5 Career Lessons I Didn't Expect to Learn in Church

You wouldn't believe what they were preaching about in church this week. Normally, these days you walk in expecting to be bombarded with Bible verses and the classic "tell your neighbour to tell their neighbour" routine. But guess what, my preacherman was on point. The whole sermon was about how to realise your full potential and grow your career. And here's the interesting part: it wasn't aimed at the start-your-own-empire crowd. It was for the intrapreneurs , the people who'd rather climb high inside someone else's company than run their own thing. If that's you, this one's for you. So let me try to break it down in my own words, with a few of the insights I picked up from the preacherman (and a couple of my own). Let's begin. What is it that we actually need to do to discover ourselves and reach our full career potential? 1. Start Early There's a popular idea that life comes in four quarters: 0–25 — the learning phase 25–50 — the earning phase 50–75 — the serving / enjoying phase 75+ — the reflecting phase (You'll see different versions of this floating around, with different age bands; it's a framing, not a law of physics, so take the exact numbers loosely.) The first quarter is where the magic is supposed to happen. This is your discovery phase. You're meant to learn as much as you can, try different things, fail, get back up, and try again. This is where you find out who you actually are. If you spend this quarter as a couch potato, there's a good chance you end up miserable and stuck in the wrong career. Your environment matters too. Get born in India, you'll probably force yourself onto a cricket pitch, even if your real gift was on a tennis court; therefore, you have to force yourself into trying quite a number of things. For the parents reading this: give your kids as much exposure as you possibly can. Let them join different clubs. Let them be around different kinds of people. Someone out there might spot a talent you never even knew your child had. A lot