WMDR Blog

Make Career Happiness One of Your New Year’s Resolutions!

By Linda Brodsky // December 12, 2012

0 NOTES

I was going to talk about career success as a top New Year’s resolution. But then it struck me–success is not success if you’re not happy.

What makes women physicians happy? When we can express our feelings of altruism, experience self-satisfaction, and enjoy comfort/security.

What do these look like?

Altruism: “I want to make a difference. To heal the sick. To do something worthwhile with my life.
Self-satisfaction: “I want to be respected. To be challenged by my work. To interact with smart people.”
Comfort/Security: “I want to have a good job. To earn a comfortable living. To know my skills will be needed.”

Okay, now that we know what they look like, how do we get there?

Through guided self-examination to identify those areas that are giving you trouble. WMDR provides women physicians free career-changing toolkits unique to their career stage. As we approach the New Year, what better way to reflect and set new goals than to assess your current career happiness and create an action plan to improve it? There are only three steps you need to get there…

Step 1: Assess your career situation. Get to know your strengths and value, your desires and needs, and areas for growth and change.

Step 2: Set goals. Find out what your self-assessment means and set your goals for the year.

Step 3: Create an action plan. Download our comprehensive checklist and highlight the to-dos necessary to meeting these goals.

As physicians we are used to taking action. And being happy takes work. Admitting to our challenges and overcoming them will result in a new year filled with happiness and success. My challenge this year will be to provide women physicians with a Playbook that will be help them face the 7 basic challenges that lay within themselves, their workplace and their lives. (More on this coming up in another post.)

So this new year, take the time to see where you are challenged. Make a plan to assess your challenges, set some modest (or aggressive) goals, and create an action plan. Monitor it every month and see where you are. This is something you can learn to do now! Make yours a Happy (and successful) New Year.