October 2012 - The Career Navigator

How good do you know your most important personal needs? Are you aware of how much they influence your mood and motivation? How much they actually determine your path to becoming successful and satisfied?

You have probably heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow uses the terms Physiological, Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem, and Self-Actualization to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through while we and our personal situation develop over time. I think his findings are still relevant and they provide a good framework to explore a person’s most important needs in a little bit more detail.

So, what are your most important personal needs? If you can’t answer this question straight away and with total conviction, I suggest you sit back and think about it for a moment. Continue reading “Personal Needs – Boon and Bane for your Career”

When I talk to people about their careers, mostly in their mid-lives, one of the key concerns they regularly raise is their fear of regret. We then usually start discussing about what a life with no regrets could look like for them

But one aspect is really strange: Although they already anticipate and talk about being old with little time left and looking back at their lives and careers thinking they should have been more courageous or should have done more of this or less of that, only very few of them had ever actively tried to change their destiny – although for many of them there is still plenty of time left!

Now, in particular with regards to your career, I really encourage you to not take this lightly! In the developed world we enjoy longer and longer lives and wouldn’t it be great to look back with gratitude and a deep feeling of fulfillment and happiness rather than complaining about all the missed opportunities and wasted time? There is no perfect day to get started into a new direction – every day is an opportunity to do so!

Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives, has published the following – and now famous – “Top 5 Regrets of the Dying”. Why don’t you look at each of them and think about how you could avoid having similar regrets later on in your life. Then come up with 1 first step each which will lead you into the right direction. Continue reading “A Life With No Regrets”