CATÓLICA-LISBON

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."

- Confucius

The first and by far the most important step to achieving career success is choosing your occupation.

But does success entail for you?

Do you want a career that allows you to travel or a steady job that lets you settle into a pleasant routine?

Do you want a career that makes lots of money, or is money just a means to an end and what you really value is having a purpose?

Once you define your priorities, you can mold your career around them.

Of course, the most important priority is that you choose working on someting that you enjoy.

Not only does an enjoyable career make your entire life more enjoyable as well, it also makes you more likely to succeed since people always tend to do better at the things which they enjoy.

"A big part of living the life you want is taking ownership of your choices, now and in the future."

- Gary John Bishop

If you want to succeed in your career, you have to take ownership of both your triumphs and your failures.

Celebrate your triumphs, analyze them, and learn how you can emulate them and build on them in the future.

But take ownership of your failures as well, accepting responsibility for them without letting them drag you down and learning everything that you can from the mistakes you make.

Often, failure is a much more effective teacher than success, and most successful people would not be where they are today if they did not accept their mistakes and learn from them.

"Don't get so stuck in your ways that you can't change."

- Sam Walton

Feeling stuck in your career is almost always a state of mind, a predicament of a person’s own making.

No matter where you are in your career, you always have the power to make changes.

Many times, those changes may be frightening or difficult, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be beneficial after all.

At all points in your career, you need to adopt a mindset of continuous learning and improvement.

Never stop working to advance both yourself and your career, and never give into the fallacy that you are stuck where you’re at.

"Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out"

- John Wooden

When you have a positive attitude, positive results will come.

Pessimism, on the other hand, is the enemy of success.

Pessimism is able to turn manageable challenges into ones that are insurmountable, while optimism is able to make every challenge one that you are able to overcome.

Start trying to catch yourself when you are thinking negative thoughts or displaying a pessimistic attitude toward some aspect of your career and replace them instead with a positive and optimistic outlook. And then start acting as if you are already where you want to be.

In other words, always look on the bright side and have a positive attitude and the future of your career will be brighter as well.

"If you don't set your goals for yourself, you are doomed to work to achieve the goals of someone else."

- Brian Tracy

One of the most beneficial things a person can do for their career is to set goals for themselves.

A set of well-thought-out goals can serve as a roadmap to success, providing you with objectives to meet along the way as you work towards wherever you want to be in your career.

Besides ensuring that you do what it takes to meet the goals that you set for yourself, the most important part of setting goals is making sure the goals you set are beneficial.

A beneficial goal is one that is challenging without being unattainable and one that will improve you, and your career when you meet it.

If you can set both short-term and long-term goals that meet these criteria, it will certainly help you reach the final goal you have for your career – whatever that final goal may be.

"The key to learning is feeback. It is nearly impossible to learn anything without it."

- Steven Levitt

When feedback is anything less than positive it can often be a tough pill to swallow.

However, asking for and truly listening to feedback is one of the quickest ways to hone your skills and progress in your career.

No matter where you are in your career, there are always going to be people who have a unique perspective to offer or who may know more about a particular topic than you.

Listening to their feedback regarding your work, honestly evaluating whether what they are saying is true and useful, and putting what you learn into practice is sure to help you grow in your chosen career.