The new year is the perfect time to reflect on who you are and what you want to achieve, on both a personal and professional level. Here are our top tips on how to start the year as you mean to go on.
Your new year’s resolutions may already be falling by the wayside, but even those of us who are reluctant to make resolutions will presumably still have career goals in mind for the coming year. Whether contemplating a change of direction or aiming for a promotion, professional aspirations should start with self-discovery and self-reflection. Here are our top tips for hitting the new year running.
Test your abilities with a free online skills assessment
Free online skills assessments offer a great way to find out where your core strengths lie. Designed to help individuals discover their realised and unrealised abilities, a quick test will help ensure your new year goals are aligned with your core competencies. As a rule of thumb, it is the activities you most enjoy and that give you the most energy which are those you will be most likely to stick to and which will help you achieve your goals.
Read a book on personal development
None of us is a finished product, there is always room for self improvement. Few of us won’t benefit from reading a book on personal development, if for no other reason than to interpret ourselves in a more positive light.
Here are a few of our suggestions for self improvement books:
If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy? by Raj Raghunathan
There is an assumption that intelligent people are able to make better life decisions, which should in turn lead to greater happiness. But, according to the author’s research this is not the case.
Raj asserts that one’s success if rarely a measure of one’s happiness and reveals seven common tendencies that successful people should be wary of and suggests seven alternative habits they should adopt.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Clear’s bad habit-busting book will help you say goodbye to all those bad habits and provide practical realistic strategies for creating new ones.
Why has nobody told me this before? by Dr. Julie Smith
In this book, clinical psychologist. Dr. Julie Smith, has formulated a therapist’s toolkit for optimising your mental health. It has been described by The Evening Standard as ‘the arm hug we all need as we embark on 2023.’
Keep a journal
Reflecting on the work you did in 2022 and taking time to recognise your achievements is an exceptionally beneficial process. Acknowledging the times when you felt at your strongest and aligning those feelings with what you were working on at the time is great for planning the year ahead. Similarly, there may have been activities which proved to be negative experiences and which should be, as much as possible, avoided in 2023.
Give your personal mission statement an update
All businesses have mission statements so why shouldn’t we have personal ones? A personal mission statement provides a framework for what you would like to achieve on both a professional and personal level. When writing one, it is important to focus on your main strengths and abilities, but also on what really motivates you.
Revisiting your mission statement every six months offers an opportunity for reflection and a chance to check if you are on track to achieve your 2023 goals.
Review and update your LinkedIn profile
LinkedIn is great at letting you know how complete your profile is so a quick review will soon show you where your profile might be lacking.,
Perhaps take a look at the profiles of people you admire and note how they use LinkedIn to its best advantage. Decide if you wish to use LinkedIn for the purposes of finding a new job or as a means of promoting yourself and your activities to your professional network, as this will determine the content you post or engage with.
It is much easier to commit to a habit when something feels beneficial, so it is critical to be consistent with the work you put in to achieve your 2023 career goals and really feel that sense of achievement. The skills required to achieve your goals should be thought of rather like muscles which need to be worked consistently in order to achieve maximum success.
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