As we head into the new year (and I know we all feel 2021 cannot come soon enough), I figured this is a good time to start looking into your career goals, therefore on my Career Central – The Podcast, I wanted to discuss How to Simply Your Career Planning.
Before you can even think about planning your career goals, first things first, you need to determine what your personal brand is. Once you have that figured out, then you are all set to start career planning. Now that sounds like a huge undertaking. I mean we are talking out your CAREER, which will impact the rest of your LIFE! Wait, let’s slow down a bit and breathe. This is what we tend to do right? Get overwhelmed by the enormity of our plans, ideas or tasks and then become anxious on how we will be able to figure it all out. Please keep in mind, Philippians 4:6 – “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God”. You don’t have to overwhelm yourself and have it all figured out at once. That idea in which we make ourselves believe we are not doing enough is Satan at work right. Instead we should turn to God and ask for His guidance, but with a thankful heart as opposed to an anxious, crazy heart. Be in a place of thanksgiving for all that God has done for you.
So how might you go about simplifying your career planning? I’m so glad you asked, because I have laid out some key pointers for you.
- Set Goals – Please keep in mind you want to set up your career goals which is different from your workplace goal. For example, your career goal might be starting and maintaining a blog vs. your workplace (job) goal might be completing a project on time.
- Pick One Main Goal for the New Year – That’s right you only need one goal. Make it simple for yourself so that the goal is something you can implement and work on throughout the year. And while you are at it, please be sure to check in with God. Run it by your Heavenly Father the same way as you would with your earthly father or someone that acts as a father figure in your life.
- Each month pick one thing that will help you toward that goal. So if we go with our starting and maintaining a blog example, in January you might first work on setting up a website domain. In February you write four articles (one for every week) and then maybe for March you blog about a book you recently read and write three or four things you learned from it. And then continue with that process each month throughout the year.
- Follow through on what God prompts you to do. God is good at cutting through the crazy. He loves you and will help guide you. Just take the time to listen to Him. And remember as you move through each stage of the planning process make sure you check with the Lord and ask Him – What else can I do to expand upon this goal? What is the one thing I should focus on for this month?
- One last thing. Six months into the year if the goal you selected is not working out you can change your goal. Now I don’t mean you should change your goal because you simply just do not want to pursue it anymore because of boredom or laziness. However, if you are prompted to change, especially from God because the goal does not resonate anymore then please by all means pivot toward something else.
So as you embark on simplifying your career planning for the new year, please keep in mind to let the anxiety go, be prayerful about your career planning, and have a thankful heart that God is going to guide you and as always He’s got your back.
Be sure to catch the podcast here.
Below is the transcript for this podcast episode:
[00:00:00] Hello, all you beautiful mamas. I am career coach, Jen, and welcome. Go to career central, the podcast. This is a place for career advice for working Christian moms. Hey, I know you’re busy. You’ve got a lot going on with your day job and you were busy with your church congregation and then add the bomb element and no wonder life could be that’s right.
[00:00:24] Hey, as your career coach, I know firsthand how busy life can be. And yet through the busy, they’re all beautiful moments where we see the hand of God in all areas of our lives. So mamas let’s talk, let’s get into the details, what it takes to build a great career and also embrace Christianity above life.
[00:00:47] And that’s what I’m here for with career central, I’m on a mission to help you, you working Christian bonds built great careers without mom guilt. All right. My friends. So [00:01:00] on today’s episode, I want to share with you some insights about simplifying your career planning. I know you are so excited right now to hear that there’s something that I can tell you for simplifying your career planning, because I know.
[00:01:16] For all of your work and moms right now, you have an enormous task list, right? Christmas is coming up in a hurry and you got all sorts of stuff you need to do to prep. I mean, seriously, like just the other day, I had a totally coordinate with my husband to make sure that he had the five-year-old so that I could go over to the store so that I could get some stuff taken care of without her around, because.
[00:01:39] I can’t like sneak things into the shopping cart anymore. When she was younger, I could do it because she wouldn’t have realized that, Oh, mom put that thing in the shopping cart and now, huh, weird. Sam does giving it to me right now. And so you got all the things, right. And then just there’s this stuff going on in general.
[00:01:57] And even though I’m like, [00:02:00] Huge on simplifying Christmas and simplifying your life at this time of year and doing what you can to get things off of your to- do list, right? Like simplify, like I’m not joking. What can you do to simplify? It’s a thing that just do whatever you can to just delete things from your schedule to delegate stuff, whatever it is that you need to do.
[00:02:21] But ladies, we cannot delegate our career planning to Amy buddy else. You can’t do it. You can work with a career coach, somebody who can help you to nail stuff down, right. And to hold you accountable and to help you be really clear about your goals and to see things moving forward, but you still have to go do it.
[00:02:44] Even as a coach. There’s only so much I can do for my clients. Right. And so. You’re going to have to do it on your own, but what I can give you as a couple little pointers in this episode of the podcast, about some things that you can do to simplify your career planning so that as you’re planning for next [00:03:00] year, this one kind of puts some things in context for you.
[00:03:02] All right. So I want to start off talking about lovely scripture from Philippians four, six that says. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And I love that scripture when you think about simplifying things, right?
[00:03:23] Because I mean, seriously crazy. That happens in chaos. Totally. Yeah. Associated with that anxiousness, right. In the beginning of this scripture, it says, do not be anxious about anything. It’s like, Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for reminding me that I don’t have to be anxious. And that that comes from the devil, right?
[00:03:49] That sneaky dude is totally trying to make us feel like we’re not doing enough, that we’re terrible humans because we’re not sending out Christmas cards this year or that we are [00:04:00] just only going to partially decorate the house for Christmas or that we want to scale down the amount of presents we’re giving to people or whatever.
[00:04:08] Right. And Satan’s going to make you feel like, Oh, you’re a horrible human. How dare you do that? You need to do all this stuff and know you’ve made some choices and you know, this is where we need to be as a family and what I need to be doing for Christmas. Right. And then go and do it, especially if you’ve checked in with God and you feel like you’ve got the thumbs up from him, like go for it.
[00:04:29] Right. Do those things, whatever it is that you’re doing to simplify those holidays. So let’s, again, as we’re talking today about simplifying your career planning, It’s the same thing. Don’t be anxious about your career planning. Okay. And instead it says in his scripture, but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
[00:04:53] And what I love about that is it’s supplications. So that’s the praying, right? That’s that intentional thinking and pondering it’s the [00:05:00] meditating on? Hmm. What do I need to be doing? That’s all. That’s supplicating right. It said turning to God and. Let me think this through. Okay. What does he mean to me to do?
[00:05:09] But I also love it’s points out in the scripture to supplicate with Thanksgiving. So as you’re turning to God and you’re asking him and you’re saying, Hey, can you please help me out? Guide me, direct me on what I need to be doing. Do it with a thankful heart, right? As opposed to that anxious, crazy heart, right.
[00:05:26] Instead being this place of Thanksgiving and appreciation for all that God has done for you. And then that is going to put you in a different space of a receiving really good, beautiful vibes from that whole experience. So just keep again, so keep that in mind. Right? So let the anxiety go. Be prayerful about your career planning and have a thankful heart that God’s going to guide you and he’s got your back.
[00:05:50] All right. So first of all, when it comes to career planning, and I want you to think about something, when you’re coming up with a career [00:06:00] plan, you need to set some kind of a goal. Okay. Some kind of goals, planning for what it is you want to focus on your career goals. And planning is not the same thing as what your goals are in your job.
[00:06:12] So I’ll just give you an example. A career goal would be something like starting and maintaining a professional blog. Okay. That’s something you’re doing for you. So you could grow your reputation out there. Right? Think about what you want people to know about you, how you can continue to perpetuate your brand and grow your reputation, et cetera.
[00:06:34] So that’s what you could do was starting and maintaining a blog, right? Because starting a blog is great, but the hard stuff comes in maintaining it. Okay. So that could be a career goal. It’s totally different versus a workplace goals, something related to your job, or maybe that goal is something like getting projects done on time.
[00:06:53] Right? So maybe you’ve got a team of people who are working on stuff, and there’s a lot of moving parts and. Getting them to get it [00:07:00] all done. That takes a lot. And so that’s totally different from you doing something for your career separately. Okay. And I wanted to set that out there right at the beginning.
[00:07:09] Cause sometimes when people hear this thought about career planning and thinking about okay, goals and stuff, they think, well, this is what my job is and have to do these reports by this day. Therefore I’ve got to do this work in advance of like, no, no, no. Like those are goals for your job. And if you were to quit today, the next person who come take the job, they’re going to have those similar goals to get that job done.
[00:07:31] But you, as an individual person, you have your career goals, right? So what. Is your career goal. Okay. And that’s different. That’s what I was kind of giving the example of like starting and maintaining a blog because usually your employer doesn’t care so much about your blog, unless you’re totally bad mouthing them.
[00:07:47] And by the way, don’t do it. Okay. So again, just that’s a different, so what I’m thinking in this podcast today about simplifying your career planning, I’m talking about this stuff for you and for your career. I’m not talking about simplifying [00:08:00] your workplace goals. That’s a totally different conversation for different day.
[00:08:03] Okay. So now that we know that. First things first, always, always, always keep what in mind. And I hear collectively saying out there, my personal brand. Thank you so much for listening. And for hearing me talk about that, you got to know your personal brand first, right? So if you don’t know your personal brand, then there’s no career planning happening.
[00:08:23] Ladies, your career plan is to figure out what your personal brand is. That’s going to be just. First thing. Right? First thing don’t do anything else you have to get that nailed down first. Okay. So I’m assuming you have your personal brand, as I’m moving forward with these other things, to tell you about simplifying your career planning.
[00:08:40] So have your personal brand. And then all I want you to do is pick one main goal. To work on in the new year. Yep. You heard me one goal. That’s it. That’s all I want you to do is just have one goal. We’re all about simplifying over here. Simplify, [00:09:00] simplify, simplify. Right. And it’s not just because I wanted to talk about that here in the month of December as a way to combat the crazy and the chaos that happens with this month.
[00:09:10] But it’s a thing that you can totally implement in your life. For the whole year through. Okay. Especially when it comes to your career planning, these are the things that you want to accomplish for your own career. So don’t make it too nuts for yourself. You don’t need to do it. You really don’t. Okay. But if you don’t figure out a goal for yourself, you’re typically not going to see any movement towards something.
[00:09:34] And then you’re going to get to the end of next year and you’re going to be doing the forehead, slap thinking. What on earth? I’m in the same stinking place. I was a year ago. So let’s not do that. Right. But in order to have that progress forward, just pick one goal, just one goal that you want to work on.
[00:09:50] And as you have that one goal and think on it, ponder on it, take it to God, right. And say, Hey, heavenly father, this is what I’m thinking about. [00:10:00] Does it sound good? Is there something else that you want me to think about instead is my main goal that I’m going to focus on? Right. So check in with him. He loves you.
[00:10:08] You love him. You want to have that relationship. It’s kind of just like sitting on the couch with your father, your earthly father, right. Sit down and say, Hey dad, I want to run this by you. This is what I’m thinking about for my career plan for next year. This is my one thing, dad, what would you have to tell me about this?
[00:10:24] What kind of feedback would you give me on this? Okay, so. Same thing. Just think of it that when you’re thinking about talking with heavenly father, and I know some of you might be like, Oh, that seems very irreverent to think of just sitting on the couch with my dad to compare that with a conversation with heavenly father and not being irreverent about it.
[00:10:43] I’m basically saying as it, God loves you and he loves you. Cause you were his child. He wants to see you have joy and success in your life. That doesn’t mean he’s not going to give you hard stuff to grow and to learn from, trust me, just finishing up chemo over here for colon cancer. [00:11:00] That was kind of hard.
[00:11:02] And through it, I have grown and have deepened my relationship with God, so very, very much. Okay. And it’s nothing to do with a lot of other things in my life, but it has helped me to deepen my relationship with God by having gone through that medical craziness. So God’s going to give you opportunities to grow and to learn, but why not check in with him?
[00:11:23] Why not treat him like that loving heavenly father that he is, he loves you so much. So embrace him, embrace the coziness of talking with amazing father in heaven, who loves you, right? Just like, hopefully you have a good relationship with your earthly father or another man on this earth who you would consider to be like a father, like figure.
[00:11:46] Right. So it’s the same kind of thing in my mind that. Treat it with love and concern and that respect that you’ll get for your earthly father as you would also do for your heavenly father. All right. So if you get the thumbs up from him, you know, that good [00:12:00] feeling, however it is that he communicates with you.
[00:12:01] Right. And you know, okay. Yes, this is what I’m going to move forward with. This is going to be my one thing I’m going to really focus on in this new year for improving my career. Okay. Then the cool thing to do is each month pick one thing. That’s going to help you to move toward. That career goal. So I’m going to go back to the example of starting and maintaining a professional blog.
[00:12:23] So you would say, okay. Yep. I’ve got the thumbs up. This feels good. I want my blog to be about whatever it is that you do professionally. So let’s just say you’re a project manager and you want to talk about project management ideas and maybe reading different books throughout the year, et cetera. So you can start to formulate your mind.
[00:12:40] Okay. Well, If I’m going to be blogging and by the way, for blogging, please make sure that you’re blogging. Ideally, at least once a week, if you can’t do that, then I would say the next thing would be twice a month at a bare, bare minimum. And if he can’t commit to that, then don’t blog. It’s just, it’s not going to be a good cause it’ll look like you’re not professional and being [00:13:00] respectful of the blogging platform.
[00:13:02] Okay. So. And when you’re writing a blog post, by the way, you don’t have to write like thousands and thousands of words, it can be quite short. It can be like 500 words. Okay. So, but you might think, Oh, okay, well, I’m blogging. I’m going to blog throughout the course of the year about different books that I’ve read articles that I’ve read, maybe a training that I’ve attended.
[00:13:22] Maybe if I’ve been to some kind of online virtual networking event and maybe lessons learned from a recent project objects that I helped to launch or, you know, whatever it is. Okay. So that’s what you can start to think about and say, ah, okay. So my first thing I’m going to get done in January is to actually buy the website, domain, hire somebody to help me get this blog set up, or maybe use something simple like Blogspot, or you can even put blogs on LinkedIn.
[00:13:51] Right? So then you say, okay, my first goal is just simply figure out where am I going to do it? All right. That’s going to focus on a January. And then February, maybe your goal [00:14:00] is to write four articles. So then you have one for every week in February and you can sit down and you can batch write those.
[00:14:08] And so then maybe in March, then you say, okay, for March, I want to make sure that I have read a book. That I can blog about in March. And I’m going to talk about maybe three or four different things that I’ve learned from that book. So then you might want to make sure you get that book read during January and February so that you can have those articles written in March.
[00:14:27] So you see how this works. Like all this stuff is related back to the number one goal of. Blogging. And so starting a blog and maintaining a blog. And so instead of having 12 different massively different goals, and then every month you feel stretched way too thin because there’s too many things that are going on.
[00:14:44] So instead of doing that to yourself, just have one main big goal, and then every month chunk it down. And then from there, you might need to chunk it down into weekly things as well, but that way you can see progress on your career goal. Meanwhile back at the ranch, when you’re at work, she got those reports [00:15:00] to do and people to follow up with the emails to send and phone calls to have, and also other kinds of things you’re going to need to have that separation for your career goals, separate from those work goals that are still going to be happening Monday through Friday during business hours.
[00:15:14] So that’s a really cool way to see. How your career planning can be simplified, just pick that one main overall goal. And then each month just have one key thing that you’re doing to move toward that overall goal that you’ve decided. And just remember through all of this, just take that opportunity to check in with God and ask him, is there something you want me to blog about this month, right?
[00:15:38] Or, and by the way, this podcast isn’t meant to encourage everybody to go start a blog. I’m just using it. I’m just, just fleshing this out since that’s the example that I gave, but. If you wanna start a blog, great. Go for it. And let me know what your blog is. I’m always interested to hear what people are talking about.
[00:15:53] And so check in with God though, right? Ask him, Hey, what else can I do to expand upon this school? Or what should [00:16:00] be the one thing I’m focusing on this month? Right. So get that feedback from, as you’re going along. And then here’s a trick ladies. Follow through on what he’s prompting you to do, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense right now, just follow through.
[00:16:14] I promise you that the more you do that, the more you’ll see the hand of God in your career. And it’s really awesome. It’s really, really, really awesome. So do that for yourself. It’ll make a big difference as you’re simplifying your career planning, because God can cut through all the crazy and take your right down to the key thing.
[00:16:31] That’s important for you. It’s kind of cool because he knows everything from beginning to end, so he can be out there noticing what’s coming up to help you along the way. So do that for yourself. All right, ladies. So I’m wrapping up. I want to share with you a quote from the 3:00 AM with God journal. And the quote today is I am not afraid.
[00:16:51] I was born to do this. Joan of arc. I just love Joan. I look forward to talking to her one day when I get on the other side. And [00:17:00] so be not afraid to choose that one thing that you want to do for your career plan. Right. Just pick the one thing and here’s another little secret. I’ll let you in on six months into the year.
[00:17:11] If that goal just does not seem to be resonating and is not helping you out, I give you 100% permission to change. The goal. Okay. You could totally do that. All right. I can not give you permission to change what your goals are at the workplace, right. And the things you need to do for getting your job done in the to-do list.
[00:17:29] But when it comes your career goals, if you want to change, that’s totally fine. Just know and understand why. And especially if you’re feeling prompted from God to make those changes, then you follow through on that stuff. Okay. Don’t make the change because you’re bored or you just don’t want to do it.
[00:17:42] You’re being lazy. Like that’s a little bit different, like. Push through, because through that boredom, through that laziness, when we pushed through, then all of a sudden it’s really cool, juicy growth can happen in your career. So just the that’s a little bit of a difference, right. But if you’re feeling very prompted to do something differently, that’s totally different piece of the puzzle and that’s then [00:18:00] you pivot and you go with what God wants you to do.
[00:18:02] And again, it could be four months, six months, 12 months. I don’t, I have no idea. Okay. So, but along the way, don’t be afraid. And as I share with you in the scripture from Philippians and do not be anxious about this, either just take a deep breath, think about it a little bit, check in with God, get the thumbs up from him.
[00:18:19] And then. It will help you more calmly to move forward and to enjoy seeing yourself have a more simple career plan and enjoy the new year and really reigning in what you’re going to do with your career in the new year. Alright, mamas, thank you for joining me on career central today. I’ve enjoyed sharing some insights with you about.
[00:18:39] Simplifying your career planning. I hope you’ve picked up something that can help you with simplifying your career planning as well for more resources and help with your career development. Come on over to career coach jen.com. Thank you so much mamas. And remember you can have a simplified career plan, and God wants that for you too, to your successful and [00:19:00] inspired career.
[00:19:00] Thanks ladies.