Landing a new job yesterday may bring you happiness today, but it will not bring you the same happiness next month. Your current salary may seem like you just won the lottery, but when you have kids, you may feel like you just got robbed. Your bosses appraisal of your great project last month will not hold the same weight next month.
It is easy to get wrapped up in work. You spend the majority of your waking hours at work. You build lasting relationships with co-workers. But if you want to truly have a successful, fulfilling, and impacting life, you need to look outside of the office walls.
The Value to Work Experience Is Great, but There Is More
I am not devaluing the impact and influence of work on our lives, but rather suggesting we change our value of work alone. Too little value on work experience is not healthy nor is too much. The better we see the whole picture to life, the better employee, manager, and leader we will be inside and outside of the workforce. Work-life balance is a hot topic in the workforce today because of the impact people's entire life has on their work performance.
So as you enter the workforce, change jobs, interview for new positions, and search for career moves, remember that your life experience will have the ultimate say on your end story. In fact, your life experience will be a bigger player in your personal and professional development than just work. So leverage your life experiences to develop into the person you want to be at work, at home, and in life.
Here are 12 reasons why young professionals need to remember life experiences outweigh work experiences:
- Your success will not come solely from your job. Sure you may have some success at work and it does play a role, but your relationships, health, and out of work finances play a role too.
- Your impact will reach past 5pm and before 9am. Even if you work 14 hours a day, your impact will not have a time clock. As long as you are alive, you are impacting something.
- Your fulfillment in life will not be left in the hands of your performance evaluation. Please do not allow your professional evaluation be the measuring stick to your fulfillment.
- Your calling will not change from any career decision. Calling comes before you even got the job. Your career decision was a reflection to your call. Know your calling.
- Your purpose is deeper than professional achievement. Professional achievement is great, but it does not give you purpose. Purpose is the meaning that mankind has been searching for since the beginning. Find it.
- Your love cannot be reciprocated from non-living objects. Love is a two way street. Love not returned sends you searching for another fulfilling love.
- Your peace will never be achieved through conditional measures. Peace is not your work situation, but your settling of struggles outside of circumstances. Circumstances have influence, but can't bring true peace.
- Your joy is in the hands of personal decision rather than circumstantial outcomes. You make the choice and don't give the power to other results to dictate your internal joy.
- Your character is about who you are rather than what you do. Character does rather than doing is character. Your actions are a result of your character.
- Your identity does not have a job description but rather a life story. Do not allow your job to define you. Your life is a story written by you of your life experiences, work included.
- Your lifelong relationships do not live at the office. Jobs will come and go. Coworkers will be here one day and gone the next. Build the lasting relationships outside of work even if it is with co-workers.
- Your legacy will be about what you left rather than what you were involved in. Who you were, why you lived, what you did, and how you did it will have a much longer lasting impression that what you were a part of. Focus on the who, why, what, and how rather than just the with.
You get to work and that is an honor, but remember your life experiences, relationships, and health will far outweigh your work experience. If you are in the pursuit of a job right now, do not forget nurturing your whole life rather than just your work life. If you are in a job you love right now, remember you will have seasons and you might even change jobs so keep investing into all of life. If you hate your job right now, maybe you need to take a real breather and exercise those life experiences to change your job satisfaction.
Remember you work in life, but your work is not your life.
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Jared Buckley helps Millennials develop their skills for success, purpose, and impact. He believes true development comes through experience, environment, and expectations. You can read more at JaredBuckley.com.