Guest Post by Emily Bennington (learn more about the author at the end of the article):
Women in the workplace need to focus more on who they want to be in addition to what they want to achieve. Regardless of the big overall goal, it’s still small in comparison to who you have to be to master it and then keep it.
However, women in business face a challenge. They don’t know who they want to be. They haven’t taken the time to think about and then strategize who they want to become and figure out how to become that person.
You have to be more to do more. Forget about goals.
Who do you want to be? Don’t anchor your happiness around goals. When you’re focused on goals, you’re always in the future. You can’t get anywhere fast enough so you spend the majority of your time trying to prove yourself, be somewhere else, get to that ever elusive next level. This is the wrong focus. Placing your level of success on what you get done, and your level of failure on what you didn’t get done, is the wrong focus.
You need to:
- Forget the past
- Forgive yourself
- Ignore the future to some extent
- Be excellent in the present moment…right now
You also need to understand that work/life balance is a myth. Life doesn’t stop when you go to the office; work doesn’t stop when you go home.
You can kick ass in your job, set goals, and enjoy the journey too. But first you have to try. You need to create the groundswell to be the change in the world. Or, maybe you need to find another job if your work environment is too toxic to be who you want to be.
About the Author
Emily Bennington is a career-transition consultant and has led employee development programs for numerous Fortune 500 companies. She has been featured as a career expert o CNN, ABC, and Fox Business, and quoted in publications including the wall Street Journal, New York post, and Washington Post Express. Emily is a contributing writer for Monster.com, a featured blogger for Forbes Woman and Huffington Post, and coauthor of Effective Immediately: How to Fit In, Stand Out, and Move Up at Your First Real Job. Her new book, Who Says It’s a Man’s World: The Girls’ Guide to Corporate Domination, is available now.
