 |
|
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
 |
How to Choose Your Best Work: Part 2 How’d you do with the exercises suggested in last week’s ezine? If you didn’t make it through or you didn’t even get started, no worries. Sometimes it’s very difficult for us to begin the process of taking an honest, in-depth look at ourselves. If it’s important to you to discover the work that will excite and energize you every day, generate the income you want and allow you to live the life you want to live, you’ll complete the exercises when the time is right for you. If you made it through the first five exercises and are ready to take the next step, let’s get started. Take some time to study and think about the information that resulted from completing the first five lists. The key is to let something jump out at you that feels and sounds right when you think about work that you would enjoy doing every day. It should be a combination of something you really enjoy and something you really do well. And, as strange as it may seem, the “love to do it” part is more important than the “good at it” part. For example, I have a friend who is a very good sales person, but he doesn’t really like to sell. It took him years to figure out that selling was the wrong career for him. Every time he started with a new company he would be the top producer within three to six months, regardless of the product or the industry. After that his production would start to fall off. He’d start looking for new opportunities. He’d attribute the drop off in his sales to the company, or the product, or the market, or something else. Once he figured out that the real reason for his up and down production was because he didn’t really like to sell, he took some time to discover something he loved to do and was off and running in the right direction. When we do something we love to do we look forward to it everyday. We also invest the time and effort necessary to become as good as we can be at doing it. It’s important to choose work that we’re not only passionate about, but that we can also become the best at doing. I have many friends who really, really love to play golf. They play as often as they can, they practice, and they even take a lesson now and then. But, they will never be good enough to play golf for a living. The "good at it" part is missing with this example. So, when we ’re choosing our best work, the combination of what we love and what we do well has to result in something that there is a market for. Our work has to have a value in the marketplace. The greater our value in the market, the more money we will earn. A couple of quick facts about value and the marketplace. We all make buying decisions based on value. I may look at a watch priced at $59.95 and think it’s too expensive. You may look at the same watch and think it’s a great deal. It’s all about how we assign value to various products and services. Actors, recording artists and athletes make a bunch of money because a large segment of the market assigns value to what they produce. Lots of people spend lots of money going to movies, going to sporting events, and buying CDs and videos. Because of this the folks that make the movies, CDs and videos, and your favorite athletes make lots of money. In general, people are more willing to spend money on being entertained than they are on being educated. However, spending money on being educated - making ourselves more valuable in the marketplace - has a much greater benefit to us in living the lives we want to live. One of the keys to work success, business or personal, is to continually increase our value to the segment of the market in which we choose to do business. If we ’re doing something we love, we will willingly invest time and effort to become more valuable while doing it. Even though being entertained is an important and necessary part of living, doing things that will make us more valuable in the market will bring us much greater personal reward. So – the trick is to figure out how to do something we love to do in a way that we can do it excellently. Once we get there, we need to determine the segment of the market that is willing to pay us for what we do. We also need to find a place that we will enjoy doing our work and we need to continue to increase our value. Let’s say that we discover we love to work with seniors. And, we further discover that we ’re very good at teaching them activities and habits that help them stay healthy and vital. At this point we can decide if we want to work as an employee for a senior center or some similar organization, or start our own business. Whichever we choose we need to find out what credentials and education we need to get where we want to go, and make plans to learn whatever we need to learn. The great thing is that when we ’re doing something we love, the learning is part of the enjoyment. It’s not a chore. This whole process may seem difficult and cumbersome. Could be. It does require some time, thought and patience. Keep reviewing and revising your lists. Give it some time. It will come to you. Believe me, there is nothing better than getting up every day excited about your work and knowing it will result in the life you want to live. It’s worth whatever time and effort it takes to discover your best work. Since the work we do relates directly to the money we earn, we’ll talk about money issues in next week’s ezine. Have a great week! (c) 2006 Brian Silverthorn ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||