As many Peak Prosperity readers know, I was on a very different career track before opting out of the corporate race and teaming up with Chris.
I had been dissatisfied for years leading up to this career transition. There were many reasons for this, but at the core, it was because there was a disconnect between the work I was doing and the values I held. As a result, I found myself committing 60+ hours per week to a job that didn't fulfill me, nor that I felt was relevant to the type of future ahead as forecasted by the Crash Course.
To maximize my odds for success in transitioning not just to a new job, but also hopefully to a lifelong "great-fit" career, I spent a lot of time studying the science of career management and engaging with a platoon of professional consultants and executive coaches. Through this research, I learned that there are indeed time-honored practices that can statistically and materially improve your chances for identifying work that matches your aptitudes and passions AND for finding gainful employment in this new field.
Jennifer Winn was one of the expert coaches I worked with and a tremendously helpful guide for me as I put this methodology into practice in my own career transition. The fact that I'm writing this post – for a company I've co-founded, in partnership with a personal hero, doing purposeful work that I love – shows that the process worked out pretty well.
I've detailed out this methodology in a book Peak Prosperity has just published this week titled Finding Your Way to Your Authentic Career. It's written for anyone who thinks that there may be a higher use of their talents than their current job path is offering. It's also a helpful resource for new grads seeking to identify where to place their professional focus, as well as for soon-to-be retirees wondering how to find purpose after their current career ends.
To provide folks with a better sense of the guidance the book offers, I sat down with Jennifer to discuss the essential elements of the transition process. We focus particularly on the most important and earliest stage of the process, in which you develop an enhanced understanding of your core attributes – your interests, your natural aptitudes, your values – and use these foundational building blocks to begin constructing a vision for what fulfillment looks like for you. These insights will serve as the compass points that will guide everything else that you do in your transition process (and will most likely end up adding clarity to other elements of your life outside of work, too).
Click the play button below to listen to my interview with Jennifer Winn (54m:36s):
by pinecarr