This question (Who are you?) was posed by me to someone recently in regards to their career fulfillment.
I felt there was an unhealthy gap between the way they saw their possible career/future and what I sensed could potentially be achieved in their life.
In other words, I saw two different people that they could become, but which one was going to become the real them in relation to experiencing a fulfilling career and life!

Here’s a couple of takeaways that came from it that I believe are applicable to a large number of people trying to work out what they should do with their career and life

• Great Achievers in life see bigger possibilities for themselves than other people. They see the future differently primarily because they think differently about it.
• Many of us could achieve greater and more fulfilling lives if we learned to simply think differently.
• These thinking habits can be learned. The thoughts required to enlarge our thinking about what is really possible – about what we could potentially achieve – these can be learnt.
• How do you learn to think this way? In exactly the same way you learn any new habit. It’s no different than deciding to get fit or eating more healthily.

How Can I Learn to Think Bigger and Better?

The way you think is a habit that can be learned and many people have done this.
In the same way that a person wanting to lose weight must change what goes into their mouth.
A person who wants to change their mental fitness must change what goes into their mind.

Have you ever tried losing weight and you suddenly find yourself with a piece of food in your hand that you know you shouldn’t eat?
If you have got to a significant discipline level, you may elect to put the food back on the plate and not eat it.
It’s the same with the thoughts you eat.
You must identify what thoughts will serve you well and what ones won’t and take steps not to allow the unproductive thoughts to be eaten.

How to Protect And Feed Your Mind

In my experience, one significant culprit in this space is our continued consumption of gloomy media – TV, radio, social media, newspaper, etc.

There is very little good in most of these for your mind – with some exceptions. I have had several news/media fast’s in the past and my mind was significantly better for it.
I’m doing one now!

Of course, that is only the intake sources.
Our human nature often gravitates to unproductive negative thinking all by itself.

There is a proverb that says “As a man thinks so he will become”.
In fact, James Allen wrote a whole book about this topic which became a classic.

You can download a free copy here

What If I Fail!

One of the reasons people are hesitant to embrace a bigger thinking future for themselves is because they are concerned they might fail.
I have some great news for you on this. It’s not that you might fail.
You will fail!

What if I failed 10,000 times?

Every person’s success is simply a series of failures that they employ to make the next outcome better.
When Thomas Edison was interviewed by a journalist prior to creating the light-bulb, the journalist asked him, Mr. Edison, don’t you think it’s time to give up on this electric light thing. I understand you have failed to make it work over 10,000 times.

Edison responded, I haven’t failed 10,000 times, I have successfully found 10,000 ways it will not work.
Not long after, the light bulb became a reality.

The Key to Success – make the wrong decisions!

There was an enthusiastic young man who observed the great success of his father’s friend and wondered how he might become successful also.

How do I become successful the young man asked. Young man, you have to learn to make the right decisions. OK, said the young man, but how do learn I learn to make the right decisions?
Make wrong ones he responded.

What’s Your Potential?

It’s our responsibility as a human being to be always pushing the boundaries to ensure we fulfill all our potential while we are on earth and to do that, we will make lots of wrong decisions.

It would be a waste knowing we left this place without achieving our potential.
What could you do to make sure that doesn’t happen? What could you do to ensure a full and fulfilling career and life?
Do you even know what your true potential is?

_{^{by Pradeep Kumar (Nainital, Uttarakhand, INDIA)}}

Dear Sir,
I am a herbal medicine graduate (B.A.M.S-Bachelor of
Ayurvedic (ancient Indian medicine system) Medicine and Surgery) from Uttaranchal Ayurvedic Medical College, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, INDIA.
It’s a course of 5 1/2 years and 1-year Rotary Internship from Doon Government Hospital and Ayurvedic hospitals in medicine, surgery, E.N.T, Ophthalmology, Pediatrics, Gynecology & Obstetrics, pentad therapy, panchakarma therapy and uses and abuses of herbal medicines as well as light treatment and many other natural therapies that don’t have side effects but are effective in all types of chronic diseases.
I want to know if there are any opportunities for herbal medicine careers/naturopathic careers outside INDIA, especially in New Zealand or Australia.

Herbal Medicine Career Opportunity- Simon’s Response

Hi Pradeep
Opportunities for herbal medicine careers, homeopathy, and other alternative health treatments have been on the increase globally in recent times due to people increasingly seeking these types of treatments.
(See article)
Although this increase has been steady overall, we could probably not describe it as spectacular. For example in New Zealand, one of the countries you were interested in, there has been an approximate 15% increase in the last five years of people working in the natural health remedies/homeopathic sectors.

I never encourage people to get too focused on job market statistics. Whether they be good or bad, they refer to averages and means, most of which become significantly less important when compared to the other key factors that determine the success of an individual securing and keeping a particular job. Things like how passionate the person is for that type of work (which comes across in things like job interviews), how much they are prepared to network and access the underground job market, how committed and persistent they are to make it work once they secure a position, and in the case of being self-employed how entrepreneurial and creative they are in their approaches to gaining clients, and most importantly what sort of reputation they begin to establish in regard to their competence and popularity in their field.

There are opportunities and they have been increasing, however, it should be noted that many health professionals working in this area are self-employed. I’m not sure if this is an option for you or not?

I’m not sure if there are any legal barriers to you commencing work in the homeopathy/herbal medicine careers in countries like Australia or New Zealand.
Here are some useful links that you may like to have a look at to help answer that question: www.homeopathy.co.nz and www.homeopathyoz.org

Employment recruitment agencies are a great resource during a career change.

They can get you in front of employers, provide insightful industry information and if managed right, can also provide general career change help.

However, employment recruitment agencies should only be resorted to after you have completed your self-discovery and uncovered your inborn aptitudes.

It is no good visiting an employment agency until you are very clear on what your natural abilities are and what type of job you want to use those abilities in.

The more targeted and focused on a specific job type that you are when you visit an agency, the more they will warm to you and the more they will be able to help you.

Presenting yourself in this way makes their job easy and they love job applicants who make their job easy.

Agencies Work for the Employer

Employment recruitment agencies primarily work for [and are paid by] the employer.
But the process is very much a win-win situation for both employees and employers.

Agencies need fantastic employees coming through their doors as much as they need great employers with job opportunities.

If the agency doesn’t provide the employer with the very best staff, they will not get any repeat business.

Employment Agencies Can Provide You with Valuable Information

Employment recruitment agencies can be a fantastic source of industry information once you have established the direction you want to go to.
It is important that you choose an agency that is specializing in your area of employment.

Before meeting with the agency’s purpose to establish a good rapport, then use the meeting to gain inside industry information.

Make up a list of your questions before you go.
What do you need to know about the industry and what do you need to know about the main employers within the industry.
As mentioned asking questions like this can only be done after you have established rapport, so plan ahead how you will do this.

Find out how many placements the agency works with on average each month/year within the industry you are interested in?

You can also point out that you are proactively changing careers.
Prod them for any industry-specific career change help that they think would benefit someone in your position.

You may be surprised at some of the valuable tips that an agent working in a specialist employment area can offer on how to change careers successfully.

Employment Agencies Love Passionate People

A critical component of your interview with the employment agency is to convey in great detail and with great passion, your innate abilities.

Of course, you can only do this once you have established what they as a result of completing your career assessment.

There is nothing more enjoyable for employment recruitment agencies than to place a genuinely passionate and gifted employee with an employer who is in need of those exact talents.

A number of employment recruitment agencies work in a proactive manner, in that when they discover someone who is particularly passionate and gifted in an area, they will contact known employers to see if they have an opening.

Employers are always willing to employ people who can add to their organization despite the fact they may not have a particular opening prior to being introduced to a prospect.

[This is how I employed my now wife. She applied for a job in a business that I owned but she wasn’t suitable for the advertised management role. However, I could see that she had some gifts and abilities that we could use. So I created a job for her]

Use Employment Recruitment Agencies For Practice Interviews

There may be two different instances where you find yourself sitting in front of a recruitment agent.
One is when you are seriously chasing a job they have advertised or a job that you think they may have on their books.

The other instance is a little less formal where you manage to arrange a meeting with the agency to test the market and to use the meeting to gather additional industry information.

The agency will always be looking at you as a potential candidate to market to employers, however, you may not be ready for that yet if you are still in the information-gathering mode.

In both cases, the meeting or interview with the employment agency is a good opportunity for job interview practice.
One thing that job seekers get very little practice during their job search is interview training.
Of course, if you are applying for a lot of jobs and managing to get a number of interviews, you will get practice this way.

However, you really want to be good at job interviewing before the first real job interview comes along so that opportunities are not wasted.

Here is a piece of career change advice that I have seen to help many people.

Practice Job Interview Training in Front of a Video Camera

I have seen numerous job applicants substantially improve their job interview techniques by simply watching themselves on video in a mock interview.
This is something you can easily do yourself.

Using my list of job interview questions, find a friend or family member to ask you the questions on camera.

Then sit down and watch yourself in the interview while taking notes of the areas you can improve in.
Repeat this exercise a few times implementing your improvements.
You will quickly become proficient at job interviewing.

What To Do After the Job Agency Meeting

1. If you were pursuing a particular job, then you should send the agency a thank you note and small gift soon after the meeting, but before you know any decision will be made.

I feel a very unusual sensation – if it is not indigestion,
I think it must be gratitude.
~Benjamin Disraeli

For example post [don’t e-mail] a handwritten ‘thank you for the interview’ note expressing your gratitude for the opportunity for an interview.

You could also enclose a token gift such as a small chocolate bar or coffee voucher to a nearby cafe etc if you thought it was appropriate.

The ‘thank you for the interview’ note should include:

• a thank you for the opportunity to interview for the position
• a very brief [one to two sentences maximum] reiteration of why you would love the job
• a thank you for any advice or career change help as a result of your questions.
• your token thank you gift( if any)

Why do you send a thank-you note and a small gift?
Firstly, it’s common courtesy to say thank you to someone who has provided you a possible job opportunity.

Secondly, you do this because everything you do in your job search must be done in a way that differentiates you from the masses.
You are in the marketing game and marketing is all about standing out from the crowd in a positive light.

2. If you weren’t pursuing a particular job but this was more of a general meeting with one of the employment recruitment agencies to gather industry information and test the market, you should still send the gift and the ‘thank you for interview’ note as above.

Why?

Because your goal is to leave an impression on everybody that you network with so that they are happy to hear from you again in the near future.

These little acts of kindness help you stand apart from others and it leaves the door open for further contact. You might be amazed at how the little things can make a big difference.

Hi, my name is Simon Davies.
Before I became qualified and began providing career change advice, I had my own career and life search moment.

I was sitting in my first floor office in Christchurch, when I had a life changing moment

I had worked in a number of jobs and then at the age of twenty-three I started my own business; a two-store video rental business that I owned for seven years.

This was in the early 1980s just when videos were getting going and the business became quite successful.

Coming from a family that never had much money (six kids), I now found myself with more money than I knew what to do with.

Although being self-employed was my most enjoyable role up to that point, I had become unfulfilled and a bit frustrated at work and in life.

What Did I Want to Achieve In Life

I began to think long and hard about what it was that I really wanted to achieve in my life.

Success in business had allowed me to obtain many of the material things that an average 28 year old would want, including a freehold house and money to spend on my expensive hobby (motorsport).

Then one day in May 1990, I was sitting in my first-floor office in Colombo St, when I had a life-changing moment.



I had just completed a review of an SMI goal-setting program when I began to realize that I had now achieved many of the relatively ambitious goals that I had set.

Most of my goals related to growing my business, getting more money and material possessions, and motorsport achievements.
But as I reviewed my goals I felt something wasn’t quite right.

My Turning Point

As I thought about what I had achieved, I began to become increasingly frustrated.

The frustration grew and grew to a point where I began to ask the question

What is success in life all about?

I soon realized that any number of these goals on their own was not going to bring me the fulfillment I was looking for.


I was now aged 30 and I was in the early stages of a total paradigm shift in my philosophy towards success in work and life.

I felt I had wasted a lot of years chasing things that I thought would bring greater satisfaction than they actually did.

This was not to say that I hadn’t enjoyed these things, having money and the things it could buy and the choices it can offer.

It’s just that I thought they would bring me the level of happiness and contentment I was looking for, but they had failed to deliver.

I never thought to have these things was bad, to the contrary, they had provided opportunities and experiences that I would not otherwise have had. But for me, the pursuit of them held promises of a level of fulfilment that didn’t happen.


Over the following weeks and months, I pondered about:

• What is it in life that I really wanted to achieve?
• What one thing, when I get to the end of my days on earth, I will be able to say with absolute conviction:
  “I’m glad I dedicated my life to doing that”.

Around this time, another significant event occurred – the death of my father.

Some Good In The Bad

After his death, I was having a discussion with one of his friends when he uttered what he would probably regard as a throw-away comment.

But it was a comment that stuck in my mind and has impacted my life since.

I knew that what he said was true about my father, but I also felt that it was true of me.

I started on a journey that helped me confirm that one of my desires was to help others reach their maximum potential.

This same journey also caused me to think about the spiritual aspects of my life and how God and work might be linked.

It also began a journey in me of wanting to know more about God.


A short time later I began an eighteen-month self-study program on how to find your optimal job.

This was followed by setting up a business that taught this material to groups and individuals.

I then completed my qualifications in career guidance, a Diploma in Career Counseling and Certificate in Vocational Assessment in New Zealand.


For more than a decade I have been career consulting, helping people with their job search and self-marketing in New Zealand and Australia.

I have worked with individuals, groups and corporate clients including New Zealand’s largest company (at the time).

If you would like to find out more about my services, please see my career services or resume services pages.

Simon Davies Career Consultant

Career Change Advice Specialist

Diploma in Career Counseling | Certificate in Vocational Assessment
Past professional member of Career Development Association of New Zealand (Formerly Career Practitioners Association of New Zealand)

About

Hi, my name is Simon Davies.
Before I became qualified and began providing career change advice, I had my own career and life search moment.

I was sitting in my first floor office in Christchurch, when I had a life changing moment

I had worked in a number of jobs and then at the age of twenty-three I started my own business; a two-store video rental business that I owned for seven years.
This was in the early 1980s just when videos were getting going and the business became quite successful.

Coming from a family that never had much money (six kids), I now found myself with more money than I knew what to do with.
Although being self-employed was my most enjoyable role up to that point, I had become unfulfilled and a bit frustrated at work and in life.

What Did I Want to Achieve In Life

I began to think long and hard about what it was that I really wanted to achieve in my life.
Success in business had allowed me to obtain many of the material things that an average 28 year old would want, including a freehold house and money to spend on my expensive hobby (motorsport).
Then one day in May 1990, I was sitting in my first-floor office in Colombo St, when I had a life-changing moment.


I had just completed a review of an SMI goal-setting program when I began to realize that I had now achieved many of the relatively ambitious goals that I had set.

Most of my goals related to growing my business, getting more money and material possessions, and motorsport achievements.
But as I reviewed my goals I felt something wasn’t quite right.

My Turning Point

As I thought about what I had achieved, I began to become increasingly frustrated.
The frustration grew and grew to a point where I began to ask the question

What is success in life all about?

It’s not that I thought to have these things was bad, to the contrary, they had provided opportunities and experiences that I would not otherwise have had. But for me, the pursuit of them held promises of a level of fulfilment that didn’t materialize.

Over the following weeks and months, I pondered about:

• What is it in life that I really wanted to achieve?
• What one thing, when I get to the end of my days on earth, I will be able to say with absolute conviction:
  “I’m glad I dedicated my life to doing that”.

Around this time, another significant event occurred – the death of my father.

Some Good In The Bad

After his death, I was having a discussion with one of his friends when he uttered what he would probably regard as a throw-away comment.
But it was a comment that stuck in my mind and has impacted my life since.

“Your father missed his calling He should have been a motivator of people. He was so good at encouraging others and supporting them in their dreams and endeavors in life”

I knew that what he said was true about my father, but I also felt that it was true of me. I started on a journey that helped me confirm that one of my desires was to help others reach their maximum potential.
This same journey also caused me to think about the spiritual aspects of my life and how God and work might be linked.

A short time later I began an eighteen-month self-study program on how to find your optimal job.
This was followed by setting up a business that taught this material to groups and individuals.
I then completed my qualifications in career guidance, a Diploma in Career Counseling and Certificate in Vocational Assessment in New Zealand.

For more than a decade I have been career consulting, helping people with their job search and self-marketing in New Zealand and Australia.
I have worked with individuals, groups and corporate clients including New Zealand’s largest company (at the time).

If you would like to find out more about my services, please see my career services or resume services pages.

Simon Davies Career Consultant

Career Change Advice Specialist

Diploma in Career Counseling | Certificate in Vocational Assessment
Past professional member of Career Development Association of New Zealand (Formerly Career Practitioners Association of New Zealand)