Career happiness isn't about climbing higher or working harder. It's about knowing yourself deeply enough to walk away from what doesn't serve you. After years of coaching professionals through career transitions, I've discovered that true career success comes down to three fundamental practices: defining your non-negotiables, clearing your mental roadblocks, and taking consistent action. Let me show you how.
Your Career Non-Negotiables: The Foundation of Everything
Here's the truth about career success and happiness: there's only one way to achieve it. You need to be ready to walk away.
This isn't about being flighty or ungrateful. It's about understanding that your core values and your career must be in alignment if you want genuine fulfillment. Your values need to be your non-negotiables, the things that if your career isn't honoring, it's time to look elsewhere.
That's what a non-negotiable actually means. Something that if it isn't being met, you walk away from the table.
For every client I work with, this is the first exercise we tackle. We do nothing before this, and the rest of our work is based on it. It's that important.
How to Define Your Core Career Values
Knowing your values are important is one thing. Actually defining them is another. Here's the three-step process that works:
Step 1: Brain Dump Everything That Matters
Begin by writing out a list of anything and everything you find truly important. Anything you consider a value or a priority in your life as you understand it right now. Today. And I do mean today.
These things you hold important can't be based on what mattered to you a decade ago, or what you believe you'll find important ten years from now. And definitely not what you think your friends, family, culture, or partner believe you should consider a core value. This has to come from you.
Create a list of anything and everything you hold dear. The list can have anywhere from 10 to 100 items. It doesn't matter. Just get them all out on paper.
Step 2: Group and Narrow Down
Like group things together. Most likely many of the things you've listed separately are really the same thing.
For instance, if you've got family, friends, and partner on your list, all three can be lumped together under the single value of loved ones. Money, a good job, and a house are all actually security.
Once you have your list narrowed down, choose four or five values that are absolute 100 percent musts. These are your non-negotiables. The things that have to happen in your life for you to be happy, fulfilled, and find meaning.
These are the base foundations of who you are as a person. These are the things that you need in your career to support and to be supported by your career. It's a two-way street.
Step 3: Compare Against Your Current Reality
Once you've got your values defined, compare your non-negotiables to the current state of your career. Does it line up? Is it supported by your values? Is it supporting your priorities?
If it isn't, that's most likely the source of your dissatisfaction with your career. It might be the reason you're not moving ahead or feeling unhappy in your position or sensing that you're not following your passion.
If one of your non-negotiables is time with family but your career ensures you'll always be working a 95-hour workweek, those are in direct opposition. It may be time to consider a new path because with such conflict between your career and your core values, you can never truly achieve the life success and happiness you desire. It goes against who you are as a person.
If something is in opposition to who you are as a person, even if you're getting a fat paycheck, you will never truly be fulfilled or happy.
However, when your values and career are aligned, success and happiness become not something you constantly have to fight for, but a given. It becomes something that comes to you easily. It is no longer a daily struggle.
Permission to Be Honest About What You Want
Each person's values will be different. Do not censor yourself. Do not judge yourself. If in this exercise you discover that money, just cold hard cash, is a thing you are prioritizing, that is 100 percent acceptable.
You have nobody to answer to but yourself. Now that money may have other meanings attached to it like freedom, comfort, or security, but you understand what the shorthand means to you. That's fine.
You don't need to fill this out as if your pastor, grandma, or ex-boyfriend who's in Doctors Without Borders is looking over your shoulder. This is for you. These are your personal priorities. Your wants. Your needs.
Whatever they are, you need to honor them or you will never be happy. If you're working off someone else's list of what is considered culturally or societally appropriate values, you will never find the fulfillment and meaning you're looking for.
Clearing Your Limiting Beliefs: The Mental Roadblocks Holding You Back
When I work with a new client, I often start by asking them how they plan on finding their path. What work have they done and how have they done it? Basically, I ask how they think they'll finally figure it all out.
Some say they've read a few self-help books, maybe taken a personality test that told them they were a scrabble word jumble worth of letters, or that they tried meditation but nothing has really worked.
A few have said something along the lines of: "I'd probably go away to some retreat in Costa Rica or do an Eat Pray Love trip."
Here's the thing: you don't have to, and really shouldn't, travel to have an experience that allows you to finally figure your stuff out. It's a dangerous idea actually.
Why? Well, you're still taking that self on that trip with you, right? Wherever you go, there you and your current beliefs are.
I'm a big believer in the idea that you can't move forward until you really acknowledge where you are right now. This can take some major honesty, which is hard for lots of us because we are super great at lying to ourselves.
What Are Limiting Beliefs?
Limiting beliefs are things you believe to be true about your situation, yourself, or the world at large that limit your actions in some way. They're the stories you tell yourself that keep you stuck.
Here's how to identify and tackle your limiting beliefs:
Step 1: Ask yourself what are my limiting beliefs about my work?
Step 2: Question your answers.
Step 3: Flip them and then rewrite them.
For example:
Belief: I can't do anything but the bartending I've been doing because I'm not trained in anything else.
Question: Why is not being trained in anything else yet so bad?
Flip: I'm totally open and available to choose new skills to learn.
Or:
Belief: I can't leave my banking job to wait tables because my college friends will look down on me.
Question: Does it matter what those guys miserable at their nine-to-fives think?
Flip: A restaurant job will allow me the freedom to take that two-month trip to Southeast Asia I've been dreaming about since college.
See how this works? Grab some time, something to write on, maybe an adult beverage, and get to it.
Ladder vs Lattice: Redefining Career Progress
I'm not saying that you shouldn't find success in your career, just that you shouldn't necessarily focus on the concept of a corporate ladder. There's absolutely another way. It's not a ladder, it's a lattice.
Understanding the Lattice Approach
At its core, a lattice is a newer way to design your career these days. It allows for lateral, upward, diagonal, and sometimes even good downward moves, a lot like the lattice out back holding up your roses.
While a ladder is the traditional straight up-or-down path, a lattice allows ideas, skills, and titles to flow in different directions within companies and careers. The lattice concept is changing perceptions of both productivity and progress.
The ladder concept was invented during the Industrial Revolution. The thought was that by increasing the knowledge, responsibilities, and skills of employees, there was a better chance of success for the organization as a whole. It was and is, however, a strictly upward promotional path that focuses solely on additional responsibilities and higher pay for certain employees.
When a Ladder Makes Sense:
The traditional climbing of the corporate ladder isn't dead yet. It makes the most sense when you are on a specialist track and have a clear idea of the role expected of you, especially within particularly designed functions such as finance, legal, medical, or scientific.
With a ladder, you gain subject matter expertise which deepens and grows as you become an expert in your field. You have clear job expectations and progress path while you become familiar and comfortable within roles, organizations, and colleagues.
When a Lattice is Better:
A lattice approach to career development can apply to most job functions and allows you to become a cross-functional generalist with a varied set of skills. It's a good approach for anyone considering a career change, attempting to create work-life balance, returning to the workforce, or anyone seeking to broaden their general experience.
A lattice means that you can move laterally, vertically, downward, or diagonally, all with a focus on building your capabilities, not just reaching the next ladder rung. You can move across an organization or organizations, not just up within a department or field.
Sometimes lateral moves or moving down can be perceived negatively if hiring managers don't understand why you made those decisions. Also, some career moves will be accompanied by a smaller paycheck, so you will need to be comfortable financially and emotionally enough to swap less cash, title, or status for the experience that you are aiming to gain.
No matter which path you select, you need to be your own best advocate. You will need to be the one making sure that your goals are being met and that you're making room for the possibility that plans can and will most likely change.
Taking Action: Small Steps That Create Major Career Momentum
There have been a lot of goal setting and planning posts everywhere lately. And planning is great. But if you never implement all of that planning, it means little more than nothing.
Planning can sometimes be a fancy-pants, pseudo-productive version of procrastination. We can get so bogged down in the planning that things never actually get done and definitely don't get done any differently than they have before.
You need to take action. Not huge actions. Not big, blow up the system actions, but small, sometimes totally imperfect, big-time baby steps.
Three Weekly Actions for Major Career Growth
Do one of these tiny actions each week and you'll see major career momentum:
1. Email a different industry connection each day this week.
Keeping your network up-to-date, warm, and dynamic is genuinely the best thing you can do for your career. Keeping yourself top-of-mind, keeping yourself informed, keeping yourself connected can do exponentially more than a bag full of specialized skills and deep-dive know-how.
The old adage "it's not what you know but who you know" truly is a force. People recommend other people that they know, like, and trust. Someone else may know more than you, but if you know the right person, the job is yours. The project is yours. The corner office is yours.
2. Follow one industry leader, innovator, or insider each day on some social platform.
Interact with them. Get to know them and they'll get to know you. You'll be surprised what kind of mentorship and opportunity can come from being actively engaged on social media.
Another old adage to take in here is: the only way to get better at tennis is by playing someone better than you. This goes for most things. To become better at something, anything, you need to be challenged, you need to be questioned, you need to have to fend off a few serves flying at your face at full force.
The best way to be challenged is through mentorship, guidance, and inspiration. You can find those things by becoming immersed in the worlds of leaders, innovators, and insiders within your industry.
3. Research your industry and your role.
Spend a few minutes this week researching industry news, your company's competitors, salaries for your role, and how tech will be changing your role.
Information and learning are keys to growing. Knowledge truly is power. The more you know about your role within the industry and what makes you unique and impactful, the more bargaining power you have when it comes to getting the initiatives you want, being on the team you want, and getting the money you deserve.
Putting It All Together: Your Path to Career Fulfillment
Career success isn't about following someone else's playbook. It's about building a career that honors who you are at your core.
Start by defining your non-negotiables. Be brutally honest about what matters to you, not what should matter according to society or your well-meaning relatives.
Clear out your limiting beliefs. Those stories you tell yourself about what you can't do or can't have are just that: stories. Question them, flip them, rewrite them.
Choose your path intentionally. Whether it's a traditional ladder or a more flexible lattice approach, make sure it aligns with your values and your definition of success.
And then take action. Small, consistent steps that keep you moving forward. Network authentically. Learn continuously. Stay engaged with your industry.
When your values and career are aligned, success and happiness become not something you constantly have to fight for, but a given. It becomes something that comes to you easily. It is no longer a daily struggle.
That's the secret to career fulfillment. Not working harder or climbing higher, but knowing yourself deeply enough to build something that actually works for you. And being ready to walk away from anything that doesn't.
Yours in career success goodness,
EBS
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EB Sanders
Career Coach for Creative Types
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Helping you figure out what you want to do and how to do it your way!