My Mind's Ink

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.

Who am I?

1. A Thinker
2. A Builder (Creator)
3. A Renaissance Man¹
4. A Listener (Debater)
5. A Positive Influence²
6. A Computer Geek
7. Unconventional³
8. A Host (Entertainer)
9. A Writer
10. A Cook

What turns me on about these things?

1. Exploring new options, learning, teaching
2. A job well done, sense of accomplishment, designing, creating , brining it all together
3. Not being restricted or defined, freedom
4. Making connections, learning about people, challenging ideas
5. Having fun, making people smile, pushing people to enjoy themselves
6. Thinking, problem solving, clarity, creating, making something work, finding clever solutions, combining creativity with problem solving
7. Questioning preconceived or traditional notions.
8. Having fun, and helping others have fun
9. Exploring ideas, sharing, communicating, learning, teaching
10. Food, tastes, smells, creating, entertaining people

Common Denominators

Creating, fun, people, learning, teaching, mental challenges, change

Footnotes

Making these normally private explorations public makes clarification sometimes necessary.

Footnotes

1. I never want to do just one thing. I like to try many things [↩]
2. By which I mean that I try to induce smiles [↩]
3. This seems like a strange one perhaps. I’m the yuppie poster boy, but I’d like to think I’m not tied to a conventional line of thinking [↩]

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