1. How does The Pathfinder specifically define “purpose?” What, according to Lore, does it mean to “live from a purpose?” What, in your own opinion, are the benefits to livingfrom a purpose? What are some of the drawbacks to living from a purpose? Is it possible/useful to distinguish between living from a purpose and workingfrom a purpose? How so?
2. Choose one “purpose” that you would be willing to dedicate yourself to in the next few years of your life. Declare your purpose by writing it down as one complete sentence/statement in BOLD font. Then, discuss at least two ways to express, achieve, or succeed with your chosen purpose. Finally, are you ready to “live from this purpose?” Why or why not? Do you envision “working from this purpose?” How so? How does having a sociological imagination (that you’ve been developing in this course) help you live and/or work from your stated purpose?
3. While you may have your heart set on a particular profession, brainstorm a list of TWO possible career choices that you could see yourself doing. Think about your talents, personality, dreams, plans, and goals. For each career choice, discuss 1) why you’re interested in that career, and 2) why you’d be successful in that career. Which is your top career choice? Why is it your top choice, and what skills and talents (the book makes distinctions between each of these, so discuss both) do you have that would ensure your success in that particular career?
4. How does Sociology as a discipline fit into the two possible career choices you’ve just discussed (in question #3)? How might this specific course (Sociology 1) influence your future education and career trajectories?
5. Choose ONE of the “Inquiries” that you completed from Chapters 15-29 to discuss. Which inquiry did you complete (name it) and what was the overall outcome/result of the inquiry (describe in detail what you did)? Why did you decide to complete that particular inquiry and what personal insights did you gain from doing it? How might this inquiry help in finishing school, making future decisions and planning your career?
This Pathfinder Summary II involves asking you a few questions about Chapters 15-29.
Please answer each question thoroughly with GENUINE reflection rather than “correct” answers. Your entire papershould be at least 5-7 pages in length, typed, double-spaced in 12-point font with one-inch margins, pages numbered, your name on the upper left corner, and edited for spelling and grammatical errors. Yes, you can number your responses but DO NOT use bullet points. Write in complete sentences with thoughtful responses.
THE CLASSIC BESTSELLER—COMPLETELY REVISED AND UPDATED!
DO YOU JUMP OUT OF BED EVERY MORNING
AND RUSH TO A JOB YOU LOVE?
Or is your work just a way to pay the bills? Whether you are a
seasoned professional in search of a career change or just starting
out, let The Pathfinder guide you to more engaging, fulfilling work.
Based on breakthrough techniques developed by the author’s
award-winning career coaching organization, Rockport Institute,
The Pathfinder has changed the lives of thousands. This
completely revised and updated new edition offers more than fifty
self-tests, diagnostic tools, and the acclaimed Rockport Career
Design Method to help you choose an entirely new career, an
entrepreneurial path, or the ideal job in your present field. You’ll
learn:
How to design your new career step-by-step—a realistic,
attainable career that fits your talents, personality, goals,
and interests—a new career you will love
How to deal successfully with the “Yeahbut” negative
thoughts and obstacles that keep you going back to the
same old ill-fitting job, day after day
How to land the perfect job in your new field using
personal marketing and networking (even for those who
hate to network)
At once comprehensive, insightful, practical, and empowering, The
Pathfinder will be your personal career coach, expertly guiding you
through the process of moving forward from your present
uncertainty to designing a career that fits you elegantly, perfectly,
like a custom-made suit.
NICHOLAS LORE is the originator of the field of career coaching
and the founder of Rockport Institute, an organization that has
guided thousands of professionals, executives, high-tech people,
artists, support staff, and government officials through career
change, and has helped numerous young people design their work.
He has been commended for excellence by two U.S. presidents.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
SimonandSchuster.com
THE SOURCE FOR READING GROUPS
COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ED KOREN
Thank you for purchasing this
Touchstone Books eBook.
Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access
to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and
other great eBooks from Touchstone Books and Simon &
Schuster.
or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com
This Is the Perfect Book for You If:
You’ve walked a city street with other people on their way to
work. Many of them look resigned, stressed, or a little blank. These
people are obviously not looking forward to their workday. Suddenly
you realize that you are not just an observer. You are one of them.
Or
Like a leaf in the wind, you have been blown into a career by the
winds of circumstance and by decisions that seemed like the right
thing to do at the time.
Or
You entered the job market with high hopes that you would be
starting a terrific career. By now it is painfully apparent that you
made some sort of misjudgment: Somehow you have found yourself
in the job from hell—or, even worse, you are bored most of the time
with the daily grind of tasks that don’t even begin to make use of
your intelligence and abilities.
Or
You used to really enjoy your work. It used to be full of challenges.
When friends sang the career blues, it never crossed your mind that
anything like that could ever happen to you. But now your gum has
lost its flavor on the bedpost.
Or
You have visited career counselors and read numerous books on
career and personal growth. You have done everything you can think
of to find your true vocation. You know much more about yourself.
Yet dark clouds still obscure your future direction.
Or
You are a mindful young person. You and your friends are trying
to figure out what to do with your lives. You want to have a career
that really sings and soars, that gives you a real life. Your friends are
deciding their fates the same way their parents did—and you know
how that turned out.
Or
You had a job. You knew it wasn’t the right one, but at least it paid
the bills. Now it is gone or about to slip away. You could follow the
crowd and repeat your last mistake or take this opportunity to carve
out a new and better future.
Or
You are good at your job. You just don’t seem to have a sense of
purpose. You want to do something that means more to you
personally. You may close your eyes and imagine pounding through
stormy seas at the helm of a Greenpeace rubber boat just inches ahead
of a Japanese whaling ship. But then the vision fades. When you open
your eyes, you are back in your day-to-day life. Sure, it would be
exciting on that boat, but it doesn’t seem very realistic. Nevertheless,
you definitely want to do something with your life that matters.
Also by Nicholas Lore
Now What?
Touchstone
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 1998, 2011 by Nicholas Ayars Lore
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or
portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address
Fireside Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the
Americas, New York, NY 10020.
The inquiries, worksheets, charts, descriptions of traits, and all parts
of the Rockport Career Design Method in this book are copyrighted
by Nicholas Lore, and are used with permission. If you want to use
or adapt any of our materials for use with your clients or students,
we are happy to let you do so as long as you get written permission
from Rockport Institute first. If you plan to use this book with your
clients or students, please have each of them get their own copy.
Rockport Institute, the Pathfinder Career Testing Program, the
Pathfinder Career Choice Program, and Pathfinder Career Programs
are registered trademarks and service marks. The Rockport Career
Design Method, the Rockport Career Design Program, Customdesign a Life You Love, the Career Testing Program, the Career
Choice Program, Core Personality, Tribal Personality, Maestro
Personality, Lifeline, True Values, Type and the Talent Indicator are
trademarks of Nicholas Lore.
First Touchstone trade paperback edition January 2012
TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon &
Schuster Inc.
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your
live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the
Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our
website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lore, Nicholas.
The pathfinder : how to choose or change your career for a
lifetime of satisfaction and success/by Nicholas Lore.—1st
Touchstone trade pbk. ed.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: The Pathfinder : how to choose or change your career
for a lifetime of satisfaction and success. c1998.
1. Career changes. 2. Job satisfaction. I. Title.
HF5384.L67 2011
650.14—dc23
2011043709
ISBN 978-1-4516-0832-8
ISBN 978-1-4391-8866-8 (ebook)
For Mitra
MY WIFE, TWIN FLAME, AND INSPIRATION
CONTENTS
Section 1 • LIVING A LIFE YOU LOVE
CHAPTER 1: THIS CAN BE YOUR GUIDE
CHAPTER 2: YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO
CHAPTER 3: HOW TO DECIDE
CHAPTER 4: USE THE PATHFINDER
AS
YOUR GUIDE
Section 2 • HOW TO GET FROM HERE TO THERE (THE
LIBRARY)
CHAPTER 5: WHY YOU DON’T GET WHAT YOU WANT
CHAPTER 6: THE POWER OF COMMITMENT
CHAPTER 7: MAKING DECISIONS—A SHORT COURSE
CHAPTER 8: GOALS AND PROJECTS
CHAPTER 9: QUESTIONS
CHAPTER 10: WHEN YOU GET STUCK
CHAPTER 11: THE BOTTOM LINE—RESEARCH
CHAPTER 12: RIGHT LIVELIHOOD
CHAPTER 13: SEVEN KEYS
CHAPTER 14: THE ROCKPORT CAREER DESIGN METHOD
Section 3 • DESIGN YOUR CAREER
PART 1 • WHO AM I? PERSONALITY, TALENTS, ROLES,
FUNCTIONS
CHAPTER 15: TEMPERAMENT AND PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 16: YOUR CORE PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 17: NATURAL TALENTS
CHAPTER 18: NATURAL ROLES
CHAPTER 19: THE GAMES OF LIFE
CHAPTER 20: THEY PAY YOU
FUNCTIONS
TO
PERFORM SPECIFIC
JOB
PART 2 • WHY WORK? MEANING, PURPOSE, GOALS,
REWARDS
CHAPTER 21: PASSIONS, MEANING, MISSION, PURPOSE
CHAPTER 22: VALUES AND REWARDS
PART 3 • WORK WHERE? WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENT
CHAPTER 23: WORKPLACE
ENVIRONMENT
PART 4 • PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
CHAPTER 24: WHICH CAREERS FIT BEST?
CHAPTER 25: FINAL RESEARCH AND MAKE THE CHOICE
CHAPTER 26: WHAT IF NOTHING FITS OR I CAN’T DECIDE?
Section 4 • MARKETING AND JOB SEARCH
CHAPTER 27: PERSONAL MARKETING PRINCIPLES
CHAPTER 28: THE JOB SEARCH
CHAPTER 29: ROCKPORT TYPE AND TALENT INDICATOR
RESOURCES AND CONTACT INFORMATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness
has genius, power, and magic in it.
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The
PATHFINDER
Section 1
LIVING A LIFE YOU LOVE
You have never used a book like this before. It is designed to take
you through the process of choosing your future career rather than
just reading about doing so. As you continue through The
Pathfinder, it will become your personal career coach and guide.
Many people say that this book seems to be speaking directly to
them alone. Of course this is not true, but you will find that you
have an opportunity to develop a very personal coaching
relationship with The Pathfinder. This relationship will help you
deal successfully with everything you need to consider, as well as
learn practical new ways to move forward from your present
uncertainty and design a career that will fit you elegantly, perfectly,
like custom-tailored clothes. I hope you will choose to be a
participant, and not just a reader. If you want to change your
career, or if you are a younger person making a first-time career
choice, you’ve found a book that was written just for you.
CHAPTER 1
•
THIS CAN BE YOUR GUIDE
Once, I was in the same situation you are facing today. It was time to
decide what to do with my life. I committed myself to doing whatever
was necessary to make a truly excellent career choice because I
passionately wanted to wake up in the morning looking forward to
going to work each day. This is the book I searched for then but did
not find.
I remember an extraordinary, imaginary book that first framed my
boyhood vision of what I hope The Pathfinder will be for you. Each
month, Donald Duck’s nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, would find
themselves in the middle of a full-tilt comic-book adventure. When
things got completely hopeless, when the forces of chaos seemed sure
to win, they always pulled off a miracle. Out of their knapsack came
their infallible guide and problem solver, The Junior Woodchuck
Guidebook. It had an absolutely perfect, creative solution for every
situation they stumbled into, no matter how obscure or difficult. It
was the complete guide to life.
Since then, I have passionately sought those rare volumes of
chuckery that surface in the real world. Every once in a while, one
appears—the seminal guidebook to some aspect of life. Inspired by
these wonderful books, The Pathfinder is intended to be one small
chapter of The Junior Woodchuck Guidebook: how to decide what to
do with your life. Whether you are in midcareer change or are making
career decisions for the first time, it is designed to get you successfully
through the process of planning your future.
How can an intelligent person, committed to choosing a new
career path, decide exactly which direction to pursue? That is a
question I began asking many years ago. At the time, I was restless
and bored with my job. I ran a conservation and solar energy
company on the coast of Maine. I had written and been responsible
for passing legislation that saved thousands of beautiful historic
houses from destruction and had recently been commended for
excellence by the White House. My office looked out on a beautiful
harbor where lobster boats and foghorns greeted the new day. Yet I
had trouble getting through the workday. Even with an extensive
background in psychology and Eastern philosophy, I had difficulty
understanding why my workday left so much to be desired. How
could it be that working on interesting projects in an idyllic setting
and making a positive difference in the world and getting recognition
could get boring? It was an absolute mystery to me.
I then searched all over New England to find someone to help me
solve my problem. I called nearly every counselor in the region. I told
them I was seeking to choose a new career where I would be able to
wake up in the morning and look forward to work. I said I wanted to
find a vocation that was challenging, creative, and that I would
passionately enjoy, where I could use my talents to their fullest, doing
something that mattered to me. None of them seemed to know what
it took to have a really phenomenal career. In fact, I could tell from
their voices that many of them didn’t seem to love what they did,
either.
Finally, I took my problem to a wise old man who was a fellow
member of my boat club. As it turned out, I was lucky enough to pick
the ideal supporter, R. Buckminster Fuller. Many people have heard of
Bucky because he invented the geodesic dome. The building at Epcot
Center that looks like a huge silvery ball is one of his many
revolutionary designs. Bucky was much more than an architect. If you
can imagine Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda combined in a real person
who was at the same time a master futurist, scientist, engineer,
architect, inventor, mathematician, philosopher, and mystic, you get a
little hint as to who he was. I struggled with my dilemma for what
seemed like eons. Ultimately, with his encouragement, I decided to
dedicate my life to tackling the very problem I had so much trouble
solving myself. I founded an organization dedicated to developing
more effective ways to help people make career and education
choices.
Since
1981,
that
organization,
Rockport
Institute
(www.rockportinstitute.com), has been a pioneer in developing career
coaching programs that successfully guide clients through the process
of career decision making. These programs consist of clear-cut steps
that help clients choose a specific career that will be highly satisfying,
give them the opportunity to reach their goals, use their talents at the
highest possible level, and be practical and achievable. From the
beginning, we have been committed to developing the best tools to
help people make the best decisions. Rockport Institute has helped
many thousands of clients from all walks of life: young and old, rich
and poor, scientists, professionals, executives in career change, artists,
professional athletes, students, and people reentering the workforce.
Our clients include people who have been fabulously successful and
others who never reached their goals because of an ill-fitting career.
We have had the opportunity to serve as personal career consultants
to several national and global leaders, C-level executives of Fortune
500 companies, senior policy makers of four presidential
administrations, and people in nearly every field of endeavor. Our
clients have one thing in common: a strong desire for a very fulfilling
career.
For the last thirty years, as director of Rockport Institute, my
single-minded passion has been to help intelligent, complex people
like you live remarkable lives that are self-expressed and satisfying by
stretching themselves beyond their everyday circumstances and the
perceived limitations that hold them back. I have written this book to
duplicate, as closely as possible, the experience you would have if we
were to sit together in the same room and work step-by-step until you
reach your goal: knowing for sure what you will do with your life—
or, at least, this part of it. In these pages, you will find a pathway
through the process of deciding what to do with your life that can
actually get you to (or closer to) the goal line. For the first time, you
will have access to most of what you need to reach your goal of
picking an outrageously excellent new direction, choosing your first
career, or tuning up your present path. By looking from new
perspectives at the questions you have previously been unable to
answer, you will finally have a chance to sort them out.
You will also have an opportunity to look into areas of your life
you may have never considered before. You will find some of these
components absolutely critical to making the best possible career
decision. The Pathfinder will help you break everything important
down into small, bite-size pieces and deal with them one by one. Far
from offering a generic, cookie-cutter approach, this book will enable
you to customize your journey through the morass of questions and
uncertainties to fit your own particular needs.
I will completely respect and appreciate you and your unique
nature. At the same time, I won’t pull punches or be too polite to give
it to you straight. I don’t mind at all if you jump up and down and
curse me when you get frustrated. After all, I’m just a book.
The Pathfinder will help you examine every aspect of your life that
relates to career. Designed to be a universal guide, it should work for
you regardless of your age, background, education, point of view, and
experience. If you are a recently deposed emperor, you won’t be
treated like a teenager. And if you are a teenager, don’t worry, you
won’t be treated like a deposed emperor. Rather than just discussing
theoretical ideals about career fulfillment, The Pathfinder is designed
to actually take you toward your goal of deciding exactly what you
will do with your life.
Using this book as your guide may take you all the way to your
goal of designing a career that is both perfect for you and practical. It
has guided many thousands of intelligent, committed people all the
way to having 100 percent certainty about what they will do with
their lives. Others make it most of the way or partway to that goal,
but need time, experience, professional coaching, or something else to
cross the finish line. The Rockport Career Design Method you will
use throughout this book helps you answer the question “What am I
sure will be the important components of my work?” The most
powerful way to design your career is to become sure about the
answers to questions such as “How will I make best use of my natural
talents and personality?” “What workplace environment will support
my best effort?” “How important is it to do something that
personally matters to me, and what specifically will that be?” Asking
and answering those big questions about your future build islands of
certainty that move your career design project forward. Becoming
absolutely sure about one piece of the puzzle makes it easier to sort
out the other pieces.
You Can Do It!
The difficulties you may have faced, the times you have gotten stuck,
and the less than perfect decisions you may have made previously do
not signify that there is something wrong with you or that the world
of work must be a hard, dark, cold, dreary place. If you want to do
something with your life that really sings and soars, all you need to
do is to start your journey here. No matter what your situation, you
can do it if you go for it wholeheartedly and keep going until you
arrive at your destination. But remember, this book can’t do it for
you. Only you can make the choices that build your future work,
piece by piece.
Decide How You Are Going to Keep Track of Everything
Before you start this career design process, please decide what format
you will use to keep notes and do inquiries. If you are 100 percent
digital, create a folder or whatever works for you to organize this
project. If not, get a good notebook. An old-fashioned three-ring
binder would be perfect. In any event, don’t use your head to store
your clues, insights, decisions, and questions. Write them down.
CHAPTER 2
•
YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO
The Pathfinder contains inquiries as a way to generate clues about
what is important to you. These inquiries are tools that provide a
useful way to ask good questions and choose definite components and
elements of your future work. Here’s the first.
INQUIRY 1
Back to the Beginning
Remember back to your childhood, back to the beginning of
the journey. Remember your childhood visions of the future.
What were those dreams? What were those wild fantasies of
yours? What seemingly perfect careers did you imagine as you
were growing up?
How did you feel when you imagined yourself in the midst
of one of these fantasies? Feel now what it felt like then.
If you were like most of us, you dreamed of an exciting future where
you were passionately engaged in life. Perhaps you dreamed of being
a rock star or a professional athlete, a detective, or the first empress
of the galaxy. You might have envisioned yourself as a brilliant
surgeon, as an artist, or swinging from a vine over a bottomless
chasm. Wiser now, you might smile at the naïveté of childhood
dreams. Your vision may not have been reasonable or practical, but it
was certainly passionate. It put you in the midst of a life that was
fully lived.
How well does the word “work” fit with your childhood dream
job? Doesn’t it seem strangely out of place? The way these fantasies
usually occur seems to fit better into the category of “adventurous
vacation” or “getting paid to play.” Our dream jobs are more play
than work. When people dream of being a lawyer, they aren’t
thinking about being buried under endless piles of deadly dull
paperwork or having to defend an unscrupulous client. In our dreams
of being a fireman, we are fighting the fire, not repacking the hoses or
passing long nights in the firehouse playing endless games of pinochle
with two cards missing from the deck.
When you get down to the very skinny truth, under all the
sophisticated conversation and pretense, no one really wants to work
if that includes a life of suffering. One definition of the word “work”
that is not in the dictionary, but nevertheless is a part of our internal
dictionary, goes something like “Work—something I would rather do
less of” or “something I have to do when I would rather do
something else.” Underneath all the serious reasons people give to
explain why they want to change careers, lead a company, write a
book, or drive an eighteen-wheeler, there is an essential, powerful
motivation that’s not discussed in polite, sophisticated company. They
want to do something they are passionate about. They want
satisfaction, an adventure. And they want to have fun.
I don’t mean idle, frivolous fun. In our visions, we savor life, we
are brilliant at what we do, and people appreciate our contribution.
Our dreams are shaped by our own individual inner templates of
what matters the most to each of us: self-expression, adventure,
power, a certain picture we have of success, enjoyment, making a
difference, being a member of a team that’s going for it 100 percent,
making beautiful things, personal growth, solving problems, healing,
teaching, machismo, raising a family.
The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation.
—MARK TWAIN
If you were to look around, there do seem to be some people involved
in careers that include all the elements we value. There is a satisfied
minority that actually looks forward to going to work. Sure, they call
it “work” in front of other people. They are being polite.
Reality 101—What’s Really Going On out There?
Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ
them in throwing stones over a wall, and then throwing
them back again, merely that they might earn their wages.
But many are no more worthily employed now.
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
When I was a boy, my friends and I would watch the men in dark
suits walk to the train station for the ride into Philadelphia. We were,
in our blessed state, Tarzans of the jungle pretending to see the
“civilized” world for the first time from our hidden vantage point at
the edge of the bamboo grove. The men seemed to drag enormous,
invisible weights along with them, as if they were sucked toward the
city by some mysterious, invisible magnet. We imagined that they
were zombies answering the call of the voodoo master. We did not
have to stretch our imaginations very far. They did look a little like
zombies. They had lost the joy of living.
From The Huge Book of Hell © 1997 by Matt
Groening. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission
of Penguin Books USA, NY. Courtesy of Acme Features
Syndicate.
Every once in a while, I take a ride on the subway during the
morning rush hour. Even though I no longer watch from the edge
of the jungle, I still observe people on their way to work. At first
glance, they seem fine, concentrating on their newspapers or lost
in thought. But look again, with the eyes of a child. What’s really
happening here? Perhaps “resignation” is the best word to
describe the general mood. Many of these folks are enduring,
submitting. My friends and I were being theatrical in imagining
zombie magnets pulling people to dark fates, but, hey, let’s face it:
These people are definitely not looking forward to going to work.
Maybe they are still half asleep? Might they awaken by the end of
the day? Take the same subway when people are on the way
home from work. Any improvement? Actually, if anything, it has
gotten worse. Now there is fatigue mixed with the resignation.
Some of them look like they’ve just done fifteen rounds in the
ring.
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re
still a rat.
—LILY TOMLIN
To make these observations a little more scientific, I have also ridden
the subway when people were on their way to see their beloved
football team play. The train is filled with a spirit of excitement,
enthusiasm. People talk and joke with others they have never met
before. The mood is playful, with the channels of communication
open, the passion for life obvious. It’s irresistibly delicious. So now we
know, after careful scientific inquiry, that it is not the subway ride
that darkens the riders’ lives. It must be something about their work.
Not everyone on the subway is dreading work. As a matter of fact,
some people are more satisfied than they look. They are hiding it. Try
stepping onto the subway one morning filled with enthusiasm, doing
a little soft-shoe routine, whistling, radiant, alive. People will shoot
you looks that suggest that you must be on the way to the Mad
Hatter’s tea party. You are a threat to their resignation. If there were
more people like you around, they might have to wake up and get a
life. They want to make sure that you do not disturb their
somnambulism, so they glower in your direction to stop that infernal
dance that’s intruding on their dark daze. So the people who love
their work play it cool. They camouflage their enthusiasm in order to
look “normal.”
If you divided the subway riders into categories, based on overall
career satisfaction, you would discover a wide range of levels of
fulfillment. Many surveys have looked into this question over the
years. Some of them paint an overly rosy picture because people tend
to respond to casual “How’s it going?” questions with “all’s well.” Indepth surveys suggest that most people are not satisfied with their
work. At Rockport Institute, we surveyed 1,500 college grads from
ages twenty-one to sixty in an attempt to get at the unvarnished truth.
Here’s what we found. (We did round off the numbers a little.)
The Career Satisfaction Scale on the next pages contains some
good news as well as some very bad news. First the bad: 40 percent of
American workers are at least somewhat unhappy with their jobs. Ten
percent are in a condition I call “career hell,” a condition very
dangerous to their well-being, their health, and to everyone around
them. If you include the Neutrals, fully 70 percent of us go to work
without much enthusiasm or passion.
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what
dies inside us while we live.
—NORMAN COUSINS
The good news is that about 30 percent of us experience career
satisfaction, either liking or loving our work. To me, the most exciting
news is that about 10 percent report that they love their work. This
significant minority has somehow managed to pull together all the
important elements to have its dreams come true. So often we imagine
things going well for a distant and mysterious group of people, such
as the ones we see on TV: the movie stars, writers, and Nobel Prize
winners. To have fully 10 percent of people operating at the highest
levels of career satisfaction gives hope that you can do it too. After
all, how difficult can it be to be in the top 10 percent if you dedicate
your energy to achieving that end?
The American Way of Career Selection
Before we delve into how you can make a career choice that fits you
perfectly, let’s take a look at how people usually decide. The
American way of career selection goes something like this: During
your junior year of high school, the tribal elders, consisting of your
parents and your guidance counselor, initiate you into ancient secrets
learned empirically over many generations. They whisper the secret in
your ear: “Start to think about what you may want to do.”
You, as green as the jolly giant, don’t notice that this meager advice
might be insufficient to plan a brilliant future. You begin your quest.
That night you pry your attention away from teenage angst and
raging hormones long enough to follow their sage advice. You “think
about what you may want to do.” Perhaps some ideas for potential
careers appear out of the mist, like distant, mysterious mountains.
Perhaps they don’t. You get no really useful guidance from school
guidance counselors or your parents, none of whom realizes that such
an important and personal decision must be based on knowing much
more about yourself and the world than you do at this tender age.
Career Satisfaction Scale
0 to 10 Scale
10/10
Estimated Percentage of Population:
10 percent
General Description
Work occurs as passionate play. Looks forward to going to work;
work seen as vehicle for full self-expression, fun and
pleasurable; dif culties interpreted as positive challenges;
personal growth and contribution to self-esteem linked to work;
little distinction between work and rest of life; sense of purpose
and making a difference; uses talents fully; work ts personality;
usually exhibits eagerness and alacrity.
Effect on Personal Life
Self-actualized lifestyle; generous—often participates in
“service” to others; loves life; active participant in all aspects of
life; goes for the gusto, playful; high level of personal integrity;
self-esteem not a major issue; signi cant increase in longevity
and disease resistance.
Contribution to Workplace
Work is an expression of a clear personal sense of purpose or
mission; self-generating, does not need supervision; trustworthy
—will persist until objective is reached; almost always
contributes and is appropriate to the situation; takes correction
as an opportunity; the presence of a person living at this level
raises others with whom he or she works.
8/10
Estimated Percentage of Population:
20 percent
Positive. Enjoys work much of the time; feels useful; has a
sense of mission or that work is meaningful, career meets
perceived needs, contributes to positive self-esteem; good t
between work, talents, and personality; high level of
competence; value appreciated by others; would say work is
“pretty good. I like my job.”
Satisfying career enhances other areas of life such as selfesteem, quality of family life and other relationships; increased
resistance to disease and longevity; overall sense of well-being,
enjoys life much of the time.
Usually makes a positive contribution to the organization and
other people; effective worker; fairly exible; needs a minimum
of supervision but may not be fully self-generating; handles
responsibility well; decision making usually based on what’s
needed rather than personal agenda.
6/10
Estimated Percentage of Population:
30 percent
Neutral. Accepts work situation without struggle; can appear to
be a valued worker in a procedure-driven organization. Common
in government agencies and large, stable corporations. Some
may say they like their work, others may grouse. If so,
complaining is often simple socializing in an environment where
complaining is a preferred mode of communication.
Leads a life that has little positive effect on the community but
usually has no signi cant negative effect, either. Relationships
and other aspects of life outside work may be “normal” but
narrow.
May produce quality results in repetitive tasks; contributions are
mechanical; little potential for real leadership, initiative, or
creativity; resists change; conservatism affects judgment—at
best, furthers own ends; would hire the person with the best
résumé rather than the best candidate; destructive when placed
in a position beyond grasp.
4/10
Estimated Percentage of Population:
30 percent
Negative. Goes to work because forced by circumstances to do
so; actively dislikes signi cant parts of job; daily routine marked
by struggle, suffering, clock watching, resentment, resignation;
areas of life other than work may be satisfying; work either
doesn’t use abilities fully or requires talents not possessed; may
be a clash between personality or values and environment;
complains about job.
Even though other areas of life may be healthy, career stress
usually has negative effect on relationships, health, and
longevity. May spend considerable portion of spare time
recovering from work. Some erosion of self-esteem contributes
to resignation or feelings of powerlessness in other areas.
Destructive to the workplace. Even if lack of satisfaction is
hidden, it spreads to other employees; often ineffective because
usually wants to be somewhere else; motivated by need rather
than by choice. May need supervision to produce consistent
high-quality results.
2/10
Estimated Percentage of Population:
10 percent
Career hell. Work is a constant struggle, takes an act of will to
go to work each day; strong sense of resentment, deep
suffering; major clash between talents or personality or values
and requirements of the job; symptoms similar to people
between 2 and 4 on this scale except that here the
dissatisfaction is more intense and the person feels completely
trapped; each day at work erodes self-esteem; profound negative
effect on other areas of life.
Because work is so enervating, little psychological room to do
more than survive; reduced capacity to support others; dif culty
in maintaining healthy relationships; marked hostility or
resignation toward workplace; life may be shortened by several
years; diminished immune system.
Dangerous and very destructive to environment; liability to self,
others, and workplace; resistance (may be passive) to
supervision; poor concentration; agenda is at odds with
organization’s mission; may feel vindicated by failures of others;
needs constant watching.
Much later you find yourself queued up to pick your college major.
You remember the mantra “Start to think about what you may want
to do.” By the time you reach the head of the line, you have decided.
Years later you will tell friends that your major in Polynesian
philosophy “seemed like a good idea at the time.” Years pass. Like the
majority of college graduates, you will have embarked on a career that
has nothing at all to do with your college major. How did you make
that final choice? “Well,” you say, “it seemed like a good idea at the
time.”
If you are a younger reader, you may think that I am exaggerating.
I wish I were. Ask some of my older, midcareer readers who are hitand-run victims of this process. Look closely. You will know them by
the tire tracks across their souls.
Here are the results of two studies for all of you statistics lovers: In
a Gallup survey of 1.7 million workers, only about 20 percent said
they used their best strengths every day at work. In a Rockport
Institute survey, more than 70 percent of successful professionals
surveyed thought that they could have done a much better job of
making decisions about their lives. They said that they had not
known how to go about making choices in a competent way. In
another survey, 64 percent of college seniors said they had serious
doubts that they had picked the right major.
Many people put more energy, creativity, and commitment into
deciding which house to buy or where to go on vacation than into
deciding what to do with their lives. More often than not, they drift
into a career that doesn’t really fit their talents or live up to their
dreams. Others get stuck along the way and spend their lives making
unnecessary compromises. Some blindly follow or resist the family
career template. If they come from a family of cannibals, they’ll either
dine at McFingers or become a strict vegan.
Since the do-it-yourself method, without professional assistance,
often fails, what about career counselors? Some colleges provide
extremely competent job-hunting assistance, but very few do an
excellent job of helping students decide on a career direction. In fact, I
have met just a few people who said that their college career center
was useful as a source of decision-making tools and coaching, and
most of them went to schools that use the philosophy, methods, and
tools found in this book. The vast majority agree that college career
counselors are well meaning but just do not have the necessary tools
at their disposal to be really effective.
It’s not really their fault. Always look to the top to see who is
asleep at the wheel. It is the college presidents who don’t seem to care.
If they were anything other than totally complacent, it might occur to
them to take a survey of alums and ask questions like, “Did you make
use of the career center to design a fitting career? If so, how effective
was it in helping you sort out your life direction?” What they would
find is that nearly all college graduates agree that college career
centers are totally ineffective when it comes to helping students design
a career they will flourish in and love. Have you ever known anyone
who decided what to do with his or her life as a result of visiting
career services? Shouldn’t one important goal of every college or
university be to graduate students who at least know generally where
they are going and what they will do with their lives—based not on
fantasy but on a powerful, in-depth investigation of the many facets
of life that bear on career success and satisfaction? Of what real value
is a career center that is good at helping graduates find jobs they don’t
really want?
Most professional career counseling and coaching is not much
better. Several years ago, I conducted a survey of people who had
used professional career assistance in New England. Some said that
the counseling or coaching was helpful, but the great majority had
not been able to decide what to do with their lives. Being certain
about your future career is like pregnancy: Either you is or you ain’t.
You can’t be 68 percent pregnant. If working with a career coach or
counselor doesn’t use a methodology that gets you to the goal of
certainty about your future, you will still be where you started out:
unsure, questioning, uncertain. Isn’t that the same situation you are
facing now? Even though most career counselors are well intentioned,
their methods were developed more than fifty years ago to help an
unsophisticated public deal with simpler decisions. You may have
been exposed to outdated counseling in school or in subsequent
attempts to make career decisions. Most people who call themselves
career coaches have little training. How effective were these methods
in helping you? In these complex times, it becomes more obvious
every year that the usual methods of choosing life direction and career
path are pitifully inadequate.
If you have worked hard trying to pick a satisfying career and it
hasn’t worked out, please let the following sentence seep into the very
core of your being: It’s not your fault! Nor is it the fault of a
psychological shortcoming or some fatal flaw in your character. It is
simply that the tools you have been using aren’t adequate to the task.
If you have felt frustrated or depressed that you have been unable to
choose well, that is completely normal. It’s got to get to you after a
while if you try to pound in nails with a sponge instead of a hammer.
Every aspect of your life is directly related to how well your career
fits you. People who are engaged in satisfying, challenging careers that
match their talents, personalities, and goals usually achieve a higher
degree of success than people who do not care passionately for what
they do. They are healthier, live longer, and tend to be more satisfied
with other aspects of their lives. They feel their lives are meaningful
and a source of joy. An ill-fitting career contributes significantly to
stress and depression, and has a profoundly negative effect on selfesteem.
We are what we repeatedly do.
—ARISTOTLE
Whether you are midcareer and contemplating a change or at the
beginning of your work life and making a first choice, it is extremely
important to make the best possible decisions. If you choose well,
your life will be enriched in many ways by your work. If you make a
mistake now, you place an unnecessary burden on your shoulders that
may be difficult to carry and equally hard to put down.
You spend more time working than doing anything else. Since
making the best possible career choice has an enormous impact on the
overall quality of your life, attempting this adventure without expert
guidance can end in disaster. Left to their own devices, people often
find themselves in careers that don’t match their talents and desires.
To someone who has never worn shoes, there would not seem to be
much difference between size 10 and size 9. However, if you have size
10 feet and spend your life wearing size 9 shoes, you are constantly
aware that a small miscalculation makes the difference between
comfort and pain. Some people wind up bored or burned out. Some
are successful yet remain unfulfilled. Midcareer people who take the
risk to improve their lives by making a career change often find their
new careers are not much of an improvement. Others pick something
impractical or unrealistic, without considering how they could go
about making the shift to a new field. These people have done their
best, but their best wasn’t good enough.
If you do not feel yourself growing in your work and your
life broadening and deepening, if your task is not a
perpetual tonic to you, you have not found your place.
—ORISON SWETT MARDEN
The Benefits of a Career That Fits
You enjoy better health, a longer life, more vitality. Read the obituary
notices of very successful people. Notice how many celebrated (and
notorious) people live into their eighties and nineties. Other than
inheriting good genes and taking care of your body, leading a
satisfied, purposeful life is the most effective thing you can do to live a
long, long life. Most of the people whose deaths are reported in the
national media dedicated their energy to the wholehearted pursuit of
something that mattered to them. That’s why they became so
successful that their death was deemed worthy of mention. You may
also infer that they must have found an elegant fit for their talents to
have become so accomplished in their fields. Even the gangsters and
dictators must have excelled at their evildoings to generate such
worldwide notoriety. People whose work is fulfilling are more
resistant to disease and heal more quickly when they do get sick. Why
not turn your sick days into vacation days? People die in
disproportionate numbers within three years of their retirement
because they have nothing exciting for which to live.
You have enhanced personal and professional relationships. If you
want great relationships, live your life fully. Others want to be around
people who lift their spirits out of the petty pace of day-to-day
routine. Your enthusiasm will spark those around you, who then
become better company themselves. Having your working life be a
major source of satisfaction and self-esteem has a powerful positive
effect on the other areas of life, including your relationships. You’re
more fun to be around.
You’re more successful and more productive. There is a close
relationship between career satisfaction and material success. People
who enjoy their work put their heart and soul into their careers. How
much do you accomplish when you are completely immersed in a task
that you really enjoy? Compare this with your productivity when you
are forced to do something you don’t want to do.
You have heightened self-esteem. We have managed to turn selfesteem into something mysterious and complex. Simply said, selfesteem is the reputation you have with yourself. How much do you
admire people who grumble about their lives, blame their
circumstances, and resign themselves to a life of mediocrity? If your
career is not satisfying and your self-esteem is low, you’re probably
not neurotic. You’re just being honest with yourself! Create a future
you will be proud of. Spend your days doing something you love.
You become a better role model for children. How can you teach your
children, or any young person who looks up to you, to live their lives
fully if you don’t live yours fully? They watch your actions. When
your words don’t match your actions, they know instantly that you
are full of caca del toro. Your children will model themselves after
who you are and what you do. If you want to be proud of them, live
so that you are proud of yourself.
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on . . .
children than the unlived lives of their parents.
—CARL JUNG
You lead a life that counts. Your career is your best opportunity to
make a contribution. Somehow, it’s not the same thing spending your
life in a job that is meaningless and then trying to make a difference
in your spare time.
You look forward to life. Just as laughter is infectious, so are
listlessness, dissatisfaction, and boredom. This ennui will follow you
home from work and infect the other parts of your life. Having a
career that fits perfectly restores the enthusiasm that came so
naturally early in your life.
I think that what we are seeking is an experience of being
alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical
plane will have resonances within our own innermost being
and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being
alive.
—JOSEPH CAMPBELL
You have a deeper, richer, more authentic sense of humor. Humor that
wells up from a core of well-being and satisfaction is very different
from the cynical jokes of those trapped in a life of resignation.
Wouldn’t you rather have your wit generated by happiness instead of
resignation? You might even find yourself smiling and snapping your
fingers when you’re stuck on the thruway during rush hour, happy
with thoughts of work well done and the joy of living.
INQUIRY 2
What Would It Be Like to Have a
Career That Fits Perfectly?
Imagine waking up in the morning with excitement and
enthusiasm for the coming workday. Imagine spending your life
doing something that you care about deeply, with most of your
time engaged in activities that use your talents fully.
What would it be like to attain a high degree of mastery and
success while engaged in activities you enjoy? Take a minute
now and actually imagine what it would be like. Close your
eyes and visualize yourself in a career you love. Make it as real
as possible. Play a scene in your mind’s eye from beginning to
end. Try to actually see, feel, and hear yourself in the midst of
working happily at this new job. What would it be like to have
a career that fits you perfectly? What would it feel like?
The Costs of Having a Career That Fits
• You will have to control your impulse to constantly remind
your friends how much you enjoy your career.
• You might have to get new friends. When you begin to live
from a commitment to have your life work brilliantly, you
might discover that you have outgrown some of the people
who will champion their lack of fulfillment until their dying
day.
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.
Small people always do that,
but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become
great.
—MARK TWAIN
• You will lose some of your best reasons to complain. Most of
us have a certain investment in complaining. If you think this
doesn’t apply to you, try to refrain completely from
complaining for the next month. An unfulfilling career is ideal
raw material for this hobby. You would have to find other
things to grumble about.
• People will talk behind your back. When you are just one of
the herd of moderately dissatisfied people, you don’t attract
much attention. When your career really takes off, there will
be plenty of jealous gossiping.
• You will not be a member of the biggest, most popular club.
You will be in a minority and perhaps feel slightly out of the
mainstream, like a monk in a bordello.
• It takes more heart, more energy, and more commitment to
have a career that really sings. You would have to ask more of
yourself, inquire more deeply, put more time and energy into
choosing your direction.
• You would have to exchange comfort for vitality. This is by
far the biggest reason people pay the terrible price that having
an ill-fitting career exacts. If you want a full life, you have to
give up whatever addiction you might have to comfort, to not
rocking your boat, and to avoiding the feelings of fear and
uncertainty that are always one’s companion on journeys
outside the safety of the daily routine. A passionately lived life
is not always comfortable. Going for it involves being open to
all of life: the joys, the sorrows, the mundane, as well as the
magic, the splendid victories, the most abject defeats. You
might even stop closing your eyes during the scary parts of the
movie.
CHAPTER 3
•
HOW TO DECIDE
You’re at the amusement park, about to bash around in bumper cars
for the first time. They tell you how to do it: “Climb in, clip on the
safety harness, get moving in the general direction of the other cars,
then put the pedal to the metal and try to crash into the other cars.”
That’s all you need to know to have a smashing good time.
When you are old enough to learn to drive a real car, you discover
that there is a lot more to it than bumper cars. Our culture has its
own completely automatic, habitual way of instructing us in the art of
career design that is just about as useful as bumper car instructions
would be for driving a real car. It takes more than all the conventional
wisdom one picks up along the way to choose a career that will
satisfy and fulfill you.
This chapter lays out some basic principles about how to move
from wherever you are, through figuring out where you want to get
to, and then narrowing down the possibilities until you are sure
exactly and specifically what you will do with your life.
Creating Your Future, Step-by-Step
Choosing a vocation that is not a compromise need not be a terribly
daunting task, if you go about it in a way that is effective. Basically, it
is simply a process of posing questions and then answering them. It is
a little like buying your first house. You start the house-buying
process by making a commitment to yourself that you are going to
own your own home. Then you start to explore. You are not really
starting from square one, because your mind is already filled to the
brim with wishes, dreams, feelings, preferences, prejudices, and
everything you already know and believe about houses. As you go
through the decision-making process, you may alter some of your
dreams and hopes. You may discover that some of what you think
you know about houses is not necessarily so. The more you dig into
the subject, the more you learn. The more energy you give to the
project, the more likely it will be that you will buy a house that you’ll
love.
At some point, you will probably realize that doing a great job of
picking a house is a lot more complex and demanding than you
thought. You discover that there are many important questions to
consider that you hadn’t even thought of before. After lots of careful
consideration, you begin to make some smaller decisions. You may
decide that the house absolutely must have four bedrooms, or a large
country kitchen, or that it must be located on a quiet side street. As
your explorations continue, you make more and more of these
smaller decisions. As you make them, other pieces of the puzzle come
together naturally. While all this was going on, you are out there in
the real world, looking at houses, checking out the realities such as
how much of a mortgage you can manage, and other practical
matters. Each of the pieces contributes to the others. The research
helps you make decisions. Each decision helps you explore the areas
you have not yet made decisions about. And continuing to explore
helps you make more decisions. The house you eventually decide to
buy may be quite different from your original idea because its features
are the result of in-depth exploration and an ongoing process of
decision making.
One thing that is very important to notice is that deciding on
definite components of your future work has a much more powerful
effect on putting together the pieces of the puzzle than your
preferences do. For example, if you have decided that the house
absolutely must have four bedrooms, then you would not even bother
to look at houses with fewer bedrooms. Your preferences do not have
the same power. In fact, they often make things more confusing. Let’s
suppose you have lots of strong preferences but no clear
commitments. You might dream of a house with five bedrooms, two
fireplaces, a huge backyard with a stream, nice, friendly, quiet
neighbors, a big party room, and a large Dutch windmill coming out
of the roof. That’s a wonderful dream. But since you are living in the
ephemeral world of dreams, you are highly susceptible to becoming
lost in the twilight zone. When the real estate agent shows you a
house with a large Dutch windmill coming out of the roof, you jump
for it. After all, if you don’t grab it today, someone else will. Only
later do you discover that the neighbors file their teeth to a point and
raise cobras. When you return to reality, you discover that the house
has only two bedrooms, the fireplace doesn’t work, and the stream is
actually sewage outflow from your neighbor’s house.
You could easily make the same mistake in choosing your new
career. To make sure this does not happen, please take the time to get
completely clear about how The Pathfinder will guide you through
this process. If you spend the time now to completely understand
these steps, burn them into your memory, and keep them in the
forefront of your mind as you go through this journey, you will not
lose your way. First a few general principles. Then in the next chapter,
we will get more specific.
Take a look at the igloo illustration on page 23. To the right of the
letter A are eight boxes. Each represents an important area to
consider as part of deciding what you will do. They will each be
described in the next chapter. The many inquiries in this book are
designed to help you explore each of these areas in depth. They are
different from the usual career explorations you may have done in the
past. Most traditional career exercises just help you sort out what you
already know about yourself. You wind up with more information
but no closer to deciding what to do. Why does that happen?
Our minds are continually running in a nonstop stream of
impressions, memories, information, hopes, dreams, opinions,
feelings, passions, and ideas. You could think of it as your own
personal soap opera, the never-ending parade of thoughts flowing by.
When you dump more information about yourself or about potential
careers into this cauldron of random, quicksilver thoughts and
impressions, the information becomes more flotsam and jetsam—just
more stuff swirling around in your head. Have you noticed that
thoughts about your future career (and everything else) seem to pop
up in your mind as concerns, worries, and uncertainties that flow by
and then disappear without getting anything important decided? This
is shown at B on the illustration. This is the part of your brain that is
perfectly designed for writing romantic poetry, conversing at parties,
and living the everyday parts of your life. Without it, life wouldn’t be
much fun. But it doesn’t work very well as the place to conduct your
career choice process.
The inquiries in this book give you an opportunity to go much
further, to make a leap to the domain of certainty, a domain where
the big question is not “What do I want?” but “What am I sure will
definitely be an important component of my future career?” This is
shown at C in the illustration. The inquiries in The Pathfinder are
designed to allow you to break down all the important questions into
small pieces and then make smaller decisions, choosing definite
components that add up, one at a time, into the final big career
decision, like the blocks the Inuit (Eskimo) is building into a nice,
solid igloo.*
The Pathfinder will guide you through a series of steps that lead
toward the final goal of deciding exactly what you will do with your
life, or at least as much of your life as you want to decide about now.
Each of these steps builds toward that final goal. Let’s take a look at
each of them now. I’ve broken down the career choice process into
several steps for the sake of clarity. In reality, deciding what you will
do is not quite as neat and linear as that. You will be engaged in
several of these steps: research, making some smaller decisions,
investigating, asking new questions, all at the same time. But as time
goes on, you will find that you are more and more clear and the final
goal will become closer as you fit the pieces of the puzzle together.
And then, one day soon, you will have put together enough of the
pieces that you will see the light at the end of the tunnel. Later on you
will get to know chapter 14, “The Rock-port Career Design Method,”
which is a short, practical guide to the method we’ll use. Right now
let’s get a basic sense of how you will design your future work so you
can start looking from this perspective:
1. Make a commitment to decide on your future vocation. The
first step is to decide to decide. Wanting to decide will not get
your plane off the ground. What do you suppose the glazedover, office-bound people you see taking the subway to work
are thinking about? Probably they are thinking the same sort of
things we all think: “I wish my life was ___.” “Wouldn’t it be
great if I could ___?” “What I want is ___.” People can
entertain themselves forever this way. But no matter how much
they wish and hope and dream, they keep getting on the same
subway each morning and going off to the same old job. You
need to get clear enough about your commitment to the quality
of your life that you can take potent and resourceful action to
make your commitments become your reality. The way to do
that is to step out and make definite promises that you are
willing to keep, even when it looks scary.
2. Make designing your future career your number one priority.
Don’t just fit it into the cracks of your life. You will get what
you give.
3. Begin by looking in. The idea is to design a career that fits you
rather than trying to squeeze into something the wrong shape
or a few sizes too small. To do that, you must turn your
attention inward. Get to know yourself thoroughly. Inquire
into every aspect of your nature and personality. Even if you
know yourself well, find ways to observe your past and present
from new viewpoints, especially those that provide tangible,
realistic, and practical clues about the best fit between you and
the working world.
4. Seek full self-expression. You would be wise to honor every
aspect and each domain of your life. Many poor-fitting careers
result from considering only external rewards like money and
status. Consider each thoroughly if you want your work to be
balanced and harmonious. Full self-expression doesn’t
necessarily mean swinging from the chandeliers. It means
including all the important parts of your nature and your
intentions. A career that fits perfectly demands that you be who
you are fully and do what you do naturally.
All other creatures on the planet, from the lowest amoeba to
the great blue whale, express all their component elements in a
perfect dance with the world around them. Only human beings
have unfulfilled lives. Only humans suffer from career
discontent. But, then again, we may be the only inhabitants of
the earth who get to decide what we will do with our lives. Since
we have the option to be the authors of our destinies, why not
do it well? The reward for taking on the adventure of choosing
and creating a career is a life of fulfillment. There is nothing
magical about this. It is simply a function of learning to have all
aspects of your nature play together in harmony, like the
instruments of an orchestra.
So without any intentional, fancy way of adjusting yourself,
to express yourself freely as you are is the most important
thing to make yourself happy, and to make others happy.
—SUZUKI ROSHI
5. Break down the big question—“What am I going to do with
my life?”— into smaller, more manageable chunks. If you are
like most of us, when you attempt to make career decisions,
you imagine careers that might be interesting (doctor, lawyer,
Indian chief). Your mind hops from one potentially interesting
career to another. Your romantic imagination kicks in. You
think of all the positive aspects of the job: “Let’s see, I really
like the idea of becoming an Indian chief. It seems like an
exciting job, working outside, nature all around, not a boring
desk job, great clothes, etcetera.” Then, after a while, you have
an attack of negative considerations, an attack of the
“Yeahbut” thoughts: “I’m allergic to feathers, those cold winter
nights in the teepee, and what about cavalry attacks?” You are
left with a veritable blizzard of mental images and opinions
about potential careers yet are no nearer to making a definite
decision about which one to pursue. What’s worse, using this
method, you tend to get foggier rather than clearer.
The more you think about a career, the more your opinions—
both positive and negative—get stuck onto the original picture.
After a while, whenever the thought of that particular career
surfaces in your mind, all you see is all the stuff stuck to it.
When you think “Indian chief,” up pops a picture of a cavalry
attack. When you break down the “What shall I do with my
life?” question into small chunks, thinking about it all gets
easier.
Natural talents and innate abilities. Everyone is born with a
unique group of talents that are as individual as a fingerprint or
snowflake. These talents give each person a special ability to do
certain kinds of tasks easily and happily, yet also make other
tasks seem like pure torture. Can you imagine your favorite
improvisational comedian as an accountant? Talents are
completely different from acquired knowledge, skills, and
interests. Your interests can change. You can gain new skills and
knowledge. Your natural, inherited talents remain with you for
your entire life. They are the hand you have been dealt by
Mother Nature. You can’t change them. You can, however, learn
to play the hand you have been dealt brilliantly and to your best
advantage.
Personality traits and temperament. Many people are engaged
in careers that make it necessary to suppress themselves at the
job. An elegant fit between you and your work includes and
supports the full self-expression of your personality. Telltale
signs of a career that doesn’t fit your personality include: the
necessity to assume a different personality at work, restricted
self-expression, activities that conflict with your values.
Passion, meaning, mission, purpose. People who are
enthusiastic about their work are usually engaged in something
they care about and are proud of what they do. They feel they
are making a contribution. They may need to go to work to pay
the bills, but that is not what gets them out of bed in the
morning.
Willingness to stretch your boundaries. One of our clients was
a forty-year-old woman who decided to pursue a career in
medicine. Her previous college record was insufficient for entry
into medical school. She had no money to finance a medical
education. Her willingness to stretch beyond what seemed
possible was so strong that she went back to college and
completed prerequisite courses. She gained admission to a fine
medical school and managed to creatively finance her education.
Other clients are unwilling or unable to make more than a
modest stretch in a new direction. I encourage you to stretch as
far as possible toward a career choice that will not be a
compromise. At the same time, be completely realistic. It makes
no sense to make plans you are unwilling or unable to achieve.
Fulfills your goals. To have something to shoot for is an
important part of the joy of working. A custom-designed career
supports you to fulfill your personal and family goals and gives
you a sense of challenge on the job.
Rewards fit your values. Like a biscuit you give a dog,
rewards are the motivators that help keep you happily
performing your tricks at work. Some rewards mean more to
you than others. That is because they are linked with your
values. If recognition for doing something well is a value
important to you, then it may also be a necessary reward to
motivate you to keep performing well. Doing without adequate
recognition will slowly erode your well-being on the job.
Compatible work environments. Each person flourishes in
some work environments and finds others stressful or otherwise
inappropriate. Several different aspects of the environment that
surrounds you play a vital role in the quality of your work life.
You live in a certain geographical environment. The company
you work for has a particular organizational environment, style,
and corporate personality that affect you every minute you are
there. On a smaller scale, your immediate work environment
includes the physical work setting, the tone or mood of your
office, and your relationships with others, including your
supervisor, fellow employees, and clients or customers.
The bottom line. Are the careers you are considering really
suitable, doable, and available? Do they really fit you? The
decisions you make about your career direction are no more
than pipe dreams unless they are achievable and actually turn
out as you hope they will. Research is the key to understanding
the reality of potential future careers.
6. Ask resourceful questions. The quality of your life depends on
the choices you make. Your choices stem from how well you
answer fundamental questions about yourself and your future.
The quality of your answers directly depends on how focused,
how succinct, and how clear you are willing to be when posing
important questions.
Questions are the creative acts of intelligence.
—FRANK KINGDOMY
Like most intelligent people, you may have already learned a
great deal about yourself. Many people who know themselves
well still have difficulty making the best decisions. Getting a PhD
in psychology has never made anyone well adjusted or happy.
However, the way that you understand yourself and how you
use this knowledge are often more important than how much
you know about yourself. The art of inquiry is an essential skill
in designing your life. The better the job you do of framing the
question, the better the answers will serve you. In fact, when you
frame a question perfectly, the answer often seems to fall from
the question naturally and easily, like rain from a thundercloud.
One secret to successfully asking and answering important
questions is to break them down into small chunks. Answering
the question “What shall I do with the rest of my life?” is a
mammoth endeavor. The only possible way to tackle it is to
break it down into small, manageable questions. As our ancient
ancestors knew, you eat a mammoth one bite at a time.
7. Delve into all important questions using inquiry tools and selftests that help you become absolutely sure what the elements of
your future work will be. As you continue on through these
pages, you will come upon many guided assignments and
exercises called inquiries. Some of them are like telescopes or
microscopes. They allow you to look farther or deeper. Some
are a bit like the transporter room on the starship Enterprise.
They give you access to new possibilities and new worlds.
Others serve the function of a crowbar, prying you off the rock
you are clinging to for dear life. Each is designed to delve into
one important area in a way that allows you to get clear
enough to make some decisions. You must remember that these
tools are only little black squiggles on white paper. They will
not do it for you or to you. Only your wholehearted
engagement with the inquiries can make it happen.
You may find that some chapters and inquiries focus on
things you do not need to investigate. If you are sure about some
parts of your career design, skip the chapters that cover those
areas. Just use what you need.
8. Design your career one piece at a time. Build with definite
components. Tentative decisions engender fuzzy commitments,
which in turn give rise to irresolute actions. Often people
attempt to hold back on making decisions until they have done
all the research and answered all the important questions. They
have mounds of information but nothing definite nailed down.
They try to manage the wild herd of mustang dreams, needs,
wants, insights, and goals stampeding through their minds. As
attractive as this method seems, there is one small problem
with it: It just doesn’t work! At Rockport, we see a steady
stream of clients who have spent years trying to do it this way.
They know themselves as well as the canary knows its cage.
But they still haven’t decided what to do with their lives. The
only way I know that works consistently is to build a piece at a
time, to make a series of smaller choices that fit together like
the blocks of snow in an igloo. It doesn’t matter if you make
big decisions or small ones. Each is a worthy piece of the
puzzle. Build your future career one block at a time. Build it
from solid chunks, made from components that you have
chosen as definite parts of your future work. The best question
you can ask is “What am I sure will be some of the definite
components of my work?”
9. Fit together everything you are sure of like pieces of a puzzle.
Construct your future block by block, piece by piece. The
building blocks are made of the one and only element you have
to work with that is as solid as the blocks of snow in an igloo:
certainty. You build with whatever you are certain of as you go
through this career design process. There are really only two
ways to be sure of anything. You can look inside yourself and
uncover preexisting requirements, elements about which you
are already sure. For example, you might already be sure that
you will work in the world of business—or perhaps you’re sure
that you definitely won’t work in the business world. The other
way to be sure is to declare some element you want to be a
definite requirement: You make a commitment, a promise to
yourself. If you decide that you will work outdoors most of the
time, future components you add to the “Definite” column
have to be consistent with that choice. That commitment will
also bring up new questions and guide you in adding other
components to your design.
• Passions, insights, and dreams live in the realm of inquiry,
where they serve as guides. But they become as evanescent as
clouds when you take them out to the career construction site.
If you build your future on a foundation of solid rock, using
as building blocks the career components you have become
sure of and the definite decisions you have made, you will be
more able to stand firm when doubts and difficulties arise.
• Taking things one step at a time and building from solid
chunks is like putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
When you start assembling a large, complex puzzle, you have
a tabletop covered with a seemingly endless number of
unconnected pieces. It’s difficult to fit the first few pieces
together. Once you have fit some together, it becomes much
easier to add new pieces. It is also a bit like doing a crossword
puzzle. First you fill in whatever you can. When there is a
piece of the puzzle you cannot find, instead of getting frantic,
you simply work on answering other parts of the puzzle.
Then, later on, you return to the part you could not figure out
before. Because you have filled in some other, related pieces, it
is now much easier to answer the previously unanswerable
question. So we will concentrate on what you can answer.
10. Go for vitality, not comfort. Be unreasonable. At every
moment, you have one essential choice: to let the programming
steer the boat or to take the helm yourself. Your present
circumstances, your mood, the thoughts that pass by all have a
life of their own, independent of your will. You can, at any
moment, take flight on new wings into an unprecedented life
by making a choice for vitality, for living fully, for life spelled
in capital letters. It is, however, an expensive journey. You pay
by giving up the familiar, comfortable, everyday ways of living
and thinking that are the wages and rewards of going with the
flow of your programming. The willingness to feel fear and
keep going forward distinguishes the living from the merely
breathing. In fact, it is not just the so-called negative emotions
that are uncomfortable. When you choose to live fully, your
palette of experiences, thoughts, emotions, and possibilities
expands. This leads you onto new ground in other areas of
your life as well. And, folks, all that newness swirling around
just ain’t comfortable.
The question is not whether to take risks but which ones to
take. The peril of being reasonable is that you miss all the fun.
It’s not enough to edge your way cautiously toward the cliff.
Learn to revel in taking risks for the sake of your soul. Every
choice you make gives birth instantly to certain risks as surely as
your shadow follows you.
There are really only two ways to approach life—as a victim
or as a gallant fighter—and you must decide if you want to
act or react, deal your own cards or play with a stacked
deck. And if you don’t decide which way to play with life, it
will always play with you.
—MERLE SHAIN
11. Go out into the world and do research to discover what sort of
work matches the pieces of the puzzle you have assembled so
far. Your definite components become the specifications you
use to come up with specific careers that may fit. Now it is time
to look out into the world and see what sort of work these
specifications fit. Do some research. You want to list a few
possible careers and then find out more about them.
12. Persist in spite of obstacles and setbacks. Don’t stop until you
know what you are going to do with your life. If you quit
before you reach your goal, you won’t reach it. That last
statement seems almost idiotically obvious, doesn’t it? Yet it is
the number one reason people do not get what they want.
Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My
strength lies solely in my tenacity.
—LOUIS PASTEUR
Throughout history, men and women who have made
extraordinary contributions have been asked the secret of their
genius. The one thing that most of them agree on is the power of
persistence. No matter how brilliant your idea or how large your
dream, without exceptional tenacity it is likely to remain
unrealized. The quirk of human nature that makes it difficult to
persist when the going gets rough is that most people are more
committed to experiencing their habitual, comfortable range of
inner sensations than they are to accomplishing what they have
said they will do. If you are willing to experience fear,
disappointment, humiliation, and embarrassment, and keep
going anyway, you become an unstoppable force of nature. As
we shall see in later chapters, the secret to perseverance is a
simple one: have a commitment to getting the job done that’s
bigger than a desire for comfort and ease.
As you travel through The Pathfinder, you will discover that
your biggest difficulty in persisting, as well as in making the final
decision, is something I call “Yeahbuts.” These are thoughts
generated inside you by a device that seeks to keep you safe by
keeping everything in your life the same. You will meet up with
it often on this journey. For the time being, begin to notice that
you have attacks of thoughts that try to persuade you to give up
on making any substantial changes to your life.
Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never.
—WINSTON CHURCHILL
13. Keep whittling down your list of possible careers until you
know enough to make the final decision. Then make the leap
and make the choice! Once you put together many pieces of
the puzzle, there comes a moment of existential choice. It’s time
to leap; to decide on your future career. For most people, the
final answer will not appear out of the fog on its own. You
have to make your own final choice. A few weeks or months
ago, it may have seemed like an impossibly large leap. Now
you are ready. Because you have worked so diligently making
some of the smaller decisions, it is easier to decide. In the
movies, the hero often has to make impossibly long, deathdefying leaps from the roof of one building to another. Making
the final decision may feel a little like this. But all the work you
have done has paid off. It has brought the buildings sufficiently
close together so that making the leap is now within the range
of what you know you can do.
14. Celebrate! When you have decided what to do with your life,
celebrate! You owe it to yourself. Or, even better, why not
celebrate that you started this process today? Tomorrow
celebrate that you are moving toward your goal. When you get
stuck, celebrate that you are stuck. Celebrate when the sun
shines and when the cold winds blow. Make this process one of
joyful creation rather than a job that you have to do.
More Words to the Wise
Please do not believe anything I say or jump to conclusions too easily.
Trust yourself. Don’t blindly accept the word of experts. As you read
along, look into your own life to see whether what I say seems valid
to you.
Wherever you are now on the journey toward a fulfilling career is the
perfect place to begin. There couldn’t be a more advantageous place
for you to start from, because, for you, there is no other possible
starting point. Your life has taken you to where you are today. It
didn’t take you somewhere else. You wound up here! This is it! This is
what you have to work with. If you are young and shiny and naïve,
use your enthusiasm to propel you. But look carefully before you
leap. If you are crusty and jaded, use your experience to separate
wheat from chaff. You just have to manage cynicism. If all has not
gone well so far in your search for the perfect career, use your
experience to guide you away from making the same mistakes. Watch
out that you are not seduced by the inner voices that speak from
resignation. And, wherever you are, remember these great words of
wisdom:
No matter where you go, there you are.
—BUCKAROO BANZAI
To have a great career, have a great life. To have work that really
sings and soars takes expanding your commitment to excellence to
include other aspects of your life. At any moment, each important
area of your life is either expanding, contracting, or hovering. If other
areas are contracting, this may sabotage your journey along the path
to having a very satisfying career. To get moving in this career choice
process, you would be wise to up the ante in the rest of your life. As
you wend your way through The Pathfinder, you will find that
sometimes you will focus directly on career issues. Other times the
view will expand to include your entire life. When that happens,
please expand your inquiry so that it is broad enough to consider
your life as a whole.
You may need resources in addition to this book. I have done my best
to include everything you could possibly need to go through the
process of choosing your future career. This new edition of The
Pathfinder contains many new, cutting-edge inquiries and methods we
use with clients at Rockport Institute, as well as many changes and
improvements. For some readers, the combination of their energy plus
time plus this book will be sufficient to get them to their goal. For
others, it may not.
The final choice you make about your future work will affect all
the areas of your life: your sense of personal fulfillment, the level of
success and security you reach, your health and longevity, your sense
of self-worth, as well as the quality of your relationships. This may
turn out to be one of the most important decisions you ever make.
This book has worked for many of the hundreds of thousands of
people who have used it to coach themselves through designing their
perfect career. I suggest that you dig in, use this book as your coach
and guide, participate 100 percent, and, at some point, evaluate
whether using this book, or any book, is likely to get you to your
goal. I suggest that you ask yourself, “Should I undertake this journey
on my own or get some professional assistance?”
Most people do not seek help in choosing their work because of
ancient cultural habits. Career choice has been a do-it-yourself project
since the dawn of time. But, then again, most people aren’t very
fulfilled or maximally successful in their work. Throughout human
history, most simply chose the obvious: If you were a man, you did
what your father did; if you were a woman, you raised children. In
the late 1800s, there were only about one hundred different careers to
choose from, and very few of those were available to women. Now
there are more than ten thousand different jobs from which to
choose. Before the 1960s, people didn’t expect to like their work.
They just wanted to make a living, get ahead, and keep the wolf away
from their door. Now that we want more—satisfaction, success, selfexpression, and time for a life outside of work—making the best
choice takes more than a good guess.
If you broke your arm, you wouldn’t set it yourself; you would find
a doctor. If you were sued, you wouldn’t defend yourself. During my
more than thirty years as director of Rockport Institute, we have
coached more than fourteen thousand clients through designing their
careers. I have talked with many readers of this book about their
experiences. From all of this involvement, I have gotten a pretty good
idea of what it takes. Given the low percentage of people who believe
their work is a good fit, the do-it-yourself method, even with a good
book, is not always sufficient to make the best career choice. In the
future, I think our culture will learn to make career design an
important part of one’s education, and that career design coaches and
courses will play an increasing role in helping midcareer changers
through these important decisions.
In my experience, the best way to design work that is both a great
fit and attainable is to participate in a career design process like the
Rockport Institute Career Choice Program, or a similar program from
another source, instead of going it alone. The most effective programs
include natural-talent testing and a complete career design process
that coaches you through the complex process of making the best
choice. If one-on-one coaching is not feasible for you, the next-best
strategy is to use a natural talent assessment program, and use The
Pathfinder to coach yourself.
Each of us is born with a unique and complex profile of natural
gifts and personality traits. Mother Nature deals each of us a very
specific hand of talents. The source of what we do best and enjoy
most is various combinations of these individual components. The
things we do well are, for the most part, natural talents working
together in various combinations. Most of us are not aware of the
individual pieces that make up our strengths. If you have a clear
understanding of your unique profile of natural abilities and how they
fit together with your personality, you can combine them in new ways
and design your future career to include everything important. Testing
also helps you understand what tasks to minimize or stay away from;
why some tasks are enjoyable while others seem like torture. People
who report both success and fulfillment in their work almost always
have an elegant and excellent fit between their natural abilities and
what they do all day.
Chapter 17, “Natural Talents,” is designed to help you get a useful,
though rough, assessment of your natural talents. I would be less than
honest, however, to say that this can replace high-quality, objective,
scientific testing. This is one area where self-assessment just does not
work very well. Good abilities testing can give you a definite edge in
making an excellent career decision. This kind of testing is available
from several sources, including Rockport Institute. It is something
that I believe every young person should do and something I
recommend to all career changers.
I would also get a book that covers personality type in more depth
than is possible here. One excellent book is Do What You Are by Paul
Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger. As I said, The Pathfinder alone
works just fine for many people. It may be all you need. Try it. See
what works for you. If you think you need some professional
assistance, check out the programs at www.rockportinstitute.com.
Another strategy I recommend is to form a small group of likeminded people to work together and support one another through the
career choice process. Career design works least well in monologue
because we are all imprisoned within our own points of view and by a
lifetime of interpretations we take for truth. Expert career coaching or
a group of committed companions provides perspectives impossible to
discover with the do-it-alone method. Just this week, I heard from a
group of women, all Smith College grads of different ages, who found
one another through alumnae services, and formed a Pathfinder group
that was very effective in assisting them through choosing a career.
Two mistakes to avoid. There are two mistakes you might make in
going through The Pathfinder. The most common is to remain in the
role of observer; a reader instead of a participant. At a championship
tennis match, the players are participating totally, giving all they have
to the game. Everyone else is just an observer. Their minds are
commenting on the game, critiquing, as a journalist would. They are
not playing the game. They are just watching as the game unfolds. If
you remain in the role of observer, The Pathfinder’s process will not
work. What will make this process turn out as well as you hope is full
participation, unreserved, with as much energy and commitment as
you can muster.
The other mistake folks make is to get too compulsive. You do not
need to examine every leaf on every tree along the path of your
journey. Don’t make this more complicated than it already is.
Concentrate on the central issues, the important stuff. Don’t sweat the
details.
How long will it take? Most people take months to go through this
process. I suggest that you allow it to take exactly as long as it takes.
Mark your calendar for three to six months from now. If you still
haven’t chosen your career by then, it is time to start wondering what
is taking so long. No matter what the difficulty, you should be able to
diagnose the problem and figure out what to do about it within the
pages of this book. Some people move very slowly. They need a great
deal of time to let things bubble up. It takes them ten years to decide
to marry their lover and all week to decide what to do Friday night. If
this describes you, give yourself one year at the most. Note to
students: This project may take longer. Get to know yourself and the
world intimately.
I have difficulty making big decisions. Why should I think that
suddenly anything will change? It can and will change, if you are
willing. Most of the difficulties people experience stem from using
commitment problems as a shield to hold off the new and the
unknown. What people perceive as a problem is often a solution they
subconsciously concocted to deal with other problems. When you
were a child, did you usually have trouble deciding what to do when
other kids asked you to come out and play? If not, you are in good
shape. Don’t worry. It will all work out. The Pathfinder is, in a sense,
a course on how to create and follow through on commitments. So
you are in the right place at the right time.
How will I know that I made the right decisions? You won’t know for
sure until time passes and you have reached your objective. You can’t
know for sure how anything in the future will turn out until you get
there. If you give the career choice process your best effort, and you
are willing to do whatever it takes to arrive at your destination, you
can be fairly sure that you will make the best choice. If you diligently
work your way through The Pathfinder, you will have the best
possible chance of choosing a career that will be deeply rewarding in
many ways, for the rest of your life.
What if I’m not completely ready to decide now? That’s fine. I suggest
you stick your toe in and try the water in a place you think you will
like. If you have issues you want to work on, go right to the chapters
that deal with them. If you like the water, dive in headfirst.
Why are some concepts repeated in different parts of this book?
Learning anything, especially ways of thinking that go beyond
ingrained habits, requires repetition. Sometimes an important idea
that could make a huge change in the quality of my life has to hit me
over the head many times before I get it in my bones instead of as an
intellectual concept. I often read something and think, “I already
know that.” If I look a little more closely, I will notice that even
though I know it, I’m not living it. I may not have made it into a daily
practice. Living a life you love requires reviewing the habitual ways
you live your life and sometimes making changes.
To Choose or Not to Choose
Sometimes people put off choosing a career because they feel they
have some growing or changing to do. That’s fine if you are nineteen
and need to get to know yourself and the world a little better. It also
makes sense if you are recovering from a catastrophe or from some
sort of deep-seated psychological problem that would seriously
subvert this project. But often people put it off because it is
confronting and brings up all sorts of feelings such as doubts and
fears. All sorts of Yeahbut thoughts arise: “Am I ready?” “Do I have
time?” “What if it doesn’t work?” The best way to tell if you are
ready is to ask, “Do I have the intention to choose a new direction?
Am I willing to do what it takes?” That’s all you need: the
commitment to move it forward. If your favorite hobby is exploring
your own inner mysteries, through personal growth or therapy, don’t
put off deciding what to do with your life until you explore the back
passage of your internal labyrinth. Who knows how long it will take
or if you will ever do it to your satisfaction.
An Apology
Throughout this book, I will point out the many ways you could go
astray. It may seem that sometimes I am treating you like a wild and
intractable barbarian. Often people do not reach the outcome they
most want because they do not recognize and master those parts of
their nature that are willful, opposed to change, and operate invisibly,
completely on autopilot. It is not enough to be hopeful. When you are
truly committed to making something difficult happen, you naturally
take stock of the forces that oppose you so that you can deal with
them resourcefully. If human evolution were compressed into twentyfour hours, then just two seconds ago our ancestors were huntergatherers, using stone tools and eating one another’s brains. Most of
us, me included, are hard cases, either rebellious (“independent
thinkers,” as we would characterize it) or too quick to succumb to
beliefs we have not really investigated (“good team players”). Most of
us need to be reminded occasionally to stay on the narrow road to
excellence. I am committed to your being spectacularly successful in
designing your future career. I will point out many times how you
could get sidetracked by the idiosyncrasies of human nature. Please
forgive me if I do that when it is unnecessary. There is no way I can
be sensitive to you as an individual when we are not working within a
close, personal coaching relationship.
CHAPTER 4
•
USE THE PATHFINDER AS YOUR
GUIDE
The Pathfinder consists of four sections. This first, “Living a Life You
Love,” is like the first part of a roller-coaster ride, where you chug up
the incline before the fast ride downhill. You have already read most
of it, so I need not explain what it is about except to say that near the
end you will do several inquiries that begin your career design project.
The second section is “How to Get from Here to There (The
Library).” This is like a library, with chapters on many areas vital to
designing your work such as dealing with “Yeahbut” thoughts,
making the best decisions, choosing goals, and doing research.
The third is “Design Your Career.” This section is the step-by-step
career design process that is the heart of this book. You’ll work
through three big questions: “Who am I?” includes areas like your
talents and personality. “Why work?” covers meaning, mission,
purpose, values, and rewards. “Work where?” is about the workplace
environment. Then the last part of this section covers Making the
Choice.
The fourth is “Marketing and Job Search.”
Your Own Customized Career Design Project
Use The Pathfinder as a guide to design a career that fits you as well
as custom-tailored clothes, and, as you move through your life, to
make choices and overcome new situations and obstacles. You may
want to use it now to design a career from the ground up, to help
solve a specific problem, or get clarity on an issue. As a result, there
are different approaches you could take to use it in a way appropriate
to your situation.
One approach is to use it the same way that Donald Duck’s
nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie use The Junior Woodchuck
Guidebook to pull a triumphant victory from the jaws of defeat just
before the razor-sharp teeth snap shut. When you have a problem,
look up the specific solution. Or, if you have made definite decisions
about your future work except that one nagging area, just dig into
that. The Pathfinder contains chapters that stand on their own to
cover specific topics in depth.
If you are planning to use The Pathfinder as your guidebook to
choosing your future career, it is always best to look from a beginner’s
mind, to assume that you don’t know exactly what it will take to
make the best choices. In that case, start at the beginning and let the
book coach you all the way through your career design process, stepby-step. If you want to skip section 2 and go directly from this first
section to the third, “Design Your Career,” where you work through
this project step-by-step, fine. This may be the best method for you if
you would describe yourself as some combination of practical, downto-earth, goal oriented, direct, quick to get to the point, and
impatient, or if you learn best by doing or don’t particularly enjoy
reading. Spend a few minutes familiarizing yourself with the chapters
in the middle section so you know what they contain and can turn to
them when you need them. If some seem relevant to your present
situation, go ahead and use them now.
Many of you will find the second section extremely useful. For
example, who does not have difficulties dealing with Yeahbuts? Who
could not learn to ask better questions or develop more skill in
making decisions, setting goals, and completing projects (especially
this one)? If that describes you, I recommend that you read some or
all of section 2 before going on to the in-depth career design section.
Or, if you read more than one book at a time, you could read and use
the second and third sections at the same time, considering them to be
two different books.
If a particular chapter or inquiry covers something that you have
already mastered or handled fully, don’t feel you necessarily need to
slavishly go through it again. Be creative. This is a dynamic, living
process, not one to be done mechanically. Do it as a passionate dance
rather than as dishes that must be washed.
I hope this process will be a great deal of fun for you. Some
chapters will be smooth sailing. Others may challenge every fiber of
your being, especially if you are playing for high stakes: a truly
exceptional and highly satisfying future. You may feel like you are
stuck or wasting your time at least once. Expect that you may want to
quit, that you will feel afraid, that you will try to talk yourself into
unnecessary compromises, or that you will decide that this method
doesn’t work. All of this is just good old crazy human nature hard at
work, trying to reduce the risks and make you feel as comfortable as
a couch potato watching a good soap opera with a big bag of chips.
Get Started with Inquiries
Even though you’ll do most of your career design in the third section,
let’s do a few basic inquiries now, partly to move toward your goal
and also to gain some familiarity with the Rockport Career Design
Method. We developed this methodology over more than thirty years
of research and practical experimentation working with more than
fourteen thousand private clients who, like you, were passionately
committed to living successful, fulfilled lives. These tools, methods,
and strategies were designed to get you from here to there—“there”
being your goal of choosing a specific career. What we will do now is
a basic introduction, similar to taking a first flying lesson. In that first
lesson, the instructor lets you take control of the plane and fly in a
straight line for a few minutes. Later on, in chapter 14, “The
Rockport Career Design Method,” you will get more familiar with
this methodology so you’ll be able to take off, land, and even do
career aerial acrobatics. Here’s how it works:
You begin in detective/investigator mode, searching out the clues
that might be useful in understanding the fit between yourself and the
working world. A clue is any observation or information that might
provide insight about the fit between you and the world of work….