I’m digging this article that appeared on FastCompany.com: 10 Career Lessons You Should Learn By Your 30’s.
You can (and should!) read the entire article. The mistakes I hear about most in the career work that I do are #1 (“Your Dream Job is a Dud”), #5 (“You Have a Nightmare Boss”), and #6 (You Scored a High Ranking Job and Hate It”).
And there’s one that’s not mentioned: landing a leadership role in an organization and being TOTALLY unprepared for the first staff meeting. Yeah. That happened to me. After months and months of job searching, I landed a supervisory position with the Manhattan Chapter of the American Red Cross. At my first staff meeting, my new boss noted, kindly but loudly, that I might want to go back to my office and get note-taking materials so that I could be prepared for the meeting…oops.
The point though, is not that there is a list of mistakes and you should make them ASAP and get them over with. The point is this: mistakes ARE the path to success. We can’t possibly succeed without making them. The article refers to this as the “silver lining,” which is a little ethereal for my taste. I prefer to think of making mistakes as the bridge to success.
And there’s another point to be made. I see a lot of clients who are in the midst of a Really Crazy Job. And they feel bad – as if their narcissistic boss/disorganized founder/jealous coworker/fill-in the-blank-here-with-whatever-is-making-your-job-and-your-life-miserable is their fault. It’s not. The really good news is that EVERYONE has that one miserable job at some point in your career. Everyone. I’m not kidding.
Mine happened in my mid-30’s with an incompetent boss and a non-profit that was falling to pieces around me. I lasted 9 months, suffered one bout of depression, and got the hell out of there. It kicked my butt, but it motivated me to move towards self-employment – it was the bridge that I crossed to working for myself.
If you’re in the midst of a Really Crazy Job, don’t lose heart. Move on. Everyone goes through this – it comes with the territory of adulthood. It’s not an foreshadowing of things to come and it’s not your fault. Clarify what’s not working for you, and develop a list of what would work for you. And then – go find that job.
Thanks for the article.
Some of your statements make me think that there is no job that could make me happy. But my recent job hunting has resulted in having a good place where I can manage due diligence data room so I would say there is always a solution.
Good and interesting article, keep going with it.
Nice comment also from John, Y will find dat place where y will be happy.
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