Week 3: Finding Your Flow

Recognising your strengths to build confidence and choose the right roe

---

✨ Coaching Offer ✨

I’d love to support you with the work that you have started with this challenge.

• If you’ve found that you’re not sure about your career path.

• You feel stuck in your current role.

• Need to work on your confidence.

I’m offering you three coaching sessions with me for £95 each (usually £150).

Let’s take this challenge a step further and make an impact in your career.

Through coaching, you will find the time and space to discuss your challenges and find the right solutions.

We will find what has been holding you back so you can move ahead with confidence and clarity.

The offer expires on March 18th, so book soon to take advantage of the price.

You can also arrange a call with me beforehand to discuss coaching.

More information can be found here: Coaching Offer Details.

---

Welcome to week 3 of the Career Clarity Challenge.

As a recap, the previous two weeks have gone through the following:

• Personal job satisfaction - Consider the seven career aspects and what you want from each of them. This will help you know what to look for, giving you clarity in decision-making.

• Starting With The End In Mind - Creating a career vision so that you know the direction of your career.

This week, we are focusing on your strengths!

I want to start by asking you to reflect on the following:

How often do you reflect on your strengths and achievements?

How do you feel when you do?

For this challenge, I’d like you to do just that because:

• When we do this regularly, it can help us to build confidence and develop greater self-belief. Plus, we can create a strong foundation for exploring and moving out of our comfort zones.

• We can create our personal brands when we share our achievements and strengths more widely. This can lead to better opportunities for your career.

• We can find roles/careers that are in line with our strengths and capabilities. The tool I’m sharing for paid subscribers below aims to help you discover motivational drivers so you can relate these to your role.

---

What could be stopping us?

However, analysing our own strengths can be tricky. I know lots of women have been taught not to brag or make a big deal of their achievements, which doesn’t help with how we see ourselves.

In my culture, there is this concept of ‘nazar’, where you can attract the evil eye if you share something good too widely. I’ve found that this has impacted me in more areas than I realised. If you want to work on your personal brand, you need to make people aware of your achievements, so understanding these cultural nuances, their impact, and how you feel about them is crucial. What cultural/ family aspects may be preventing you from sharing your achievements? 

Research has shown that humans also have a negativity bias. We are more likely to focus on adverse events than on positive ones. Even if we have many positive events throughout the day, we could be derailed by one negative comment or situation and tend to think about it for longer.

To balance this out, we can focus our attention on more positive events and feelings. This is one of the reasons I enjoy journaling: It gives me a chance to look objectively at the events of the day. I usually list positive and negative things that have happened and what I’d like to change. I really recommend this if you feel that you focus more on negative events.

I also want to link your strengths to what you enjoy. This can be known as finding your state of ‘flow’.

‘Flow is the feeling you get when you are so immersed in an activity that you don’t notice anything around you and you aren’t aware of the passing of time. In general, it is achieved through using strengths and is shown to have a positive impact on work.’ (Julia Yates)

I have no set list of strengths or competencies here, as they are very individual. Strengths are also not necessarily work-based; think about what you are good at and enjoy generally, in or outside of work.

As in previous weeks, use a notepad, go somewhere where you won’t be disturbed and reflect on the following questions:

• When do you feel in your element/state of flow?

• What activities do you enjoy? Think about when you are in that state of flow.

• Describe the event(s).

• What makes you good at it?

• What strength would you say you showed?

Try to go through a few experiences/situations until you identify 3-4 strengths.

If you are looking for a different career path or role, you could now link these strengths to particular job titles. Consider brainstorming all the roles where your strengths become an advantage.

There are also other ways to use your strengths:

• Job applications: You now have a list of experiences and strengths to showcase your talent.

• Create your personal brand. Share with people what you excel at and what you want to be known for. This can start with colleagues and managers, but you can also use it in networking events.

• Activities like this are designed to help you focus on the positives. Keeping a list of strengths and achievements with you, perhaps written down and kept on your desk or on your phone, could help you bounce back quicker when you have those moments of negativity.

---

Paid Subscribers

I’m sharing a great coaching tool that can help you find the types of roles you are more attracted to. This is based on the premise that finding a job more congruent with your particular motivation or strength will likely lead to a fulfilling role.