How to Choose the Work You Love When You Feel Stuck (Part 3)

(This post is part of a series. Read Part 1 and Part 2)

Ultimately, choosing a career direction comes down to one thing.

Photo Credit: hobvias sudoneighm

What do you want to do?

That’s it.

You can take all the personality assessments in the world, go through tons of exercises, and work with coaches.

However, when all is said and done you have to make a choice and move toward a goal.

You may say, “but I still don’t know what I want to do”.

That may be, however, my hunch is you actually have some ideas but you’re talking yourself out of them.

These are what Howard Figlar calls your “yes, buts”.

Yes, I’d really like to do X but you see I can’t because…

The challenge is your “yes, buts” may be very legitamate.

You may have some major obstacles in your path to doing what you love to do.

Yet at some point, you need to take your “yes, buts” out, dust them off, look at them, set them on the shelf, and make a decision to find solutions to overcome them..

Sometimes your “yes, buts” have been so scary you never wanted to look at them.

I would encourage you to not only look at them but examine them to their fullest extent.

Feel the fear.

Then start doing two things.

1) Get more information on your problem. Let’s say you want to be a dentist but you don’t know how you’ll feed your family while you spend years in dental school and not go into a mountain of debt. You’re not the first person to ever face this dilemma. Find a dentist who had the same problem but overcame it. They are out there. It may take some work, but you’ll find someone you can talk to and ask how they did it. This goes for pretty much every type of career and situation you can think of.

2) Create solutions and implement them. In the previous example you may have found someone who was in the exact same position you are in now. You may discover there are certain dental schools where you can go part-time while you work or schools that offer financial assistance. Maybe you’ll need to move to a cheaper place to live for a time. Maybe you’ll decide to save up for dental school and go in 5 years. I don’t know.

It really boils down to asking yourself how bad you want something, what creative solutions will help you get there, and what cost are you willing to pay?

Nobody said this would be easy.

But you can do this.

We live in a wonderful nation. Full of freedom and opportunities.

The solutions are there if you look hard enough.

Use your creativity and your enthusiasm for a new career in this process.

Can you see it?

You’ll get there and you’ll love it.

Question: Have you ever found a solution to an obstacle in your life you never thought you’d figure out?

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