What is Career Fulfilment and How do You Get It?

So, do you feel good at work? Would you like to?

When I burnt out due to my work, I did not feel good, and it made me reassess what I wanted from my career. I decided then that I didn’t want my work to negatively impact my life ever again, so I made changes to focus on creating a fulfilling career that helped me to live a happy and healthy life.

People often conflate career fulfilment with career goals. Having goals for your career is no bad thing. It can give you something to focus on, and the sense of achievement you get when you hit them can feel brilliant. Career fulfilment isn’t just about having goals for the future; it’s about how you feel every day at work. Hitting a career goal every few months or years might be part of what makes you feel good, but it is likely the joy those successes bring will be short-lived. Career fulfilment comes when your normal everyday routine makes you feel good, and you can do work that meets your needs. It doesn’t have to be about having big ambitions for your career, but more that your work leaves you with the ability to live your life well.

Career fulfilment can be hard to articulate because it often isn't any one thing, and there can be a lot of nuances to what makes a good day. How you want to feel at work plays a big part. Are you looking for autonomy over your work or clear instructions? Do you desire structure and planning, or do you prefer the unexpected? Do you work best when you are by yourself or working in groups?

Whilst I’ve phrased these as binary states, they all exist on a continuum and your preferences are likely to be a mixture of things. I like structure and order to my week, but I thrive off an unexpected opportunity every once in a while. I like quiet and solitude to get my head down and work, but when needed I enjoy the company of colleagues to bounce around ideas. Whatever your unique set of conditions are, when those conditions are met, you can do your best work and in turn, feel good at work.

Your version of career fulfilment will be a myriad of different conditions with your own unique caveats. Finding career fulfilment is about identifying those unique set of conditions and then finding a way to make them a reality within the confines of your job.

When thinking about what career fulfilment means to you, you might want to ask yourself these questions.

What do I want from my career?

What does a great day at work look like?

What am I doing when this happens?

How do I feel when I’ve found fulfilment at work?

What is getting in the way of feeling this way all the time?

Career fulfilment doesn’t come by striving for one or two big goals; it happens in the small moments of the everyday. It’s being able to use your skills and talents for work that is meaningful to you, either on a large level or simply because it pays your bills. It’s about feeling good in your career choices most of the time and feeling like you are in control of what you want from your career. Pay attention to when you feel good at work beyond those big moments of celebration. When you sit back and think, “That was a good bit of work,” or “That made me feel good,” think about what is going on in those moments.

 

If you want to understand career coaching, read this.