An exercise to find what makes you tick.
If you ever want to see people look like deer in headlights ask them to define themselves. Most people focus big buckets full of energy outwards, but never set the anchor and build the foundation of self definition.
You are going to be inundated by goal setting exercises for the new year soon. Setting goals can very well be a waste of time and energy unless you understand what drives you and what makes you happy.
We talked last time about a framework for life balance. This framework attempted to let you visualize the balance between work, health, family and spiritual. But, even this does you no good unless you have a way to measure how you allocate your energy and time and whether or not this allocation is aligned with your underlying ‘self’.
Until you understand what drives you, what makes you happy and what makes you unhappy all these tactical steps are nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
How do you discover what your ‘self’ is? How do you uncover what drives you? Good news. I have an exercise for that.
We humans are very good at finding and deciphering patterns. Indeed, we often see patterns where none exist, but that’s a story for another day. Today we are going to talk about laying out your life and looking for patterns.
As a businessman I am often involved with hiring, firing and assessing. One of the things you learn in assessing people, whether a job applicant or yourself is to look for the patterns. When hiring managers ask you questions they are looking to establish patterns. We can use this same assessment methodology to help you assess your ‘self’.
I want you to get a piece of paper, or open a spreadsheet, and brainstorm every major occurrence in your life. Make a column and list in no particular order of every event large or small that you can remember from the time you were born through to the present day.
List out all your jobs. List out your sports. List out your major life events. List out your major relationships. List out your transitional moments. List out those events that would fall on the “Best things that ever happened to me” or “My favorite day” list. Also, enumerate the bad things; “The worst I’ve ever felt” and “I hope I never have to live through that again” list.
Go ahead. Do it. Take a week if you need. Get a good sample. I’ll wait…
Now, in a second column I want you to answer the question ‘what are you most proud of from the (job, relationship, event, etc.)?’ What made you feel great? What caused you to rejoice? If it was a challenge how did you deal with it? Are you proud of that and the resulting personal growth?
In a third column I want you to answer ‘what did you dislike about the (job, relationship, event, etc.)?’ What made you feel awful? What made you sick? What was the biggest challenge for you? What do you wish you could get back and do differently?
Now in the next column I want you to comment on the people involved. If I asked those people about you and that situation what would they say? Would they recommend you? Would they say they were your friend? How would they describe you? How would you want to be described?
I know some of these life events have the potential to trigger great emotions for those of you who are wired with great empathy. I’m not asking you to relive any of this stuff. I’m asking you to be a librarian. You are doing research. The subject of this research just happens to be you. If it helps you can write in the third person as if you are describing someone else and someone else’s emotions. This is purely an intellectual exercise not a therapy session.
Take as much time as you would like with this exercise. Make sure you have enough of a sample set to be able to derive and uncover some patterns. Set it aside when you are done and give it a couple days to breathe.
Let me stop right here and assure you that I know this is really hard to do. It’s especially hard because we typically don’t have a very good perspective of ourselves If you can this exercise is great with a partner. If you can have someone ask you the questions outlined above in interview format and walk you through the list building exercise it provides a good 3rd party balance.
I know it’s hard. But, it is worth the effort. Give it a try. Even partial answers are useful.
Right. Ready? Now we go looking for the ghost in the machine.
Open up your masterpiece of autobiography. What we have done here is to pump a black box. The black box is you. We can’t see inside the box to understand the mechanism directly but we can feed inputs into the box and measure the resulting outputs. In this way we can derive what the machinery is that lies inside the box.
Read through your list. Slowly. Thoughtfully.
Look for patterns. What situations did you consistently excel in? What circumstances brought you joy? Where were you consistently successful? How do you define and recognize success? What situations were consistently ruinous for you? Why? What events made you happy and why? What relationships made you happy and why?
From this you should be able to derive the parameters of your self.
When I go through this exercise or a similar one I find that I get a big rush out of situations where I can have controlled adventure. I succeed as an individual contributor, but also help others succeed as a leader. I have consistently been successful when I take big risks with my career and put myself in a position of sink or swim. I very much enjoy creative acts. I am driven and easily bored but also fairly self destructive when I’m afraid…
I won’t bore you with my details, because this is not therapy, but suffice to say I have a fairly good handle on who I am and what makes me tick.
As you read through your list. Look for the patterns. Write down in one word or bullet form what those patterns reveal. For example you might write the word “Adventure” or “Safety” or you might write the phrase “Helping people” or “Learning new things”.
Sit back and take a deep breath. Close your eyes. Breathe. Open your eyes. Read that final list of output, your list of words and bullets. It’s ok if some of these things are apparently in conflict. You may have adventure and safety written down, for instance.
You are smart enough to realize that these things are applied in degrees and are somewhat situational. When you use your list you’ll have to figure out the precedence of drivers for specific situations.
Now, here you have a way to measure you life’s goals and success factors.
Go back to the previous discussion about life balance. How should/will you allocate your time and energy so that it aligns with and supports the things on this list? If your life balance is not aligned with your internal drivers, your ‘self’, then there will be negative tension.
Finally, let’s bring it all the way back around to goal setting. Your goal gurus are going to tell you to set measureable goals, blah, blah, blah… You can do better now, because you have a foundation.
Set 1-5 goals in each area of your life balance diagram. These will be specific outcomes that you want to achieve in your life in the areas work, health, family, spiritual AND self.
The rule now is that these new goals MUST align with that list of ‘self’ drivers that you came up with. And these goals should increase the ‘fullness’ or depth of that area of your life balance. Now you will not only have goals but you will have genuine reasons or ‘whys’ for each one of them that tie directly back to your definition of self.
Cool huh?
Plato is reported to have said that a truly wise man knows that he knows nothing. Keep that in mind. There are no definite answers in the discovery of self. That is a journey only you can make. This is a never ending research project, but I can assure you that if you go through this exercise you will definitely learn something about yourself!
Feel free to send me any comments or questions and next time we are going to discuss my fascinating theory – ‘the system theory’ of self.
Happy New Year!
About Chris Russell
The Mid-Packer’s Lament
On Audio (Read by the author)
The Mid-Packer’s Guide to the Galaxy
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Bio
Chris Russell lives and trains in suburban Massachusetts with his family and Border collie Buddy. Chris is the author of “The Mid-Packer’s Lament”, and “The Mid-Packer’s Guide to the Galaxy”, short stories on running, racing, and the human comedy of the mid-pack. Chris writes the Runnerati Blog at www.runnerati.com. Chris’ Podcast, RunRunLive is available on iTunes and at www.runrunlive.com. Chris also writes for CoolRunning.com (Active.com) and is a member of the Squannacook River Runners and the Goon Squad.
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