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/