Matching Your Life to Your Vision
Each morning when you wake up, how do you visualize in your mind the day in front of you? Is it a clear, open wave of endless possibilities, joy, and hope? Is it a dark cloud of dread? Or perhaps something a little in between?
Our focus this season is momentum: harnessing all the phases of productivity and restful rejuvenation of the past year into forwarding your personal and professional motion.
If you find yourself missing the jump-out-of-bed kind of motivation that springs joy and hope, it’s possible that something in your personal or professional life doesn’t quite match where you truly want to be.
I understand how you feel! I’ve been there too! This has actually been the trigger for big shifts in my life.
Experiencing dissatisfaction or overwhelm is a human experience we all share, and it may stem from being misaligned with your values, strengths, environment, or impact.
Matching your daily life experience requires careful consideration of each of these four elements. When you feel at home in what you do, feel valued and valuable, and feel honored with your skills and strengths, you may find more and more mornings that bring about a day filled with opportunities for abundance and joy.
Create a list of your personal guiding principles and values.
WIth confidence and self-awareness by your side, define the principles and values that are most important to you. These are integral, systematic parts of your being that remain unchanged whether you are in the midst of transition, a period of challenge, or a moment of action.
Your principles form your very thinking and impact your decision-making process. Clearly and consciously evaluating how your principles have guided you in the past will help reveal what values are important to you moving forward.
To reflect on your principles and values, investigate your major life decisions. When you felt good (or well-aligned) with a decision, what principle was guiding you? What were the important outcomes or results from that decision? Did something change for you?
Finding meaningful, values-aligned work is important to all of us. As you reflect on your past and formulate your future, your list of values and guiding principles will begin to take shape. Be certain to record and share these ideals as you continue to make decisions that align you with your best-matched career and personal habits.
Identifying your deeply rooted values may require the use of a solid tool or technique. Not sure which one to use? Ask around you, ask us. It’s always wise to get inspiration and recommendations from those who’ve been there.
Match your choice of career with your skills and talents.
As you decide to match your career choices more closely with who and where you want to be, analyzing your skills and talents is top priority. People can always work within the boundaries of a system if all the other elements align – environment, impact, and values – but if your position does not lend itself well to your personal strengths, there is bound to be friction.
On the other hand, choosing a career simply because you feel you’ll excel can leave you missing the impact, values alignment, or work environment that’s equally important to your contentment and growth.
It’s easy enough to define what doesn’t feel right but identifying whether your work aligns with your skills and talents takes deeper insight.
Begin with identifying what doesn’t work.
- What exhausts me or drains my battery quickly?
- Where am I feeling worried about my performance?
- When does work I’m assigned feel heavy?
With that out of the way, it’s time to focus on the more important set of questions: Calling forward what you want to find.
- What rejuvinates me or recharges my battery right away?
- What is my zone of genius?
- What are my strengths? (We use the Clifton Strengths Finder for this!)
- Where do I shine?
Whether you are a seasoned executive or a budding entrepreneur, you have a unique set of skills and talents to offer. Becoming crystal clear on your genius allows you to confidently offer your benefits to the right recipient, matching what you can bring to an organization or to your clients with what they truly need.
Align your work environment to your strengths.
Choosing the next step in your career is a complex process, and it’s essential that you imagine – or even better, experience – what the working environment will be like for you and whether or not that environment aligns with your personal preferences and performance.
Do you work best with in-person teamwork and accountability? If so, working remotely may not be the best-fit work environment for you, and you may want to seek in-person positions.
Do you excel when leading smaller teams, but also hold a desire to complete work within a larger vision? A middle-management or team lead position may be a good fit.
Do you need autonomy and flexibility? An organization with a large upper-management structure may feel restrictive, so perhaps you should look for a smaller team or organization.
Do you desire to ideate, plan, and create your own business? You’re likely ready to venture into entrepreneurship.
Working with a coach or mentor to identify your strengths and saboteurs can be the perfect first step to determining what type of environment will help you thrive. You spend significant time at work, so finding the right match is an integral part of feeling empowered, confident, and stable in your career so that you can deliver superior results.
Choose or cultivate a work culture that suits you.
The work culture can make or break your motivation and performance, so being 100% clear on that one is essential to build a long term future and not just a short-term fix.
Knowing your strengths, your values, and your best-fit work environment will help you match yourself with the work culture that is a perfect fit for all the elements you bring to the table.
Think back to a moment in your career or life when you weren’t aligned with the culture around you. How did it impact you? What was your energy level like? How did your customer or client interactions go? Were you acknowledged? Supported? Challenged? If only one of these elements were missing, you likely experienced some dissatisfaction or frustration with your work experience.
To identify whether a work culture aligns with your strengths, values, and best-fit environment, measure your current or prospective work culture with the following criteria.
- You communicate and are communicated to in a way that works well for you; some communication elements to consider are timeliness, ease, method, consistency, clarity, and availability.
- You delegate or receive delegated tasks according to your strengths and zones of genius, without judgment or negative repercussions.
- You participate in cooperation and decision-making at the level where you feel confident and comfortable.
Working within a culture that fits well with your personal strengths, communication style, and guiding principles makes work feel fluid and satisfying, like swimming downstream.
Activate your higher self.
Match your work with the absolutely best version of you. Your personality. Your passions. Your values. Your environment. When these elements are present in abundance, you not only feel great, but you’ll also be impacting your organization, your community, your country, and the planet.
If your contribution to daily life is never connected to a greater mission, you may be missing out on one of the greatest motivators: Your fellow human beings.
“In the end, the real measure of success will unlikely be our accomplishments or achievements. Rather, our most authentic measure will likely be the lasting impact we had on the lives of people.” (70-year-old CEO to Forbes contributor Kevin Cashman)
Match yourself to something grand in the moment. Something important to you, right now. Something the world can no longer live without.
As Maya Angelou so wisely said “People will not remember you for what you did or said. They will remember you for how you made them feel”. Leaving the right legacy behind you, at whatever age, is what drives purpose.
Get curious. Stay curious.
Living an aligned life requires you to leave your past where it belongs – in the past! Your past doesn’t necessarily have to drive your future. Try on a curious, exploratory mind, allowing yourself to set aside the fears or internal objections that often interrupt your motivation or momentum.
At PointNorth International, we can help you identify and confirm the skills, talents, and strengths you bring to your professional life. More importantly, we are committed to teaching you to ask the right questions when it comes to defining your ideal matching organization or client, right down to the interview phase. Whether you are matching an ideal client or an ideal position at an ideal company, centering yourself on your values, beliefs, and strengths will make your next step a powerful one.
Ready to align your professional life? We’re ready to help! Join our newsletter list below for the latest updates on free webinars, programs and courses, and personalized one-on-one support.
