Life Skills

Although many resolutions are focused on personal development—like losing weight or quitting smoking—many of them are catered toward professional development, such as getting a promotion or finding a better job. Since New Year's resolutions are notorious for being abandoned by February, it's important to approach your professional goals with a concrete plan within your reach. To discover some helpful tips on reaching your own New Year's resolution, consider these.
 

That’s right folks; I am going philosophical on you today. As great as the quote from Confucius is, the sad truth is that doing what you love is the dream of many, but the reality of few.
 
I get asked to help people with their job searches, however some people haven’t got a clue what the next job should be, where they are heading and what the longer term plan is. They are currently doing one thing and would consider doing ten different others. This makes it near impossible for me or the person themselves to actually get anywhere with the job search, let alone accepting a job offer down the line when the doubts start kicking in.
 
Establishing clarity
 
Confucius, the über wise man himself, put the truth down in a nice quote that sounds easy enough. The question is, how do you actually go about finding out what you would love to do? Not even a career coach can tell you exactly what you should do; it has to come from you. I don’t claim to be an expert on people’s dream careers but there are three simple questions you can ask yourself today and the answers can give you some guidance. Take a few minutes out of your day to think this over and you will have better clarity as a result. Here we go:
 
• What is the passion in your life?
 
• What would you pay to do?
 
• How would you fill your days if you were a millionaire?
 

Having done recruitment for long, I know that most of us have a think over the holidays and come up with revolutionary plans for January and the year ahead. Some of us follow through on these plans, some of us don’t. What are the factors that make for effective resolutions? Well, these are rules that work for me and people around me so I thought I’d share them well before you start getting to work on next years action plans.
 
1. Make them achievable
 
Don’t cheat yourself when making resolutions. If your goal was to quit smoking this year and the last 7 years, you are not very likely to kick the habit next year. If you set a goal that you won’t achieve, it will only have a demoralizing effect on your psyche and you are worse off. Be honest with yourself and set objectives that will challenge and stretch you but definitely are achievable with hard work.
 
2. Make them measurable 
 
What gets measured, get done as the wise fellow said. Buying a house on stilts, travelling to Patagonia, auditioning for the X-Factor are all goals that you will know when you have achieved. Merely saying ‘learning old church Slavonic’ isn’t good enough, it has to be more detailed than that. Make it: ‘will take 50 lessons and pass exam level B and be able to order fine wine at a restaurant in Slavonia’. If you can come up with milestones or through goals, that’s even better as you can track your progress easier.
 
3. Write everything down
 

 
Why do you do what you do for a living? If you say that you love what you do, you are lucky. Only a small minority can actually claim to be happy doing what they do. 

Most people will say they do their job for the money. They would ideally want to do something different but they believe they have to stay and do more of the same to get that income. Here are the top 5 reasons you should not just chase those dollar bills:
 
1. You will never make enough
 
There will never be enough hours in the day to earn enough if you are not having your money work for you. There is only so much one individual can do in a job and this is what you will be paid for. You can only be paid for the work you are doing and never earn passive income. Being employed is very much “the more you put in, the more you get out” when in fact you could put less in and get more out if you only knew how to. Starting a business on the side, investing in the markets or in real estate, creating work that will generate royalties will allow you to make passive income. This will in turn free you up to focus on what you really enjoy in life. Your day job will not make you wealthy and will not open you up to new opportunities outside of your day to day tasks.
 
2. The debt spiral