In my most recent blog, The Logical Reasons To Trust Your Gut Feeling, I discussed how intuition can often beat analytical thinking, especially when we are deliberating crucial career decisions. This is because intuition comes from our subconscious mind. The part of the brain that works simultaneously (or often in competition) with our conscious thought processes, acting as a parallel intelligence system. Intuition is our internal “hard-drive”, because it collects patterns of our previous first-hand experiences.
At its simplest, an example of our intuition guiding us, would be our inclination to not, touch boiling water. Notably, if we are faced with boiling water, we don’t make a conscious decision to not touch it. We just naturally refrain from doing so. This is because we have a stored memory in our intuition (either of a parent warning us, or of us actually getting burnt) enabling us to make a decision without logically thinking about it. The whole “not-thinking” but “feeling” part of intuition scares many people. However, as shown above we make numerous decisions, on a daily basis, without applying our logical minds. So, we should learn to have a little more faith in “feeling” and trust our intuition.
Draw backs of intuition
There are two key draw backs you should be aware of when using your intuition to make career decisions.
- If you lack substantial experience within your particular field, it is unlikely you will own the intuitive resources, yet, to guide you. The only remedy for this is to be diligent and collect those experiences.
- If you lack clarity on your career goals your intuition can’t, subconsciously, make decisions inline with your goals. The good news is that this drawback can be fixed, relatively, quickly.
How to Get Career Clarity and Unlock Your intuition
If you feel totally lost about your career
See a career coach. At this stage, its probable, you can’t see, the wood for the trees. You would benefit, greatly, by having an objective (trained) mind guide you through your muddled thoughts. If you invest in other aspects of your wellbeing such as, fitness, health or hair, then investing in your career should be a no-brainer. For everyone else, trust me its well worth it.
If you feel a little lost about your career
Write a list of the pro’s and con’s of each career path. Sounds simple but it really helps. It gets you to think about what career path makes you happiest and why.
If you’re not lost about your career field but lost on how to progress
Re-focus, your work day by targeting your to-do list. Feel like there’s not enough hours in the day? Stop doing things that don’t matter. Put your to-do list on a diet. We all have extensive to-do lists. In reality, they are burdened with trivial, irrelevant tasks. To refine your to-do list you need to identify what your goals are. Write your career objectives at the top of your to-do list. Delete all of the tasks on your to-do list that do not support these objectives. Voila!