Everybody wants a successful career. However, not everybody is willing to pay the price for success. A successful career creates fulfillment, happiness, and confidence. But the truth is that it takes a lot of hard work to get there.
As Vaibhav Shah puts it, “whenever you see a successful person, you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them.”
This goes to show that a successful career doesn’t come on a platter. But it is achievable if you’re willing to give it what it takes. All you have to do is copy the habits and strategies of successful people and model them according to your needs.
Here are 6 strategies to help you build a really successful career.
1. Identify with Your Goals
Goal setting is generally accepted as one of the ways to attain success. We believe that life would become a lot better when we achieve those goals and so we start putting plans in place so we can end up living the good life.
But the surprising thing is that a lot of people who set goals don’t achieve those goals. This is because people hardly identify with those goals or they probably set the wrong goals.
Goal setting is not rocket science. You just need to ensure that your goals are valid enough to push your career forward. These goals must not be so bogus as to overwhelm you and at the same time should not be too limited in scope.
2. Stay disciplined
Life is full of distractions. If you’re not disciplined enough, you’ll lose your sense of direction and fall off the track eventually. That’s why you need to stay focused and keep your eyes fixed on the goal at all times.
Whenever you get the urge to compromise certain standards, remember why you set out in the first place. Think about the impact such a compromising act would have on your career and ask yourself if it’s really worth it.
3. Invest in personal development
According to Wikipedia, personal development covers activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and facilitate employability. It also involves the development of pre-existing personality traits that are aimed at advancing professionally and socially.
Once you have identified the crucial skills and competencies you need to become suitably qualified to handle the job, you must make the acquisition of these skills and competences a priority. You can do this by watching helpful videos by life coaches and career mentors, reading self-help books, buying courses and attending seminars. Don’t forget to add value to others as you develop yourself. It helps a lot.
4. Be creative and innovative
There’s no gainsaying that the most successful people in life are the problem solvers. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or an employee, your ability to proffer effective solutions to real-life problems places you miles ahead of others. But when you’re in the midst of problem solvers, your creativity will definitely give you an edge.
Creativity and innovation are intertwined. Creativity allows you to generate problem-solving ideas as well as great strategies to turn them into reality. Innovation, on the other hand, is your ability to create solutions using the existing creative ideas. Combining these two qualities will surely propel you to soaring heights; far beyond your imagination.
5. Create a solid network
Networking is all about connecting to people of diverse disciplines and building a relationship with them. Not just that, it also involves nurturing the relationship until it brings about collaboration and exchange of value.
The most important thing here is to know where to network, who to network with and why you’re networking with them. This is what dictates the kind of relationships you’d end up in and also determines how far you’d go in the pursuit of your career goals.
One good thing about networking is that it gives you access to a pool of resources, making it almost difficult for you to run out of ideas and opportunities. Remember, your network is your net worth.
6. Do the SWOT analysis
Have you ever heard about the SWOT analysis? In case you’re wondering what that is, SWOT is an acronym for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat. It goes without saying that the SWOT analysis itself is not the end goal. It’s just a tool that helps you achieve your objectives.
By capitalizing on your areas of strength, improving on your weak points, exploring your opportunities and eliminating your threats, you get to identify more easily what you really need to focus on and also understand the best approach for solving any problem.
Leave a Reply