A personal examination of yourself and where you are with regard to your career choice should happen with everyone. You’re not the only one. I perform one of these every five years because I want to make sure I am still truly happy and satisfied with what I’m doing. But sometimes it takes me to follow certain steps to take in order to conduct a self-examination.

No matter your age,economic or professional status, you should always conduct a self-examination of where you are with your career. Is your job taking you down the career journey that you expected, five, ten or fifteen years ago? Are you constantly finding an excuse why you are not advancing or changing your career to what you really enjoy? Do you leave work everyday wishing you were doing what you are really good at?

Yes, there are a million reasons, and many of these are really good excuses for you to delay your career change, but nothing days that you should delay the self-examination of your career journey. I’m going to help you with this in a very easy and quick manner.

A self-examination is just what it says…observing and evaluating your current professional situation and

• Interests – What You Like/Dislike
• Personality – What Makes You Unique
• Values – What’s Important To You
• Knowledge, Skills And Abilities – What You are Good At

Values – What is Important To You   Establish those values in your life first. What is it that you live every day of your life by?  what do you believe in? What, no matter how things go, you will always stand by your values. What are they? Once you know what you fight for, believe in and am passionate about with regard to life values, then you can develop a much better understanding of yourself, thus building much more confidence.

THIS will help you build a better sense of yourself, and thus will help you to achieve the next three steps:

Interests – What You Like/Dislike  What do you like in life in general that you can get paid for. Think about everything and do not tie them to careers or jobs that are on your mind. Completely void yourself of that and think about everything you enjoy.

Knowledge, Skills And Abilities – What You’re Good At  Every one of us has something we are good at. It is our job to find them. The skills and talents you have continue to nourish and grow. It’s not like your good at everything. But what kinds of things do you do good? Do you like certain courses, and why? Do you talk a lot of take things apart? Do people come to you for something, or are you complimented on certain things or abilities more often?  This can aid you in figuring out some of the skills and talents that you attain. I say some because we live our lives every day learning something new, and discovering (through hardship or good times) that we have other skills and talents that we can benefit from.

Personality- what makes you unique?   Many people don’t actually think about this as part of their career choice. If you’re fun-loving and talkative, go for it, and do that in your career! If your quiet, introverted, task-oriented, go for it and do that for your career! Use your personality to match your career! If you’re the type of person that likes doing one thing at a time, well there are jobs for that! Check out http://wp.me/pAKTs-2I to really investigate this. Don’t worry it’s not hard work. There are four categories of personalities and as you review the personality traits that make up each color, you can easily tell the type of personality you have. And don’t worry, if you choose two or three colors, you’re not a schizophrenic…it just makes you that much more marketable for different careers and jobs.

Check out these other great posts from The Career Closet that focus on certain areas to help you choose the right kind of career.

YOU CAN’T JUST CHOOSE ANY CAREER YOU WANT

MATCHING YOUR CAREER WITH THE CLASSES YOU LOVE

EXTROVERT OR INTROVERT? YOUR CAREER MIGHT DEPEND ON IT

THE FINAL STEP IN YOUR CAREER CHOICE: VISITING THE O.O.H.

Your Success is My Success,

Keith Lipke

I’m a careers and college recruiter, coach, public speaker and leader at The Career Closet. His passion is to educate, inspire, and give hope to young people who need it upon their search for the right career and college

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Related articles

• You Can’t Just Choose Any Career You Want (thecareercloset.com)
• The Fairytale Career Path: Should You Change Careers to Do What You Love? (careerspiration.wordpress.com)