It is officially the end of the summer. What does this mean to you? From early childhood we associate the third quarter with a break - from kindergarten, school, and classes. And although businesses work with calendar years, we tend to restart our professional energy and commitment in September. Again, summer is gone, vacations are gone, and we are entering our new psychological business cycle. Hope it's an empowering one for all of you!
On the threshold of this new career cycle you can take for granted whatever comes up on your way or you can consciously determine how you want this cycle to run for you and where you want to be before next summer comes up. This means to pay close attention to your intrinsic professional desires and your career goals. I have written a lot about building individual development plans, focusing on passions and ultimate goals, and pursuing purpose. Now I want to share with you another simple technique to encourage reflection on your upcoming professional year. It is: listen to what happened during the summer.
If you think about it summer is a very informative period. Often times the work load is less than usual which allows us to breathe. If you have experienced this think what are you taking a breath from. How does it feel? How energized are you to jump back to the same workload? What do you want to change? What do you want to get rid of? What do you want to take in? The purpose of these questions is to reflect on what is it about your work that makes you tired or bored, and what is it that you love and want to have more.
Summer time is also vacation time. Think on how you felt during your days off. Were you thinking about your work? What did you miss about your work? What were you taking break from? What made you excited to go back to work? What was it about your work that filled you with some negativity on the first ride back to work? These type of questions will help you to emphasize on the best and worst aspects of your professional life. When you figure them out it will be much easier to build a strategy for enhancing the first and diminishing the latter.
And a final thought. Summer is also the time when we feel free and relaxed, and we are at our most outgoing-ness. We meet new people, we see new things, we come up with new ideas, we feel energized by our thoughts. So, what happened to you during the summer? What ideas, thoughts, desires came up to the surface? What made you smile and energized? Remember, nothing is impossible and you can achieve whatever you commit yourself to. And now, it's a great time to be strategic about your career advancement whatever that means to you.
What the summer informed you about? I would love to hear your thoughts :)
And again, I wish you an amazing you new career cycle!
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