This is the way I think
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BBC Science - Human MindTo Choose Career Direction, Look For Your Energy Source
Pursuing work you love can be like playing darts blindfolded. Sure, it's possible to hit the bull's-eye by guessing where the target is. But it's a lot more likely your dart will miss the mark.
To take the guesswork out of creating a career that lights you up, you need to understand what energizes you. Here are five ways to find the source of your energy so you can make conscious decisions to incorporate it into your career:
Ask yourself what you love and why.
Always begin with asking yourself what you love, and then ask why you love it. Think of it as dissecting the activities you enjoy, while looking for reasons why you enjoy them. Make a list of things you love doing--work or play--and dig deep. You'll likely uncover common themes that run through each of those activities. I call those your Passion Factors.
One of my main Passion Factors, for example, is exploration and discovery. While my Passion Catalyst coaching (my work) and my travel photography (a hobby) may look like apples and oranges, when you dig below the surface they both share a common source of energy: exploration and discovery.
Explore your Personal Return on Investment.
Imagine yourself transported to a different dimension where you get paid for the work you do by the feeling it gives you, rather than money in the bank. To maximize your pay, to get the greatest possible return on your investment of time and energy, what would you do?
Visualize a scenario where the work you do feeds your energy to the max. What kind of people would you be around? Would the focus of your work be narrow and deep, or broad and varied? Would your work focus on people? Information? Physical things? Would it be creative? Analytical? What would your ideal day look like? What kinds of outcomes would you work toward?
Make a passion collage.
Try non-linear exploration. Gather some old magazines you no longer need. Spend a few minutes sitting quietly and focusing on the idea of pursuing a career you love, then flip through the magazines. Cut out whatever images and words catch your attention. Let the process flow freely. Don't try to make sense of why you're choosing certain images and not others. Just go with what you're drawn to.
After you've gone through all of your magazines, make a collage with the images you've selected. Let yourself play and be creative. Then look at the collage you've created and ask, Why? What about this image am I'm drawn to? What's the message here for me? (If you don't feel like creating a collage, you can go straight to looking at the images and asking why.)
Turn your gripes upside down.
Sometimes it's easier to figure out what we dislike than what we love. Use that to your advantage. Make a list of things you don't like about your current job or past jobs. But don't stop there. Once you've created that list, look at each item and ask, What would be ideal? What's the opposite of what you dislike? Use the things youdon't want to identify what you do want.
Consider your wildest dreams.
In your dreams, what does your career look like? What kind of work are you doing? Let your imagination run wild. Don't limit yourself to what's practical and realistic. Describe those dreams in detail. Then ask, Why? What is it about that wildest dream that feels so compelling? How would it fuel you? Where's the energy coming from? The dream might not be realistic, but it could offer helpful insight into what makes you tick and what lights you up.
[For more career advice, visit U.S. News Careers.]
When you don't have a good grasp of your passions, you're left blindfolded with a dart in your hand. You might hit your career target, but it's more likely you won't. So aim to understand where your energy comes from. Armed with that information about yourself, you can look for energizing opportunities and better evaluate different options. Knowing what fuels you gives you the power to make that next step in your career a wise one.
After years as a professional malcontent, Curt Rosengren discovered the power of passion. As speaker, author, and coach, Rosengren helps people create careers that energize and inspire them. His book, 101 Ways to Get Wild About, and his E-book, The Occupational Adventure Guide, offer people tools for turning dreams into reality. Rosengren's blog, The M.A.P. Maker, explores how to craft a life of meaning, abundance, and passion.
Monday, August 16 2010
Beauty and the Beast : The Mall and the Middle East
The old story of Beauty volunteering to become hostage to the Beast to save her father. She uses the Beast's library to educate herself and get control over the Beast and eventually bring him to the light of righteousness.
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As hot as August maybe in the tiny Europe of the Middle East - Lebanon - there's no escape but to take a refuge in the Mall. Malls are the I Ching of summer survival. This idea can potentially be pushed further and claim that the Mall is the I Ching of survival in Lebanon in particular and in the wider Middle East without the necessity of being particular.
If in Moscow, threatened by the heat, one can easily hide inside grandiose museums not merely for hours, but you can spend entire months of summer strolling inside, of course paying entrance fee each time, BUT, getting both educated and well preserved in delicate temperatures destined for safekeeping of masterpieces for as long as eternity. If caught up in the sudden heat in Northern Europe, you can always hop on an air-conditioned train and move to a culturally rich neighboring town for a touristic day or two that also offers less heat a degree or two. There are many options, indeed.
In the Middle east though, there are neither grandiose museums, nor railways. And no, if you're inclined at this point to offer me to move back if I don't like it, I'll definitely say no to that and clarify that in no way does this note imply any negativity. Yes, it's obvious that there's an increase in a new breed of Middle eastern middle class. Hotels do not come at less than four stars and are always fully booked, so are the rich spa and relaxation programs they offer. There are nargile bars, perfectly air conditioned and filled with TVs at every corner and dimension your eyes may come across even if your sitting at a table closest to both the bathroom and the kitchen. They additionally offer round the clock rich menus. there are country clubs with swimming pools of any dimension, valor, color and functionality - for newborn babies, for toddlers, for young children, for teenagers, for adults, for seniors, all in one place divided by tennis courts, golf courts, jogging trails, yacht parking lots at a nearby bay. Similarly, you can go to a mountain village and have an excellent dinner at an excellent traditional tavern... and all these options come with superior sense of service, with a natural gift of making one feel 100% welcome. Of course, all this comes with a cost, but they make it up to all the value you've invested.
But if you're not into an outdoorsy mood, nor do you wish to get together for the thousandth time and hit the restaurants or cafes or each other's homes, or if you simply want to walk, simply sit in a place with the aim to read more than to eat and it's not Starbucks, or if you want to get culturally agitated by an outrageous exposure to contemporary or modern art exhibition that you don't necessarily understand but can perfectly feel...
No, those things are hard to get. An urban day in in the Middle East means one thing - hitting the Mall. yes, it's always fancier to go to the boutiques in certain areas like the downtown, or Kaslik, or Ashrafieh but the prospect of being shoved from +37 degrees to +18 every time you enter and exit a boutique, has even the most bourgeois of Beirut be Lebanese or guests, heading to the Mall just like the unfortunate rest of us. One could turn concepts of any product, project or a political campaign targeting mall visitors into a real marketing success. Everyone is here. Everyone is relieved to be here. It's cold enough and big enough to spend hours without any particular awareness of the heat outside that comes with full accessories of a nearby factory's smells or sewage scents from an invisible somewhere but in perfect harmony of dance with the humidity of the Mediterranean. One can find anything at the Mall - latest fashion, latest trends, supermarket groceries, free aqua massage at a showroom, kids playground, even a future spouse. You can also find books at a Virgin megastore that offers the latest and grandest of English, French and arabic publications but lacks that dusty corner shelf of a bookstore filled in with world classics, or a meaninglessly huge sector of philosophy and human sciences with an armchair tucked in a corner where you know you can sit for hours and no one would step into that sacred space of yours. No, people go through bookshelf at the Virgin megestore inside this mega-Mall just as they go through lines of hang cloths and shelved shoes - is it glossy enough, are other people looking to buy that title. No wonder, in such a place books on decoration, cooking, family & health, self-help are in the shiniest central area separated by a wall from the area of CDs, DVDs and Video games.
...Remember the good old times when books smelled like books and had no marketing pitch lines on the cover, inside the cover, on the back of the cover, in the first pages of the back, in the back pages of the book... While consumerism is pushing its veil like a burqa, complete with niquab all over the world, the only item remaining open - the eyes - are the books and any other items that cover food-for-thought in the real sense of the word. It is heavy to breath like that, it is difficult to communicate one's individuality like that. Beirut is hyped with ongoing contests of who's wearing the same thing better, who's driving the same car with better, more expensive features. Who's eating where and doing it better. It's at times suffocating, save for the wholehearted Middle Eastern character of things that come with laughter, with people's primary intention to have a family fun atmosphere. But that food-for-soul is unreachable.
Today, I again escaped to the Mall for simply not having any other escape. By now, I know exactly where every store is, I can draw the plan of the Mall with my eyes closed, I can navigate in the parking guiding the guards, I can find an elevator and a toilet in three minutes max and I can guess from the people's exterior where they're gonna shop and what they're gonna buy (some of them don't ever buy). I can call my husband in Saudi Arabia and from his sheer "hello", I can know from the background that he's at a Mall. And sigh with a relief that we're not THAT couple who do exactly the same thing on a distance at the same exact time. It's not a romantic coincidence but rather a cruel account of reality - there IS no other place to go. And for one second, I imagined what IF....
People are already so accustomed to the Mall, they're rushing in for so many reasons that one couldn't wonder but give that extra to the Customer, that invisible extra... I imagined how fancier it would have been to be inside a Mall that on in between walls of the shops would hang paintings, real, one-of-a-kind paintings and sculptures and with bookshelves where people could put books on, take books out, sort of a public library. You could even bring the National Museum of History to the Mall since the Mall does not go to the National Museum of History. If you're somewhere outside of the Middle East reading these lines, no, there aren't any options of these items getting stolen. there is tighter security in the Mall than in an actual museum. Allow your Customers feel that there are not just a consumer. After all, the Middle East is coming out of closet right now with its own brand of capitalism that has a certain color of dignified commercialism. How about giving your Customer a luxury of being your constant Client, show-offing your skill to both educate (really!) and trade with them in goods and capital. This would be the perfect happy end to the Beauty and the Beast.
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(Next time I'll recount a wilder dream, whereby the Mall's windows when looked from outside are featuring biking trails for customers to get the habit of doing some exercise when shopping, and putting an entire roof of solar panels to showcase an effort of real appreciation of the one commodity every Northerner envies the Middle East for - the Sun!)
