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Continued . . .
With no future and nothing waiting for you, then nothing will happen
unless you choose something and go make it happen. To get started, consider this question:
What am I naturally talented for? This question is bite size,
and much easier to answer than
the other big hairy question brought up earlier.
Your innate abilities are a major component to build
into your future. Once you
understand your innate talents, you'll be able to quickly narrow down the vast
career world to a very small set of career fields that suit your abilities.
Knowing what small subset of career fields fit your talent profile is the best
clue any human being can use to discover what they are "meant" for.
Deciding what you're "into" is another major component to add to your
career building blocks. This is where meaning comes into play. Consider another
important question: What subject matter fascinates me?
Once you figure out the fields you want to
continually learn and apply on a real problem, you'll have motivation to use
your natural talents. It's not enough to be good at what you do. If you don't
care about what you're doing, having all the talent in the world won't get you
jumping out of bed in the morning to go to work.
This methodology to career choice is based on a simple principle;
it's easier to answer smaller, more specific questions and think
about your career in terms of building blocks or "specs".
Above, I posed that you actually have two important questions to
to research in choosing your career direction. The first is to figure
out what your inborn talents are, and the second is to decide
what subject area would give you meaning to engage your abilities, year after year.
There are many more questions to ask yourself, but this is a good foundation to
start your career change effort.
Albert Einstein recognized early
that he was naturally talented at visualizing complex spatial (3D) problems
in his mind's eye. He also had exceptionally high
diagnostic reasoning, a talent for making connections between ideas
that are not obviously related (this aptitude is the key ability for
excelling in the sciences). He could have used these same talents to be an
architect or engineer. However, what gave him joy was
playing with the subject matter of quantuam physics.
He disagreed with the notion that he was
a born genius, he credited his accomplishments
to a lifelong commitment to using his innate talents in service
of an intriguing purpose—he gave himself a personally meaningful reason
to apply his natural abilities.
"A person starts to live when
he can live outside of himself." ~ Einstein
The future you design is really just a landmark, an ideal,
to guide you in living fully day to day. How you live your life
"now" is the most important point. Choosing a direction
for your life is kind of trick to get things moving in the right direction.
Design your path, then forget about it and enjoy the journey.
How will you know your going the right way? If you're good at
what you're doing, you'll know. Trust your instincts; if your work
starts to feel more like play, you've found your way.
The payoff to designing and moving "toward" your future
is extraordinary. When you commit your talents to something that
matters, you'll be living outside of yourself—on purpose.
Nicholas Lore, best selling career author said, "When
life is about caring for the orchard, rather than picking the
apples, you get more apples to eat. It is quite paradoxical,
but as soon as you give up trying to make yourself happy, you
are."
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