What is most important to you? What ideals do you embody? These governing philosophies provide the framework of your life.
Defining your values helps you understand what it is you want to accomplish. Your goals and methods of achieving them need to be in line with your underlying values. Writing them down is the first step in defining the job you want.
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Loading ...Your job is a large part of your life. For many it becomes inseparable from their sense of identity. The belief that your role as a teacher, carpenter, or engineer defines you creates fear. Overcoming the fear of being without work is liberating.
No Votes Yet Loading ...As part of The Project I am doing many exercises designed to help me define the things I want in a career. One of the first I have done is the Who Am I section in What Color Is Your Parachute.
The instructions are to write down ten answers to the question: Who am I? Then write Why and What turns you on about each of your ten answers. Finally, put the answers in order of importance and look for common denominators.
The consensus is that getting started requires some effort, but it goes quickly and produces worthwhile results. Some of the answers will be expected and some a little surprising.
For the volunteers that are doing The Parachute Experiment with me I’ve labeled this the warm up exercise. When you do a series of self improvement projects you begin to notice different approaches to arriving at answers that contain much of the same language. This exercise begins to uncover words and phrases you will see repeated as proceeding assignments delve deeper into specific areas.
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The lofty statements you hear preceding the company’s financial report are not inspiring. They were created by a committee of people you do not know and reflect views and values which you may only partially share.
A personal mission statement is created by a committee of one. No executive groups meet to discuss it and no voting is required. I wrote a mission statement this week, as part of The Project, because unlike its corporate equivalent, a personal statement has value to you and I.
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Many people do a job that they find unfulfilling. Years of this will lead anyone to begin to question themselves. Fear about your job builds as you begin to wonder if this is the best you can do. Is this as good as it gets?
Work that you do not enjoy and do well indicates an inadequacy in the job, not in you. Natural talent and ability combined with passion and enthusiasm creates everything worthwhile in the world. Everyone has talents and abilities, so finding work that uses yours is a worthwhile pursuit.
No Votes Yet Loading ...Last week I started doing the exercises in the job hunter’s book What Color Is Your Parachute? The goal is to produce “That One Piece Of Paper”. Workbook exercises, in a series of seven steps, distill your values, knowledge, skills, and desires down to something you can put on a single sheet of paper. That single sheet of paper functions as a roadmap that will help you find work that you find rewarding and enjoyable.
I have recruited at least 10 other people to do the exercises to provide a variety of viewpoints. I will be conducting interviews with my volunteers after they finish each step to find out how it went. The results will become a collective review of this process before The Project finishes.
No Votes Yet Loading ...In Phase One of The Project I am setting out to reduce my wants, wishes, skills, and values down to their essence. There are many terms for this process but I am calling it What I Want.
No Votes Yet Loading ...I am splitting The Project up into different phases:
No Votes Yet Loading ...I sent an email out to everyone I know last week publicizing this site. The email had strong undertones indicating I was looking for something else to do with my life. Within 12 hours of sending the email I was fired from my regular job. I do not really believe in destiny, but I do believe that how you react to events in your life is a choice. I am a lemonade from lemons kind of a guy.
I was fired on Friday morning. By Saturday an idea for a lemonade recipe had started to take shape. I am pretty excited about it. I am calling it The Project.
No Votes Yet Loading ...I was fired on Friday. People react strangely when you tell them you have been fired. You are spoken to in hushed tones generally reserved for hospitals and churches, or for those you suspect of mental instability. It is therefore important when relaying the news to follow up immediately with: It is OK, it is a good thing and I am not upset.
The reason is simple. (more…)
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