Finding Your Way Home: How Our Roots Can Guide Our Careers

By Mary Ann Faremouth, CPC

“There’s no place like home.” Dorothy’s famous words from The Wizard of Oz have stayed with audiences for generations because they remind us of something we all want: to feel connected, understood, and comfortable with where we belong.

For many of us, home means family gatherings, familiar traditions, and the people who have been part of our lives for years. It might mean returning to the community where we grew up, spending time with relatives, or remembering the experiences that helped shape who we are today.

Home is more than just a physical place. It can also represent our values, the people who support us, and the sense of purpose that helps us through life’s changes.

As a career consultant, I have spent years helping people recognize their strengths, explore opportunities, and figure out what they truly want from their careers. One lesson has become clear to me: Sometimes, moving forward means looking back.

Our roots can help guide our future, especially when we are thinking about making a change in our careers.

1. Remember Where Your Strengths Began

Think back to your childhood. What activities made you happy or excited? Were you the person who organized neighborhood games, helped friends solve problems, built things, or brought people together? What strengths did your teachers, relatives, and friends often notice in you?

These early experiences might not seem connected to our careers, but they can give us clues about our natural talents and interests.

Sometimes, we overlook the things we are good at because they come so easily to us. We may assume everyone is equally good at communicating, organizing, creating, analyzing, or solving problems.

That is not always the case.

Self-evaluation and self-inventory are important parts of the Faremouth Method. Understanding our strengths helps us recognize where we can make the biggest difference. Once we know what we bring to the table, we can make better decisions about how to use those skills in our careers.

My first book, Revolutionary Recruiting, explores the ideas behind my approach to recruiting and career development. Its companion workbook, Revolutionary Reinvention, helps readers look at their experiences, identify their strengths, and explore how those abilities might lead to new opportunities.

The goal is not to go back to the past. It is to learn from it so we can make better choices moving forward.

2. Let Your Relationships Remind You What Matters

One of the best parts of going home is spending time with people who know us as individuals, not just by our job titles.

Our relatives, longtime friends, mentors, and former colleagues have seen us through different stages of life. They may remember our dreams before we started working, encourage us when we doubt ourselves, or remind us of strengths we have forgotten.

These relationships can give us a fresh perspective when we get caught up in the demands of everyday work.

Professional success matters, but it is important to ask ourselves what success really means to us. Is it financial security? The chance to lead? Creative freedom? Helping others? Having more time with family? Finally pursuing an interest we have put aside?

Our answers can change as we move through life. What motivated us early in our careers might not be what matters most to us years later.

Taking time to think about these questions can help us separate other people’s expectations from the goals that truly matter to us.

Our relationships also remind us that we rarely build successful careers entirely on our own. The people we meet, the advice we receive, and the connections we maintain can all open doors to new opportunities. Building these relationships is just as important as developing our professional skills.

Sometimes, a conversation with someone who knows us well can help us see an opportunity we had never considered.

3. Trust Your Inner Compass, but Keep Moving

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy visits unfamiliar places, faces unexpected challenges, and meets companions who are searching for things they believe they lack. Along the way, they begin to discover that some of the qualities they want may already be within them.

This is a helpful way to think about career development. We often spend a lot of time looking outside ourselves for answers. We search for a better position, another qualification, a different employer, or someone who can tell us which direction to take.

These things can certainly help, but finding lasting career satisfaction also means understanding ourselves.

What kind of work allows us to use our strengths? Which environments help us grow? What do we want our careers to make possible in our personal lives? Are we pursuing an opportunity because it fits our goals, or because it simply seems like the next step we are supposed to take?

Answering these questions takes honesty, patience, and a willingness to look at things differently.

It also takes action. Thinking about change is a good start, but we must be willing to take steps toward it. We might explore a new industry, learn a new skill, meet people in a different field, or take a calculated risk to see what opportunities are available.

The key is to make these decisions with a better understanding of our values and where we want to go.

My third book, Revolutionary Results, features a foreword written by the CEO of Dale Carnegie of Texas and brings together a collection of my articles from years past. The book covers many of the themes that have shaped my work, including personal development, career growth, and understanding the qualities that help us succeed.

Throughout my books and consulting work, I return to the same basic idea: We make better decisions when we understand ourselves, recognize our strengths, and take an active role in shaping our futures.

4. Your Next Chapter Starts With You

Finding our way home does not always mean returning to where we started. Sometimes, it means reconnecting with the people and experiences that remind us who we are. Other times, it means finding a new place where our values, talents, and goals come together.

Our roots give us perspective, our relationships provide support, and our experiences help us decide where to go next. Together, these things can help us make better career decisions and recognize new opportunities.

As you think about your own career, take a moment to reflect on the experiences that have shaped you. Remember the strengths you showed long before you had a résumé, the people who encouraged you to follow your goals, and the values you want to carry into the next chapter of your life.

You do not need to have all the answers today. You simply need to be willing to ask the right questions and take the next step.

After all, building a more fulfilling career does not mean becoming an entirely different person. Sometimes, it means recognizing the abilities you have had all along and finding new ways to use them.

Perhaps that is the most important lesson of all: Sometimes, the best way to move forward is to remember what has always guided us home.