4 reasons why a lack of Career Vision is impacting your chances of sustained success

For the majority of my career I don’t recall having a Vision, and I mean a really well thought out plan as to where I was going and why I wanted to get there. Instead, I worked with what were more ‘in the moment’ or medium term goals for personal gain. For example, if I wanted to buy a house, I knew I had to have a certain amount of income to make it happen so I held onto that and worked toward it. If I wanted to achieve the next promotion level at work, I knew what I had to do and off I went to make it happen. But, very very rarely did I stop to ask myself what I was doing it all for. What did I ultimately want to achieve beyond my short-medium terms goals, or who did I want to become.

If I’m completely honest, I never saw the value in it.

I never really understood how powerful it could be on so many levels, at least not until I made my own career change and dug very deep on all of this to ensure I was on the right track, and that what I was doing was for the right reasons. And nowadays, it is so blatantly obvious how critical it is to sustained success at work that I start my Coaching Programs with exactly this point!

So, if you are like the old me and have never considered how a Career Vision really impacts your chances of sustained success, check out the below.

1. A Career Vision is your anchor

How often do you get into your car or go for a walk and have no idea about where you’re going or why you’re headed out? For the free spirits it happens, but for the majority I think that answer would be ‘rarely, if ever’. Having a meaningful vision in place allows you to have a solid foundation on which to grow from. An anchor to fall back on when things get challenging. You can say goodbye to confusion and feeling lost around work, because you are confident you know exactly what you’re striving for and why you want it.

Now of course, visions can change and evolve as we mature and grow and that’s perfectly allowed, in fact I would encourage a routine check in to ensure you’re still on the right path and make any tweaks as you learn more about yourself over your career evolution. As we get new experiences and new skills we can start to open up avenues that we didn’t previously consider and so we need to ensure they are built in.

2. A Career Vision is your motivation

If you’ve done a good job at pulling together your Vision you will be excited by it because it will align with everything about you including your values and life goals and will have a lot of meaning behind it that is important to you. And that excitement will keep you motivated to move forward, even when things are tough. Consider those times when your workload is piling high and you feel overwhelmed and like you’re drowning. Without a meaningful reason or anchor to remind yourself why you’re doing it can lead to resentment, frustration and all the negative feelings coming to the forefront far more quickly! Have you ever heard someone who is angry exclaim ‘I don’t even know why I bother!’, they could do well to tap into their anchor….!

3. A Career Vision is your decision making tool

When it comes to your decision making about work, promotions, job changes or new projects to take on your Career Vision is your guiding star. Sense check any decision against what you are ultimately striving for and away you go. Does taking this job align with what I am aiming for? What will this promotion give me that allows me to align to my vision? You can save a lot of time and energy on considering things that are actually meaningless to you when you have your foundation well set. So many people bounce from job to job as something keeps not working out for them, the new boss wasn’t right, the location was too far, the work was boring….i’d be pretty convinced they don’t have a meaningful career vision and actually have no idea what they keep chasing, let alone why. Slowing down, taking a step back and thinking more strategically about things can lead to sustainable success that leaves you far happier over the course of your career. The time invested will pay off tenfold!

4. A Career Vision keeps you in check

Imagine those times when work starts to feel like it is draining the energy from you rather than giving you energy like it used to, or when you find yourself working all hours under the sun and your personal life and wellbeing have been thrown to the back burner. The chances are that you have lost sight of your priorities and your overall vision or that you need to reassess the timelines of your vision and make amendments to allow for more of a balanced approach to achieving it. Without knowing what you’re striving for it is very easy to run yourself into the ground, chasing the wrong thing, and get even more frustrated when you end the working week wondering why you’re doing this anymore.

Going off track or losing our why is pretty normal, what’s important is that we notice it when it happens (because we know our vision!) and know how to pull ourselves back in line before we do too much damage.

So, there you have my 4 key reasons why a Career Vision is vital to sustained success at work. The benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing!

If you are curious about setting your own Career Vision but are not confident in doing so, book in a Complimentary Consultation Call to talk to me directly about how you can go about it and learn more about how my Coaching Programs help set the foundation you need.