After examining your talents and passions (and also here), considering your values is an important piece in determining career direction. Values, in this sense, are not values that we should all strive for like integrity and honesty, but your personal work and lifestyle values that are unique to you. Oftentimes, I see that values are the first thing that gets neglected when considering career decisions, but they really help people eliminate certain career options or certain work environments more effectively than talents and passions do.
How do I determine what I value?
You can use page 15-16 of the Finding Your Point Worksheet to select work and lifestyle values that matter to you. (Remember, the title of most of them is linked to job matches. Just click on them to see careers that align with your values.)
You can also visit these links for help determining your values:
Working Conditions:
Lifestyle Conditions:
How Values Drive Career Decisions: An Example
There is an example of how values drive career decision making that I always love to share. In working with youth, I always ask them:
“Where do you see yourself in 10 years? What will you be doing, what will your life be like?”
The answers I receive are broad and many youth have to be probed when thinking about this because they’ve never thought about it before.
Before asking a girl I had been working this question, I was ready to send her to Broadway. We had examined her talents and passions, and she was a gifted vocalist and actress. She has been accepted into the musical theatre program at her college of choice, which is rare for an incoming freshman to obtain. She loved the arts, particularly the performing arts, and most of her extracurricular activities and enjoyment came from performing. I thought, easy. She’s got the talent, she’s got the drive in this area, done deal, send her to Broadway! She would just have work hard to achieve success in this arena.
Then I asked: “Where do you see yourself in 10 years? What will you be doing, what will your life be like?”
Her response was immediately and with certainty: “In my hometown, married with several kids.” Her hometown is not New York. In fact, it has less than 100,000 people in it and is nowhere near Broadway.
With such certainty in how she saw her life in 10 years, you can see how considering what she valued in terms of her lifestyle with this simple question was not a match for the direction her talents and passions identified for her.
Consider what you value. It may be more powerful in determining direction than you think.
What do you value? How has this determined your career direction and options?
image source: http://www.nyctourist.com/images/times-square-photos/broadway-sign.jpg
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