High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: How to Identify Your Life Purpose & Leverage it in Your Career

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• Identify Your Life Purpose & Leverage it in Your Career:"each of us can identify a key, over-arching purpose of our lives and live from that knowledge, and doing so is helpful and positive. And I've seen that when we do, we open the door to experiencing more joy, peace, satisfaction and positive energy."

• 7 Ways to Maximize Your Workspace & Productivity: "Now that I’ve fully implemented the formula, I’m much happier and infinitely more productive. My desk is now my oasis. Adopting these seven habits made all the difference."

• How to Be Creative When You're Feeling Stressed: "f you still feel stuck and just can’t come up with something new, then you may want to give your brain more material to work with. This could look like reading on the topic, taking a field trip to a place where you can see other people’s creative solutions to a similar problem, or talking to experts."

• How to Stay Productive When You Travel A Lot: "People overvalue money and undervalue time. I have been willing to spend money to make sure I am fully staffed so that I can leverage my time better."
• 25 Lessons Business School Won't Ever Teach You: "You may learn negotiation strategies in business school, but the act of doing it in real time, in real life, is entirely different."

5 Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Job

Maybe you've been on the job for fifteen years or only 15 minutes. Or you leave the house with energy and enthusiasm or you're like a zombie at work, or operating your career on auto-pilot.

Wherever you happen to be at this moment in your career you should be constantly evaluating your situation and asking yourself a series of questions.

Below are five questions you should ask yourself about your job at least monthly.

Am I challenged in my work? To be satisfied in your work there needs to be some difficulty and some challenge involved. If a job is without a challenge it will become boring, making it unlikely for you to experience growth.

Do I have opportunities to advance at my workplace? Speaking of growth, a dynamic career is one that involves change, development, and opportunities to move up and advance. 

What conferences or workshops should I attend to develop my skills? A great way to gain new skills and knowledge in your field is by attending regular conferences and training sessions. These also provide important networking opportunities that should be cultivated regularly.

Do I experience joy in my job? An underappreciated byproduct of our work is the experience of joy. Work does not have to be (and should not) feel like drudgery. The work can be hard, difficult, and challenging and also provide a great sense of joy. In fact, perhaps the most joy-filled work experience requires difficulty and challenge.

Do I feel a sense of purpose at work? The most successful people, and those who feel happiest in their lives and careers, have a clear sense of their purpose and how their current work fits into that purpose. If you don't have a clear sense of what your purpose or "calling" is, then take some time in the next week to examine this. You will feel a greater sense of engagement, energy, and enthusiasm in your career when your job integrates your purpose with your strengths and skills.

5 Practices to Support Our Mental Health at Work

During stressful times on the job or if you’re an entrepreneur and feeling the heat it is critically important to take care of your mental health. Neglecting our mental state leads to fatigue, emotional outbursts, bad decision-making, and more.

But don’t wait until something is wrong before you think about your mental health. By then the damage to your job or career can be done, and in some situations, irreparable.

Implement the following practices to maintain your mental health and to enable you to effectively manage the stresses that will inevitably come.

Develop connections. It is vital to our mental health to engage with others. We are social beings and gain support and energy from our friendships and relationships with colleagues. Schedule regular time to meet with friends, develop new relationships with co-workers, attend networking events, and seek out meet-ups with others who have similar interests. 

Manage expectations. It’s easy to compare our work performance with others and get down on ourselves for failing to measure up but it is important for our mental health to be realistic and focus on our own strengths and weaknesses.

Take vacation time. In addition to ensuring that we get adequate sleep each night, we need to take advantage of our vacation time to allow ourselves to reset and focus anew on the big picture. Stepping away and getting a change of scenery can do wonders for the soul and help a frustrating or cloudy situation become clearer.

Work with a coach or therapist. Sometimes it is necessary to work with a coach to maintain our mental health. A coach or therapist can provide a different perspective and can help us be more effective in our work. Talk to friends or colleagues to get a referral or recommendation.

Find other sources of joy, fun, and satisfaction. Our lives should not just be about the office. We need hobbies and other interests to better enjoy life and to help us maintain our appreciation for the work we do. Often, by engaging with our curiosity for the world outside the office we can gain new insights that we can apply to our working lives and bring new enthusiasm and purpose to our career.

Paying attention to our mental health and applying practices that support us will reduce the stresses in our job, help us manage the inevitable surprises that accompany change, and help us bring consistent energy and intention to our working lives.

Five Characteristics of Successful People

When you take a look at the lives of people who are successful in their careers and personal lives you can see some common characteristics, whether your talking about world-class athletes or billionaire entrepreneurs.

Let's take a look at a few of these traits and consider how to implement them into our lives in order to experience more success and improve the quality of our lives.

1. Curiosity. To be successful one must have a curiosity about the world, about people, about experiences, and about how things work. A successful person will consider the traditional knowledge of a subject and turn it on its head, looking at things from different perspectives and coming up with new and unique solutions.

2. Resilience. Failures, mistakes, and slip-ups will come and the most successful will understand this and find ways to get back up and move forward.

3. Positive attitude. You cannot control your circumstances, how others will respond to you, or what you experience in life and the workplace, but you can control how you respond to these things. Individuals who maintain a positive attitude and response to things outside of their control are more likely to be at peace with themselves regardless of events and circumstances.

4. Desire to serve. Life is not about taking and the most successful people understand that to be at their best they need to serve others. They consider the needs of their audience, their teams, their companies, or their clients and figure out the best way to be of service to them.

5. Clear purpose. By clear purpose we mean a clear purpose and vision to live a life that brings value to others, rather than simply living in order to maximize personal profit and fame. The most successful people have a clear vision for how they their lives and work can be of service to others.

5 Ways to be a Success in Your Career (and Life)

There have been many books and articles written about how to be successful in your career. You could spend the next few years reading through them all but if you put into practice the following principals you'll be well on your way to career and life success.

1. Control your speech. In other words, learn to avoid speaking to others when you are angry or

frustrated. If you receive an email that is hurtful or offensive take some time before crafting your response. It can be very difficult to repair a relationship that has been damaged by careless words.

2. Be humble. Few people want to work for, or spend time with, a boastful individual. Let your accomplishments and successes stand on their own and speak for you. This does not mean that you keep silent about them. They should be noted on your resume and personal web site and you can discuss your successes and strengths with anyone you seek to humbly lead, serve, and support.

3. Acknowledge others. You did not arrive at your successes on your own. Be sure to recognize those who help and support you in your work and life.

4. Be kind. Similar to what has been mentioned so far, kindness toward others will strengthen relationships and enable you to lead effectively. For some encouragement in this watch George Saunders' remarks about kindness at Syracuse University.

5. Make others a success. If you apply your strengths and skills to making those around you successful then you will achieve great things and others will seek you out. You will likely discover that you have many more opportunities than you imagined and others will take note that you work on successful projects. This also applies to your friends and family. Work to make others successful and you will be a great success in life and in your career.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: 3 Tips to Identify Your Life Purpose

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

© Bellemedia | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

• 3 Tips to Identify Your Life Purpose: "Look for a unifying thread or pattern that's consistent throughout your past experience that's also consistent with your passion and skills."


• How to Follow Your Dreams and Pay the Bills: "Whichever path you end up taking, make sure you make an informed decision and understand the short- and long-term financial implications. Choosing a career for its intrinsic reward is fine – as long as you can repay your debt and cover your bills."


• 5 Habits of People Who Always Get Promoted: "A large part of any business is helping people work together well. Super-employees make that a top priority. They look at relationships as something that’s critical to success in the business."


• You Don't Need a Promotion to Grow at Work: "Expanding your influence through actively mentoring others, building internal communities of practice, or stepping up to represent your organization with external bodies can forge satisfying new frontiers without changing roles."


• 10 Steps to Millennial Financial Success: "The biggest monthly expenses that most millennials have are rent and transportation. Making some sacrifices to keep those bills as low as possible can have a huge impact."