It can seem impossible to think of your career development path as “abundant” when you feel stuck in a dead end job.

IAMX has always had abundance and an abundant philosophy baked into our methodology for True Self alignment and transformation. The recent launch of Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s persuasive book, Abundance: The Future is Better than You Think, appears at a perfect time to bring heightened awareness and focus to seeking a more abundant life, fueled by abundant careers.

But when your resume appears to shackle you to a limited career path, “abundant” is perhaps the last adjective you would choose to describe your life. Even worse when your current work environment feels stagnant or seems to be a never-ending spiral of politics and drama.

The daily grind can easily grind you into mush and hopelessness if you don’t do something to reset your career view and break the cycle of work that appears to lead nowhere.

Fiona’s Common Career Dilemma

I recently worked with a client in exactly this kind of state. When Fiona looked at her education and resume, she saw herself locked into a future path that she didn’t like very much. Her choice of education had been based on family history and something she “thought” she would like to do for a living.

After working in her career for a few years she discovered two things:

1. She didn’t like the work her education prepared her to do at all, and
2. Her job was a far distance from what she enjoyed and really wanted do with her life.

To complicate the situation, office politics and the tension she felt about her career seemed to make matters worse among her co-workers. Contentment and abundance were nowhere in sight.

To put this in IAMX terms, Fiona’s “career path” had verged way off of her “True Self path” and now she had no idea how to find her way back. Fiona’s dilemma presents such a common pattern that it is almost a textbook portrait of most people’s career stories.

How Do We Lose Our True Self Path?

It happens more often than not. We choose an educational or career focus because it is something we think we want to do or simply because a job is available. We begin to do some aspect of work well even though it may not be something we like to do.

People recognize that we do it well so they give us more of it. Before we know it we get promoted, receive more pay and maybe even are asked to manage other people in an area of work that does very little to light our passions.

Five, ten or fifteen years down the road our career path is so far off our soul path that we can’t see the forest for the trees that now suffocate us. The tread mill that keeps us on that path never stops and only seems to go faster.

Combine this scenario with a drama-filled work environment and your job can look a lot more like living hell than any kind of vision of “abundance”.

IF THIS SOUNDS LIKE YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW, KEEP READING …

The Path Back to Your Path

There are three essential realizations that are invaluable in helping unlock you from your current career path and align your journey back to your soul path. These are important mind shift changes that lead to changes in action. Collectively they can majorly reset your career.

Realization 1: Your education and career history are not life sentences. We often hear people attempt to justify staying in a career they hate because of the “investments” they have made in their education and work experience so far. That is roughly equivalent to a company trying to get full price for inventory they purchased five or ten years ago that should have long since been depreciated down to zero.

Accountants call investments made in the past “sunk cost”. In other words, that investment was already made and is water under the bridge. Far better to retool those assets into something more valuable than to keep trying to milk old value out of them and remain in a career that does not ignite you. Your career assets are often more valuable aligned with something you love to do.

Realization 2: Resumes can be counterproductive. Your resume can work against you in your goal of aligning your work and True Self. Resumes are often deceptive and counterproductive documents when it comes to finding the right career for you. That’s because they aren’t accurate portraits of what you “want” to do; they often simply record and market what you “did” do. Your resume is not the sum total of you.

If your resume presentation doesn’t contain a balance of your work history AND your future career desires, it will most likely perpetuate your problem by finding you more of what you don’t want to do. Far better to use your resume as one piece of the larger story of your career direction, including your past history AND future vocational desires.

Realization 3: Abundance is available NOW. This may be the most difficult of the three mind shifts to make. As you consider realigning your career, your current situation, including all of its joys and sorrows, is exactly what you need to get you to a better place. In fact, your deepest current agony and the most troublesome people in your life are often the best clues to your release into career enjoyment.

We call the challenging stuff “Drama“ and it contains some of the most valuable assets you have in recognizing your current situation as “abundant”

States of Vision and Contentment

One clue into realizing how to create “Abundance Now” comes from Vishen Lakhiani, the founder and CEO of Mindvalley.

Vishen defines four states of vision and contentment that can easily be applied to jobs and careers. These states determine whether we are sinking in a negative spiral of misery, trapped in neutral states of stress or complacency, or rising abundantly in what Vishen calls a “State of Flow“.

Combining Vishen’s vision of “Flow” with IAMX’s approach to managing Drama can provide you with a structured framework for transforming your current “job” situation into a career about which you can feel “abundant”.

IAMX’s Tools for Achieving Career Abundance

The career path mind shifts and the True Self alignment framework are enabled on the front end by the FREE High Level True Self Alignment Assessment available here.

Using this tool you can assess and chart your desires for your True Self alignment journey – so you can align your path for abundance.

Regarding our client Fiona, who thought she was stuck on some career path train tracks she couldn’t exit … a few hours with the True Self Assessment, assisted with IAMX coaching enabled her to jump the tracks and head back toward the career path where she belongs. According to Fiona, her outlook now is very hopeful.

Your Purpose = Your Abundant Career – You were uniquely endowed with a purpose.

You are the only person on the planet who can serve that purpose in the unique way that only you can. Aligning with that purpose can lead you to abundance faster than you think … NOW, in fact.

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