Health and Career Development
This blog will be part of a series of blogs that will be outlining what I have learned from the interviews and readings regarding careers and career development.
The most important attribute would be understanding yourself and using this as a starting point. There are some key categories that a person should review as a starting point. The points would be health, mental health or outlook on life, relationships (family and friends), work skills, the viewpoint on work and money. I will talk about each of these in more detail in individual blogs coming up.
Today it will be health.
Understanding our health going into a career change or starting a career is important and may be overlooked. I would like to point out some things to consider regarding our health, especially when dealing with careers.
Generally, our health is something that we just take for granted when we are healthy, it is when we are not, that we tend to pay more attention to it. And these issues can impact our lives marginally or dramatically. Our health can impact how we perform mentally and physically. When we are healthy, we are more capable of making better decisions and we have the ability to solve more complex problems, this is because the brain is an organ and is affected by our general health. Just think when we have a cold or flu and the impact it has on us.
Some occupations are more physically demanding which may cause the body to develop issues and wear down. It is important to understand some of these impairments and how they can be affecting our lives especially in an occupation that demands some physical aspect. In some cases, a person may need to move on to something else or find another way of doing their job. Working with pain and limitations is frustrating but it also can limit the capabilities of doing a job.
On the other side of the spectrum, there are some of us that need to move around more. Technology has forced us to be more sedentary, which is not healthy either (the human body is a machine that wants and needs to move around). With that said a person may need to look at a job that will enable them to move around more.
Pressure and stress are also factors that can play a role in our health. Climbing the corporate ladder can be overrated if it is impairing our health. The opposite is also true as we need some pressure in our lives this is how we grow. Challenges are deemed as good for us, all of us can go faster, can become stronger and above all smarter, we can learn new things. “Flow” a book written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi deals with the subject. In either case, we may need to look at what we are doing and how it is impacting our health. And more importantly, if we were to move on to something else how will it affect our health then.
Furthermore, as we age, we may develop issues but also, we become more confident, more experienced, we have a better understanding of our likes and dislikes, we are more mature and calmer as well. In the last twenty to thirty years technology has pushed many of us beyond our limits so to speak. We are learning more now than ever before. So, the myth that as we age and we have let ourselves go can be false. There are many reasons to support that as we age, we should be able to move into something that we want to do more so keeping our health in mind.
The essence of this blog then is to point out that we need to be aware of our health as it is a major component of understanding ourselves. As I pointed out at the beginning when our health is good, we take it for granted. Some of us have issues or not, or maybe developing some, and if we do have issues, they could be major or minor. The key is being aware of them and their impact on us. This is the first step in understanding ourselves and how we want to move forward with our lives and careers.