How to Keep Your Career Satisfaction Curve on the Rise

Have you ever thought about your problems as gifts? That’s right. All the hassles big and small, when viewed from the proper perspective, can be used as stepping stones to reaching your career objectives.

One of the things that everyone experiences in their career is what I call the career satisfaction curve. What I mean by a career satisfaction curve is the amount of satisfaction you experience while in your present job.

I remember my first career as a recreation director for a small township in Michigan. The first two years I was very excited. It seemed I was always learning something new and making real progress. After the second year, the excitement started to wane as the bureaucratic issues I experienced started to become more and more of a de-motivator. I was faced with the fact that my career satisfaction curve was flattening out. It soon became clear that many of the things I hoped to achieve in this position were being limited by budgetary constraints and an ultra conservative park commission to which I reported.

I remember a promise I made to myself when I was younger. This was to work in a career as long as it was fun and I was doing something I enjoyed. When that stopped happening , I would move on. I had to ask myself what I was going to do next. Would I stay in a career that was not moving forward or go into something completely different? True to the promise I made to myself, I choose the latter. What eventually happened was I joined a national training and development company, and once again, my career satisfaction curve started to rise.

This pattern has repeated itself six times, over my working lifetime. What I have learned is that when I sense my career satisfaction curve starting to flatten out, I force myself to get back into an exploratory and learning mode and once again experience the excitement and satisfaction of a rising learning curve.

So, if you want to keep your career satisfaction level high, keep yourself in an exploratory and learning mode. You just might find that your career potential is much greater than you think.


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Tom Borg is president of Tom Borg Consulting, LLC. He is a business consultant, speaker, coach and author. He helps companies and organization become more profitable by increasing their value and lowering their costs through the professional development of their managers and employees.