Yesterday something happened to me that happens all the time. I met a new person and she happened to be looking for a job. I asked her what kind of job she was looking for and she curled her lip, shrugged her shoulders and said, “anything really.”

Okay, I’ll admit this is a pet peeve for me. Here she is looking for a job and any job will do. Do you believe that? Yeah, me neither. I’m sure anybody she’s networking with feels like they have to do a lot of work to learn anything about her and her skills and ambition. My guess is her cover letters and resumes and any applications that she is putting out there are very nonspecific too. This is likely the main reason that her job search has gone on nine months so far with no offers which is certainly a source of frustration for this bright, young woman.

Of course I can’t resist talking to anyone about their career. So I asked a few more questions and found out that she was a burned out elementary school teacher who had been teaching for three years. She felt like she was a statistic because she had heard reports that so many new teachers only last three to five years in the field. I told her that might be true but most people these days are only in any job for three to five years before being let go or otherwise choosing to move on anyway. I also tried to reassure her that sometimes you don’t know if you will like a profession until you’re in it but you can always learn something from it.

As we continued to visit, finally her eyes lit up about something. What she really wanted was to start her own business! She had already done a lot of research into potential businesses and was continually drawn to ideas centered on working with children. She also wanted to continue to use her curriculum development and organizational skills. Now we were onto something! Better yet her education and time teaching would nicely support such a business endeavor which was really important to her.

So by the end of the conversation she had a new person in her personal network. I was also able to provide her with several resources to check out. We also had an impromptu brainstorming session which resulted in several business concepts that she is excited to research further.

Moral of the story: knowing what you want sure helps other people help you…even people you just met.

It is about taking responsibility for yourself.
Your career is your own and it belongs to no one else. You have within you the power to create it, to live it as an expression of your unique talents and energy. The other choice is to work at the whim of others, not usually a positive place to be since it is difficult to be inspired and enthusiastic when you believe the choice was someone else’s. Instead, be empowered knowing that you are in control! You may not always choose the activities of your day but you do choose the spirit in which you complete each task. Focus on what you are doing and enjoy the process. Spend some time working to understand yourself in order to better communicate that to your personal network, potential employers, clients, project managers, and partners to secure the best-fit opportunities for you at any moment in time.

It is about creating your future.
It involves self-reflection, learning, researching, planning, and/or talking a little everyday about accomplishments, potential, and opportunity. It is not an obsessive thing though. It is more about going with the flow in a productive manner yet always honoring where you are right now in the process so that your day-to-day work is a source of fulfillment and positive energy.

It is about choices.
Career and personal development is an ever evolving process of making more and better distinctions of who you are and what you want during different phases of your life. Career development is influenced by your whole life…your own changing roles as well as personal and economic circumstances. You will be choosing again and again to create the path of your personal career development throughout your lifetime. You will also make choices each day about how you feel about your work and the attitude and energy you will bring to it and take from it.

It is about rapid change.
Today’s world of work is highly competitive and in a constant state of flux. We can no longer expect to stay with the same company for 20 years then retire. The current environment is much more dynamic with many more opportunities for success when an individual properly manages their own career and personal development.

It is about quality of life.
Think about it, what is a career? It is about the work you do over time and involves such ideas as your productivity, the way you contribute, how you are driven to spend your non-leisure time. Some people are driven to accomplish lots, others are interested in a simpler and more independent existence. Your career becomes the work activities (whether that is paid or unpaid work –such as volunteers, students, parents, and homemakers) that you participate in during your lifetime. Because of the current complexity and speed of life, managing your own career development is an important task for having some control of your quality of life.

It is about hard work completed with ease.
People who know themselves well (by understanding their strengths, what they enjoy, what they want, what they have already accomplished, what they can uniquely contribute, where they are going) are so easy to spot in their enthusiasm and confidence. They are like a breath of fresh air so people and opportunities are drawn to them like vacationers to a sunny beach!

Millionaire Blueprints is one of my favorite reads. There are great stories in here to inspire entrepreneurs and people in traditional careers since the featured bios demonstrate a lot of creative thinking and persistence. You can also feel the passion of people in all kinds of businesses and careers which is very inspirational.

I think reading good stuff like this makes an abundance mindset more likely by helping to keep us more aware of opportunities all around us as well as our own potential based on our unique combination of personal strengths.

So, have you heard about infopreneuring? I first read about it in Robert Allen’s book Multiple Streams of Income back in 2004. He defines an infopreneur as, “an entrepreneur whose main product is information.” He goes on to say that having expertise and being able to deliver that in a nice package for others is something people will pay for. He provides examples and procedures for helping others locate their core expertise to use as the basis for their infopreneuring. He even went so far as to say, “Intellectual property is the real wealth of the new millennium.” (He also has a new book out called Multiple Streams of Internet Income that I intend to read next time I get a free minute.)