5 ways to make your career path as powerful as an avalanche

01.21.2016

avalance

Photo from Mashable

What do a slow moving avalanche and your career have in common? This video trending on Mashable.com this week shows the power of this uncommonly slow-moving force of nature, and its influence on the environment around it. The avalanche, like your career, doesn’t take an obvious course, doesn’t warn us when it’s going to speed up or slow down, and doesn’t always take the path of least resistance. So how can you make your career path as powerful as an avalanche?

1.Stop being a tree
If you’re feeling like you’re stuck in one place and all of your colleagues are sliding right past you, it’s time to pick up the pace in your career path. Are you doing anything for your professional development? Are you networking? Do you know what direction you want to take your career in? If you are shaking your head at all of these questions, it’s time to break out of your comfort zone and get involved in your industry. As Will Rogers said, “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” While it’s fantastic that you love your company and you’ve been able to plant some roots, don’t let those roots drag you down. Developing new ideas and finding new ways to solve sometimes decade old problems are the building blocks of ingenuity and progress. Figure out how you can get involved with the direction your company and industry are going and become a thought leader in your space, not a tree.

2.Be nimble
Being able to pivot throughout your career is an often overlooked asset. If your background and skillset allow you to jump across industries when one of them is sinking, you’ll always find yourself with the ability to escape escalating situations. After all, an avalanche oftentimes starts out slow, just like the unraveling of an unprofitable company. If you can see what’s coming, jump out of the way, and land on solid ground, you’ll be luckier than most people who have tied themselves to a specific company or industry and can’t climb out of their circumstances. Even if you’ve been at the same company for over a decade, hopefully you’ve been able to experience a variety of job functions, have been promoted, and have built your experience in a way that if you see the wave of snow coming, you can snap on your skis and make your way to the other side of the mountain. If you haven’t done this with your career path so far, go back to point number one, and see how you can start impacting your career with professional development and networking events.

3.Get out of your own way
It’s January, it’s freezing, and you haven’t found time to finish “Making a Murderer” on Netflix. However, If you opt to sit on the couch this month instead of setting personal and professional goals, you’ll get to your bi-annual review and have nothing to talk about other than pop culture. Do you need to spend every waking minute thinking about work? No, we are definitely not encouraging that. However, invest some time into figuring out where you want to go and set yourself on a path to get there. Oftentimes the only reason we haven’t done what we said we would is because we never started at all. Find your inspiration for starting, set a goal and get after it!

4.Acknowledge your fear
Almost every stage of your career is accompanied by some amount of fear. You’re afraid that you won’t get the job, you’re afraid you won’t get the promotion, you’re afraid of loving your job so much you don’t want to look for a new one, you’re afraid of your new boss, you’re afraid of getting fired, you’re afraid after you got the promotion, you’re afraid your co-workers don’t like you, you’re afraid because you love your co-workers so much that you never want anyone to leave, you’re afraid of being recruited, you’re afraid of not being recruited, and these reasons to be afraid are just the tip of the iceberg. However, if you don’t acknowledge what is making you afraid, you can’t figure out how to overcome it. Overcoming fear is one way to feel like you have control over your destiny. If you feel like your destiny is something that happens to you, that’s what will happen. But if you determine that you are in control of your own destiny and life will throw things at you that are not part of your plan, fear will no longer be the guiding force behind your decisions. This is the hardest thing almost everyone has to face in their personal and professional lives. In addition, each person’s path to conquering their own fears is unique to their own circumstances. However, acknowledging you are afraid of something is the first step to figuring out to move past it.

5.Ask for help
Sometimes, figuring out what you are afraid of can help you figure out who you can ask to help you take the next step in your career, get you qualified for that promotion, or set yourself apart from your colleagues. If you don’t have a trusted mentor in your life, can you think of someone who you could have a conversation with about your career? Ideally, it’s someone you know, but Gillian Zoe Segal gives great tips here on how to meet anyone you want. Developing a mentorship relationship might just give you the direction and inspiration you need to get you moving.

If you can take these five suggestions and apply them to where you are with your career today,  you’ll be one step closer to harnessing the power behind an avalanche and aligning it with your career path.