The Great "I" - It Pays To Talk About Yourself

The Great “I”: It Pays To Talk About Yourself


If you don’t know what you’re best at, no one else will either. In this piece of work talking about yourself is important to knowing who you are, what you’ve done, what you can do. You may think you know, but you have only the vaguest picture until you’ve done this. And, if you have only the vaguest picture of yourself, you’ll be invisible to a hiring influence. I use ‘hiring influence’ often because the person who makes the decision to hire – the hiring influence – could be anyone.

What you’re going to do now is get to know a lot more about yourself. You want to develop a clear idea of who you are and what you’re capable of doing. This is fundamental to your career development. That means, if you don’t do this, you might as well can any hope of growing a career through the working years of your life. Your choice.

Go back over your life and pick out ten incidents that show you at your best. This applies whether you’re old or young or in between. The events can be from work, play, or any other venue in which they happened. In Part 1 you’ll recount the 10 events. In Part 2 you’ll analyze what characteristics, talents, skills you exhibited in action in each event.

All of this is very brief; I’ll tell you how to do it. Then, do it.

In recounting the events, start anywhere you remember one:

• Situation: in one or two lines outline the situation, problem, event in which you took action. What was the challenge?

• Action: In two or three lines explain what you did, not the details of how you did it, that showed you at your best. A very short movie of you in action.

• Result: In one or two lines explain what your action accomplished.

Each little story you tell will uncover more. You’ll surprise yourself.
As you improve, you can go back and rewrite the first ones. You can expect to be a little rough in the beginning; that’s okay. Do 10 Bests.

After the last You-At-Your-Best story go back and start analyzing what personal characteristics, skills, talents or other attributes you drew on to perform the action and get the result you did. The idea is to highlight and define your best abilities from your actual performance in a situation, on the ground, so to speak.

Use two to three lines to analyze your best abilities. This is all about the best you have to offer: organizing it, journalizing it, knowing it.

Now, do it. The format will keep you brief:

• Situation, problem, challenge: one to two lines
• Action: two to three lines
• Result: one to two lines
• ================================
• Analysis: two to three lines about your best.

The 10 events, challenges, stories about you will come up easier as you write them up. Like peeling the onion, another layer is revealed (remembered) as you lift one off. You will feel better about yourself after you complete and digest this piece of work. You’ll probably like it as you go along doing it, too.

What you have here is the start of a Credit Journal of the things you deserve credit for doing. You must always take credit when it’s due you. You must always record in your Credit Journal all the golden nuggets of career excellence that make you a valuable person. More about the Journal and its critical importance next time.

Do your ten best; you’ll like who you find there.

=================

“It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do and then do your best.” - W. Edwards Demming

I guess that means we should listen, learn and then do, huh?

=================

Try Mr.Q's High School - Head On highschoolheadon.blogspot.com

Young Careers - Action Plan: Self Assessment


At the crossroads, a forced opportunity, but an opportunity nevertheless.


Who am I now? Alphonse Carr said, “Every person has three characters - that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has.” Who you are now is the sum of your life and work adventures until today. During those years, what challenges have you faced, what were your responses and what happened? That’s who you are. At this crossroads the question you ask is: how much of my life and work did I plan, guide and make happen? How much did I allow to be done to me? The right answers to those questions will come from your assessment of yourself combined with the assessment of you by others. We must accept from others the effects we have generated.

What is my objective? What is my destination on this voyage through the rest of my life? Let’s look at your Big Picture Assignment. How do I want to be: to look, talk, dress, behave, how? How do I want others to see me, as what kind of a person, socially and in business? Where do I want to live, in detail; what do I want to own - clothes, cars, stuff? Who do I want to be with - who am I having to the party in my life? Who will come? Feel the handshakes, see it happening. Visualize the way you want your life to be happening in sound, motion, color, with the cast of characters playing the roles you want in your life. That’s where I want to go, that’s my destination, my objective. See it, hear it, feel it happening - picture it in your mind - in Wide-screen, Surround-sound, Technicolor with you giving your greatest performance among your wonderful cast of characters. Close your eyes and see it. That is no dream. That is your destination, the objective you want to spend your efforts on from now on.

Focus. It is psychological fact that a person who consistently focuses on an objective will subconsciously make those choices which lead him/her directly or indirectly to it. This is sometimes depicted as the “self-fulfilling prophecy”. A sharp and steady and consistent focus on your Wide-Screen objective is the “magic” to making those choices that produce the effects you want in your life. Julius Caesar said, “Divide and conquer.” Allow exterior influences to lead you into choices incompatible with your objective and your focus gets changed, split, fuzzy - you are being divided. Re-sharpening the focus puts you on course.

Doing It. When you know who you are, what your objective is and you keep it consistently in sharp focus - out of reach, but not out of sight -, how do you prepare to get there? How do you want your life and work adventures to proceed from today on? You prepare. You learn the lessons of your history; you listen to the witnesses of your history, of your life, the testimony of your actions. Construct from your personal and business facts that representation of you that is best equipped to reach your objective. That’s who you are, who you want to be, who you present to the world.

Getting there. To achieve this kind of long range personal objective - to make your life come out somewhere near where you’d like it - you have to approach the work you do as a long range project. In other words, you don’t want a job, you want a career. A job and a career are two different animals. In one you work for a company; in the other, the company works for you. You decide which you want, a job or a career, but remember: it takes just as much pain, trouble and effort to lead a bad life as it does to lead a good one. It’s up to you which one you want to spend your time on -

A Job: (Old E. meaning `lump’) A piece of work, especially, a small miscellaneous piece of work at a stated rate; occasional pieces of work for hire -

or

A Career: (Lat. carrus meaning `car’ or `cart’) Exercise of activity; the pursuit of consecutive progressive achievements, especially, in public, professional or business life; to go at full speed.

A career or a job? Life is choices. Every choice is your responsibility. You have two choices at each point of decision, large or small:

1. Cut yourself adrift to the winds without compass, food or water, or -

2. Prepare yourself, plot a course and head for a destination you choose.


================


“It is a person’s duty to proceed as if limits to his abilities did not exist.”
- Teilhard De Chardin

===================


"It is good to dream, but it is better to dream and work. Desiring is helpful, but work
and desire are invincible."
- Thomas Robert Gaines


===================

Try: High School - Head On

highschoolheadon.blogspot.com/

Young Careers - Action Plan

What’s Your Big Movie Like?

It doesn’t matter where you are in your working life; you may be building expertise in school still, you may be out in the working world. Here’s the start to get you focused; your first assignment. Make it fun because you want to set the mood and tenor and components for the life you want for yourself. This assignment gives you the focus, the details, the picture of where you want to go and who you want to be. In our imaginations all things are possible, so, let it fly, kid; do it in grand style. But do it. If you don’t, there’s not much point in moving on. You’ll have no place to head for, no target to hit. You’ll be a ship without a port to sail to, a traveler without a destination to aim for. The events that happen in your life, that define your life, will be accidents. You’ll be a supporting actor in someone else’s life, not the star.

Here’s what you do. You must write it out in detail and sketch it on a large poster paper even if you’re not a great artist. You can do it with computer graphics or video media, any way that will show and say how you want your life to be. You must keep it private and let your imagination run far and true. If you think other people are watching and judging over your shoulder, you won’t be honest with yourself. Imagine – and reproduce in writing and drawing or more modern media – a performance of the life you’d love to have if there were no restrictions at all. Tune your imagination to wide-screen, Technicolor, surround-sound, with a cast of thousands or, at least, everyone or kind of person you want in your life as it develops. All the details: what kind of people are your friends, where are the places your life takes place? What is your work like, your family like, your part of the world? What are you like and how do you feel about all this? What will your house look like, your cars, your clothes, your other stuff? See all the things that make you happy and proud of yourself. Imagine all this going on all over a giant motion picture screen only you can see and hear, showing you everyone and everything you want in your life. Think about that and sleep on it. Then think about it again and write it down and draw it, produce your media or computer version so you remember all the details.

Save it where you can look at it often….because the things you see there make you happy and proud of yourself. This is a portrait of your life the way you want your life to be. It doesn’t have to done perfectly, just the best you can is good. This is where we start.

=============

Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is everything, it is the preview of our life’s coming attractions.”

============

Try: High School - Head On (highschoolheadon.blogspot.com/)

How to live, laugh, love and sweat your way to a big win

through the four greatest life-shaping years you'll ever have.

===========

Next Assignment: The Great “I”

Young Careers - Action Plan

No Time Like Now

Young Careers is about growth and development while you’re working. We won’t wait until you get laid off or fired in one way or another. That’s not the positive dynamic to work with when we’re trying to make the best of your working life. An important phrase: ‘your working life’. Your working life can mean a job you’re doing anywhere. It does mean a job you’re doing wherever you are. Are you doing a job on school assignments, on extra curricular activities? I hope so; high school is where you develop the most options for work you’d like to do for the rest of your life. Then, you may be out of school as you read this; that’s okay. The process we talk about here can be used if you’re a student as well as if you’re working at a job. In short, anyone can use this process to take command of his or her working life. When you’re in control of your working life, you are managing your career, molding it, shaping it and doing those things that are necessary for your working life to develop the way you want it, or close to it. If you are not engaged in this process and are working, then, you are holding a job, doing what someone else tells you (although this can happen in a career, too), and accepting what others are willing to give you for your efforts, doing only what others want you to do. Your job controls you and determines what your working life will be like. You’re part of what someone else wants their life to be like.

So, in holding a job, you’re doing nothing to determine your own outcome in a most important part of your life – your work. Yeah, everybody talks about work and business until they’re blue in the face. You should listen and think and build your own ideas of what your work should be. Work is the action that pays the bills and you don’t get through this life without paying your way. Got that? No matter how noble the pursuit, we all pay our way through life, with money - that we earn from what we call work. How well we do this determines how well we enjoy our lives. Yes, enjoy. The wrong work can be a misery every day just as the work you choose, enjoy and focus on can be a joy. We spend about one-third of our life working. Wouldn’t you rather enjoy it? That’s kind of cold and in your face, but that’s the truth; money determines a lot of what our life is going to be like.

Have doubts? That’s okay. Think of everything you have now, everything you own or owe on and tell me what means of exchange got these things for you and what means of exchange will get you what you want next week or whenever. It’s just a fact of practical life. Money is not evil, it’s a tool, it’s the lubricant of our activities. It allows us to do things and, if we have enough of it, money allows us to do everything we want to. And we need enough of it even to do the things we must do. Accept the need for money as a fact of life and for our purposes forget about philosophizing about it. Money doesn’t determine the quality of our work; we do that. The choices of the admirable or mundane are ours. Money is just a tool, but, to get it, you need to be more competitive in the career markets. If we understand each other, we’re ready to begin your first assignment.

===========


“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with
problems longer.” – Albert Einstein


===========


Try:High School - Head On (highschoolheadon.blogspot.com/)

How to live, love, laugh and sweat to a big win in your
four years of greatest life-shaping opportunity.