Elevate Your Career: Live A Life You Are Truly Proud Of

By Helen Horyza

When you live a life you're truly proud of, you ignite your potential and become a catalyst to solve the world’s most perplexing problems.
Elevate Your Career brilliantly demonstrates how you can design a career in alignment with your interests and talents by discovering what makes you truly happy. Through stories of real people, Helen Horyza expertly illustrates how people from all walks of life and education levels can create a career that is literally a perfect fit—even if you don’t know what your “passion” is. By taking the Elevations® career assessment and following the Elevate Career Cycle method, you can uncover your passion by discovering your interests and unique talent package. No matter where you are in your evolving career journey, this book will provide you with the tools and the momentum you need to elevate your career!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Helen Horyza
• Release date: Jan 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781949635393

Helen Horyza

Helen Horyza is an expert in the field of career development, employee development, engagement and retention. She is an accomplished trainer, motivational speaker and executive coach. Helen holds a Master of Science degree in Career Counseling from California State University, Sacramento (CSUS) and is a professionally trained coach through Coach Training International. She is a Nationally Certified Career Counselor (NCCC) and has over twenty years of experience uncovering talent and directing it to achieve extraordinary results.Helen is comfortable inspiring audiences large and small with her authentic, approachable style. In her keynote speech, Unlikely Grit she describes her own story of navigating major life transitions utilizing the Elevate Your Career change model. It offers practical, eye opening insights on how to maximize career potential and overcome fears.Helen is the inventor and author of the Elevations® suite of assessments designed to assist individuals in career transition or to enhance employee engagement. Elevations® is utilized in colleges, universities, and in consultant practices around the world.In January 2020 Helen’s book, Elevate Your Career: Live a Life You’re Truly Proud Of, will be released. This timely resource brilliantly demonstrates how you can design a career in alignment with your interests and talents by discovering what makes you truly happy. You can also take a deep dive into Helen’s expertise by visiting her YouTube channel

Book preview

Acknowledgements

Thank you, Joe, for giving me the love, support, and playful humor that made this book possible. Because of you I walk taller and live a life I can be truly proud of.

I had this book inside of me but needed a magnificent editor to bring it to fruition. Thank you, Kelley Sewell, for your expert guidance and unwavering commitment. You believed in me enough to introduce me to the dynamic publishing and branding duo Krista Clive-Smith and Ashley Bunting. You two actually made this fun. You walked me step-by-step to a vision that was far greater than my own.

Hats off to the local team, Brett and Kathryn Gardenhire, Desiree Aragon, Katy Reich and Cesar Torres. Talented, creative and selfless in their contributions. And to my friends and family who love their Tiger.

Preface

As you pick up this book are you:

•Being bullied

•Failing academically

•Struggling with a disability

•Dealing with anxiety

•Feeling stuck in a job that is meaningless

•Working for a despicable boss

•Considering quitting a cushy job that is boring

•Dreaming of owning your own business

•Living on the edge of bankruptcy

I get it and I’ve been there. Every one of the above has been a part of my life. That may be disturbing to hear. As a supposed career development expert, you would think I would have navigated my life with more ease. But, no: disappointments, mistakes, and a few disasters litter my life story. I will transparently share all of it with you.

Let’s be honest. Choosing a career path and navigating your life’s work is messy. The ups and downs can make you feel crazy. But, actually, the disappointments and struggles polish the stone that is you. Each step along the way can bring you closer and closer to your potential.

It’s tough to keep moving in the right direction if you don’t understand the psychological dynamics of healthy career development. In this book I will lay out a clear model and a set of strategic steps that will demystify both initial career choices and mid-career shifts.

I have spent the last thirty years of my life refining my understanding of optimum career decision making strategies. I’m going to be specific about what works and what will cause your further pain.

Here is my core message for you: if it’s taking too long for you to find your way, you are pursuing the hero’s journey. You are not failing. I can help make your career decisions more efficient and help you achieve your goals faster.

Introduction

Why do so many individuals remain in jobs they hate? While there are innumerable reasons why workers choose to stay stuck, personal finance experts list the following five reasons as the most common:

•Fear of change

•Need for a steady income

•Lack of updated skills

•Attractive salary

•Co-worker relationships

As you read this book’s introduction, you may be thinking it’s just too much trouble to change jobs or careers. It’s easier to continue to live for the weekends and occasional vacations. You will hang out with friends when you can, pay your bills, and do what you can to get by. It may seem safe to settle on a job that isn’t challenging, or to accept work that others tell you to be satisfied with. While you can argue there is a hefty price to pay for aiming for a career that matches your full potential, make no mistake; you will pay a heftier price in the long run if you don’t.

Forbes made a bold statement in a March 2016 feature story: If you hate your job, chances are you hate your life. With a tough-love flair, the article clearly depicts some of the health consequences of staying in a job you detest:

•Weight gain

•Stress

•Physical and mental illness

•Sleep loss

•Decreased motivation

•Diminished confidence and self-worth

In addition to compromising your health, staying in an unfulfilling job keeps you from doing what you really want to do. The famous psychotherapist Sigmund Freud said, Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness. This statement validates how important your career is; it’s not just a job, it’s an expression of who you are.

Granted, some of us are able to vividly envision our dream career while others are paralyzed by the number of choices. What do you do if you don’t know what type of work would be fulfilling to you? With a seemingly endless variety of industries and vocations available, how do you go about finding a good match?

In the book, What Should I Do With My Life, journalist Po Bronson interviews people from all walks of life, asking them about their work and their level of satisfaction. Bronson asserts, I’m convinced that business success in the future starts with the question, ‘What should I do with my life?’ Yes, that’s right… People don’t succeed by migrating to a ‘hot’ industry. They thrive by focusing on the question of who they really are—and connecting that to work that they truly love (and, in so doing, unleashing a productive and creative power that they never imagined).

The path to a thriving career requires self reflection to discover what values are important to you and to identify the types of work that hold real meaning. It also demands patience and persistence. Career emergence usually takes longer than we want it to, and in the midst of the transition, we can feel like we’re failing. A major career transformation often involves pitfalls or disappointments which threaten to derail us. The metaphysical notion that things will go smoothly if you’re on the right path is simplistic. Life is more complicated than that, but there is a clear path forward.

As a career coach, I’ve dedicated my life to helping people make their initial career choices and manage mid-life career changes. This profession has turned out to be one of the greatest blessings of my life and has provided a broad platform, allowing me to express myself through training, coaching, and motivational speaking. I’ve had the honor to work with virtually thousands of people at crossroads in every stage of life seeking to find work that allows them to express their natural talents, pay the bills, and find enjoyment in life.

Yet, while I have enjoyed working with my clients, for many years I was frustrated with the tools available in my profession. My experience inspired me to develop my own: 1) an essential career assessment tool—the Elevations® Career Assessment, which you received as a free gift along with the purchase of this book, and 2) The Elevate Career Cycle, which we will cover over the course of the remaining chapters. The Elevate Career Cycle model was developed using insights from thought leaders, sound psychological theories, and many years of my own experience helping clients through career transitions. The Elevate Career Cycle will allow you to design your best future and equip you to ride the mental, emotional, and sometimes spiritual ups and downs of your transition. It provides both strategic vision and tactical action steps to help you manage risk and improve the quality of the decisions you make. The Elevations® Career Assessment and the Elevate Career Cycle work together hand-in-hand as two powerful resources to smooth your path to a career you’ll love.

This book offers you a model for healthy and smart career development. Further, once you know how to find a career that aligns with your interests and values, you will have the tools to do it again when your life unexpectedly goes sideways or you are confronted with an irresistible opportunity. Change is the one thing we can all count on in life.

If you are tired of superficial advice without lasting results, keep reading. It is brave to aspire to your potential and to never give up. You are designed to grow as a human being, not to stagnate. When you settle for less than you are capable of, you die a little bit every day. It’s a huge price you pay when you give up on yourself and your true capacity.

This book is for you because you have a contribution to make. Your circumstances can be incrementally, if not exponentially, improved. You can design an amazing career through a comprehensive, step-by-step process that will allow you to consciously manage your transitions and grow to your full potential.

There is no better time because societal change is accelerating. Industries are being replaced and disrupted at an unprecedented rate. Technology is altering how work gets done, who does the work, and who is no longer needed. A rapidly-changing environmental climate is spurring new ways of solving problems and creating new jobs for innovative people. Your choices and opportunities are expanding like never before.

Commit to living a life by your own design that brings meaning and satisfaction as you define it. It may take longer than you want it to and it may not be free of disappointments along the way, but unparalleled growth comes from life’s biggest challenges.

Think of the alternative—if you continue living, you will get older. If you look back at your life several years from now, you can either say you are stuck in the same dissatisfaction or you can see the progress you have made, no matter how small. As Po Bronson said, There is nothing more genuine than breaking away from the chorus to learn the sound of your own voice. Step out of your fear and into your future.

CHAPTER ONE

The Evolving Twenty-First Century Labor Market

As the world we live in is so unpredictable, the ability to learn and to adapt to change is imperative, alongside creativity, problem-solving, and communication skills.

— Alain Dehaze

THE LINEAR CAREER FANTASY

Many people look to their parents’ generation and expect the trajectory of their own careers to take a similar course. The vision goes something like this: first, decide what you want to do with your life (somewhere between the young ages of sixteen and eighteen), second, find an occupation and stick with it (perhaps even with the same employer), and finally, retire in the Winnebago at age sixty-five. I call this the Linear Career or Leave it to Beaver fantasy. Once on a path of some sort—happy or not—you hold on to it in an all-out attempt to keep your life running smoothly. You expect over time to earn more and more money, advancing up a stable, successful career ladder that will eventually lead to a fulfilling and financially secure retirement.

Regardless of how you feel about the Linear Career Fantasy, it is just that—a fantasy. It’s the paradigm of a bygone generation the twenty-first century labor market has left behind. The career path of today’s worker is anything but linear.

CHANGE IS UPON US

The twenty-first century labor market, in both developed and emerging countries around the globe, is becoming ever more volatile. What does this mean? Entire industries are disappearing as technology disrupts and displaces workers. The gig or self-made economy is growing with an increasing number of individuals weaving together traditional employment with entrepreneurial ventures as a means of securing their financial futures. Corporate mergers, restructuring, and industry upheavals are reported daily. You don’t have to look far to find a friend, family member or colleague who is re-tooling their career intentionally or because of unexpected circumstances.

The 2018 Jobs Report published by the World Economic Forum reports increased demand for new roles will offset the decreasing demand for others. However, these net gains are not a foregone conclusion. They entail difficult transitions for millions of workers and the need for proactive investment in developing a new surge of agile learners and skilled talent globally. Perhaps you picked up this book because you are feeling the ground shifting beneath your feet. You keep hearing about all these labor market shifts and you don’t want your career to suffer because you are not agile enough.

It can be mind-twisting to think about self-directed job security if your role models have been fairly traditional. In a recent blog post, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki challenges familiar career expectations head on. He states being an employee is the riskiest thing you can do in this economy. He goes on to say, job security is a myth, a nice sentiment from a different age. This tough talk suggests your approach to your future will likely be affected by the acceleration of change.

This is an exciting time in many regards, but the mounting unknowns can be deeply unsettling. It is understandable you might yearn for the traditional model of employment to stick around. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a steady paycheck, health insurance, and retirement benefits. Jobs with those perks do still exist, but they are disappearing and the stability associated with them is eroding. Your career is a complex, unpredictable design project you must manage. There is no such thing as a safe bet in this labor market.

Over the years I have had many people come into my office and make it clear they want a job that is insulated from layoffs, mergers, and other disruptions. I always explain that there is not a single occupation on the planet guaranteed to be unscathed by economic downturns, political disputes or socio-economic changes. Every day, whether you work as either an employee for a large organization or as an entrepreneur, you must be fully accountable for your own security and future. No employer, industry or job title will protect you completely.

As you can imagine, this kind of self responsibility is not terribly popular. Online job sites and traditional career centers promote how easy they can make the employment process. Many commonly-used career assessments assert their algorithms or research databases can match you with a wonderful future. On a gut level, you suspect they are selling fairy dust but you want it to be true. It may not seem fair that you will have to deeply explore yourself, perform comprehensive research on your options, risk making a number of mistakes along the way, and possibly disappoint a few people on the path to your best life.

If you would like to get a sense of well-established career options in a specific field, you may want to check out the Occupational Information Network (O-Net)—a free online resource that describes the roughly 60,000 traditionally recognized job titles in the US labor market. This information trove describes the educational requirements, skills used, typical tasks, and the projected level of growth for each occupation. Be forewarned, however, this database is limited to traditional career options. The vast majority of new and emerging positions are not listed anywhere on this site.

If you pick a conventional career because it seems secure, that could work out for you. Let’s turn that idea on its head for a minute. Instead, what if you got really clear about what fascinates you and then used that vision as your guide in selecting or even creating a career? While other job seekers are distracted by the seemingly sure thing, you will be going going after something you are passionate about. You effectively eliminate your competition because no one else hold the exact vision of what you aspire to. This approach to career selection is strategic and employs your own unique talent profile to create a career opportunity that will lead to deeper personal satisfaction and greater success.

At least one career advice source estimates the average worker changes careers between five and seven times in their lifetime. While children continue to be pressured at younger and younger ages to choose a career path, only a small number of people choose an occupation in their formative years that they actually end up staying with for the rest of their life. Not only do our interests and priorities change so many times over the course of our lifetime, the labor market is changing so rapidly that the career you had your heart set on might disappear or dramatically transform beyond recognition by the time you are ready to enter the workforce.

In the real world, your career path will evolve in a nonlinear fashion. It is the twists and turns you encounter along with occasional roadblocks that will form the path to your full potential. You will cycle through periods of satisfaction to dissatisfaction over the course of your working life: the economy tanks, you get assigned to a boss from an alien planet or illness delays your progress. Obstacles are normal and are a requisite part of healthy career development.

GENERATIONAL DIVIDES

You are the product of your generational experience and will be labeled because of it, sometimes accurately and other times not. If you were born between 1996 - 2010, you are a member of the iGen/Generation Z cohort. You are a digital native, technology savvy and socially connected. You have been measured, bullied,