Finding and validating your career direction through journaling …

Do you enjoy your job? If you’re one of the fortunate who is fully satisfied with your career as it is today, good on you. You’re likely someone who consciously or otherwise set about mapping and targeting goals, some of which may include remaining exceptional and at the top of your game.

It’s a rare admin. professional, though, whose gamut of experiences and encounters has not generated some frustration with limitations, actual or perceived. We exert energies in navigating our way through delicate interpersonal challenges and unanticipated business issues, yet these can wreak havoc with time management strategies. In the midst of putting out office fires and taking care of others, it’s easy to let care of one’s self slide to the back burner – and it may also be acknowledged that we sometimes inadvertently establish our own roadblocks.

While many frustrations in an assistant’s career may be unavoidable, we can control the manner in which we deal with them. Journaling, a term for maintaining a journal or diary, can help provide perspective and clarity, and many consider it yet another tool for stress reduction. Such reflection can help solve problems and, support enhanced self-awareness that contributes to success, satisfaction and professional growth.  Over time, identification and understanding of recurring themes can help identify areas for professional growth and satisfaction, and it’s a wise AP who approaches performance reviews with this heightened awareness.

Journaling is not a running rant or diatribe on issues or people in your workplace. Neither should your journal be a depository for details of your employer’s business, which could imply a breach of ethics and trust.

Approach journaling with the intention that it’s intended to celebrate your successes, establish goals and support your professional development, not others’; treat your entries accordingly.

Journaling, which involves self-reflection, clear-eyed assessment and planning, is an effective tool whatever one’s stage of career development. For a number of us, it’s the transition from recognizing the need to take care of one’s self to actually mapping out and taking those steps that will support a career plan, and career satisfaction, that may present the greatest challenge. Effectively undertaken, it’s a constructive approach to building your own resiliency, success and satisfaction. Watch for more in an upcoming post!

You may also be interested in …

Ready to Begin Journaling? (exceptionalea.com)

Introvert, Extrovert or … Ambivert? (exceptionalea.com)