When I started in the Career Development field 30+ years ago, one of our leaders, Richard Bolles, wrote about how to find your mission in life. Almost immediately I knew that my mission in life was to guide persons in identifying and affirming their natural talents and how those talents can add value in their work life. The talent focus is about work (paid or non-paid) because when we spend the majority of our time doing what we love, where we fit the best- well, that permeates everything else in our life.
In all my work and in my heart, I have always used that as my guiding principle in coaching people in their career and job choices and paths. Transforming lives. It is who I am.
The Career Development field has been reignited with the program “Designing Your Life.” We used to call it Career/Life Planning. As quickly as the world is moving today, plans have become very short term making it more like Career/Life pivots than plans. That excites me since it gives people opportunities to use many of their best talents in different ways.
Excited about the new methodology and tools, I made the decision to grow my business again. I am attending workshops, working with a brand consultant, defining my target clients, working on my mission, vision and values. Though my heart knows my mission is still the same, I was struggling with how to articulate it in today’s branding type statements. For the past several months, I reached out to many who I have helped along the way and asked them to help me say what differentiates me. Their input was great; however, it was not quite the wording that resonated with me.
The past few weeks, I have been feeling ungrounded as I search for the best way to describe my talents and how I want to use them. For a project that I am working on, I decided to go back to my roots and reread some of my favorites from when I started in the field. Sometimes after many years of doing something, we may forget the basics.
While reading on my exercise bike, I look up and there it is. What I have been searching to articulate for months was right there in front of me all the time. A framed copy of the words about finding your mission written so many years ago. The words were so deeply in my heart that I had an artist create 3 pieces of artwork with the words on them. One I gave to my best friend in the field who started with me over 30 years ago- Billie Ruth Sucher; another to a former co-worker who, though newer in our field, seemed to naturally understood many nuances, and the one that is on my wall.
Here are Richard Bolles words from ‘What Color Is Your Parachute?”
Moment by Moment
Day by Day
Step by Step
Make the world a better place.
Exercise the talent
Your Greatest Gift
The one you love to use
In the place or setting
God causes you to find appealing.
Do so with the purpose that
God most needs
To have done
In the world.
This is my mission, my purpose, my value to the world. My natural talent is to guide others in discovering and affirming their natural talents and where they belong in today’s world.