Nancy Fredericks pens Women Lead Change's "Mindful Mondays" column, appearing the second Monday of every month. Fredericks is a preeminent Business Executive Strategist, Author and Thought Leader. Corporations like Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, Adobe, Allergan and Transamerica have retained her to optimize individual and organizational performance. You can find her at www.CareerStretchZone.com. The views of Nancy Frederick's blogs represent her own and not necessarily the views of Women Lead Change.
When women feel they are not achieving their aspirations, they look to shore up their skills. The assumption is that they must be lacking something. Frustrated they often go back to school for a higher degree to build credibility. They work harder to produce more and better results to prove their value. Or they attend business seminars imagining this will fill some unspecified gap in knowledge and skills by your company.
Are your efforts designed around doing something externally that will make you more worthy in the eyes of the business world?
Take a deep breath and believe: your career isn’t based exclusively on learning more or doing more. Instead, shift your attention away from external fixing as the way to move ahead and rather embrace the idea that everything starts from within and is then brought to fruition externally.
Three confronting questions:
What popped into your head? Did you find one side of your circle easier to complete than the other? Answering these questions will reveal more about yourself than you might expect! Now, what are you going to do?
The moment you realize you’re repeatedly building the same “sand castle;” and thus, limiting your career possibilities both today and tomorrow, choose to stop and take decisive action. Remember, a career is a journey—a long one—where you’ll experience many ups and instead downs along the way. It is how you choose to respond that determines the outcome of your career.