Our careers are continually in motion. You move in real time whether you are currently employed or not. It does not always feel like you make progress as you measure your success by how much you have truly accomplished and in what period of time it took to get there. Whether you wish you could hurl yourself into the future and fast-forward your career into a more profitable time, or you could rewind it back to a place when you were perhaps at the top of your game, always remember the choice is yours. You can simply “pause” and wait for a sign or, hit “play” and see where the road will take you. Either way you choose to roll, remember that the learning process and the learning lesson is the same.

Our career consciousness dictates the only way toward success is to move fast-forward no matter which direction we may be headed. You take any call, any offer, any amount of money, only to realize later, this might not have been the best long-term approach towards true fulfillment (even if it may have helped to pay the bills along the way). It is part of our nature to want to move quickly away from areas in our lives that are not particularly comfortable, hoping to ride out whatever storm is in our path. When you hit “fast-forward” in your career, you skip over important information, learning lessons and opportunities that you miss along the way because you are stuck in old ways and choose to believe it’s just as simple to take the easy way out. We all do it. There is nothing wrong with it. The only thing we have to live with are the consequences of our actions no matter the cost when what we most wish is to “rewind” and do it all over again.

How many times have you asked yourself, “If I only had to do it over again I would …” only to realize that the opportunity to do it over again may have passed or is here now, if you would only “pause” and take notice? You may sometimes wish to stay stuck in the past, rewind the career and reminisce a time when things were steady, certain and really “comfortable.” A time perhaps when you knew where your next pay check was coming from, when your review was due and you knew the amount of your next raise or how your boss felt about your overall work performance. You may have thought at the time it was all too predictable and well, boring. But now, when change and uncertainty loom at every turn, you yearn for the knowledge and understanding you had back then, that everything was safe and it was always going to be okay. It’s at times like this when you know that all you need do is to “pause” and take a breath and consider all of your career options. All you need to know is this is exactly where you need to be and that there is no “right time.”

When you feel the need to move at the speed of light, know by doing so, you are choosing to miss out on opportunities you would have otherwise noticed had you slowed down. When you choose to live in the now, you can pause and take notice of what’s right in front of you. Only then will you be able to hit “play” and move comfortably, confidently and successfully towards your next career move.

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