Feeling stuck? How to ride the wave in your career

We have all been there. I certainly have. When you started at a company or in a new position, you were filled with excitement and anticipation. Your energy was ignited, your self-confidence high, and you felt that you could do it all. The possibilities for success seemed limitless. After all, you landed a great position, and your world expanded. But in the natural order of life, the honeymoon ends when we meet all the trials and challenges and have to dig deep for solutions and creating a strategy and actions plan that will really work.  

At that point you are willing to put your all into it to create success, but along the way you may have a conflict with your boss or someone else that you are not sure how to resolve, or you got depleted due to lack of self-care. This can lead to a phase where you are feeling some disappointment and a lack of fulfillment at work – this was not how you wanted it to turn out! 

But all of this is a normal cycle all leaders go through. The trick is to recognize when you are in the stuck and disappointed phase for real or whether you just need a new strategy or action plan. The feeling of depletion is a clue that it is time for renewal activities, self-care at the mind, body or spirit level, and perhaps beginning the search for a new opportunity. 

Look at this Leadership Cycle of Transformation I developed based on The Heroine's Journey by Maureen Murdock (click to make it larger), see where you are in the cycle, and answer these questions for yourself: 

1. Where are you now in the Leadership Cycle of Transformation in relation to your career/position? (Note: You may be in more than one place at the same time.) 
2. How does it feel to be in this place or these places on the Leadership Cycle of Transformation? Please list all of your feelings and thoughts, whatever they are. 
3. What does your place or places on the Leadership Cycle of Transformation tell you about what you need to do to stay pro-active so that you are bringing intention to the transformations, not just letting them happen to you? (Put down whatever comes up for you right now and you can continue to work on this through contemplation and taking some actions in the direction you want to go.) 

Just know that cycling through all of this is normal and you are absolutely on your way to a new place to Ignite!