1.  What is your working style?  Corporate?  Small Business?  Home-Based?  Family–Owned Business?  Self Boss?  If you enjoy interacting with different people in a formal setting, then you might enjoy a corporate environment.   However, if a large conglomerate with lots of activities makes you feel tense and anxious, then you might prefer a small business or family-owned setting to work in.  If you cannot picture yourself working for someone else and taking orders, then you are ripe for becoming an entrepreneur in your own business, whether home-based or in a partnership.

2.  Clear out the clutter in your life and figure out what brings you down.  Eliminate deterrents that keep you from pursuing your dream career or business until you have nothing left to give or throw away. 

3.  Look at your work style from a different perspective. Are you management material or are you a follow-the-leader type?   Being management material means you like telling others what to do and that you are capable of taking the heat when the final decision rests on you.  If being a follower suits, you, then go for it and choose a leader whose traits you admire.

4.  How do you represent yourself?  Is your title obvious?  Do you match your title?  Or, are you something else.  Building a career means figuring out where you fit in, in your job and industry.  Entry-level trainees should develop ways of managing up, instead of getting in the way of their supervisors.

5.  Which parts of your personality benefit your career drive?  Instead of relying on the job you have to fully represent you in your current field, why not broaden your interests and be represented through various outlets.  Learn to play golf or tennis.  Take up vacation travel.  If you are an artist or art-minded, take a membership with a museum group?  You will need to expose yourself in other ways in order to enhance your career.  And you will need to be savvy enough to talk shop in the shop you’re in.  In other words, know something about something other than your job.

6.  Make your career multi-purposed.  If you are good at writing, understanding and developing contracts, why not start a side business doing just that?  Handling contracts may not even be the most important task in your job description.  But, if you’re good at it, why not develop it enough to create an income stream for yourself?

7.  Reinvent your job.  Add to your skills and certification base by learning how to do something totally unrelated to your job or career.  I know a woman who was hired as a personal assistant to a very high level executive because she had a commercial driver’s license.  She eventually became a corporate chauffeur in addition to being the person who handled all his private business.

8.  Volunteer with an organization whose work you admire or get mentored by someone who has been degreed by the School of Life.

9.  If you are career-involved, don’t give away all the secrets to your longevity.  Share some, keep some.

10.  It is true that you can enhance your career by taking on some task that no one else wants.  But, it you don’t want to do that, then invent or create your own.  Most people like a new idea and especially if it is something anybody could have thought of.  Be different and do what no one else wants to do.  Find an idea that is waiting to happen and make it happen.

11.  Find a niche that you are passionate about and work on making it your dream.  And to make it a success, act like you have an invisible Boss who is constantly looking over you shoulder and instead give yourself the respect you would give your invisible Boss.

12.  Take some of the money you make and use it to improve your manners, your etiquette, your speaking voice, your dining etiquette, learn another language, your courtesy habits, your wardrobe, upgrade your accessories, personal habits and the list goes on and on.