Career planning is a recommended activity for all of us. It helps us focus on our aspirations and goals, and it provides us with the opportunity to plan our personal development.
The "sweet spot" we all aspire to is to reach a position that gives us a tremendous amount of satisfaction, intrinsically as well as extrincically. I have been both a student and practitioner of career planning during my entire professional life, and I can testify to its rewards.
But we do not live just to work, we also work to live. Careers, although important, are not our entire lives. We are involved in families, communities, churches/temples/mosques, hobbies, etc.
Focusing on life planning is focusing on the "whole person". Aligning career aspirations with our other personal goals, in my view, is crucial. In systems terms, the different parts of our lives can help us optimize its "whole". Focusing on just any one part, and ignoring any other part, is akin to sub-optimization.
Having a successful career and a miserable personal life is NOT success -- it is an empty success, a hollow success. Career success at the expense of family or community or our spiritual well being is indeed an empty and possibly painful victory.
There are those who claim that to have a successful career, we must make personal sacrifices. I am one to say "yes, but". It is not one versus the other. It is all of the above. That is not to say that there are no sacrifices involved; what I am suggesting is that any sacrifices must me justified by the overall gameplan.
Loneliness, emptiness, and guilt are sure signs that something went wrong. I have seen many folks during my own career that suffer from either one or the other. All three maladies eat away at our very soul. They leave us unfullfilled, incomplete. I must admit that at one time or another, I too got sidetracked, for which I paid a lot of emotional capital to right things up.
I advocate, in the strongest possible way, the escalation of the planning process to include our whole life, to involve our significant others in the process (spouses, children, partners). By involving significant others, we bring more balance to the planning process. Through participation, we also build ownership and support for any career decisions we are expected to make.
Life is worthwhile living when we make it so. Enjoy the trip along the learning curve.
No comments:
Post a Comment