When we seek getting promoted in our careers, it requires an evolution of the self. Your technical skills, your soft skills, or even just your negotiation/communication skills will all come under review to determine if you are a good fit for a promotion. This is why personal growth and professional development come hand in hand. I’ll review 3 key areas and ask some prompting questions for a self-assessment.
Starting Your Journey of Self-Discovery
Your next steps have 3 major areas:
- Taking care of yourself – Physical and mental/emotional self care
- Inner journeys – Spiritual self care and healing work
- Outer journeys – People support and lifestyle items
Take a moment with these simple descriptions to note if you think you are in a bad, okay, or great state for each of these areas. Which one is the best and which do you think you want to put more effort into? Here is some more contextual information to go deeper in your thinking and to consider what you want to set goals towards:
Taking Care of Yourself
To feel balanced and ready to take on higher levels of stress/responsibility, you have to keep these items in check:
- Nutrition & water intake
- Sleep
- Exercise
- Breath work
- Supplements/Medication
- Psychotherapy
- Identifying your emotions
You can still get promoted if you don’t sleep well and don’t exercise, but in the long run your anxiety might stay at a higher level or you have an underlying feeling of dissatisfaction. If you prioritize work over your personal health, you are thinking short term. Even something as simple as breathing is an item we take for granted.
Inner Journeys
You may identify you suffer from anxiety, but the path to healing is a longer and deeper journey than exercising it away. Inner journeys can be about digging into your past traumas that created negative behaviors you would like to explore healing. It is highly recommended you work with a psychotherapist or establish some form of support, either via a coach or support group.
It can also be about presence and connection. Spirituality doesn’t mean you have to believe in god. It’s taking the time to connect with your purpose and meaning. If you think there is no purpose and meaning, it’s taking the time to meditate in the present and allow the meaning of “nothing” to really sit with you. Appreciate it, feel it fully. Be in awe of the complexity of life.
Inner journeys can also be a simple self-exploration for defining what you want in life. Maybe you feel aimless, unhappy, unsure of what you should be doing. It’s about committing to go on a journey of discovery for what you want and need. Doing this will ensure that you are picking a career and future that is a right fit for you and brings about a more fulfilling life.
Outer Journeys
One version is packing up a bag and venturing out into the unknown – traveling, exploring. It’s really just the moment you step outside of yourself into new territory with an external party. It could be engaging with a new group of people, trying a new activity, spending time in nature. If you consider how things grow and new organisms are formed, it is with the combination of other elements.
It usually isn’t as easy as “let’s add this new job or opportunity.” You want to create momentum, forward movement. Create lots of new things by engaging outside of yourself. You will be amazed what will follow.
Finding Your Voice
For many of us in the pandemic we spent a lot more time inside our homes, and naturally we focused on self-care and inner journeys. Nothing like a pandemic to make you really reflect on your health and habits. For others, it was too much external stimuli to process and self-care/inner-journeys were neglected in addition to the outer journeys, causing depression.
We are now at a moment where things are changing and there is a higher level of motivation to focus on those outer journeys, either to create balance or to get away from those inner journeys that were avoided. We see more people leaving their jobs, either to go on those outer journeys or because they identify the organization they work with does not hold the same values around personal care.
Identify where you are at with each of these areas. What do you want? What do you need? Who are you? What does it mean to really sing your own voice? When you’re ready, start creating goals. You can use personal scrum to create sprints and iterate your planning as you learn & grow.
My personal growth & professional development
For me, I focused heavily on self-care and inner journeys for the past 2 years. I knew that an outer journey was the next step in my path, and part of it was to start creating more. In addition to writing blogs and filming/editing videos, I have been working more on art (painting, crafting). I’ve been networking and engaging with more people to work on my elevator pitch – every time I try I consider something I want to fine tune. It’s discovering my own voice. In this last sprint I had a strong discovery: I fell into singing other people’s songs. Hear more about this perspective in my sprint 4 retrospective:
To follow along my path of personal growth and professional development, follow me on Linkedin or subscribe to my YouTube channel.
May your journey be fulfilling and positive. Thanks for tuning in.