There’s the typical questions you ask yourself when choosing a new career or deciding on a new job. Things like what you like doing, where you want to work, where you can see yourself in ten, twenty, fifty years time.
Such questions are incredibly useful, and by asking them you can gather up a lot of valuable information. But by design, they only get at what you’re thinking on the surface, and as a result, only bring back superficial answers.
When trying to find your ideal job, you need to tap into your real intrinsic, wants, motivations, and desires. And to do so, you need to delve deep into your psyche through by using much more piercing and thought-provoking questions.
Here are three such questions that by asking yourself are sure to move you leaps and bounds in the direction of your perfect career and job.
What are you willing to sacrifice?
If your ideal job is one which is wonderful and fulfilling one hundred percent of the time, then let me tell you, it doesn’t exist.
Everything, even the best jobs out there, are terrible at least some of the time. Therefore, to find your ideal job, you’re not going to do it by deluding yourself into some idyllic vision. A better way is to dive into the murky depths of what a job is really like and ask yourself if it is worth making such a sacrifice for.
Through questioning, you’ll quickly eliminate a lot of jobs and before you know be left with just one or two that seem right for you.
What drove you as a child?
When we were little, a lot of us had grand ideas about what we wanted to be when we grew up. We wanted to be zoo keepers, judges, artists, presidents, and astronauts. But puberty and reality soon came crashing in and we forgot we ever had such bold dreams.
Of course, dropping everything to become an astronaut is not feasible for the vast majority of people. The point is, there were reasons behind the things we wanted to do, and so instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, we should reconnect with those reasons to help understand what we want to do today and find the ideal job.
For instance, if you wanted to be the president, why was that so? Did you have an affinity for leadership? A desire to help people? Or a love of innovation and improvement? Asking such questions can uncover your hidden wishes and aspirations and save you much valuable time and effort in choosing the right career.
What would you be happy failing at?
If you want to get good at something, you first need to be bad at it. Therefore, failure is inevitable if you want to find your ideal job.
The problem is, as being bad at something and failure typically means looking stupid and embarrassing yourself, we often steer clear of such new and familiar things and stick to the safer and more comfortable gigs.
As a result, we don’t even get close to trying the professions and careers we really want. Avoid this pitfall by asking yourself what would you be happy doing even if you failed or sucked doing it. This can help you dispel external pressures from family, society, and social norms, and get more closely inline with your real internal motivations.