Hello and welcome back to the awfully quiet podcast. I am really excited for you to tune in today. And I'm seeing a lot of new listeners recently consistently over the past couple of months. So to speak, you know, I'm a brand marketer. I cannot help it. I am in the analytics a lot, and I really like what I'm seeing.

I see consistent growth. I see more and more downloads. I see new listeners. And obviously that makes me happy from a point of view of like having started this podcast and obviously wanting it to thrive, but also I love that this community is growing, I love that this topic resonates and that more and more listeners are.

Getting exposed to this content, especially because it always feels like we're some sort of minority as like awfully quiet introverts in the workplace and in corporate, but we're clearly not. And this is. Really relevant for, for so many reasons is because often we're, we're overlooked, we're underestimated, and it's really important for us to see that our introversion and our being awfully quiet is not something that has to hold us back, but it's something that can really fuel.

Our career aspirations. And I want to lend that message with as many of you as possible. So if you know someone who could benefit from this podcast for tuning in, share this episode with them or an episode that you loved from the ones before. And also, I always feel cringy for saying this, please, please, please.

Leave a five star review or a rating. It's really easy on Spotify. You just click the three dots at the Awfully Quiet Podcast. Rate this show five stars. Done in three seconds, I promise. And it really helps bring this podcast to more awfully quiet folks out there. Now for today, I have a topic that I am always drawn to at this time of the year.

It might just be that it is Leo season. It was my birthday end of July. It always feels like transitioning into a new year for me. And I always have a lot of. Questions. I always have a lot of self reflecting going on during this time of the year around, you know, where am I headed in my career? Am I happy with where I'm at?

Where am I going? Do I have the right goals in place? Am I striving for the right things? Do I really want what I'm currently pursuing? And so on and so on. So it's a lot of stuff going on. And, you know, as introverts, That's absolutely normal. And actually what, what we're thriving at, isn't it? Terms of like, just kind of that self reflection.

I think we're very in tune with our thoughts and we're not afraid to ask the big questions. And that's a strength, just telling you that. So career fulfillment is where it's at today. And I appreciate career fulfillment is a big word. And often comes with so much shame, with so much just kind of like, you know, it's a privilege.

You know, you should be happy that you have a job. You should be content with what you have. You've been working towards being where you are right now. Why are you even considering something else or, or questioning where you at? And I feel like it's so, so important for us. To question and to tune into how do we really feel and where are we going and what's ahead of us because it gives direction.

It helps us just kind of lay the groundwork for the decisions that we make on a daily basis for how we feel like for me, it's almost like that anticipation of like, you know, having a holiday planned in the near future. It just kind of creates a different vibe, doesn't it? You know, you have something really nice planned.

You look forward to it. There's this whole suspense and, um, yeah, anticipation. You're really looking forward to that. And I feel the same about my career. I want to have something to look forward to. I don't need to set things in stone. I don't need to. You know, lay down exactly, here's where I want to be in five years.

This is where I want to be in 10 years, but I want to have direction. I want to know where I'm going. And I saw this really, really good visualization about what career fulfillment is and what the ingredients are to achieve career fulfillment. And I wanted to share this with you today because it really breaks down Um, you know, what's needed, what's the recipe for career fulfillment.

So number one, the first thing that you're going to need for career fulfillment is a career goal is to know what you want. What do you really, really want and, you know, career goals can come to you in so many different ways. Sometimes they're extrinsically motivated. Sometimes they're intrinsically motivated.

It may be just something that you've been told by your family at one point, you know, this is a really good job. Go for this job. It may have just been that. You saw somebody, , with a job and saw that they are making really good money off of it. And therefore you just kind of took this on as, Oh, this is my career goal too.

You may see somebody on social media have a career or display a career a certain way that you say, Oh, I want to become this type of person. I want to have this type of job. And so many ways you can get a career goal to start with. But often we have a couple of career goals inside of us that, you know, either from our childhood or something that's.

just kind of came up more recently that we would say is a goal. This is what we're striving for. For me, this has always been becoming a brand marketer. And I believe this is a career goal for me ever since I'm in my early, early career, like early university days, I studied marketing. I wanted to become a brand marketer.

I thought, the kind of ads that I would see on TV were really cool. I always thought there were a couple of brands who did a great job with their communications, with their campaigns. And I was always like, Oh, I want to be the person who creates these experiences, who builds these brands. And I had very little knowledge about what a brand.

Marketer actually does, but for some reason I was really, really drawn to it. And you already see the first kind of clue within that is that career goals often come up before we actually know what this type of job or what this, what this kind of career is really about. But this is how it happens. And in the very early stages of A career goal, just kind of popping up, , as a thought is it's a daydream.

It's nothing more than that. Just kind of like, oh, this looks nice. Do I want that? Can I envision that? Do I see myself as that? It's a daydream, something that we might be pinning on Pinterest or putting on our vision board, or again, seeing on social media. It's a daydream. And that career goal is ingredient number one.

Now, in order to move from a daydream to something that becomes more tangible, we need a second ingredient. And that's a plan in place. So you have a goal and then you build a plan. Here's how I'm going to get there. These are the milestones. These are the type of experiences I would need along the way in order to get to this position, in order to get into this career.

This is, , the kind of, , personal development and growth that I would need. So you almost like build a plan and you lay this out in front of you. And that way you move from it just being a daydream to it becoming an objective. Now you have a goal, you have a plan with clear milestones, potentially even deadlines.

Now, the third ingredient in order to move forward. And in order to actually make it happen is consistent action. You have your goal, you have your plan in place, but you know as well as I do that sometimes that's all it is. You have a goal and you just kind of lay out here's what would need to happen in theory in order for me to go there.

And we've made these development plans at work, haven't we? It's just kind of like, here's my plan. Here's what I'm going to do in order to achieve X. But then we just kind of stopped there and we just kind of like sit there with this beautiful plan, but we're not actually in the plan. So actually moving forward step by step.

Consistent action is ingredient number three in order to then become successful and achieve that objective, achieve that career goal. So success looks like you have a goal, you have a plan, you're taking the action. And if you just kind of think about these three components, they can make you pretty happy.

Like if you have, Something that gives you direction. Something that gives you a sense of purpose. You're, you're, you're going somewhere. You're on a journey. You actually have a plan. So you almost know what needs to happen at what point in time and you're consistent with your actions. So let's say each and every day, each and every week you take.

One small step forward in order to go where you want to go. And to me, that feels super, super satisfying to me. I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is, this is great. This almost feels like, you know, career fulfillment at its best, where you know exactly what you want. You know how to get it. You're taking the action.

Obviously there's always going to be, you know, bumps along the road. Detours, things that don't quite work out the way you want them to, but ultimately this is what success must feel like. But there is one thing missing, one ingredient missing or one aspect missing really because the ingredient is already there.

But there is something that's wrong about this version that often trips us up. And it's to do with the career goal to begin with. We can't really feel successful. We can't really feel happy and fulfilled unless we're really going for the right goal. Because I'm not sure if you've, if that's ever happened to you, but it certainly happened to me that I had a goal.

I had a plan. I took consistent action. I got the goal. I achieved the goal. I achieved the goal. And I was like, well, that's it. I'm still not happy. I'm not, you know, I've achieved my career dream. I got where I really wanted to, to be all these years. My younger self would be so, so happy, but my present self.

does not feel happy, does not feel fulfilled. And that's very likely because something was wrong with the goal to begin with. And I kind of alluded to that at the beginning where you're like, sometimes you're not spending enough time on figuring out what the goal is. And that can kind of trip us up. So, in order, For you to feel fulfillment, that fourth ingredient or the aspect of the right ingredient is it must be a meaningful career goal.

It must be the right one. And that is so, so tricky for us because again, some of these goals, they just kind of came to us from the outside. They weren't really born within us. It's just something that we saw on social media one day and like, Ooh, That looks really nice. It looks like they're making a lot of money being a UGC creator.

And I see all of you just kind of thinking the same thing. Same with me and my goal to become a brand marketer. One day I saw that ad on TV and like, Oh, Must be nice to be the person behind this ad, must be nice to be the person behind this campaign. And then you wake up one day and you realize what the job really is about and that it involves a lot of, you know, acting politically and doing PowerPoint presentations and all that jazz.

And you might not feel fulfilled from that because it was a goal that was not really aligned with you. It was not, it's not meaningful to you right now. So I think it's one of two things that can be wrong with a career goal. It can either be, you know, it's not really your goal to begin with. You just kind of saw something and you didn't spend enough time.

You didn't do your research to really understand this is what that kind of career, what that kind of job is about. And you went in without really knowing what you were deciding for going for. Yeah. Or it could be that your context kind of changed over time that you're now in a different season. And that goal you set 10 years ago is not really relevant to you anymore.

And that's something that will always happen. So a meaningful career goal is not one that you have for life. It's not that at the age of 18, 19, you decide this is my meaningful goal. Here's what my purpose is in life. This is what I'm meant to do. And then this is something that's going to fulfill me.

Throughout my life. This these kind of four ingredients or like the three plus ingredients, the meaningful career, the plan, the consistent action, it just leads to fulfillment. If we make it a cycle, if we constantly evolve, and if at the end of, you know, achieving something, we Ask ourselves the tough questions along the lines of, is this really something that we want?

Is that still something that's relevant for me? Is this still meaningful for me in this season of my life? And what I want to leave you with alongside of these kind of. for ingredients to achieve fulfillment is what can you do if you feel like the current career goal that you have. Is not meaningful enough, or if you feel like I don't really have a career goal right now, I don't really know what I'm striving for.

I don't have that direction. There are three different things that I want you to explore three different questions that you can ask yourself to gain that clarity to understand that direction and to make your career goal more meaningful. Number one. Is to check what's really important for you in your career.

What are you kind of top criteria if you had to make a decision about your career tomorrow? What's most important for you right now? And this is an exercise that is really, really important. What, what is a career criteria to begin with? You could think about, you know, financial security is a criteria. , it's the work life balance as a criteria, your opportunity and chance to develop and grow job security.

Your kind of work environment, being able to work from home, the location that you work from, Et cetera, et cetera. So these are career criteria and you want to make sure that you understand what's ultimately important for you right now. Again, they change over time and that's super natural. But you want to be mindful of like, what's my top three right now?

What are my top three career criteria that must be true? Why is this important? Because this allows you to make career decisions. Let's just say you see a job offer tomorrow and you need to decide whether you go for it or not. Or somebody reaches out to you and says, look, I have an opening on my team. This is what it looks like.

Are you interested in applying? And these decisions often have to be made super, super quickly and having your criteria in place. Allows you to make those decisions really quickly, because you can go ahead and say, look, here's what's important for me right now. I need to be able to work remotely. I need to be able to develop and grow.

I'm early in my career. I want to have those opportunities. Plus I want to work. In an international context, I want to still develop. It's really, really important for me that I work at this kind of regional international level. And this is something that ultimately really helps me gain energy and thrive.

And then if that job offer that's on the table, doesn't have that doesn't allow for that. It's an easy no for you, but otherwise. If you just kind of see that offer and it like gives you all of the three, it's a very easy. Yes. And you're going to show up so much differently to that job interview, because it all aligns with your vision.

It aligns with what's important for you. You can sell yourself differently. I'm sure you're going to be articulating yourself differently. And it makes a hell of a difference. Having these criteria clear for you. So, that's the number 1 number 2 is you want to always make sure that your career goal aligns with your values.

What are the values that are currently. Important for you again, these can change over time and. They can be difficult to find out to begin with. Most exercises on the internet will just kind of like give you a variety of values. Here's a bunch of values. Pick the ones that are most important to you, but it's always, it's not always as simple as that.

And it takes a lot of soul searching. It takes a lot of self reflection to find out what your values are. And I want to dedicate some more time and space to that. To that specific exercise in the future, but for now, I believe the best resource that I could find is the values list by Brené Brown. And I will link that exercise for you in the show notes.

Just kind of go ahead and see what are your current values? What's driving you in this season of life? What is really, really important for you? And then again, is the career goal that you currently have? In line with those values, does it, does it contradict these values? Does it enable you to live according to your values, et cetera?

And then number three is. Does your current career goal aligned with your longer term vision? Does it align with your career aspirations? And for this. I often recommend to really start from scratch and come up with almost like a little bit of a mood board, a vision board. And what's really, really important for this exercise is to not just think about who do I want to be in the next, let's say five, 10 years, but What do I see myself doing?

How do I envision my day to be? When do I wake up in the morning? What's the kind of work environment I'm in? What's the kind of office I'm in? Am I in an office? Am I at home? What does the coffee taste like at work? Who do I work with? What are the kind of projects that I'm working on? What are the kind of things people value me for?

What is the value that I bring to The work that I do on a daily basis and just kind of like build this vision, regardless of the job title, regardless of the company that you're in, or whether you're at the company at all, or whether it's your own business. Just kind of start with those questions. What's the day that you're in vision and then build this vision board out for you.

I always go on Pinterest to do that. And I have so many Pinterest boards to help with that and always takes a little bit of time to really dive in and really find the right images, honestly, but it becomes so, so powerful to do this because that way it really comes to life for you. Yeah. And then. You can look at this and think to yourself, what's the kind of job, what do I need to make sure to, to achieve that?

How do I align that with a tangible career goal and what's meaningful in that again, this gives you a lot of data points to ultimately help guide your decisions. And I'm pretty sure once you have done these things, like the career criteria, the values, the vision and the mood board, you will start to look at things differently.

You will start to see opportunities that you didn't see before. You will start to see things in real life that reflect some of the visions on your board. You will see some things and jobs pop up in real life. That aligned with your values, and you will also start to discern between things that are in line with your career criteria and are not.

I promise you, you're going to look at things differently. You're going to see opportunity, and you're going to be able to say a hard no to things that are not aligned. And that's where you start with building a meaningful career goal. That's how you start by putting these three things in place. It's a lot of self reflection.

It takes a bit of time, but it's so, so powerful for you to really think about where are you headed in this particular season at this particular point in your career in order to ultimately achieve that fulfillment through a meaningful goal, A plan in place, consistent action towards that. I hope that you feel inspired now to do some thinking, to do some soul searching.

It's the end of summer. It's a beautiful time to be doing these things and to be again, harnessing the power of Leo season to really go deep. And to ask yourself the big, bold questions, I hope that you're tuning in next week. And I wish you a wonderful time self reflecting and finding those meaningful goals.

See you there.