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Unhappy in your career? Follow these rules for success
Follow these simple rules for a stable and successful career. Illustration by Uttam Ghosh and Dominic Xavier
Choosing a career is an important step because your future is at stake.
Many of us are unaware of what we want to achieve in life.
We take up a course in college and come out with a job or maybe not. But then what next?
You start questioning yourself if this is what you want and want to do.
This amounts to a situation like boarding a train without knowing one’s destination.
And even if you arrive at the destination, you may not be happy with the fruit it gives you.
You may then realise the things you care about and what you believe in. So what is that you must do?
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1. There is no plan
You can’t plan your career too far in advance because there are too many x-factors linked to it.
In the world of work, we do things for two reasons: Instrumental and fundamental.
Instrumental reasons are things that get us from point A to point B, whether we enjoy it or not.
On the other hand, fundamental reasons are those that nudge us to do something we care about or strongly believe in, even if we are unsure where it will take us.
Instrumental reasons usually don’t work out as evenutally things get too complicated, unpredictable or out of hand.
Most of the times, successful people make decisions for fundamental reasons.
2. Think strengths, not weaknesses
Successful people don’t try too hard to improve what they’re bad at.
They capitalise on what they’re good at.
First and foremost, concentrate on your strengths.
Put yourself where your strengths can produce results.
Second, work on improving your strength.
Identify opportunities for improvement; don’t waste time cultivating skill areas where you have little competence. Instead, concentrate and build on your core skills.
3. Persistence trumps talent
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Talent alone won’t get the job done and for some people, their persistence will outdo talent.
A lot of people have talent, but nothing will come off it if they aren’t persistent about it. So don’t give up!
4. Make excellent mistakes
Many of us spend time avoiding mistakes.
We are so scared about being wrong and messing up that we never try anything.
The focus is to avoid failure. But that’s actually a rotten way to success.
The most successful people make spectacular mistakes. Why?
They’re trying to do something big but each time they make a mistake, they get better and move closer to excellence.
5. It's not always about you
The most successful people improve their own lives by improving others’ lives.
Researchers have found that happy people are ten times more likely to be other-oriented than self centered suggesting that happiness is a by-product of helping others rather than the result of its pursuit.
Happier people are more successful — and that’s causal, not correlative.
It turns out that our brains are literally hardwired to perform at their best when they are not negative or even neutral, but when they are positive.