Get to know yourself...

Today’s topic deals with the importance of knowing yourself before making decisions concerning your own professional orientation. The classic pitfall to avoid is a mid-life slippage: whereby a person, having had positions of responsibility, continues to have good professional experiences but on shorter periods of time. They find themselves in the situation, where the pathway to success has been changed into a sequence of failures that are difficult to present to a future employer. The fact is that around 45, you find yourself at a crossroads.

An individual spends the first 25 years of his professional life according to the construction that he imagined during his adolescence. The second part of his professional life is built on his know-how and life-skills gained during the first part of his professional life. This state of reconstruction is essential.

Around 45, enriched from 20 years of experience, it is worth asking yourself the following questions:

• Does your chosen orientation conform to your expectations?
• What prevented you from doing exactly what you wanted?
• What has been your mindset during these last few years?
• What happened in your previous job?

This time period often leads you to realize that the situation in which you find yourself is not a consequence of external circumstances such as, a takeover, a new boss etc…Accidents happen everyday. What is important is the way in which you respond and adapt to them. The goal of this new maturity is to give you the tools, which, in the future, will help you to adapt to different situations. For this, there is only one solution: analyzing yourself deeply in order to know your strengths and rely on them, as well as detecting your weaknesses and putting strategies in places to get around them.

In general, we have a relatively good knowledge of how we function, but we use this knowledge "a posteriori" instead of using it to choose and master our environment. The difference between the first approach (suffering) and the second (proactive) relies essentially on one things. First of all, you write down how you think you function on a piece of paper; to be well aware of it and agree to make the best use of it without judgment, rather than trying change yourself.

A quick way is to pass some behavioral tests. I have a preference for the MBTI, which identifies clearly the differences and the aptitudes that exists between people. This theory assumes that some differences are innate and they generate behavior patterns. This means that you will never perform better than in a job that uses your innate abilities.

If your job is not in line with to your capacities, to perform at the top you will use a lot of energy and you risk burning out. Or, you may meet someone who finds your job easier and who may finish by taking your place.

The most common uses of this test are carrier choices or personal relationships. It allows you to know yourself better: determines your values, your contributions in an organization or your potential risks… but also describes the behavior patterns of your counterparts and how to communicate better with them.