Reviewing our values, passions and gifts

Christmas is a time for thanksgiving for all the blessings that we have received. It’s also a time to take stock of the year that will come to an end in a few days; 2009 may have been happy or sad depending on the events that happened in our personal and professional lives. If we have experienced a lot of difficult situations — manmade or an act of God, like the wrath of Mother Earth — it will help to set our sights, not on the danger but on the opportunity that set in during those trying times and work from there.

To do that, we need to reassess our values, passions, and gifts. It’s also important to keep in touch with our reason for being as we design our roadmap, and familiarize ourselves with review process that will serve the needs of our life and work. It’s imperative to be clear about what’s important to us and about what we do and conquer them.

In one of her dissertations on career management, Margaret Newhouse of Harvard University explains that the workplace, including its physical characteristics, the size of the organization, its corporate culture, and the people we work and interact with are critical in the assessment process. To help lay down our courses of action, Newhouse encourages us to look at the conditions and lifestyle implications of our work, covering areas like professional stability, income and benefits, prestige, time commitments, and flexibility; to be clear with the tasks and functions we will perform and the work style we will adopt; and to put together substantive content.

Our skills, Newhouse says, primarily affect our choice of tasks; our interests, the substance of our work and the organization; and our values, the work environment and lifestyle we will adopt. For example, how we choose to use our gift for presentation and the passion for the work we do depends on our values. A desire for financial stability might send us into currently in-demand job areas; for autonomy, into freelance work; for variety and intellectual challenge, to media assignments; or for public impact, to advocacy or corporate social responsibility engagement.

Ideally, we want a career that falls into the area where our values, interests, and talents crisscross. As Newhouse elaborates, it is possible to find work that utilizes our skills that does not contradict our beliefs, and provides us a fat paycheck while allowing the flexibility to follow our passions and express our gifts. And there are many ways to compose a life, and the music that will satisfy our desires as long as we are true to most dimensions of our life. She recommends a few exercises to get you started.

Remember The ‘Peaks’

Richard Bolles of What Color Is Your Parachute? fame recommends that we think back over the experiences we have had in our life and pick three to 10 that have the following characteristics — we are the chief or significant player; we, not the world or any significant others, regard what we have done as a success; we achieved or created something with concrete results; we acted to solve a problem; or gave something of ourselves that we are proud of and truly enjoyed.

List each experience, explain why we consider it a success, and write a paragraph or two detailing the experience step by step. Extract from these stories the values and interests revealed about us and the skills and attributes we manifested. Then look for patterns. In other words, what do they reveal about what we like to do and do well? For example, Newhouse tells the story of someone she knows and works with. She is a musician and in one of their conversations has recalled a “peak experience” participating in an organized cross-country bike tour, which eventually led her to investigate and ultimately take a job leading bike events.

Passion is Everything

Think about what our interests and passions are. What do you do in your spare time or what would you do if you had spare time (think about creative, outdoor, social, and intellectual activities)? What did we love to do when we were young? If we were given a limited sum to spend in a bookstore, what types of books or magazines would we spend it on? What do we think and talk about? Is there a cause we feel passionately about, some injustice we hate, or something that the world or our community needs?

An appropriate example of following a passion is the story of an assistant professor of math that loved playing games (particularly Magic). He now works as a game designer for Wizards of the Coast, the producers of Magic. And then there is this neurobiology student who developed a passion for combating illiteracy and is using a post-doctoral fellowship to make a career switch to educational evaluation.

Gifts Are Meant To Be Shared

Our gifts are our talents that we employ so naturally and happily that we may not even consider them special. Using our gifts expresses our uniqueness and brings us joy and we need to find ways to incorporate them into our work and life. To ascertain our gifts, look back at our “success stories” and look for talents that appear consistently in the stories. Think of what totally absorbs us or what people often ask we do for them or what help we can extend to others, and try asking people who know us well what they think our particular talents are and work from there.

I have personally identified two of my gifts as teaching and writing. I have been a college teacher for more than 25 years and a column writer for this publication. Introspection, with the help of exercises, is necessary for knowing one’s self, but it is not sufficient. We need to connect it with what’s out there in the world. To do that, brainstorm with friends, observe closely, and ask a lot of people about their work and their life.

It’s All About ‘The Journey’

The more we learn about possibilities, the more we can clarify what we’re looking for. It’s as important to rule things “out” as “in” and often we can do that in a low-cost way by talking with people about their jobs. Sometimes we rule things out only after we’ve been in a situation, or perhaps our values or our life circumstances change (such as getting married and having children). It’s a long, iterative process, but the journey is the point of it all.

Listing and reviewing what we have done during the past months is good for our body and soul, our heart and mind, our logic and magic. Make time for that as we usher in a new year full of hope.

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E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.