Why Personal Clarity Fuels Professional Growth

Who you are will always be at the core of how you’ll grow. You don’t achieve personal or professional success by acting like someone or something you’re not. You achieve success by aligning who you are with what you do. This requires self-awareness, a desire to better yourself, and a willingness to take new action. When you are clear on who you are and what you want to accomplish with and through your work, you will naturally gravitate towards a lifestyle that fuels your growth.

If you lack personal clarity, you may experience cognitive dissonance, which is the discomfort that a person feels when their personal values conflict with their actions. This can occur when an individual has a job that requires them to perform tasks or behave in a way that goes against what they believe in. For example, if a person’s job encourages something like “less talking and more selling,” but their passion lies in connecting with others and developing professional relationships, then they will not experience a sense of fulfillment within that role. Whether they realize it or not, their discomfort in their job is due to a difference in their values versus their actions.

However, when you do align the two, you not only tend to feel happier, your work also tends to be of a higher quality. It is significantly easier to direct your efforts towards something that you feel passionate about than it is to work on something that you have no interest in. That is not to say that everything you do within your job will be something that you are excited about, but if your job allows you to live into your values overall, you are more likely to feel a sense of pride and fulfillment.

It is important to have personal clarity about who you are, what you want, and what your values are when thinking about the professional path you want to take. This sets you up for achieving your goals, both personally and professionally. 

-Meghan Slaughter