A while ago I gave myself the task of figuring out a few simple things...
What I'm doing, Why I'm doing it and Where it's taking me.
Thanks to this task, every now and then you'll find me visiting and revisiting past decisions and choices I've made (big and small).
Now this might sound like a recipe for driving yourself around the bend but there's more to it than that.
For a start, you get a better handle on the whats, whys and wherefores when it comes to your career (and Yes, I'll happily admit the wherefores were new to me too) and they would be worth the ticket price on their own but, every now and then, I've also come face-to-face with a cracker of a brand-new-and-wonderful fact.
To give you an example, I recently discovered that,
Almost all of the time (and especially when it counts),
I have always chosen for.
[Image courtesy of Auntie K on Flickr.com]
How We Make Choices For (as opposed to against)
A simple study of past decisions helped me realise that I have nearly always made choices for positive reasons.
OK, a sample of one doesn't make an expert but I'm convinced you make choices this way too.
Think about it for a moment...
There's something fundamentally positive at work when we make choices, even when we're not sure we're doing the right thing. Perhaps it's even more obvious when we have the hardest choices to make. When times are tough and/or the pressure is on, we choose for (and with) the things we really believe in.
I'm not talking about easy choices like, "Hmm, Shall I have chocolate or cake?", I mean the ones where there are sacrifices. When it's not at all clear cut or black-and-white. To give you a working example, maybe it's the honours graduate student who waits tables to put herself through college; or maybe it's the fully qualified physiotherapist who does shifts in a factory while his overseas qualifications await recognition in a new country (oddly specific but career facts often are).
In my case, I made a big decision a few years back to take my career into unknown territory. To head for the place where our individual choices and decisions come from. At the time it must have looked like I was choosing against the people around me or rejecting my more familiar work. Of course this wasn't the case but it was only recently, while reflecting on my choices (and their outcomes) that it stood out so clearly.
When it comes to work/life, we always choose for.
* * * * *
