Choosing A Career --3 Questions

YOUR PASSIONS--THE BASIS OF YOUR NEW CAREER IDEAS.

See ADDITIONAL RESOURCES below for a Tony Buzan video about mindmapping.

QUESTION 1: Who are you?
For our purposes this is not a big philosophical issue, but a practical one involving your passions, values and skills.

For this quickstart version of the process, we'll focus just on passions. You'll need to map out ALL of your current passions, hobbies or work or family oriented. If you know how to mindmap that's best, but a list is OK too.

A mindmap of your passions might look like the image here. Basically, what you'll need to do for your own mindmap is to write out My Passions in the center of a piece of unlined paper (landscape) with any images that remind you of your passions.

Next, circle (oval, diamond shape or whatever) My Passions and the images.

From there, draw out lines and print on them single words that signify your passions, such as outdoors or music.

That's the first set of lines radiating from the topic of My Passions. Use additional lines from each main passion to further define it. In the example, you'll see that music for this person is something they play and something they listen to. Further definitions come on the next set of lines, in this case showing what kind of music they like to play or listen to.

Go as far as you need to get a clear picture (literally) of all your current passions.

Once you finish your list or mindmap, what are you looking for?

Not necessarily the exact passion (for instance, dancing), but what you really love about dancing or what element (dancing with others, moving to music, where you are dancing, seeing what you've learned in action, creating community through music and dance, learning dances, meeting people through music and movement, etc.). Then see if some of those things you really love about dancing match up with what you love about other passions or can be combined with them, such as teaching (dance) or travel (to dance and learn new dances around the world). In other words, you are looking for patterns that define you, that you can apply to careers where people will pay you actual money. Of course, it could also be about the dancing itself and getting to travel for a sponsor, such as in the video below.

Bring in friends. Others may not be able to choose a career for you, but they may be able to help you notice what's obvious to them, but not to you about your passions. AFTER you complete your list or mindmap and thought about it, do talk it over with people you trust to see if any patterns pop up to them in what you are saying, or if you are missing some passions that they have seen you exhibit.