My daughter has one more semester of student teaching before she is a full-fledged high school teacher at 23 years old. After countless hours of hard work, test preparation and college classes to achieve her undergrad degree and now her post-grad credential, my girl is about to embark on the most significant growth journey of her life and I am so excited for her.

Of course, none of this would have been possible had she not reached for the stars and put herself out there.

Sadly, as adults, we get to a point in our careers where we stop pushing ourselves. We plateau and settle for less, incorrectly believing our time for growth has passed and that it’s too late.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. American author Zig Zigler famously said:

There are 3 C’s in life: Choice. Chance. Change. You must make a choice to take a chance, or your life will never change.

If you’d like to make career progress, (and honestly who doesn’t want that?), look at these elements:

Choice

Choice is all about shifting your mindset. It can be so tempting to ride that wave of familiarity, especially if everything in your career or job is going well. But at some point, you’ll decide that good isn’t good enough. Maybe you have that, nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach telling you something needs to give. You want something more, something different, something new, even if you’re not sure what that is.

When you make a conscious choice to do something, you’re taking the first step toward growth. Action is empowering and contagious; inaction breeds stagnation.

Chance

Have you been going back and forth in your mind about taking a leap of faith? Maybe harboring some fear about the unknown? This is understandable, but don’t let it paralyze you. Challenging yourself to leave your comfort zone helps you stretch your wings, gain new skills and insight, experience and confidence.

Still unsure about taking that chance? Ask yourself if what you are doing today is getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow. Remember any shot you don’t take you will miss 100% of the time.

Change

Change sometimes gets a bad rap. You have heard me say in the past on my podcast, “change isn’t good, good change is good”, because change is often seen as a disruptor. When one thing changes, others usually follow suit. But if you flip that around, you’ll see that change is the antithesis to the status quo. Change shakes things up and breathes new life into old methods and routines. We’re forced to get out of ruts we may not even know we’ve been in, to view things differently with a fresh perspective. It’s about envisioning what’s possible, not just what is.

That being said, change requires a degree of focus and intentionality. If you want something you’ve never had, you have to do something you’ve never done. It’s not too late.

Remember, it starts with a choice; choose wisely.