You Are Too Precious For A Mediocre Career

In today’s episode, I explain how you can take your career from mediocre to magical. Get inspiration from Becky, an Elevate e graduate, who was able to find clarity on what she wanted her career to look like and how that focused approach has helped her bring that vision to life. In just three years, Becky was able to completely transform her career by taking intentional action, and you can too!

You are too precious for a mediocre career. But only you can do the work necessary to create the impact you want for your field. Are you ready to make a change so you can start living in alignment with your goals? Let’s get started!

What Happens After Your First Promotion

1. While working hard to advance your career, you take on too much. Similar to a snowball rolling down a hill, your responsibilities and activities grow to an unmanageable size. You want to advance, and you take on too much out of fear of saying no.
2. You are so likable and hardworking that you are asked to take on administrative or leadership positions. Most are not compensated but take up a considerable chunk of your already overbooked schedule. You take these positions out of obligation or flattery despite the additional stress the role adds to your life. So much time is spent on extra activities and roles you don’t have time to work on what you are passionate about.
3. There is a constant feeling of wanting and knowing that there is something bigger and better than what you are doing.  

How Do You Go From Mediocre to Magical in Your Career?

If you struggle at work or feel like your career is a chore instead of a dream, it’s time to make a drastic change! It is possible to move your career from mediocre to magical. Here’s how:

• Clarify the impact you want your career to have on the world
• Identify what you want your career to look like 
• Invest time in creating a plan so that your career can grow in alignment with your academic mission
• Act intentionally and only in ways that move you closer to the career that you want, not the career that you have
• Develop self-trust and self-knowing
• Refine the processes that work good for you and stick with what motivates you

The key to changing your career is trusting yourself. Your inner mentor should be your only guide to creating the career of your dreams.

“The overall feeling of the career should not be surviving. You should be loving it, or at the very least liking it. It should not feel like a survival or like the Hunger Games to live in your career because you are spending too much time on your career to feel that way all the time.” 

“What do you want? Do you want a career that is mediocre? Do you want a career that you survive or a career that is meh? How long are you willing to put up with those things? 10 years? 20? Because the path to a magical career, the path to alignment, starts with self-reflection, clarity of vision, intentional action, and self-trust.”

We will run one last cohort of Elevate this 2023 (after that, we’re retiring the program). Check out the program details here and apply here.

CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION:

1. Our 12-week Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap® program helps tenure-track womxn and nonbinary professors to publish their backlog of papers so that their voice can have the impact they know is possible. Get on the waitlist here!
2. Cathy’s book, Making Time to Write: How to Resist the Patriarchy and Take Control of Your Academic Career Through Writing is available in print! Learn how to build your career around your writing practice while shattering the myths of writing every day, accountability, and motivation, doing mindset work that’s going to reshape your writing, and changing academic culture one womxn and nonbinary professor at a time. Get your print copy today or order it for a friend here!
3. Want to train with us for free on your campus? Now you can when you recommend our Scholar’s Voice Faculty Retreats to a decision-maker on your campus! Download the brochure with the retreat curriculum and both in-person and online retreat options here.

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