What does your perfect job look like?
Someone asked me recently: What is your dream role? What does your perfect job look like, in terms of what you’d want to do, what you’d be paid, how much you’ll work…everything?
“Well”, I thought, “that’s easy! It’s… well, it definitely doesn’t include anal glands. And, um..it has lots of free time, and it pays really well. I’ll… wait, I don’t really know…”
Why is this such a hard question?
Why is it such a hard question? And why aren’t most of us already working in our dream jobs?
I’ve come up with a list of possible reasons. Let me know what I’m missing:
- You’ve never actually taken the time to think about this question.
- You don’t know yourself particularly well, so how could you know what you want?
- What you think you want (or say you want) is a concoction of what society (and your parents?) told you what you should want.
- You KNOW what you want, but you’re scared. You’re afraid of:
- Asking for what you want.
- Asking, but being told no.
- Not being good enough at the thing you want.
- Failing.
- Getting what you want and then realising that it’s NOT actually what you want which would leave you with nothing to hope for.
- You know what you want, but:
- You don’t feel like you deserve it.
- You’re worried about money.
- You don’t have the skills to do it. Yet. (Or you think you don’t.)
- Society has told you that you can’t have your cake and eat it too, and you believed it.
- You’re worried about what others – colleagues, friends, social media, will think; that you might be too big for your boots or overly ambitious, ungrateful, or greedy.
- You don’t want it enough, so you stay stuck because it’s easier to complain and watch Netflix.
So tell me, what is YOUR dream role? Why aren’t you doing it? What can you do about it?
