subject: Your Story Is The Key To Your Right Work [print this page] Many career assessment tools utilize a story-telling, autobiographical approach. This approach has proven to be valuable in helping individuals understand their life passions and translating them into career satisfaction.
Autobiography may have been the first type of story told. Our understanding of the world passes through intellectual filters, and our personal story is one of those filters. Certainly, Freud and other practitioners of depth psychology in the 20th C. have applied this principle : no person can understand their behavior if they dont understand their history.
Career transition is a change process. And one of the main tasks of every change process is to elucidate the life experiences of an individual. Autobiographical work is important work. It is certainly one of the most important things Ive ever done.
Try it! What is important is that you let the memories come, especially about times in your life when you were doing what you enjoyed most and doing it well.
Start with a quick inventory of your life. This will help to anchor your writing around a specific set of memories comprised of facts, people, and events. Move quickly through each decade of your life by remembering 2 or 3 things you really enjoyed doing and believed you did well.
Most of life is lived in a valley, fulfilling everyday duties and obligations. But I want you to identify mountain top experiences, where you felt truly alive, or in a groove, or going with the flow of life. Punctuate the continuum of your life story with those special events.
In my book JobJoy : Finding Your Right Work through the Power of Your Personal Story, I provide a format for charting and writing your stories quickly and easily.
For example, pick one For each of your enjoyable activities, and follow the following steps:
1. Write a clear statement of the enjoyable activity in one short phrase. It should be written as if it were a newspaper headline, the opening statement of a newscast, or even as a proud boast.
2. Explain how you got started in the activity.
3. Tell the story with details step-by-step, what you did, how you did it, where, when, and with whom. Focus on the how not the why. And stick to the facts.
4. Explain what was wonderful and consistently satisfying about this event/activity.
5. Tell why you stopped doing it.
This simple format will pull out of you a rich vein of gold that can be mined for specific information about the kind of work that will recognize, reward, and motivate you. Write 8 stories like that.
Then send them to me george@jobjoy.com
I will answer the questions: What are the natural talents you use and consistently bring satisfaction to you when you are doing what you enjoy most and doing it well? What is the subject matter that you gravitate to without even trying? What circumstances or conditions have to exist in the job environment to bring out the best in you? How do you naturally build relationships with others?
From this analysis we can generate an Ideal Job Description and match it with specific opportunities in the real world of work, real jobs that will recognize and reward at the level you deserve. These jobs will motivate you and turn your career pain into job joy!
