Why Your Long-Term Career Goals Are Making You Miserable [And How To Fix It]
Every goal or objective has a price. To prepare for the Boston Marathon, you may need to wake up at 6 AM before work and run a few miles. If you want to go back to school, you may need to give up some of your personal time. Any amount of significant success will require an investment or commitment. However, your goals and aspirations should not make you miserable.
When pursuing long-term career goals make you incredibly unhappy, something is off. While working towards a goal, you will feel some level of discomfort, of course, but consistently feel tired, unmotivated or doubtful of your path is problematic. It can be difficult to admit these goals aren't bringing you gratification, especially when you've invested a lot to get where you are now.
Without direction on how to overcome this challenge, it can feel as if there is no end in sight. That's why you need to start by gaining awareness about why these objectives no longer feel fulfilling.
Figuring Out Why Long-Term Career Goals Are Making You Miserable
We’ve all heard stories about the lawyers who quit prestigious firms to work at non-profits, the authors who wrote a best-selling book then fell off the map, or the rising celebrities who left the limelight to seek quieter lives. But you don’t always hear what happens after that.
Did these people regret not shifting their goals? Are they happier now? Was it worth giving up their long-term career goals and starting something new? Without a guarantee that shifting your course will make you happier, it can be intimidating to make a change.
You could be in a short season of challenges, or be genuinely unsatisfied with your career path. That’s why often, the best way to move forward in this situation is by slowing down. You need to assess the quality of your long-term career goals and figure out whether you're on the right path.
Here are five reasons your goals may leave you feeling uninspired.
1. Your Goals Aren’t Yours
There are a lot of people who influence your direction. At a young age, it's your parents. As you move through school, it's your teachers and professors. After that, friends, spouses, co-workers, and employers play a part. These outside influencers can be pillars of support and guidance, but sometimes, they can unintentionally (or intentionally) guide us away from your potential.
Without realizing it, they can guide you towards meeting their expectations rather than your own. Whatever their intentions are, they can distract you from what you really want for your life. As a result, you work towards objectives that don't feel right.
Dr. John Demartini, a human behavior specialist, stresses the importance of blocking out the outside influences and finding your real vision.
“When the voice and the vision on the inside is more profound, and more clear and loud than all opinions on the outside, you’ve begun to master your life.”
When you have a clear vision and understanding about what you want, you can prioritize your own growth. To get that vision, try sitting down and evaluating your long-term career goals.
Do they reflect what you want for your life? If you could do whatever you wanted, without input from anyone else, would you still pursue the goals ahead of you?
Here are a few prompts we use to assess goals:
If I accomplish this goal, will it bring me closer to becoming who I want to be?
Does this goal serve me or someone else? If it doesn’t help me, can I accept that?
If I achieve this objective, what happens next? Am I comfortable with where this road goes?
If you allow it, your life will always follow someone else's priorities. But if you identify what feels real and purposeful to you, you can re-chart your course and work towards something that feels fulfilling and purposeful. If you find it hard to slow down to even reflect then you may need to practice your meditation muscle.
2. You Don’t Have A Cause
Pioneers don't only pursue careers, but a cause to rally behind. Elon Musk’s objective is to innovate and transform the transportation industry. Jane Goodall’s cause is to protect chimpanzees. Their purpose in life is not defined by a job title, but by an overarching mission that impacts everything they do.
When you have a cause, you can link your job, career, and even your personal life to it. You can conquer limiting beliefs and find purpose in your day-to-day life.
You can begin with identifying your values. For instance, Jane Goodall cares about conversation, preservation, and awareness. Those values relate to her purpose and also impact day-to-day decisions. Elon Musk believes in innovation and progress.
Where do you stand?
Think of 3-5 things you feel inspired about and believe in. Do you think healthcare should be accessible to everyone? Do you want every child to receive a good education? What sets your soul on fire and gives you the inspiration to act and contribute?
With this insight, you can begin to get a clearer picture of where you should dedicate your time and talent.
3. There’s No Inspiration In Your Work
When you regularly feel disinterested in your day-to-day work, it won’t matter what your objectives are. You may meet your goals eventually, but in the process, you will sacrifice your time and fulfillment. That much unhappiness and uncertainty can impact your health, wellness, and every other area of your life.
You may have accomplished something but will have given up so much more. No matter how much wealth, influence, or recognition you hope to gain from meeting an objective, your daily fulfillment is much more critical.
Because when you feel purposeful each day, all of the work you do will feel important and meaningful.You will sprint through your goals instead of trudging towards them. Keep in mind this doesn't mean it's a cake walk or a short cut. You may actually be taking on more of challenge but your energy and confidence are at higher level.
However, when you’re in the thick of it, it can be difficult to tell if you’re unhappy at your job or only going through a rough patch. We figure this out with a practice called values linking. With values linking, you take your values and relate them to the activities you’re doing.
For example, if you believe in saving the environment, but you’re working at an organization that works against that value, your lack of fulfillment stems from there.
Another way to uncover alternative career paths is imagining you won the lottery. Would you continue to work at your job, or would you invest your time, energy, and skill set in something more meaningful? What would that job be?
The lottery exercise can help shed light on your true motivations and get you back on track to purposeful work.
4. Your Goals Are Unrealistic
Gary John Bishop, a prominent author in the self-improvement space, believes that shooting for the moon can do more harm than good. While setting lofty goals is exciting, when you fall short of meeting those goals, you feel uninspired in your career. Goals that your existing circumstances will not allow you to meet are also dangerous.
You know you can't do what it takes to meet the goal. It’s too far out of reach. You’re setting finish lines that you cannot cross.
That's why Bishop believes that setting the right goals requires self-awareness.
“When you start to view the world through the lens of what you’re willing and unwilling to pursue, rather than what it seems you want and don’t want, things start to become a lot clearer”
When you think of a goal, look at it closely. Outline everything that would need to occur for your goal to be possible. With this, you can establish a start-to-finish path. You can identify benchmarks and bottlenecks.
Often, the bottleneck is you. You can’t run a marathon if you’re not willing and committed to getting up and running every day.
5. You Don’t Have An Action Plan
Once you have a goal in mind and understand what needs to occur to accomplish it, create an action plan to see it to fruition. That means finding ways to measure your progress and hold yourself accountable. You want to aspire to solve long-term problems and avoid being short-sighted in the interest of comfort or ease.
Ari Wallach did a great TEDxMidAtlantic Talk about planning for the (very) long term. In the talk, he identifies a tactic called “the long path” that breaks apart three ways of thinking.
First, there’s transgenerational thinking or shifting your mindset to the world after your death, and the actions you can take now to contribute to it. Second, there’s futures thinking, or thinking about how our actions now will impact our life 10-15 years from now. Third, there is telos thinking, or adopting an Odyssey-like mindset. Odysseus’s end game was returning to Ithaca and Penelope.
What is your Ithaca, and what’s the plan to get there?
Often, this is the most challenging aspect of goal-setting, and you may need extra help. At this stage, having a mentor or a coach can be incredibly beneficial. You can work with a consultant or an objective third-party who does not have any stakes in your success. Even Odysseus had some help.
Setting Long-Term Career Goals That Matter
After some reflection, you may realize that your unhappiness is purely a symptom of a stressful work period. You may decide that the goals you have in place are worthwhile. In that case, push forward. However, if you realize that your long-term career goals do not align with what you ultimately want for your life, it may be time to take a step back and reassess.
When you have goals that align with your values and feel achievable, you will feel unstoppable. The long-term career goals you set will be worth it because it's an inspired investment. You will be striving towards your higher purpose and calling.
For additional clarity about where you are in your career and where you should go from here, check out our Career Clarity Assessment. After answering a few short questions, you can have the guidance you need to reset your path.
