i am enough

Despite all good intentions I'm dawdling with this weeks activities for our Career Clarity Camp. I HAVE been reflecting but I wanted to also write. So a bit of a catchup here...

We're meeting online for 90 minutes each week. It's an interesting mix of people from around the world and I enjoyed the diversity very much. We're using a visualisation tool called The Image Centre - a service by VisualsSpeak . As a visual person I loved the platform but would have liked to be able to text chat to the group as they described their ideas. It provides a canvas on which participants can select and display images to describe their response to different trigger questions. Our last task was to select images in response to the question - If success was completely guaranteed, who could I become? We had about 50 images to choose from and about 3 minutes to complete the task. Here's my response:

Then to the analysis.
I see myself as the fish in the top left (happily) swimming against the flow. My thoughts were around creativity, pathways, resilience, tenacity and choice.
We've been asked to seek input from others who know us well so I'd love to hear your comments.

I've revisited my post from a year ago untapped & unrecognised and realised that if self-employed, management of my skills and talents is entirely up to me! I AM able to combine them into the directions I take as well as drawing on the strengths of others to complement. The challenge is to think laterally about what's possible and perhaps to create new possibilities, and to market those as worthwhile without falling into the trap Michele describes in her Dreams for sale post - making career decisions based only on what the market will bear. The questions posed in Michele's post (from Peter Block & Michele) to help us step back from an 'economic monoculture' view of ourselves are useful I think -
* What does it mean when we lose contact or faith in our ideals, or our dreams and desires?
* Why would we give up the pursuit of our desires, of what matters to us, if the right offer doesn't come along?
* Why have we placed our desires up for auction?
* When did we decide that we could live without what was important to us or postpone our desires until we have implemented an exit strategy?
* What would my career look like if I wasn't worried about selling to the highest bidder?
* What really matters to me, regardles of how much someone else is willing to pay for it?

I've also taken time to think about Michele's post Courage, Vulnerability and Being Wholehearted at Work and really enjoyed the TEdTalk from Brene Brown which I'll share again below.

A few points that resonated:

  • is there something about me that if other people see it will make me unworthy of connection? 
  • whole-hearted people have the courage to be imperfect and the compassion for themselves in their imperfection and
  • they had authenticity--the courage to give up their image of who they thought they SHOULD be, in order to be who they actually are
  • in order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen

I'm taking the last point forward into the next session.