Naumche Ivanovski on LinkedIn and Twitter.

I want to have a great career. I want to work for the best, learn from the best. I want to move fast, get promoted and earn a lot. I want to become entrepreneur, manager, leader in 1, 2, 5 years. Great, only one question.

• Where to start?

Identifying yourself in those words means you are determined to fight and go forward in one of the important aspects of your life, your career.

While there is great focus on work-life balance discussions or putting career in the greater life and happiness perspective, and both of them are very valid discussions, we would focus our attention on the specific career related skills, which when put in greater life perspective can be reviewed as life changing aspects as well.

• Try, fail, reflect, learn and…, try again

Try with courage, fail with acceptance, reflect wisely, learn with curiosity and try again with more courage and wisdom and so on….

All along the way, everything we have learned and accomplished, started by trying and failing.

Baby tries to walk and fails, learns how to balance better and tries again and again until finally starts to walk. Along the way as we grow, influenced by social norming of perfection and shame to fail, we decide that it is better not to try, then to try and fail. What a pity…

But, this is not us, it can’t be, otherwise, we would not walk, talk or do many other things we learned through the hard process of trying and failing.

Career wise, it is impossible to succeed without being open for making mistakes. Having said that, the intention is not to show it as easy task, it is not, but it is the only way forward. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new” – Albert Einstein.

• Own your story

“Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure” – Tony Robbins.

In the world of great changes and opportunities, it is tempting to start living our lives influences by the surrounding social norms. What our friends are doing, what our parents want us to become, what is “trendy” and so on.

And, to be perfectly clear, this happens to all of us without exception. Career wise, we always have good, bad examples around us to evaluate and in the greater sense of learning and development, we need to be aware of the surrounding and reflect on it, this is normal.

Following the authentic self, developing our unique set of capabilities and offering them to the world with intention to provide added value will bring the best of us.

The innate feeling of contentment in our career is heavily dependent on the fact how successful we are when accomplishing our own story line!

• Know your worth

Your work is not your worth.

Actually, the one who knows his own worth as human being, will always be ready to face with great challenges through his career and thrive further.

Every individual along with his strengths has weaknesses and blind spots, and this is perfectly normal. Acknowledging them and systematically working on them is part of our life time learning process.

Career wise, our appearance in the eyes of Customers, recruiters, collaborates is highly influences by our own self-worth and is critical determining factor for our success.

Ultimately, what we can become in career and life in general is the best version of ourselves, nothing more, and nothing less.

• Unlimited power of communication

While new skills are with high demand on the market as there are new and new technologies taking place such as block-chain, artificial intelligence and so on, proper communication skills are, in my view, the determining factor when it comes to career success.

Being able to express ourselves in clear manner, along with practicing empathetic listening and feedback, is substantially increasing one's chances of achieving great career.

However, when it comes to long term career success, we need to differentiate if the effect of communication makes us feel as we belong or we are fitting in with our teammates and within the Company in general. There is a huge difference in both, and communication plays key role in determining where we are.

While “belonging” means we feel accepted as we are, and we stay authentic and true to our-selves, “fitting in” is adjusting to the current situation even if that makes us believe we are not true to our-selves. 

Constant thrive towards belonging along with opennes for constant learning through which we expand our horizons, learn to be more flexible and grow is the right path forward. On the contrary, sooner or later we pay the price of long term fitting in strategy approach.

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony" - Mahatma Gandhi.