When it comes to your career you cannot make mistakes. We all do it – we all have jobs we shouldn’t be choosing – and it takes learning through each of those jobs what you want the most. The problem is that if it takes years to figure out what you don’t want, how will you ever know what you do want?
This is a contributed post. Please refer to my disclosure for more information.
Playing to your strengths in your career is important, but not every 18-year-old goes into college knowing exactly what their strengths are and what to study to get there. We all have some strengths and weaknesses that we bring into our working lives whether we are wealthy naturally or we are climbing the ladder from the very bottom. You can speak to a HR consulting firm to help your employees to play to their strengths in their career, but you can also learn for yourself with the four tips below of why you should play to your strengths in your career.
- Your career peaks before you hit 50. In your 30s and your 40s those are the prime ages for your career to hit its peak. These are years when you are going to earn the most money in the role that you have taken on that will fit into your retirement and set you up for the remainder of your life. If you consider that your teens and your 20s are the years that you used to figure yourself out, your 30s in your 40s are the years where you will finally live with the person you have figured out. If you can play to your strengths in your career, you’re going to ensure that you have the intelligence that you need to make your chosen career a success.
- Your priorities change as you get older. If you know what your strengths are and you can pivot to play to the strengths, you’re going to be able to prioritise yourself as you age. The interests and passions that we have in our early 20s are not always the same in our 40s, and early in your career you may solely focus on supporting a family with a job that pays the most. This may not be the job that gives you joy or brings your passions to the surface, so you use your later years to figure that out and start from scratch. If you put it this way, you’ll have the opportunity to develop new skills and harness an unrealised potential. It will also help you to connect with like-minded people of a similar age mindset, expanding your network and extending your reach.
- You will feel fulfilled. Chasing the wrong career goals can really lead you to feeling unfulfilled in your current career. If you’re going to spend eight hours a day doing shifts in a workplace, and you want to ensure it’s the right workplace. You deserve to go through life feeling satisfied, because otherwise it just becomes an empty existence.
- Your strengths are going to dictate your future. The things that you are good at I’m going to help you to determine what your future will look like, but that doesn’t mean your witnesses won’t help.