by: Erin Leslie, EQ-i Certified | Coach
Many people today tell me they are unmotivated at work and feel they've lost their career direction. More employees than you may think are feeling tired by the daily churn, and they don't know how to change it! When I meet with them, I typically ask some key questions to see where the lack of interest lies.
- Is it due to personal distractions with family or friends?
- Is it relationship-related issues with team or management?
- Is it due to pre-existing beliefs or concepts that may need to be renewed?
- Could it be depression? Have you sought professional consultation?
After some analysis, I find that it is not that many people necessarily lack motivation, but rather have difficulties with intention.
Purpose provides the compass that fuels our minds and bodies to move in a specific direction. Now how do we go about finding purpose?
It's quite simple.
I share two important methods of finding intention.
First, volunteer. Don't think about it; do it. Go out this weekend and find a school, religious organization, municipal supporting event, or service and give your time.
Volunteering allows your mind to stop focusing on itself. It opens up your thinking towards others and helps you care about an external problem that you may not have considered before.
Volunteerism exposes you to areas of risk and need in your community and gets you instantly thinking - how can I change some aspect of this outcome into a more positive one? How can I improve the lives of others?
It also gives you the purest sense of intention. Helping, caring, and enabling another human is our foremost purpose. But we forget that sometimes.
Volunteering enhances your beliefs about what is important. It doesn't require a lot of time or thinking. It requires you to feel and act. That renewed sense of purpose fuels your intention towards your future.
Secondly, mentorship. I suggest entering a mentorship relationship with a peer or colleague. Mentorship allows us to focus our attention on another person's inquiry, leveraging our own experience and knowledge to solve a problem and focus away from our own pain points. People find it highly satisfactory to support others ahead of themselves. Still, it is through an interaction of mentoring and helping that often we find the answers to our issues.
I often say that everyone should mentor as we all have something to offer and learn in this enriching professional relationship.
Do you specialize in a specific skill set, industry insight, or business strategy or methodology? Someone within or outside your professional circle is looking for guidance, and it only takes a few meetings a month to connect and follow up on a specific area of interest or need. Those meetings could make a real difference in a professional's work-life.
Erin Leslie is an Associate at CFIR (Toronto) and is the Founder of EQFootprints, a leadership coaching business. She is committed to supporting professionals with an array of coaching and vocational tools and is also passionate about giving back to the community. In her role as co-Lead of the Career Coaching and Counselling Service as well as the Career & Vocational Assessment Service at CFIR, Erin provides a wide array of personalized testing to complement one-on-one coaching tailored specifically to individual client needs. She works under the direct supervision of Dr. Dino Zuccarini, C.Psych.
