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[CAREER CONNECTION] Discovering Your Journey Line
Sent Friday, May 13, 2011
| Andria Corso's CAREER CONNECTION |
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May Issue of CAREER CONNECTION |
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| MESSAGE FROM ANDRIA | |
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May, 2011
Hello everyone! Welcome to the May issue of Career Connection!
I wrote this month's article in the spirit of discovering how our own life events and beliefs (and influential people, like our Moms) have shaped our decisions and choices I also wrote it as a follow-on to one article I wrote in March about a client who had some limiting beliefs that were holding him back in his job search. It's about an exercise you can do, called a Journey Line exercise, to discover the significant events in your life that have shaped your beliefs and influenced your life choices, including career choices. Hope you enjoy
it and I hope it helps you discover how and why you've made the career choices you've made and continue to make in your life.
Here is a picture of my Mom and me a couple of weeks ago when we were all together at my Mom's house for Easter weekend. To all the Mom's out there, I hope you had a wonderful Mother's Day last weekend!
Best,
Andria
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| NEWS AND EVENTS | |
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| THIS MONTH'S ARTICLE | |
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Your Journey Line:
Discover What Shaped Your Beliefs and Decisions
A couple of months ago I wrote about one of my clients who
had a break through after realizing his limiting beliefs about his job search
were holding him back. Further
work with him revealed a lot about where these beliefs came from and how
to change them.
So, where do our
limiting beliefs come from?
Typically they are things we heard from authority figures when we
were growing up (parents, teachers, grandparents, guardians) or, societal
messages that made a strong impression on us. There is a great exercise that I use with clients in
career development workshops and in coaching sessions where individuals create
a "journey line" to help them understand where their beliefs
originated and how these beliefs have shaped career choices (and life choices).
To create your journey line, you want to first look back at
your life and the significant events that occurred. Often times it helps to look at your life in terms of decades
and the impactful things that happened in a given decade. Our past experiences and life's highs and lows often shape who we are today. Identifying these things gives us insight into our most defining and enduring values and beliefs. Write down those events and then
the prevailing belief that formed as a result of what happened. For example, perhaps in the first
decade of your life you won a big spelling bee contest after lots of hard work
and practice. Based on that, you formed a belief that persistence and
hard work pay off. Maybe in the
second decade of your life you got into an Ivy League school, which reinforced
the belief that persistence and hard work pay off. One of my clients actually lost her first job after
college and, based on that she formed a belief that change is
constant.
After coming
up with 6-10 events and beliefs (or, perhaps there are eight events but only
five beliefs, because often our beliefs are reinforced by different events),
you want to have a little fun and actually draw out your journey line. It may look like the image below, which
demonstrates several peaks and valleys throughout the journey line or, it may
be more of an even line with a few small bumps which indicate a few lower and
higher points in your life. There is no right or wrong - it's just an opportunity
to create a visual description of the significant events of your life.
After drawing the line, have some fun and creatively try to
illustrate, with pictures, crayons, stickers or just words, the particular
event and resulting belief and how it impacted you (now is your opportunity to
grab some crayons, stickers, colored pencils and anything else you can pull
from the kids playroom or junk drawers).
What most people find is that, first, many of the lowest points often
propel them to many of their highest points in life and second, both of these
create some very strong, deep seeded beliefs which we carry with us throughout
our life. This exercise is a way
to connect the dots looking backwards at your life and helps make sense of the
decisions you've made and how certain events have created beliefs and pushed
you toward other decisions and events.
By going through this
exercise, you will get a clearer understanding of what some of your beliefs
have been and how they have influenced both your career and life choices. What happens next is you get to choose
which of the beliefs are serving you well and which are best to leave behind as
you continue your journey forward.
Leave the limiting
beliefs behind as they tend to be the ones to hold you back. Leverage the beliefs that continue to
serve you well and create new beliefs based on how you want your journey line to
continue.
Career Development suggestion for the month: Get a piece of poster board, crayons, and stickers and have some fun creating your journey line. Then, look at the story it tells of how you've made your career choices. Decide which beliefs you want to stick with and which you will change so that you continue to grow your career in the way that best suits you. © 2010 C3-Corso Coaching & Consulting | |
| ABOUT ANDRIA | |
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Andria Corso is the founder of C3-Corso Coaching and Consulting, an Executive Coaching & Talent Solutions Consulting firm that helps clients reach their highest potential. If you need support understanding how your current beliefs and expectations are impacting your career, please contact us - we are here to help you reach your highest potential!
Contact information: Andria L. Corso ~ 240-558-3959 ~ andria@andriacorso.com
Connect with Andria & C3 at:
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