“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
Henry Miller, American Writer
Travelling reduces stress, boosts our mood, improves our creativity and problem-solving skills. It helps you get some distance and see things from a different perspective. All of these benefits of travelling can help you to ‘re-invent’ yourself. If you are travelling this summer (either at home or abroad) and you are also at the point of your career when you are craving a new perspective, change of mindset or a career change, I would like to encourage you to use this space for reflection. In my blog this month, I offer you three sets of coaching questions that will support your new thinking and action going forward.
1. What are you learning about yourself?
Visiting a new place, especially a different country, helps you to see the differences between cultures, values and behaviours. You are more likely to notice your own personality traits and talents. To support your self-reflection in a new place, consider the following questions:
- What are the skills that I have a chance to use on this journey?
- What is my energy like in this place?
- What makes it the same/ different to my usual state?
- What is different in my thinking in this place?
- What new situations have I faced on this journey so far that stretched me out of my comfort zone?
- What have I learned about myself thanks to them?
2. What are you learning about your career journey?
While travelling you may meet people of various professions. You may hear stories of their careers, choices they made and life events that shaped their career journey. More often than not careers are not linear or always planned. There are life events like finding your love, moving to a different country, sickness, death of our close ones, having kids, wars or world crisis that leave marks on people and can affect their career in a way that they did not predict. Follow the questions below to self-reflect on your career journey.
- What has my career journey been so far?
- What events have shaped it?
- Which beliefs have influenced it the most?
- What aspects of my career journey do I like?
- Which ones do I accept?
- Which ones do I not agree with and want to change?
- What has been the most inspiring person I met during this trip? And what makes them most inspiring?
3. What are you planning about your career journey going forward?
The time will come for you to leave the place you have been visiting and come back to your usual life and work. Hopefully, you will be returning with renewed energy, great insights and reflections. To summarise your experience, I would like you to reflect on a few more questions:
- What do I want to take from this travel with me?
- Having experienced this holiday and reflected on my career journey so far, what would I like it to be like going forward?
- If everything was possible and I could design a new job for myself, which of my skills and talents would I like to use more?
- Would I add any of the ones that I discovered in this journey?
- What decisions do I need to make to shape my career journey?
- What actions do I need to take to make the change I want?
If you feel that you may require more support to get clarity, make decisions and take action about your career journey, please book a free discovery call and let’s discuss how my career or executive coaching can help you.