Feeling Stuck in Your Career? Here Is How to Move Forward

You’re unhappy and unsure what to do about it. To get unstuck and move forward, take the first crucial step and conduct a thoughtful self-assessment of your work life. Truthfully diagnose the cause and identify the solution by assessing your career experiences over time, reflecting on your current situation, and envisioning your future career life.

At this point, your mind goes through a range of doubts, hesitations, and self-belief. Most employees often throw in the towel and walk away. But there is always a way out of this. Here are some strategies to help you move forward in your career life.

Tap into New Ideas

An important way to re-energize is to expose yourself to new learning and novel ideas. You can ask your employer for more development, but you can also expand learning yourself. Seeking new skills and information, joining networking groups and classes anything that sparks your curiosity and discovery. Open yourself up to new ways of doing your work, refresh yourself, and get exposed to ideas and people who will help you see and think differently. 

Give Your Mind and Life a Break

Permit yourself to take a break from the usual ride of work life. Take a long break from work, connect with family, and friends, and travel to new places. Give yourself a new experience, this allows you to take a step back to recalibrate. Properly identify the solution to being stuck in your career life. Reminisce your career experiences enjoyed over time, while reflecting on the cause of your current situation and envisioning your future career life and the next steps you want to take in your career.

Brainstorm and Map Out Your Options

At this stage you are often overwhelmed and do not see your goals clearly, it is ideal you focus on the possibility of getting a solution. Listing out every possible option will help you narrow down your solutions, no matter how big or small, and write them down. Do you need to switch departments, or roles, do you need to get a new job totally, do you need to further your education to upgrade yourself, do you need to get a work buddy or work sponsor to help you soar in your career? Writing down these options will draw you close to a solution to take an action.

Ask for Help

Navigating through career life alone can be a daunting task. It’s easy to feel trapped, overwhelmed or dead-ended. That is why you need a support system even at work, whether it is your boss, work bestie, or work sponsor you need someone to support you in such a moment. No one is an island, most successful employees didn’t get to the top all by themselves, but they got help along the way. You can speak to someone to help you navigate through such times, asking for guidance and deciding on your next steps. Learning to ask for help, especially at work is a valuable skill that can go a long way to give you the needed new perspective in your career.

Take Action & Be Patient

After getting a solution make a move. It is the life-changing step that can give you the results you are looking for. Taking an action is critical to getting unstuck. You can get all the help you need if you map out your options but if you don’t take action then you are likely to remain stuck.  Sometimes when we’re stuck, we just need to be patient, especially after we have implemented all the strategies. Results might not come immediately after you implement them, some may take time to move you from feeling stuck.

Which of these strategies do you think will work best for you and your current stuck situation? You don’t have to use all of them just the one that speaks to you more and implement it to help you to keep moving forward.

Photo: Dean Drobot/Shutterstock

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