Journey - The Career Development A to Z

In this episode we look into Journey . One of the most important parts in life in general as well as career. Is your journey going to plan?

What

• a long and often difficult process of personal change and development: her spiritual journey towards Roman Catholicism I was excited with my character's journey in the film..
• Process - indicates a specific way
• Personal - relates to an individual.
• Difficult - not easy.
• Example: My career journey has not been an easy one

How

• Destination - there’s no point in a journey without a destination. 
• The Route - in order to reach your destination, you have to have some idea as to how to get there. 
• Determination - there has to be a will to reach the destination. An acceptance that it may not be easy. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Oh god. And if we look at the English Oxford Dictionary, the English Oxford Dictionary in uh in the film The Pursuit of Happiness. Uh so I think a lot of uh good morning, good afternoon, and good evening wherever you are, and welcome to the latest edition of the My Coach Ben podcast. Thanks for coming along as usual. This is very, very much appreciated. And of course, if the content does float your boat, remember to like, subscribe, press the notification bell, and all that lovely stuff so that we can continue to grow the community and welcome aboard to all the um the new subscribers and followers, etc., on the various social media channels. Thank you very much for your um what's the word, your trust and for your attention and for your interest. It's greatly, as I say, appreciated. I would like to start by um firstly apologizing for my absence over the last uh couple of weeks, but um work and private life has been very busy and I haven't really had time to um to to get one done with holidays and this, that, and the other. So unfortunately, um there's been a bit of a gap, should we say, in the series, but thankfully, here now, present and correct, and uh looking forward to going through this with you. Um, if I haven't mentioned it before, I think I have, but May, as we come to a close, is mental health awareness month. I think I mentioned this in the last episode. Um, so please do bear that in mind, and even going forward, it's not just for one month, remember. Um, if you suffer from any kind of mental health illness, um, as I have been borne witness to over many years from various members of my family. Um, sadly, it's not something that only lasts a month, goes on a bit longer than that, I should say, goes into years. Um, so yes, with that said, please bear that in mind. And if you know someone who needs your support, please do if you can provide it. That will be uh a great help to everyone. Um so yes, I just thought I'd like to um to mention that before we get into it. Without further ado, let's get into this episode's topic. And as you may recall, last week we done the letter I, which was for improvement, and now we will be working with the letter J as we work through the alphabet for the career growth A to Z series. So now we are on the letter J, and the letter J in this episode will be journey. So why journey? Personally and professionally, I think most of us would agree that we are on some kind of journey, a journey of some description, whether it's a professional journey, um, a personal journey, um, a parenthood journey, a partnership journey. There's always a story, um, or there's always a kind of road to travel, let's say, um, in order to arrive where we are at this particular point. As usual, let's start with a definition. And if we go to the Oxford English Dictionary, we will see that journey, among other things, is described as a long and often difficult process of personal change and development. So the examples are her spiritual journey towards Roman Catholicism. Okay, um, or also, I was excited by my character's journey in the film. So there you go, a couple of journeys there to uh to use as examples. So, what can we take from that? What is a journey? A journey is as we've um just seen from the definition, it's a process. Whether you're going on a personal journey or a physical journey from A to B, there is a process that you need to go to or through. You need to have a destination, of course, and that's gonna be the next thing that we look at. But you need to have an idea of how you're going to go along this journey, privately, professionally, whatever it's going to be, you have to have some kind of process. Um, and in a career, the journey is going to, of course, the process will involve working, it will involve learning, it will involve maybe change as well from time to time. So, all these various processes will encompass a journey. Um the next thing, as well, as we've just seen in the definition, is it is personal and personal in the sense that everybody has their own their own journey. And the last point for the what would be difficult, as we just saw as well in the definition, and um most people would be able to relate to the fact that often journeys are a little bit difficult, let's face it, without focusing on the negative. Um, we have to be prepared that along our journey, whether it's as I said, personal or professionally, there's going to be some difficulties, there's going to be some struggles in learning, there's going to be some struggles in accepting certain things, there may be some struggles in changing and adapting. So, all of these things are involved in one's journey. And as an example, I can definitely say that my career has been one hell of a journey, one hell of a hell of a hell to skelter ride, but here I still am. And it's been um a very interesting journey, a very enjoyable journey. Um, but there have been times when it's been rather difficult, um, and there have been times where it's been absolutely um mind-blowingly fantastic, and there have been some huge breakthroughs where I've probably um acted in a very similar way to Will Smith did when he was uh when he got the job in uh in the film The Pursuit of Happiness. And a lot of us, I'm sure, have had these such moments in your career journey or personal journey, of course. Um, there's good and bad, but um you know it is a process, it is personal, and on occasion it can be difficult, but also it can be joyous as well. Let's uh let's not get too down in the doldrums, shall we? So that's for the what. Now for the how. How do we embark on the journey? How do we manage our journey? How do we fulfill our journey? The first thing I'd like to mention, as I did previously, is that we need a destination. There's no journey without having somewhere to go to. So whether this is going to be on a personal level, you would like to go, I don't know, whether it's to London or something for a visit, then this is your destination. Whether it's your career, and you would like to say, Well, look, I I would maybe like to go into management, or I would like to reach a certain level, I would like to be on the on the board of management of one company at some stage, then of course, you need to embark on a journey to reach this specific destination. So, this is the first thing you need a destination because without that you're not really going on a journey, you're just sort of traveling endlessly. So, um, that's not the best use of your time, I would say. Secondly, you need a route, and this is the most important thing, apart from Google Maps. We all have our own internal compasses, whether it's for our career or personal life, and we need to use those in order to navigate the various challenges and changes and things that come along the route of our journey. Um, what I would say, in my own experience, is that I have had to define my route along my journey towards a destination, and that is insofar as I'll come on to the example a little bit later in more detail, but just insofar as plotting certain moves along along the way. The third how is determination, you have to be determined. If we go back to our London example, if you want to go to London, then you need to obviously have the intention to get there. Determination may be a bit of a stronger word, but actually, of course, you need to uh to have the will to want to get there, and it's the same in your career and it's the same in your personal life. Um, if you want to be um, I don't know, a good parent, you have to have some element of determination because there are some sacrifices that you need to make along the way. Um, professionally as well, you need a certain amount of determination in order to fulfill the journey that you embark on in terms of a career, and this is the determination comes in the face of many challenges. Um, I work in the energy industry, for example, as you may know by now, and I've been in this industry for around almost 30 years, believe it or not. And I would say that without determination, I wouldn't be where I am today. Um there has been a hell of a lot of change, uh, as anyone that works in the energy industry will know. And I get the impression this has been in a lot of other industries. I know I have friends who are builders, that's changed a lot over recent years with regulations and what have you. It's the same with um, you know, like if you were a mechanic, for example, you know, there's not so much diagnostics uh that needs to be done these days. A lot of these are done by by computers, the tooling is different, you know, they're often very specific now. And the same can be said, um, you know, that could be an analogy for um for your career, and the determination means that you have to be able to, um, in my industry, anyway, you have to be able to uh understand new things such as regulations, new ways of doing things, new products. There's many different things, and determination will help you to be able to to fight your way through that because a lot of the time it's not very uh it's not very easy to uh to pick these things up and to flourish um in the way that you would like. So, as an example, um yes, career-wise for myself, it's been a long journey. I started in the energy business um in um in finance as an accountant, and with startups, anyone knows if you're involved in a startup, you get involved in many different things, and this is where I got a taste more for the commercial side, and then I ended up um having to change firms to to focus on on the commercial side, and that again um it takes a fair amount of um of determination and having a route that you say, okay, I would like to be in this position, um, and then you need to set out on your journey to do that, and you need a route. Um, and I've often known that I would need to learn new skills along the way, there's various courses that I've done, um you know, there's support I've had from a lot of people as well. You often need people that um that believe in you and support you as well along this journey. So, in my own example, this is something that I've been lucky enough to have along the way. Um, but again, without having um a route and a destination, um it wouldn't be um you know, I wouldn't be in the in the position that I'm in today. So that's been my journey, it's been quite a long journey, I have to say, and sometimes I have taken um roads which haven't um led me to where I've expected them to. So then sometimes in your career need you need to persevere and you need to maybe change the route and get back on track, and sometimes this takes time, it takes determination, it does take perseverance and it takes patience as well. But um, if you do all these things, I guarantee you you're gonna have more success than failures. This is 100% for certain. I know that. So, in summary, how can we wrap this up? Well, first we looked at the definition of a journey, and we know that this is a long and often difficult process of personal change. Sounds somewhat a little bit like um, you know, what happens if you don't get something right, but um you know it's it's obviously not that, but um, that's the definition, and we know that um along with from that definition, we know that one needs um it's a it's a process, the journey is a process that you need to go to in order to reach your destination, um, and it's often something which is personal and in many occasions quite difficult. And then we looked at the how, and how of course, the first one was to have a destination, and without a destination, you're just kind of meandering along it, and of course, there is there has to be a route, and there has to be a route that one has to take in order to reach the destination that has been uh decided, and along the way, you have to have some determination. That's something we mentioned before, whether this is going to be to keep on track, um, which is usually what it is, um, but also just on the on the very macro, um, on the very micro level, sorry, where you have to you know do various tasks and learn various things and apply these things, you know, there's a lot of determination that goes into these kind of things. So, on that note, I will wrap it up there and thank you for your um attention and for your time because this is the only thing in life that you can't get back. So, thank you very much for that and for your attention. Um, and I can only um bid you all a good week ahead before I go. Of course, I remind you again if um this has been of interest, please do subscribe, press the notification bell, give it a thumbs up, tell your friends and fam, and let's continue to grow the project together. It's much appreciated the support and the help everyone's given me so far. So, thank you very much for that. Um, so yes, look after yourselves, look after one another, and until the next time, guys, peace. Your coach Ben.