Develop your Career Resilience

It may be that there’s nothing more disruptive than
experiencing a career change. Frankly, it really doesn’t
matter how big the change is -  could be as major as a
complete exit from a long term workplace, or it could
involve subtle shifts of role assignments or
responsibilities. Whatever the magnitude, career changes
can leave us feeling thrilled, nervous, sad, angry, hurt,
depleted, disoriented, confused, or even all of the above.

Many indicators point towards the idea that there will only
be more and more of this kind of change. Therefore, career
resilience is one of the essentials you will need to find
and keep good work throughout your work life.

Yes – without resilience, even if you follow the
tried-and-true process endorsed by a plethora of career
coaches and counselors, the longevity of your sense of
workplace satisfaction may suffer.

As someone who’s passionate about helping people create and
bring their career visions to life, I sometimes notice that
I’m apparently more enthusiastic than my clients are about
their work prospects. How can this be? It seems that when
they’re faced with even the tiniest barrier, they give up.
And this occurs far too often and way too quickly in my
opinion. Somewhere along the way, perhaps due to the very
reason they contacted me, their resilience diminished.

Why is resilience so important? Well, for starters, we can
all count on life routinely handing us things that get in
our way of the real work we yearn to engage in.

Yet, someone who has highly developed resilience would set
a limit or avoid altogether any brooding time. And, the
prospect of giving up doesn’t make its way into their
awareness. Without the option of giving up, what are people
with resilience going to do? They’re going to face the
obstacle, and trust the possibility that this is when
creativity, quality, courage, initiative, and
resourcefulness will likely emerge in their work. Anyone
who has had this sort of experience understands the joy
that will inevitably follow such an experience.

There are limitless practical tips and actions that can be
taken immediately to help you develop career resilience.
Here are some suggested strategies to get started.

Sustain a Practical Outlook: Resilient people are
pragmatic; they know that they can control their situation
and the choices they make in response to evolving
situations. When a career change occurs, one thing you can
do is clarify your core needs for your work, such as the
core values, preferences, and talents that help you feel
energized, enlivened, and fulfilled at work. Once you
understand your core needs, they will become a resource for
you in the midst of change. They’ll help you actively
explore the change and its implications for your work. For
example, you can ask yourself:

- In what ways does this change help me meet my core needs?
 
- How might the change hinder my ability to meet my core
needs?  
- What are some things I can do, now that this change has
occurred, to ensure I continue meeting my core needs in my
work?

Tap into your Resources: People who have high levels of
resilience develop and draw from a wide range of resources.
What got you through previous changes? What happened? How
did you deal with it? What was the outcome?  How can you
take what you learned from that experience to help you now
in the midst of career change?

Explore Possibilities: People with resilience prepare, in
one way or another, for a number of eventualities that may
come their way. Explore the future of your career direction
and the specific ways in which your core needs, values,
interests, and motivations can be brought back into your
career focus through one of the following strategies:

- Enrich: Work within your existing job and workplace to
find ways to bring your core needs back into your work.  
- Relocate: Keep the job type, but decide to change your
workplace.
- Move around: Keep the workplace, but decide to change
your job or area of responsibility.
- Revamp: change it all – your job and your workplace.

Be Intentional: Keep your eye on your intended objective.
Short term changes should not derail you from the “big
picture” of where you’re going in your work life.

Having high levels of resilience offers you a different way
of looking at difficulties that present themselves along
your career path. The person who has resilience understands
that no matter how prepared he or she is, no matter how
much knowledge attained or skills developed, their most
ideally suited work will bring all manner of set backs from
time to time. These people inherently know that such
challenges will foster their own innovation, so they greet
the challenge with enthusiasm. This carries people who have
resilience through tumultuous times, often resulting in
their developing heightened resilience to future set backs.

By shifting your attention from what has happened to you in
your work life to what you are going to do as a result of
the change, you can actively participate and manage your
own transition process in a way that honors your core needs
and ultimately paves the way for you to experience long
term career fulfillment.

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This article is provided by
http://www.srpcareertransitions.com : Helping people
clarify their goals, differentiate themselves, sell their
skills to prospective employers, and get on a path to more
enlivening work. Stephanie Peacocke is a career coach,
certified professional resume writer and specialist in
career resilience and differentiation.
http://www.srpcareertransitions.com