Is your career an area of your life that you prioritise? Or does it just take a large chunk of your day but it doesn’t define you?

Either way, it certainly accounts for a lot of the time and energy that we spend our life on. So however you value your career there will always be two things that come first. Your career simply won't feel good if these two KEY areas are unsatisfied:

1.Your mental health

2.Your values

Here’s why:

Mental Health 

Your mental health impacts your physical, energetic, psychological and social well-being. Your mental health is the start and endpoint of your experience of this one precious life. You see your level of mental health is impacted by two key components; the way you perceive and react the world - your beliefs and personality and then the things that happen to you externally, which still come back to you how you react and perceive them.

Signs your job is impacting your mental health:

• making excuses to take sick leave
• panic attacks at work
• waking up with anxiety in the middle of the night
• avoiding social events with work if you used to go
• crying in the toilets or during breaks
• extreme exhaustion and lack of motivation
• Feeling stuck and trapped in your career

These feelings will usually continue to downward spiral until something changes. For many this means getting to a place of ill-heatlh and burnout before they take it upon themselves to make a change. Secondly, by some divine intervention that you possibly wouldn’t appreciate until afterwards, you get fired, made redundant or pushed out in some other way. 

The problem here is that unless you prioritise your health and your mindset first, you will always feel like your career is happening to you instead of being something you control. 

Even if you find a new role if you haven’t addressed the underlying challenges you are facing with your mental health and mindset then you risk finding yourself in the same situation again.

Taking your power back means acknowledging that you are the creator of your career. Anything listed above is feedback that something is out of alignment. It’s an opportunity for you to journey deeper into yourself and identify what makes you feel good, operate at your optimum and allows you to give back to the world. 

Your Values 

Your values are the priorities by which you govern your life. Your values are not just principles that you live by such as loyalty, commitment, excellence, but also the things that you do in your life and live by, such as your children, your family, your love of learning the guitar, your passion for traveling etc. 

Your values are easy to find, but sometimes so obvious you don’t notice them yourself until you actively list them. 

Here are some examples of values:

Principles:

• Freedom
• Safety
• Fun
• Loyalty 
• Integrity 
• Excellence 
• Courage

Things:

• Family
• Surfing 
• Fame
• Financial Opulence
• Travel
• Cars
• Fitness
  

Everything comes back to your values and your mental health.

 Answer these questions and see for yourself;

Think back on a job you have had where you were at your BEST.

• How was your mental health? Describe how you were feeling.
• How were your values being honored and upheld?

Now think of the opposite.... Think of a time when you have felt unhappy, unfulfilled or undervalued.

• How did you feel?
• How was your mental health being impacted?
• How were your values being challenged and compromised?
• What was this time/person/situation preventing or making difficult for you?

Quite simply you deserve a career that makes you feel good and upholds your highest values.

If you're at a point in your life where work isn't making you happy anymore then these are the core areas I take my clients through in Career & Life coaching so that you can go from surviving to thriving. 

Schedule a free discovery call here to meet me and discuss if Career & Life Coaching is for you. 

Photo by Sacha Verheij on Unsplash