Yesterday I speculated that the wisest career advice I could offer was to find the flow of the Universe, and jump into the middle of it. I stand by that suggestion. The challenge is figuring out what that flow is, and then navigating the balance between it and your own free will.
There are a number of practices that are helpful. Perhaps I’ll dive into each over the course of the upcoming posts?
The first is defining your values.
Values are not immutable, but they are reflective of what you believe and feel today. Life is dynamic, and values can shift over time, but they tell us a lot about what matters to us today. For that reason, it makes sense to document which values you hold most dear, and revisit that list periodically to make sure that what used to matter to you still does. If not, repeat the values exercise to generate a fresh list. Even if you did a values-sorting exercise in your career planning before, use this new list to measure what you’re doing today.
The system is straightforward. Find an inventory list of common values. Sort them into Important, Very Important, and Less Important columns. Then take the list of Very Important values and force rank them by evaluating each one against each other value. Place each in the order of most important to least important from within this sub-group of Very Important values.
Once you have this rank-ordered list, evaluate the top five to ten, and see if you can name a top five to seven overall most important values. If you can list no more than seven values that matter to you the most, you are on your way to creating a filter to help you find the flow in your Universe.