When you are aligned with your work, you likely feel a sense of contribution, that you are playing to your strengths, and that you are growing and evolving as an individual professionally and perhaps personally as well. As a result, you might look forward to your work, even though it’s only sometimes rainbows and unicorns.
When you are aligned with your work, you may feel part of a larger whole and connected to the organization and the people you work with. And, even if you’re doing more independent work, you can still feel that sense of contribution and connection to something bigger than you.
Now, what happens when you are NOT aligned with your work?
Let’s start with the phrase soul-sucking because it can feel like that.
It can feel like the life is being sucked out of you at every turn, depleting you more and more each day. And if you’re in tune with your body and how you feel, this will be apparent to you. It may be affecting you physically. A lot of times, if you are on that road to burn-out or depletion, you can feel that stress in your body or even that feeling of being lost, underutilized, or disconnected.
Not fun, right?
So, what does alignment even mean?
The dictionary definition of alignment is, coming from a place or a position of agreement or alliance.
Agreement or alliance with what? With you.
It could mean playing to your strengths or skills and being in alignment with your career and life values, but it is definitely knowing what’s important for you to get out of the work that you do. You have needs as a person, and that means you have things that are important to you personally as well as things that are important to you professionally—both matter.
At one time in my life, I was stressed out trying to figure out my next level. I knew I was capable of something more but couldn’t figure out what that was. I was chasing everything. I was trying to be perfect at everything, figuring that would get me noticed or allow me to figure out how to uplevel. All it got me was high blood pressure, migraines, and a whole lot of anxiety, in addition to feeling that stress.
So definitely different from the way that I wanted to go. And I have since discovered that when I choose in favor of what is most important to me, personally and professionally, that is when the rubber hits the road.
So, how can you choose in favor of yourself?
Well, it starts with getting clarity on you and what is most important to you. How does that happen? You ask yourself good questions. And here are some of the questions I want to pose to you today.
So first, what appeals to you in the work environment? The people, places, and things.
Are there things you notice that you might like to explore? Are there projects or aspects of roles that sound interesting to you? If it’s coming onto your internal radar, it’s coming there for a reason. Pay attention to that. What makes your little toes tap? What about work gives you that feeling of accomplishment, a feeling of connectedness or purpose? Pay attention to what those things are in the work environment.
Who do you admire? Who are the people that you look at and you admire or are envious of what they’re doing? Envy and admiration can swim in the same lane. This can be a breadcrumb you want to follow. Pay attention to it.
And also, have an idea of what you value from a career experience. For example, what must be present in the company that you work for and your role? What is it that you appreciate and that you value?
Asking yourself questions like this will lead to your own answers. Because, again, it doesn’t matter what anybody else says. It’s about you uncovering your own answers, okay?
So what I want you to do from now on is to keep asking these questions and paying attention to the answers that are showing up. And if you don’t know the questions to ask yourself, I get that; I have been there too. So that is why I put together a free resource for you to dive into some questions, some prompts, and some exercises to help you get clarity on what is most important to you so that you can make aligned decisions in the future.
Just head to www.clarityworkbook.com and get the answers that you deserve!
Until the next time, here is wishing you all the clarity and those good answers so that you can make aligned decisions for you moving forward.
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