The daily activities of working and trying to solve so many of life’s challenges can feel daunting. It’s easy to feel like pieces on a gameboard with little control. When you think that way, stepping away and seeing the proverbial view above the gameboard is essential.
When you see a situation from a broader perspective, finding answers and hope for what is happening in your life is more manageable.
Humans have always looked to answer life’s most existential and enduring mysteries. We’ve always searched for a higher point of view to find peace and perspective. Throughout most of history, the majority of people have sought this solace in a single deity.
No matter your spiritual background or religious beliefs, firmly believing in a higher power improves physical and mental health. Research has consistently shown people with faith in God report feeling better and happier.
Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann writes about all types of human spiritual habits across the globe in her book “How God Becomes Real.” She found that religious involvement with an unseen higher power improves immune function and reduces loneliness. She discovered that the happiest people have a companion-like relationship with God and believe their God to be kind and loving.
For someone to live their career as a subset of their holistic life–aligning what they believe and how they operate each day–is significant. If you want your spiritual life to inform your career, you must create a strategic career plan and keep it up to date with accountability.
When you work on a strategy, you always go to a higher place to consider the long-term effects, who else it might affect, and evaluate the entire environment for what you want to accomplish. Remember that you should always work ON your career each week – get above the work, not just in your work.
As Stephen Covey wrote in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, begin with the end in mind. In CareerTruth, for your strategic career plan, you should start by stating your values and creating a purpose statement for why you work. You will also craft a Vision of Success looking twenty or more years into the future.
Your spiritual faith should inform what you want in that colorful picture of success related to your career outcomes, family, relationships, and people you positively impact. This future distant picture shows the positive impact you will have on others towards the end of your career and life – your Legacy.
In addition, your work on your career strategic plan will inform how you achieve the future vision of success. How will you continue to develop to maximize your talents – your Mastery? How you will make significant decisions to be your best self – your Freedom.
Your spiritual life can drastically improve your career journey by knowing your three career arcs of Mastery, Freedom, and Legacy in the current state and all along the way to your desired future state.
Knowing yourself inside and out and determining how to improve to be your best in the distant future is above-the-gameboard work. In CareerTruth, you can do all this work and then develop action plans to meet your shorter-term goals to improve professionally and personally.
CareerTruth is the first career management platform focused on you, the individual providing you with tools, exercises, and a community to continually evolve your plans as they relate to your values, purpose, vision, and goals across all the seasons of your career.
All the information is private and confidential, yet you can share or get feedback as you like with people you choose in building your personal Board of Advisors or leveraging CareerTruth Growth Coaches to help you accelerate your career in a way consistent with your beliefs tied to your Mastery, Freedom, and Legacy.