The Hopeful Career
#6 Recreating Your Career
by Dér Stépanos
Dingilian, Ph.D. © 2007
Do you sometimes think that you’re in a dead end career? Do you think sometimes that the effort you’re putting in your career just isn’t paying off? Do you sometimes think that what you have is not a career rather it is just a set of tasks or paper pushing? I don’t know of anyone who does not have these doubts! In fact, it may even be healthy to once in a while to consider if these are possibilities. Of course we can run from these thoughts. But in fact, these are signals that it is time to recreate our career and its objectives.
So how do we go about recreating our career? By returning to the spiritual roots of why we chose that career. There may be altruistic reasons – I wanted to help people, I wanted to do something good, I wanted to do something worthwhile … There my be more short term reasons – I wanted to make money, I wanted to show that I’m somebody, I wanted to make money so I can form a family … Right now we are not trying to discern as to which of these is a better reason for establishing a career. Instead, the point is this: If we think we have lost our initial drive and motivation towards our career, then it is time to go back to the spiritual reasons as to why we embarked on this career in the first place.
As we go back memory lane and find out why we chose this career, it is then that we are able to connect to the spiritual life giving reasons that led to our choice. Those same reasons can also give us the strength, vision, and creativity to recreate our career, and regain that sense of motivation and drive right now. Grant you, we may find out that we have to learn something new or that we have to take on new responsibilities. But the fact is, now we are reconnected to our original source of creativity and we can be hopeful about regaining the joy and empowerment that comes from having a career.
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