When I wrote my post on day 17, I mentioned that one thing I wanted to look at was my inability to make a decision about the direction in which I wanted to take my work.
I’ve been obsessing about the direction in which to take my business for years and as of today I still have no crystal clear direction to follow. On the other hand, I do have a few directions I’m clear I don’t want to follow and that’s progress.
Today I completed the Radical Self-Forgiveness to have more peace with myself and my lack of direction. It’s challenging not having a sense of what’s next but it’s a lot more difficult when I make that challenge all about what’s wrong with me.
One of the main insights I had was on how many beliefs I carry about the right way to go about finding my “right work.”
Although I had good grades when I graduated from college and I was a marketing major, I wanted to find a job in consumer research and at the time there weren’t many companies offering entry level positions in marketing research. The easiest marketing-related job to get was in sales and I pretty blew all the interviews I had for sales jobs.
What most people I knew did was read the want ads and send resumes to the Fortune 500 companies. I lived in Chicago and there were plenty of big companies to go after.
But because I wanted a job in an area most people had never heard of I did things differently. I followed the advice in What Color is Your Parachute and I did informational interviews.
I know my parents were really nervous about the fact I wasn’t sending my resume like everyone else. They thought I was spinning my wheels and probably that fast forward 30 years into the future and I’d be living in the basement with six cats and still no job.
It turned out that the best thing I ever did was those informational interviews. It’s the reason I got a job in my field of interest to begin with and I probably spoke with more leaders in the field than I ever would had I used a different route.
It took me about 18 months to find the “job of my dreams” and I made a lot of mistakes and detours along the way.
Then I kind of forgot that experience because I decided I “knew” what my career was supposed to be. I guess I decided the soul-searching part was over and I knew enough about what I wanted and didn’t want to be in a position to make quick decisions.
I’ve done a lot of zig-zagging: technical writing, life coaching, business coaching, creating information products, etc.
At this point, where I’m leaning toward is going through the self-assessment process again as outlined in Parachute and that will probably be my next major project. For one thing, it doesn’t exclude the option of technical writing. For another thing, I think I needed to cast a wider net than I’ve allowed myself in the past. Finally, I suspect I’ll end up creating something original to fit my particular set of talents and whether I work for someone else or decide to make it a business, it’s going to be important that I’m clear about what I do, who I help, and the value I bring to the table.
For the last ten years I’ve been trying to force myself into a particular value definition and it’s been more or less an exercise in frustration. Not unlike throwing myself against a brick wall and wondering when it will stop hurting.
When I stop throwing myself against a brick wall and create a door to walk through, that’s when. Not unlike the Pink Panther tossing a black circle onto the ground and jumping into the hole he just created.
Not a final decision as of today but feeling like the most promising direction. Having a promising direction I’m willing to commit to is real progress.
