!. For this, the system should do the following; Identify talents  in the students, early on. Explain the student's talent to the student's parents  first and get them onboard with the concept of talent and how it helps in the future. Determine ways to  nurture and develop the student's inborn talents . Determine and provide the options to move forward  (higher education, career etc.) The student's parents play a pivotal role in the whole process, so they must be involved from the beginning. If the parents are not on board with the idea, it is sure to fail. And, this must be an optional enrollment for the parents. If they are not convinced, there is no point for the teachers to bang their heads against a wall! Usually, the parents are driven b...
Read more

How your Skill drives your Motivation at work!

Image
We all face motivation challenges at work from time to time. In my professional experience, 95% of the people I have come across have complained about low motivation levels at work. The situation has not changed much in the last 10 years and I am sure that there will be no change in the next 10 years if we don’t do anything about it. People who complain of low motivation levels at work can be broadly classified under two heads; Category 1 : Those who are working in their chosen jobs, doing what they love doing. Category 2 : Those who are working on jobs that are forced on to them (those who were unable to get the jobs they desired but eventually compromised to take up what was available) . The following argument holds good for those in Category 1. The argument also stands for Category 2, but only when the individual is willing to pursue their current career path and do well in the years ahead. Prof. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian psychologist and distinguished Profess...
Read more