The direction of change to seek is not in our four dimensions: it is getting deeper into what you are, where you are, like turning up the volume on the amplifier.
THADDEUS GOLAS, Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment
In this exercise, you will examine your accomplishments, looking at your strongest and most enjoyable skills. The core of most counseling exercises is some version of the Seven Stories exercise. A counselor may give you lots of tests and exercises, but this one requires work on your part and will yield the most important results. An interest or personality test is not enough. There is no easy way. Remember, busy executives take the time to complete this exercise if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for you.
Do not skip the Seven Stories exercise. It will provide you with information for your career direction, your resume, and your interviews. After you do the exercise, brainstorm about a number of possible job targets. Then research each target to find out what the job possibilities are for someone like you.
If you're like most people, you have never taken the time to sort out the things you're good at and also are motivated to accomplish. As a result, you probably don't use these talents as completely or as effectively as you could. Too often, we do things to please someone else or to survive in a job. Then we get stuck in a rut that is, we're always trying to please someone else or are always trying to survive in a job. We lost sight of what could satisfy us, and work becomes drudgery rather than fun. When we become so enmeshed in survival or in trying to please others, it may be difficult to figure out what we would rather be doing.
When you uncover your motivated skills, you'll be better able to identify jobs that allow you to use them, and recognize other jobs that don't quite fit the bill. "Motivated skills" are patterns that run through our lives. Since they are skills we get satisfaction from, we'll find ways to do them even if we don't get to do them at work. We still might not know what these skills are for us, they're just something we do, and we take them for granted.
Tracking down these patterns takes some thought. The payoff is that our motivated skills do not change. They run throughout our lives and indicate what will keep us motivated for the rest of our lives.
THE SEVEN STORIES APPROACH BACKGROUND
This technique for identifying what people do well and enjoy doing has its roots in the work of Bernard Haldane, who, in his job with the U.S. government forty five years ago, helped to determine assignments for executives entering the armed forces. The Seven Stories (or enjoyable accomplishments) approach, now quite common, was taught to me by George Hafner, who used to work for Haldane.
The exercise is this: make a list of all the enjoyable accomplishments of your life, those things you enjoyed doing and also did well. List at least twenty five enjoyable accomplishments from all parts of your life: work, from your early career up to the present, volunteering, hobbies; your school years. It doesn't matter how old you were or what other people thought about these accomplishments, and it doesn't matter whether you got paid for doing them.
Examine those episodes that gave you a sense of accomplishment. Episodes from your childhood are important, too, because they took place when you were less influenced by trying to please others.
You are asked to name twenty five accomplishments so you will not be too judgmental just list anything that occurs to you. Expect this exercise to take you four or five days. Most people carry around a piece of paper so they can jot down things as they occur to them. When you have twenty five, select the seven that are most important to you by however you define important. Then rank them: list the most important first, and so on.
Starting with your first story, write a paragraph about each accomplishment. Then find out what your accomplishments have in common. If you are having trouble doing the exercises, ask a friend to help you talk them through. Friends tend to be more objective and will probably point out strengths you never realized.
You will probably be surprised. For example, you may be especially good interacting with people, but it's something you've always done and therefore take for granted. This may be a thread that runs through your life and may be one of your motivated skills. It may be that you'll be unhappy in a job that doesn't allow you to deal with people.
When I did the Seven Stories exercise, one of the first stories I listed was from when I was ten years old, when I wrote a play to be put on by the kids in the neighborhood. I rehearsed everyone, sold tickets to the adults for two cents apiece, and served cookies and milk with the proceeds. You might say that my direction as a "general manager" running the whole show, thinking things up, getting everybody working together was set in the fourth grade. I saw these traits over and over again in each of my stories.
After I saw those threads running through my life, it became easy for me to see what elements a job must have to satisfy me. When I interview for a job, I can find out in short order whether it addresses my motivated skills. If it doesn't, I won't be as happy as I could be, even though may decide to take the job as an interim step toward a long term goal. The fact is, people won't do as well in the long run in jobs that don't satisfy their motivated skills.
Sometimes I don't pay attention to my own motivated skills, and I wind up doing things I regret. For example, in high school I scored the highest in the state in math. I was as surprised as everyone else, but I felt I finally had some direction in my life. I felt I had to use it to do something constructive. When I went to college, I majored in math. I almost flunked because I was bored with it. The fact is that I didn't enjoy math, I was simply good at it.
There are lots of things we're good at, but they may not be the same things we really enjoy. The trick is to find those things we are good at, enjoy doing, and feel a sense of accomplishment from doing.
To sum up: Discovering your motivated skills is the first step in career planning. I was a general manager when I was ten, but I didn't realize it. I'm a general manager now, and I love it. In between, I've done some things that have helped me toward my long range goals, and other things that have not helped at all.
It is important to realize that the Seven Stories exercise will not tell you exactly which job you should have, but the elements to look for in a job that you will find satisfying. You'll have a range of jobs to consider, and you'll know the elements the jobs must have to keep you happy. Once you've selected a few job categories that might satisfy you, talk to people in those fields to find out if a particular job is really what you want, and the job possibilities for someone with your experience. That's one way to test if your aspirations are realistic.
After you have narrowed your choices down to a few fields with some job possibilities that will satisfy your motivated skills, the next step is to figure out how to get there.
