I gave a speech for Toastmasters about my own layoff and how helpful this book was for me. The subtitle is
Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career.
The basic principle is that adults are more likely to act their way into a new way of thinking, than to think their way into a new way of acting.
Meaning, that the idea that we all need to sit around and carefully research out what we are going to do next in our lives/careers usually doesn't work very well, because we actually need to keep testing these hypotheses to see if what we're thinking about is really what it seems to be and what we might want.
I was happy to read this book also because I have already been trying to do this, although not that successfully yet in terms of actually starting something new.
The three steps she lists in this book for this iterative wash, rinse, repeat process are:
1. Do new things -- for me, I'm getting trained as a volunteer literacy tutor. I am going to apply for an internship at a literary agency, and I've started up my website again and started this blog to bring out more of my creative sides. Perhaps also this will go into making radio shows, perhaps by working on Philip's show idea.
2. Make new connections. This is partly to be able to try out these "new selves" in new communities where you aren't only known for what your old self does. Also the book pointed out that most job connections happen on the "edges" of your network. It's not the person that you know directly, it's the person they know, or the person their friends know, who is often most helpful in getting you useful contacts in a new field. I'm not necessarily doing this very well yet but I am reconnecting with the current network and trying to meet more people as part of Toastmasters and the tutoring links also.
3. Retell and re-incorporate the findings into your personal story. This is giving you a chance to again test out these hypotheses and make the abstract idea of what you want to be closer to the reality, by incorporating these learnings into your personal story about yourself.
I'm not sure how well these points got across in my speech which I had not properly prepared for, but they are very useful and the book is very inspiring to anyone who is looking to make a change.
2 comments:
Have you done the Strong interest inventory lately. I did it in high school and got something like Artistic, Social and Realistic meaning that I like the arts, helping people and working with my hands. I just took it on Thursday as a part of the Discover Your Place event at the U of M where I made popcorn all day. I discovered that I am now Investigative, Social, Conventional and Realistic. I was told to become an accountant. My boss thinks that would annoy all of the other accountants with my chatty nature.
I haven't done the Strong inventory that recently.
I can't remember what I got the first time... Perhaps I should take it again.
That is interesting that now it is wanting you to be an accountant? Perhaps this is from all the newly gained techie skills you have (in web design and so on).
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