Don’t only think about where you want to go – also appreciate where you are now

A lot of people in our dynamic and fast - changing world put a lot of pressure on them to keep pace. Some people have very high expectations for themselves, what they should achieve in order to be successful. This puts a lot of pressure and potential anxiety on us. On our journeys to become successful, it is therefore sometimes worth to pause and to just enjoy the moment and appreciate where we have already come to. Very often, we are so busy planning the next career step in our lives, that we forget to appreciate and enjoy what position we hold in our jobs and companies right now. We therefore need to learn again to live in the moment and not to want it all at once.

Every great leader hat to learn to be patient in their life at some point. However, in a world where everything from food to any type of good comes right to our doorstep by one or two clicks immediately, being patient has become increasingly difficult. Very often, people joining companies want to climb to the top very quickly and forget to appreciate where they have come to, and especially take their time to learn the job toughly that is expected of them rather than only being concerned about moving up the ladder as quickly as possible.

Most of us, at the beginning of our career have started in very badly paid, not very interesting positions or jobs where we had to work very hard for little money. However, it is not about that, rather it is about the learnings and developments that we get out of those experiences that will help us to progress and climb at a later stage. It is therefore about skills and personal development that are requirements for us to move up to a certain position in an organization, rather than to only jump from one department or company to the next to move up as fast as possible.

With the desire of fast career progression, we also put an awful lot of pressure on ourselves and are even more disappointed when things don’t work out as planned, which they very often don’t. The more we plan, the more room is there for things to go wrong and the more pressured and anxious we may feel.

It is ok to therefore enjoy the moment, be happy with what we have and do as jobs at the moment and take a bit of pace and pressure out of the path of our progression. This does not mean, not to have an overarching plan at all, that can give us guidance, it just means to not want everything at the same time, as this won’t make us happy and lets us feel overwhelmed. We should learn not to put too much pressure on ourselves to move all the time and only up. It is ok to fail sometimes, it is ok not to get promoted every year and to not always play in the A league of professionals. We should move in our own pace that feels right to us.

The key is to learn and develop in the moment, and not forget about this because we are too occupied planning our next move. If we know our trait and have the knowledge and experience to do our job well, moving up the latter will come automatically. We will create value for ourselves and for others and will be much better managers or directors once we are at the top.

Therefore, rather than only thinking about climbing up the latter as fast as we can, we should learn, listen and exercise patience to become really good at what we do – the rest will fall into place by itself - which is the beauty of it.