Do Your Past Job Skills Point To Something New?

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. ~Helen Keller

Combine Your Skills Into Something New

Doug and I learned a lot about our current marketable skills when we reviewed our job history. We discovered that we possess a core set of skills that emerge in whatever job we’ve held. It makes sense to our monkey brains that to find contentment in work, we should be able to express our core skills as part of our duties.

I’m a creator and  a changer. I need to make things, or, if something already exists, I need alter it… make it better. Doug thinks we should analyze my list of core skills, list how I expressed them in past jobs and  imagine how I can use them in the future.

Core Skills And How I Expressed Them

• Building/Making.- Built amusement park ride sets, homes, boats, molds for sculptures.
  
• Creating.- Sculptures, concept sketches and ideas, New solutions for old problems, trouble if I was bored with work!
  
• Creativity.- Alternative approaches for any task, making processes more efficient, facilitating smoother work flow.
  
• Hands on type of work.-Same as building, for the most part. Database creation and management for my city job can be added here.
  
• Translating ideas/concepts into concrete form.- I have a need to make things better, or at least different. I can take a concept, make it 2 dimensional (sketch/drawing) and then create it in three dimensions.
  

So, what does this tell us?

Juggling skills, talents and desires.

A lot, actually. I learned that I’m skilled at making two dimensional ideas and making them three dimensional…

This goes down a level and I’m also skilled at translating verbal ideas and concepts and making them concrete (two and three dimensional).

I now know what I need to do, skill-wise, to feel content in my work life. My skills and drives are corralled, and I can begin tweaking them and see what emerges.

Creative effort should reveal some new angles to refine my skill set, and how I can combine them into a new package for different career fields.

There seems to be different levels at which skills are expressed. I’m a creative person who creates actual objects, so the connection is easy to make. But I think there is a hierarchy of existence for everything. It begins as an idea, it is worked out and refined and then it is created. Then that’s it right?

It exists? Yes, but Doug and I just had a tiny light bulb go off in our fuzzy heads. What would be the logical progression after creation? We won’t lose focus with this post, but I know what the next post will be about!

We’re on our way to figuring out what carer is right for me…

Exercise

Take your list of skills and talents from the last exercise and read it over. How did you use these skills and talents in previous jobs. Write down each skill and then list the jobs you used it for and how you used it.

How can these skills be combined into a new package?Are there opportunities you see in previous career fields where this new skill package can be used? What about using it for something new, like your dream job that waits at the end of your path towards contentment?

We all have skills and talents that we developed over time. Looking at them in a new way may inspire a direction change in your life… If nothing else, listing and acknowledging your core skills will give you a boost. You’re not useless and hopeless… You just haven’t found the work that nourishes your soul…

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation. ~John Ruskin

Related articles

• What Is Your Work Style? (dougdoeslife.com)
• Degraded Jobs (psychologytoday.com)
• New Study Reveals Most Important Skills For Students (myveda.wordpress.com)

Do you love what you do?

Tags: Art, Career, cartoon, comic, Creativity, Employment, illustration, job, work