Get Career Fit, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 6 Shape

What is your new career identity?

‘We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.’

Denis Diderot

At the 99U Conference of 2013, vulnerability and courage expert Brené Brown remarked, ‘It’s so scary to show up. It feels dangerous to be seen, it’s terrifying. But it is not as scary, dangerous or terrifying as getting to the end of our lives and thinking, what if I had shown up? What would have been different?’²⁶

Throughout her talk she referenced Theodore Roosevelt’s famous 1910 speech ‘The Man in the Arena’, which is a powerful call to embrace challenge and give it a go, rather than becoming one of those ‘cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat’. Brené reminded us that if you are going into the arena, you will get your arse kicked from time to time, but that is better than sitting back and doing nothing.

If you’re going to make a leap in your career, you have no choice but to enter the arena.

The first two phases of this book focused on thinking about and planning your career leap, which is a lot of fun and relatively safe, as you can do much of it from the comfort of your lounge room or office. It would be easy to stop right here and keep dreaming, without actually getting out there and implementing the change.

But that’s not you, because you want to get career fit and to leap! So let’s look at what you need to do next to get your career into shape. And it starts by looking at ...