Lack of fulfillment in a career often evokes the question, “How did I end up in a career I don’t enjoy?”

If you have asked yourself this question, or one similar to it, your best option is to explore your core reasons for feeling frustrated. Then, based on your reflections, you can take steps to increase your enjoyment or change your unfulfilling career.

My clients often come to career development coaching because they feel out of alignment with their priorities and values in life. If their career has been chosen based on other people’s values or their own limiting beliefs, a misalignment can almost be guaranteed. But it can be corrected by determining exactly what provides them the greatest career satisfaction and taking steps to maximize it.

The biggest obstacles in this situation are “must and should” beliefs. Beliefs on what you must do and what you should do cloud the situation and make it almost impossible to decide on the most effective course of action.

Here are a few ways that must and should beliefs might have taken over:

• Choosing this particular career wasn’t your idea at all.

• In order to pay student loans or provide financial support to your family, you focused on quickly obtaining a substantial, regular income.

• A focus on developing your full potential wasn’t high on your boss’ agenda.

• You only developed your hard skills for your career enhancement, and as a result, brought imbalance into your soft skill development.

• There’s a misalignment between your values and the company’s, resulting in your lack of commitment to the company’s vision and mission.

• Feeling stressed at work became overwhelming and caused you to lose work-lifestyle balance.

• Loss of work-lifestyle balance impacted your state of mind and affected your mental well-being.

Is your reason listed above? Or is it something else? By becoming aware of your reason and accepting it, you will be able to focus on the need for a career change, or perhaps the lack of a need for one. In order to clearly see this change, you need to keep your focus on wanting it.

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