Career Guidance: How to Get Unstuck From a Stalled Career

Seattle, WA — Jul 3, 2015 — Less than excited about dragging yourself in to the office this morning? Perhaps you’re stuck in a rut or just feel things aren’t going the way you’d planned.

You’re not alone. Sometimes it’s the boss or too much repetition in the workday. Traits that make us great people can sometimes hold us back at the office — like being too hesitant to take risks or think big. So what’s a career-builder to do? These are topics several LinkedIn Influencers weighed in on this week. Here is what two of them had to say.

Bruce Kasanoff, Kasanoff Ghostwriting

“You’re bored out of your mind and can’t see an obvious next step. You might be stuck behind an ungrateful boss, or perhaps you’ve just been doing the same job too long. No matter the details, that feeling of being stuck saps your energy and makes you feel like there is no hope for your career,” wrote Kasanoff in his post How to Get Your Career Unstuck. “That’s sheer nonsense. You just need to break out of your rut.”

The question is, where to start. Kasanoff offered several simple steps. Among them:

“Practice irrational optimism. Your first challenge is to escape the negative mind-set that’s enveloped you. Whatever it takes, create brief periods of time – an hour or an afternoon – during which you are irrationally optimistic,” he wrote. “Forget about all the things that you perceive are holding you back. Just picture yourself as an incredible success, perhaps five years from now… Until you foster some optimism, you’ll be blind to the many possibilities that await you.”

“Create your bucket-list of jobs. Make the longest possible list of dream jobs. These are not necessarily your next job; they are jobs you would love to have, in a perfect world,” he wrote. Kasanoff doesn’t recommend coming up with your list all in one sitting; instead, you may get better results if you keep adding to your list over an extended period of time. As your list grows, look for patterns. Are you drawn to certain types of challenges? Do you crave prestige? “Look for clues about what excites you and makes you feel energetic again,” he suggested.

“Make a step-by-step plan. At some point, create a short version of your list. These are the positions you actually want to pursue… (and) create an action list for pursuing these positions,” he wrote. “Make it as specific as possible.”

Donal Daly, chief executive officer at The TAS Group

Taking risks when you face challenges in your career can be daunting. But, most of the time, “you generally figure it out,” wrote Daly in his post 10 Benefits of Taking Risk. “It is usually worth taking the (considered) risk.”

“Big ambition demands a willingness to take risk,” he wrote. “Incremental changes can happen in a pretty safe way, but if you want something to be transformational, to change your life, your career, your business, then you need to think big, face down the risk, and figure out how to deal with it.

“It is easy, and maybe safer to settle for mediocre, but if you want to get ahead of the pack, if you want to be an anomaly, then you have to act like one.”

So, why should you take risks? Daly offers 10 specifics. Among them:

• You’re driven to learn new skills.
• Embracing risk helps you to overcome the fear of failure.
• You become more creative.
• You uncover unforeseen opportunities.
• Your self-confidence grows.

“By not taking a risk, a moonshot, we run a bigger risk of being left behind,” Daly wrote.