Along with other skills that should be taught beginning in high school, or even by the final year of elementary school, and in a much deeper way from the outset of college or university education, career mindfulness is a skillset that needs steady development.
In today’s world, one must be prepared for lifelong potential career pivots or accelerations, or perhaps even disruptions [think pandemics or wars] – and it is therefore a mistake in life to not learn early one’s strengths and weaknesses and to begin early to work steadily to improve both.
This is why teachers are so critical in the life of a student because a talented teacher recognizes those strengths and weaknesses and helps the student to develop the strengths and shore up any weak areas. Weaknesses can potentially become strengths with career mindfulness. It is all about recognizing potential, in fact, and nurturing potential.
Self-evaluation is a critical skill that remains essential over the lifespan of any individual. Involving both the intellect and honesty, which is arguably the most valued skillset combination in the workplace today, self-evaluation is all about fully understanding your own value.
For career mindfulness to occur, you must be both self-aware and honest with yourself regarding your abilities and habits at work, your attitude to work, and your long-term goals, not merely for your career, but for the outcomes of that career over time. What you will learn, what you will earn, what and whom you will impact, how you will grow, whom you will come to know, what accolades will be sung in your name? All of this that happens over the course of your career happens ONLY as a result of career mindfulness.
It is never accidental or just luck. Whether you seek training, or education, or trade skills with someone [language, for instance], or cultivate certain relationships, or write books – everything that develops over the course of your career is ultimately due to the way you conduct yourself in a work environment over time.
Your manner and your intent with all that you do, how you treat yourself and others, how you engage with others, what you choose to learn, what you accomplish – this is what defines your character and the degree of your career mindfulness.
If mindfulness is to pay close and kind attention in a nonjudgmental, yet purposeful manner to enhance creativity and wellness in work environments worldwide, then career mindfulness means for an individual to pay close attention in a mindful way to how, over time, our career behavior impacts our health and well- being.
Whether one works for themselves or for an employer, understanding how individual behaviors at work can impact creativity and help to drive a sense of purpose and kindliness in the workplace and beyond it – this is what creates, in fact, the work culture as a whole.
If when at work people do not take time to engage with one another mindfully, attentively, and honestly, sharing knowledge, friendship, human kindness, and intellectual insights, the work culture suffers from a lack of authenticity and depth. In fact, without a learning, growing, caring environment, the work environment is very likely destined to implode.
For workplaces to thrive and grow rapidly, employees must find within those environments, within their work life, an atmosphere conducive to human health both mental and physical.
The work culture produced by individuals who are practicing career mindfulness [as well as mindfulness in general] is going to be focused on nurturing habits, attitudes, and even projects that deepen human connection, and thus enhance the individual’s connection to their own happiness and sense of well-being – making possible achievements and value in the workplace otherwise not possible, which in turn enhances our careers.
Career mindfulness, then, encompasses a great deal: how we care for our bodies and our minds to prepare them for work, how we conduct our lives with a mindful eye on reducing our work stress, how we improve our work-life balance, how we improve our performance at work with an eye to both what is critical for the organization to accomplish as well as developing skills that are critical for ourselves to learn and master in our career advancement.
But what is perhaps most important of all is to deepen and enhance our level of engagement with the larger goals of our organization through relationships and learning, so that our career goals align with those of the organization [employer]. For if they do not align, then very likely this means for personal growth, we must seek what is aligned with our personal goals and ambitions – as well as our health and wellbeing.
Career mindfulness is not then about blind ambition, but rather it is a conscious engagement with our own values, talents, and serious interests, implanting these core elements within our workplace in order to align these strengths within our career, every day of our lives.
