Why You Are Stuck In Career: The 3 Mistakes
What if finding purpose is the very thing keeping you stuck in career stagnation and away from living your life? I remember myself sitting on YouTube and searching how to find my purpose for the hundredth time. I would get all kinds of results like keep trying new things, follow your passion, find your talent, find your Ikigai, or follow this number of steps. But who made us believe that our purpose is something that we must find instead of something we should create for ourselves?
I started my career in sales, then I moved to recruitment, and after that I went into HR. After that, I started my own business, and then my second business. Then I burned out of my second business. I was then hired by a previous client from my consulting business. At a certain point, I analyzed my previous choices of jobs and businesses and I found three key mistakes that I kept making over and over again. These mistakes kept me where I was and away from where I wanted to be.
The Three Mistakes That Led to Repeating Negative Life Patterns
Mistake number one:
I would jump into a new job or business too fast and all-in. I would get so excited, quickly imagining myself successful on this new path. I completely ignored what needs to be done in order to get there, focusing on the end result. If I had an existing business, I would close this business very fast and get into a new thing also very fast. Right now, I think it was too fast, and I would burn all the bridges behind and start chasing this new thing, hoping that, “Oh, I finally found it. This is what I’m going to do. This is what I was born to do.”
Mistake number two:
When starting this new direction of my job or business, I would overload myself with tasks and goals. I would apply a very high level of pressure on myself about what I needed to deliver to meet my own expectations about myself. This was a very big trap because it inevitably leads to burnout if you keep pushing yourself and pushing and pushing.
Mistake number three:
I kept living my life expecting that this new, true purpose that I found was going to make me successful very fast. First, I thought, “Oh, I’m going to start making good money in half a year after I started,” and then a year, and then two, and then three. After it didn’t happen as I expected, at a certain point, from one to three years, I would quickly get a burnout. I would become demotivated and just didn’t know what to do, losing faith in what I was doing. All this led me to burnout again and again and again.
These overestimated expectations from how I was supposed to deliver in a new venture inevitably led to disappointment. If you keep hitting a wall again and again, you need to get a realization.
The Main Realization – іnstead of finding purpose, I needed to create it.
I’m intentionally deleting the words “search” and “choose” because it was only 3% of what actually needed to be done to start fulfilling my purpose. I needed to do an infinite number of actions to align myself with what my purpose requires on the level that I want to live it on. Does someone who is a very good natural singer automatically become a successful artist? Does a good knowledge of math necessarily make someone a successful businessman? Not necessarily.
This realization helped me to create and live my purpose. Here are the five steps that I used to get there:
5 Steps to Create Your True Purpose and Remove Inner Blocks
Step 1: Sincerely Look at How You Can Be Useful to Yourself and Other People.
For example, I had a construction business. I chose the construction business because I know how to organize people, and I have love for architecture and shapes and forms. I had pretty good interpersonal skills to coordinate, lead, control, and oversee the process. If I didn’t have all those aspirations and qualities that allowed me to be successful as a portfolio project manager in construction, maybe I would do a manual job if I enjoyed working with my hands.
If, knowing that I can be a construction project manager and organize a number of construction projects, I would choose to be a construction assistant, I would not be useful for myself because I can do much more and I can get paid much more. Therefore, if I chose to do a manual assistance job in construction, I would not be useful for myself first, and maybe I wouldn’t be as fulfilled. I would not be as useful to others also because I wouldn’t be happy.
Step 2: Choose a Scale at Which You Want to Create and Live Your Purpose.
Let’s come back to my example about my previous construction business in Ukraine before the war started. I never had a dream to build tall apartment buildings because for me, it’s much less a creative job and much more finance, administration, and control. You have a bunch of apartments with the same or like three or four floor plans, and that’s it. You just need to copy, copy, copy, copy, copy.
It’s a scale at which people make much more money than people that would build one- to two-story private residences, private houses, as I did. But for me, it was much more fulfilling than just doing copy-paste time after time. I would just make sure that the supply of sand, concrete, bricks comes on time and you have enough money to build before you go bankrupt. I would make sure that you sell enough apartments to finish the tall building there.
I know those people who build buildings like that—it’s a different level at which they choose to play, and that’s totally fine. But for me, it was a different level that I wanted to play in and a different level of fulfillment that I was getting from my one- to two-story construction.
Step 3: Objectively Evaluate Your Growth Plan (and Remove Harmful Mental Programs). To fix the root cause, you need to update your inner software.
What I mean about that is: What competencies are required at that level of purpose that I’m planning to create and live? If today I’m building small residential houses, but tomorrow I decide I want to live at a different level of purpose—I want to start building tall apartment buildings—I would quickly realize that competence number one that I need is finance. Of course, I could have been able to hire a strong accountant and finance manager and the other staff required to cover this gap in my competence.
When I was sitting with my crude oil suppliers and negotiating about crude oil price, you first need in your mind to turn barrels into tons because you know the volume of crude oil that you’re accepting in tons. You need to quickly convert a one-dollar discount on the price per barrel and understand how it’s going to impact the cost of supply, and how many percent difference it is. You can do it on the calculator, but when you’re sitting with a crude oil supplier and you see him doing all the math in his head, and you’re sitting with a calculator, you’re losing right there. I understand that for my competencies, I’m very good counting physical money and doing simple financial operations. But when it comes to more complicated things, I understand it’s not my natural talent.
If I decided to go and build tall apartment buildings, I would need to become much better in math. I didn’t feel that I would be useful enough for myself. I wouldn’t enjoy that much doing a lot of calculation and a lot of control and a lack of creativity, which actually ignites my curiosity. When you’re curious, you’re eager and willing to learn. When you’re willing to learn, it’s easier in anything you do. If you’re curious in what you’re doing, you’re going to be ready to devote time to get new skills and improve your competencies.
This is why I suggest that before jumping into this new purpose or a new level of purpose, the new opportunity needs to be evaluated in terms of what growth plan I need to follow to start resonating with that new level of purpose, and if I want that, or I’m not ready for that. Is it worth my time and energy and commitment?
Step 4: Set Goals That Stretch You but Avoid Excessive Pressure on Yourself and Act While Having Fun in the Process.
How this impacted me negatively in the past was that I was setting myself very ambitious goals, and I was doing a lot of overtimes. When I would not complete a certain task or would not reach a certain goal, I would be disappointed. That would demotivate me, and in a certain way, it legalized not getting certain things done. When you get used to not completing something, then you allow yourself to not reach your goals. That was a mistake that cost me many years and a lot of money.
The second part of this step is: it’s necessary to act even if you are doing something for the first time. You don’t sit and overthink for too long. You just go and learn by doing. Of course, having fun, finding fun stuff in what you’re doing, helps you to learn. It helps you to grow. It helps you to get things done and move forward.
Step 5: Keep Your Belief and Mindset Systems in Sync with Your Purpose.
This is the most spiritual one. It says that you need to keep your belief and mindset systems in sync with your purpose. For example, if I want to stop building small residential houses and start building tall apartment buildings, I need to believe that I’m able to build this house. If I don’t believe I’m able to do it, I’m going to give up. I’m going to fail. I’m going to lose. That’s 300%.
The best way to check your belief system and mindset is just to start listening to yourself: what you think, how you react to certain things that have to do with this job or project or purpose that you’re doing. You will see that, “I’m afraid of something today,” or, “I think somewhere in the corner of my mind I don’t believe that I’m going to be able to do this.” If you find something like that, you write it down and then you work with it. This is what I say when I talk about belief system and mindset.
If you’re not thinking in categories of a big construction company, there is no way you’re going to be able to build a tall apartment building. If you don’t believe that you’re going to be able to lead, organize, and execute such a large construction project, then you need to work with the belief system first. This is often why people feel stuck in career choices
Finding a way to become useful to yourself and other people is a very good start, but making it happen on the scale that you choose is the main reason why true purpose can only be created.
If you feel stuck in career or any other sphere and feel the need for one-on-one guidance from someone who can help with affordable karmic energy healing online or need to dissolve those inner obstacles, check out how I can help.
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AB
