The Power of Taking Responsibility and Dreaming Big in Our Careers.

All of us, regardless of our identities and differences desire to achieve more and desire to get to the objective of having our dream job. Some of us, start to think of it seriously at the beginning of our adulthood, some of us start to think of it in the early stages of our careers and some of us little later. But as human beings, we all start to think of that ultimate role or the objective sooner or later which we think will be our life’s purpose.

However, only few of us plan and strategise for it and most of us end up being who we currently are, even by the end of our careers and some times by the end of our lives too. It is also really important to note however, that all of us blame everyone around us or the circumstances or the environment for not being able to achieve what we always wanted to achieve. Whereas the fact is, only we are responsible to what happens to our careers or what we achieve in our individual lives.

When it comes to achieving anything in our lives, it is no secret that we need to have a plan, a strategy which will help and guide us in the right direction.

After carefully thinking (and obviously researching) about that ultimate plan for few months now, I have come up with the four step process which I believe will definitely help all of us in getting closer to our goals in our careers and our lives.

Taking Responsibility There are obvious reasons for me to put this as the very first thing to do. If we want to achieve anything not only in our careers but also anything in life, without taking full responsibility of our current situation we would not be able to be truthful to ourselves and without being truthful to ourselves, we would not be able to really see our opportunity areas or in simple terms, the areas where we can get better.

Firstly, we should take a good hard look at ourselves and see who we truly are. See our strengths but at the same time, see our weaknesses. We might be great at coding but probably might not be good with people. Likewise, we might be great with people but probably are not a natural programmer. There are chances that we might be great at both but probably are not good with understanding the business or with time management or probably might not be a good at delegating tasks. The point is, to be crystal clear with ourselves on our strengths and weaknesses. Because without knowing who we truly are, we would not be able to choose the right career path or a business partner or even our life partner.

Don’t be confused between what people say you are and who you know you are. _Oprah

Think Big I know most of us would have heard or read this somewhere in some form or the other. However, translating it to our individual lives can get a little challenging and a little overwhelming. But, how about “thinking big” keeping small actions in mind? How about thinking of the house we want to build but focussing on the wall that has to be built first?

Let me break it down for all of us, when we start our career or even in the midway, our objective is mostly to get a high paying job, to get a job where we will be respected, where we matter. However, how about adding another criteria to it? How about understanding where this job or the role will take me in long term? How about understanding, what the organisation is trying to achieve and how that would be a value addition for my long term vision for myself?

Another thing we often miss in planning our career is, we mostly know what we need to be in next five years and not what we need to be, by the end of our careers. Life is long and we will have long careers, then why just think of next five years? How about knowing what that role will be, by the end of our careers and then planning our next five years which will help us get there.

If the role (wall) does not help you build your ultimate vision (house) what purpose would it serve?

“Start small, think big. Don’t worry about too many things at once. Take a handful of simple things to begin with, and then progress to more complex ones. Think about not just tomorrow, but the future. Put a ding in the universe.” _{Steve Jobs}

Plan Once we have taken the full responsibility of who we truly are and have thought about that ultimate role in our careers, this part is one of the easiest things to do.

The reason why I say it is the easiest part is, you just have to look for the person who is in that role currently and learn how he got there. You would also want to learn how someone else in the similar role got there sooner. You would also learn the mistakes they made, the sacrifices they had to make, the learnings they took from their experiences and pretty much everything they had to do to get there (you get the idea) and coming up with your own version of it. You take all those learnings and avoid the same mistakes, you make it better, you customise it for yourself and you plan better for yourself.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” _{Benjamin Franklin}

Execute Most of the execution will depend on the kind of work we have put in the planning, the plan we have come up with for ourselves. It is following through with that plan every single day, it is that consistency which might soon disappear specially if we encounter a challenge or difficult task.

Execution in simple terms is, you do what you planned on doing until you get to your objective. If a mentor has recommended you to do a training course on LinkedIn learning or elsewhere, you make sure you do. If you have noticed that the person in that role is good with people, you make sure you do not miss an opportunity to learn and understand human behaviour. If you’ve observed that to become a CTO (chief technology officer) one must be good at understanding the technical language, you learn it and keep up-skilling your technical skills on organisational infrastructure.

If we have noticed, I spent a lot more time on “Taking Responsibility” and “Thinking Big” sections compared to “Planning” and “Execution” sections and it is by no means just a coincidence. This happens in our careers and lives too. We spend quite a lot of time to achieve our objectives and sometimes get frustrated too, because of it. That is primarily because either we fail to take the full responsibility or we don’t have anything big to achieve and we loose interest.

“When you establish a destination by defining what you want, then take physical action by making choices that move you towards that destination, the possibility for success is limitless and arrival at the destination is inevitable.” _{Steve Maraboli – Life, the Truth, and Being Free}

One thing that I did not mention explicitly is Patience. Because it is given, that in most of the cases in our lives, things would not work out the way we would like it to. May be the situation was not right, may be the timing, may be and many more may be’s… But trusting ourselves to follow the process and believing in ourselves will get us where we want to, eventually.

To summarise, we will be able to achieve anything or get to any role regardless of who we want to be by the end our lives or our careers only if, we take full responsibility, dream big, plan well and execute it really well with a lot of patience.