I woke up today feeling optimistic, full of hope, inspired and motivated to work on my three new career projects. Just to be clear I don’t often wake up like this, in fact I haven’t woken up like this and felt this way for a long, long time.
What changed? Well, I have just completed the Purposeek 4-week program. The program boasts tools to help create a life and career switch by using the power of a buddy system and group collaboration.
On the outset it seemed a bit far-fetched, tools to help create a switch in not only my career but also my life? within just 4 weeks? I’m generally quite sceptical when I’m offered life changing events especially via Zoom online. However, I gave it a go and went in with an open mind, ready to participate.
The pre-work before the first workshop was quite daunting – one of the activities asked me to email my friends and family to ask them to name some of my strengths and weaknesses! Obviously, I’m far from perfect but to open myself to criticism was a little confronting. It turns out friends and family are nice and I received lovely feedback about how nice I am. In terms of the weaknesses interestingly a common thread I received back was that I need to be more assertive and voice my opinion more. I knew this deep inside already, but was surprised to see it appear in many returned emails. It felt good having found something to work on that could be useful for me for the future.
The start of week 1 workshop involved self-reflection about what I wanted to do as a child and about what my aspirations have been and analysis of my strengths using an online tool.
I think this module was about discovering myself. I’m not sure I liked it. It was a bit wishy washy and I struggled to see the purpose of many of the activities. One of the interesting parts was using my buddy as a sounding board to help express my inner thoughts. Usually, I don’t open up to people I don’t know and won’t share intimate thoughts, however the format of the workshop was such that it felt normal and actually really helped with this introspection phase. My buddy remained my buddy for the 4 weeks and we got on so well that she will remain my buddy now forever.
Over week 2, I received an email every day with some form of homework such as watch a specific TED talk or reflect and write in my journal etc. What I found very interesting was to learn and discover my flow state, and relate it to my work. I have been in a vocational career for the last 20 years and not really exposed myself to anything else. The week 2 workshop got me to consider what gets me into a flow state and what drives me. This was really insightful as I found that what really makes me tick and drives me forward was spending time alone, working on new problems, solving problems and creating new things. Strangely I found that I get into a flow state when I am developing content to share and also when building Ikea furniture. This was extremely useful as I have not been able to do this type of discovery work on myself before and it was so valuable to have the tools and time to complete it. The workshop asked me at one stage to think of myself as an object or animal or a metaphor for my values – I found this type of activity a bit strange but thankfully it only lasted 3 minutes.
Week 3 was even better, the daily homework was excellent and I watched a great video about design thinking and how to apply it to your life and career. One of the main take away messages was that don’t make drastic changes in your career direction. Simply take a small step in the new direction and try it out. Prototype everything first.
Workshop 3 was awesome. The culmination of it was generating 3 ideas for future work using gap analysis from where I am currently and where I would like to be. This was an interesting, almost scientific approach to career change determination which I don’t think exists anywhere else or in any other format. I identified 3 new career directions that I could quite easily take and the process helped me rate which one was the best fit for me. It turned out that all 3 were compatible with each other and I actually wrote a plan to pursue all 3 directions at the same time.
My biggest insight was that for this to happen, I have to let go of my attachment to my 20 years of experience in my vocational career. This was a stark and actually difficult realisation. My rationale for it was that I am not interested in my pervious field of work, therefore I must reframe my mind to think of it as transferring my skills not losing my skills.
Workshop 4 was the action and the cost of inaction. I could feel the slow build-up of excitement from the previous 3 weeks leading up to the final workshop. So many times, I have attended a workshop and not acted on any of the recommendations. This time I was determined not make that mistake and in this final workshop I scheduled specific actions in to my calendar for the next few weeks and now have my buddy to hold me accountable.
If you are interested in what my 3 new directions are, I have listed them below and will keep you updated as to how I am tracking in this blog.
1. Changing the focus of my current paid research job to be more aligned with my values and interests. Exploring the fields of Behaviour Change and Psychology.
2. Working with a friend part time in the city, thereby fulfilling some of my needs for growth, diversity and fun outside of my field of expertise.
3. Starting an original online business with low setup costs that I could run from anywhere to give me a stable income.
This Purposeek workshop has really helped me define what I want and how to get it. I have made a new friend (my buddy) and will hopefully keep in contact, and keep each other accountable. The workshop and daily homework are a significant time investment so you have to carve out some time to make it work it. My advice is to trust the method even if at times you are not sure where the presenter or the activity is taking you – just do it – you won’t regret it.
Is it worth the investment? Well, it was for me. In fact, it’s probably worth a lot more than the monetary cost, after all what price can you put on finding your career purpose and feeling inspired and motivated?
