Owning Your Career Is Certainly Possible

Many people seem to have forgotten the fact that they are the best people for controlling or managing their career. If you are one among them, it shows that you have lost focus towards your aspirations and so, are not making purposeful efforts to achieve them. You may be a frustrated person. Though you cannot control everything that may be happening around you, you can again become the "lead architect" who can build your career. For this, you have to position yourself suitably for facing and surmounting the road-blocks you may face.

You need to make disciplined efforts for this. Being open-minded to face unexpected possibilities and situations is the first step. You may sometimes be taken along different paths that do not at all figure in your plans. You must be resilient enough to move along those paths also because these new directions may provide you with unexpected opportunities. In fact, you may be amazed to identify many of your hidden talents. If you remain confident and open-minded, you will be able to easily spot those opportunities that may accelerate your growth.

The following tips may help you take control over your career.

1. Being within your comfort zone is the major obstacle

You must be ready to take calculated risks. You must continuously work on your potential so you never lose your faith. By constantly improving on your strengths, you can reduce the chances of committing mistakes though you may not completely eliminate them. But you must learn the right lessons from your mistakes.

2. Re-evaluate your talents, strengths and weaknesses constantly

If you re-evaluate your talents, strengths and weaknesses constantly, you will know what you should do to rectify your weaknesses and improve your strengths. But you must be honest during this process.

3. Build long-lasting relationships

If you develop good relationships by networking wisely, you will get the benefits of the perspectives offered by other people in your network. Similarly, you must offer your perspectives to others also.

4. Re-visit your goals regularly

If you re-visit your career goals regularly, you can make the required adjustments. Remember, changes are taking place quite rapidly in almost all the fields. Hence, you must always be ready to make suitable adjustments to your goals.

5. Focus, focus, focus

It is focus and focus alone that can get you success in your efforts. Similarly, discipline can be the catalyst that can get you the results you want more quickly.

6. Develop your communication skills

Only effective communicators can achieve tremendous growth in their careers. Hence, you must make purposeful efforts for developing your communication skills.

7. Be ready to be a constant learner

Learning should never stop in your life. This means you must steal time for reading books and materials related to your field. Bill Gates, one of the most successful entrepreneurs USA has produced, says that he learns a lot by reading books. It is said that he reads at least 50 books a year.

8. Always have a positive mindset

If you learn to be optimistic in any situation, you can beat the stress caused by various types of hurdles you may face during the course of your journey towards your goal.

9. Teach others

You must not behave like "mean clerks" who do not teach what they know to others. Remember that when you try to teach what you know to others, you will get a number of new ideas. Experts compare this to story-telling because as in the case of story-telling, the creative part of your brain gets triggered when you verbalize and teach what you know to others.

10. Make efforts to maintain cordial relationship with everyone

Maintaining good relationship with others saves you from a lot of avoidable stress. Remember that when you are stressed out, your productivity will get a beating. You may say that you do not like certain people. Due to this, you may be "re-playing" whatever they have said about you or done to you. This will strengthen your hatred towards them. Instead of this, try to separate those people from their actions or utterances. They are human and are bound to commit mistakes. Try to think for a moment if you are behaving how they want you to. You are human also and you may also be committing mistakes.

As E.M. Forster said, there are two ways to deal with people whom you do not like. One is the Nazi method. Kill them. Since you cannot take this step, "put up with them. Tolerate them." Even if you do not like them, make efforts to maintain at least working relationship with them.
There are philosophers who advise that if you act as if you are kind and considerate towards others and more particularly, towards those whom you do not like, you may soon start liking them. Of course, this needs a lot of practice. But whether you are willing to take this step or not, the fact remains that by maintaining working relationship with everyone including your colleagues and even relatives, you can prevent stress from impeding your growth.