How To Make Room For What’s Next In Your Career

As we leave behind a year like no other, many are pondering the future of their careers.

Now is the perfect time for reflection and assessing your readiness for what's next: are there things in your professional world that you no longer need, dragging you down and preventing you from making progress?

Here's how to remove the metaphorical clutter and make room for what's next in your career:

Get hyper-focused on what you want.

The first step in preparing for your future career plans is to identify what you want, even (and especially) if that is vastly different from what you've previously wanted.

When you're clear, everything becomes easier. People understand you, what you offer, your value, what differentiates you, how you can help them, and how they can assist you. Having clarity enables you to align your goals with a plan to achieve them—and stay away from the things that can derail you.

But here's the thing about clarity: it demands specificity, and there is no room for a wishy-washy answer. You can't make progress if you "kind of" want something. The more focused you can be about what matters most to you, the better.

Say no now, so you can say yes later.

In a quest to be agreeable and accommodating, you may have inadvertently trapped yourself in a "yes-land," always agreeing to things you wish you hadn't, that are unnecessary, and that burn through your precious time—big mistake.

Leaders from Buffet to Jobs embraced the power of no to master decision-making and time management, which fueled their success. We must choose, with intention, to what we say yes and to what we say no. It all comes down to simplifying, prioritizing, and focusing our attention on what matters most.

If you want to grow your career, you need to learn to say no now, so you can say yes later.

Get rid of unnecessary baggage.

Are you still clinging to plans you made for yourself a decade ago? Or maybe you feel locked into the expectation someone else—a teacher, a parent, or an old boss—placed on you? Perhaps you're hoarding past career experience that has nothing to do with how you want others to perceive you or harboring jealousy of your well-to-do peers.

Give yourself permission to release any outdated notions, remove irrelevant experience from your CV or LinkedIn profile, and drop any unhealthy comparison and envy. When you let go of this unnecessary baggage, you're creating space for something better.

Give yourself a pep talk.

There's no question that a career change—even a self-initiated career change—can be scary. And it's far too easy to allow that fear to convince us not to go after what we want. The stories we tell ourselves are the most important words we speak because they play on repeat in our heads. When you fill your head with negative self-talk like I'm not good enough, I'm not ready, or I'm just a __________ (whatever you are now), not a _________ (whatever you'd like to be), you prevent yourself from embracing the possibility of a new and better future.

Instead, use a little compassion, and treat yourself the way you would a treasured friend. Words have power, especially the ones you say—or don't say—to yourself. By replacing self-sabotaging talk with a self-affirming pep talk, you'll abandon limiting beliefs and adopt a growth-focused mindset.

Change your environment.

Your environment, which includes your friends, colleagues, location, habits, and lifestyle, impacts you far more—for better or worse—than you realize; it always wins. You've likely grown and evolved, and what once worked for you has probably changed. You can't make a significant, lasting change without altering some elements of your environment.

Become more discerning with your time by asking yourself if what you're about to do supports what you want to do, not just what you've done. And this doesn't only apply to things; consider with whom you're spending your time—are they "energy vampires," or does time with them leave you feeling uplifted? Align yourself with people and things that support your destiny, not your history.

When you remove what's cluttering your career, you'll clear the path for professional progress.

An earlier of this article was first published on Forbes.com. Find it here, and my other Forbes articles here.

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