Invest in & benefit from your career

Nobody ever will take on the task of unearthing your strongpoints so that you remain in the forefront of your career. In other words, the initiative to make certain that others do not overtake you in this competitive world is yours and yours alone. To be able to do that, you need to embrace and entertain a genuine obligation to invest in your career and manage it. If you do not, you are unlikely to achieve anything significant; you will remain directionless and sans any control over your destiny. You will be plagued with uncertainties and be unable to forecast about anything to follow.

Career investment is a protracted process and necessitates lot of perceptiveness. You should always remember that the final outcome or returns of your investment will be a proliferation of efficiency, more promotions, increased remunerations and a marked alteration to your lifestyle. Your initiatives should be in line with your career objectives and ambitions. Therefore, it is essential that you remain vigilant and clutch different opportunities that come your way and thus progress in your career.

An important point that you need to remember is to ensure that you do not get influenced unnecessarily by what others are doing for their careers; if you do not do this, you are likely to get detached from your own self. Should you not exercise caution, you could fall prey to a ‘career discomfort disorder’ that will cause you to hate your job and become disgruntled. Considering the foregoing, the need to understand your own self better needs no emphasis; to be specific, you should be aware of issues that inspire you. This could be a long drawn-out process, however, when you get to know yourself better, you will be in a better position to decide on the methodology of making judicious investments.

When you invest in your career, the returns that accrue consequent to improvement in you are rather high vis-à-vis any financial investment. From increased likelihood to enjoy earnings for a lifetime from opportunities not thought of at one end of the spectrum to warding off any possibility of unemployment at the other, the satisfaction that accrues from personal progression and accomplishment is great. If that be so, what are the areas that you feel are worth investing? Have you already made any investment and what are the benefits that you have reaped? What are your current focus areas? If you are willing to give the matter thoughtful contemplation, you need to invest in the following as pertinent to you:

· Personal life: This entails creating a good work-life balance. You simply cannot afford to ignore your domestic responsibilities and focus only on your career requirements. Your family and friends have a momentous role to play in your career success; at times when you get stuck, they can be relied upon to come to your rescue. It will be your own kith and kin who will always stand by you and hence investing in your family is surely a meaningful initiative.

· Intelligence: If you invest in your brain power, you will be able to apply to resolve practical issues. The start point is getting hold of of appropriate expertise that will propel your career forward; remember that learning is an unending process. You cannot afford to give refuge to a presumptuous attitude and abandon any enterprise to manage your career proactively. This calls for staying abreast with all changes and nurturing good bonds with innovators and forerunners. There is absolutely nothing wrong in seeking external assistance to find out how your contenders are endeavouring to get to the position that you are aspiring to be in.

· Strengths & talents: This implies utilising them more than ever before. You should become more and more alert to your intrinsic strong suit that permits your abilities to flourish and prompt you to invest in them. You should keep your wits about and note how others are going about investing in their careers; a cognizance of such dynamics will help you take better decisions. However, the bottom line should be to get happiness in your career by giving wings to your fervencies and strong points.

· Networking: Whatever relationships and networking you may enjoy, it is important that you remain receptive to them. The best method is to have your own panel of consultants. You must discern your sphere of sway –where you stand today, the mode in which you are being influenced and if they indeed serve your career interests. You should accord high precedence to establishing a potent network, developing it appropriately and keeping in a dynamic state perpetually.

· Guide or advisor: You cannot let your enterprise and initiative to wane. Given the likelihood of having to manage multifarious responsibilities, you should be cognizant of the need to stay focussed at all times. Your career management measures should thus be an inherent component of all your career related efforts and to that extent, of your daily routine as well. A good guide or advisor will facilitate the solidification of your consciousness of different commitments and offer you different apparatuses to remain resolute.

All careers are vibrant and require a deliberate focus and line of action. You could be at the start point of your career or could have travelled some part of your career journey, but whatever stage you are at, you must engender important metrics – the skill to classify the most important functions of your job and then convert them into processes of growth that can pilot your hard work. In principle, you need to evaluate and control your fortes; develop pragmatic action-plans; and fast-track your development. That is what investing in and benefitting from your career is all about.