When it comes to finding clarity about what it is you want to be doing with your life, there are two major lines of thought.
And interestingly enough, noticing which one resonates the most with you will tell you things about your personality.
Are you curious to know more? Let me share with you what I’ve found.
How to figure out what you want to do be doing with you life.
Some authors support the idea that in order to find a fulfilling career path the best thing you can do is to know yourself. This is so because you have natural talents and strengths, and using them puts you in a pleasurable state called FLOW.
Apart from that, you also have a past full of clues about what you’d love to be doing, if you know where to look for them. So with all that information, your best career path will be revealed to you.
On the contrary, other career change authors sustain that going inwards into a self discovery process is a total waste of your time. For them, nothing can be figured out inside of your head, so the best thing you can do is to get into action, trying as many things as possible.
Once you’ve performed those experiments, you’ll be able to reflect on how you felt and what career path would be fulfilling for you.
Which one of these approaches is correct?
I think our personality preferences have a lot to do with which one of these approaches we like best, since those of us with a stronger introverted focus are prone to naturally go inwards for answers and those with a more extroverted personality by nature prefer to get into action as quickly as possible.
But that doesn’t mean our prefered way is enough. And this is why:
1) For those who need to be constantly in action, taking the time to look inwardly at themselves will seem like a waste of time; when in fact, that self discovery process would give them the key piece to figure out what experiments to embark upon in the first place.
Otherwise, they might end up randomly trying lots of things, making lots of false starts, trying things for the sake of doing something… but getting nowhere.
In this case, going inwards will give them important clues about which projects are worth testing out in the real world.
2) For those who prefer to go inwards, the idea of testing something without having a clear direction is unthinkable; when in fact, their willingness to test things out in the real world it’s invaluable.
The truth is that many times we only love the “idea” of a career path, not the “reality” of doing it.
And even though we like to believe the saying: “Do what you love and money will follow”, there are lots of wonderful ideas which make incredibly fulfilling hobbies, that will never sustain you financially.
Wouldn’t it be great to validate your idea before investing lots of your time, money and efforts? The way to figure that out is by getting into action and testing our ideas in the real world.
Bottom line:
Separately, none of those methods are enough to give you the clarity you need. First, you need to connect with who you are and what you want, and then you need to act on those ideas so you can validate them in the real world.
If you are ready to take the first step into figuring out what it is you want to do with your life, I invite you to use my Career Clarity Cards. I designed them to help you get in touch with who you are and what you want.
To get your FREE access to the Career Clarity Cards visit:
http://www.tappingyourpurpose.com/claritycards
