Shortening My Trip - 5-2-2012

Pacific Ocean from Barracuda in Playa Samara, Costa Rica



Upstairs bar at Barracuda in Playa Samara, Costa Rica

Upstairs at Barracuda, Jack Johnson was playing on the stereo and warm breezes touched my skin as I drank my frosty Imperial. I admired the baby blue sky and sapphire water interspersed with white caps. I felt peaceful, more peaceful than I had since the Canadians left two days prior. And that's when it started to hit me. On this trip, I wanted to learn how to love unconditionally. Well, if I am supposed to love my friends and my family unconditionally, then the best way to love them is to be with them. For my parents, that means being at home, or at least close to it. For my friends in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, that means visiting them. Me hanging out in Samara for six weeks does not bring love to the people who love me, though I do acknowledge that it took coming down here for me to realize that.

Up at Barracuda, I started thinking about this freedom that I've scrimped and saved for. For six years, I've put off living, and starting my own life in favor of working stressful jobs, commuting long distances and living with my parents specifically so I could get out of debt as quickly as possible and put together enough money to travel for a very long time. I have accomplished these things.

But here's the kicker: I didn't realize just how much I changed from my last trip through Playa Samara until I got back here. I see that I don't actually want to be a perpetual traveler anymore. I do still want the option to bail on a job whenever I desire and without financial concern, and I certainly want to be able to travel when I want. For the first time in my life, though, I feel like the next step for me is to set down roots, not collect passport stamps. I want to find a job that complements or serves my personal purpose rather than only putting money in my pocket. That might mean something corporate; it might mean a clean break from my corporate past. I also want to find a girlfriend who shares my values. I want to move out of my parents' house, and be a better friend to my friends by visiting them often.

 

Swimming pool at Barracuda in Playa Samara, Costa Rica

That's when I decided, amid the warm breeze, postcard view and easy Jack Johnson songs that I have to go home. I have to go home and bring love to the people who love me by visiting them in NYC and SF and wherever else they may be. I have to go home and build a life, not run from things I don't want...but really build life that any man would love to live. Sitting on a beach in Costa Rica isn't moving me towards these things, even though I had to fly down here, sit on a beach (well...hilltop bar), meet a whole bunch of people, clean up loose ends and do lots of writing here in Costa Rica to realize this.

Later that Saturday afternoon, I changed my flight home and shortened my trip by two weeks. That gives me over two and a half weeks to get into random adventures here, meet more people, and gain further insights while also moving me two weeks closer to building an awesome life at home. Shortening my trip also pulls some pressure off me here. Now that I'm just passing through, I can just have fun without worrying that I'm not making friends with other folks who'll stay for a while. That's liberating too.

How I Found Alignment, and What it Taught Me

This post is the second in a series on aligning work with one's values, strengths and traits. Read the first post here.

In my previous post, I suggested that aligning one's work with their personal values, strengths and personality traits is good career planning. I suggested this after respected friends and family members had told me that they found success in aligning their own work with these personal qualities. This post is about how I examined my own personal values, strengths and traits so that I could find work that aligns with them.

In August and September, I spent much time reading "What Color is Your Parachute" by Richard Bolles, and then going through the book's Flower Exercise. The Flower Exercise helped me understand my personal values, strengths, favorite personality traits, favorite subject matter, favorite working environment and preferred geographic areas in which to work. The exercise asked me to make lists for each of these factors and compare each item on a list to the other items until my list was ordered from most favored item to least favored or most prevalent item to least prevalent, depending on the list.

Completing the Flower Exercise was massively useful for several reasons:

Reason #1: I was surprised to discover I enjoy using certain skills and practice them often without noticing. For example, nearly every incident I deconstructed involved me 1) Organizing, Classifying, Systematizing and/or Prioritizing information, and 2) Deciding, Evaluating, Appraising, or Making Recommendations. I used these skills whether I was weighing where to take Mom and Dad for vacation, looking for an apartment in San Francisco, or researching business schools.

Reason #2: I easily found points of misalignment in my past career. My last two economic consulting jobs, and especially my last one in Los Angeles, featured client-oriented, fast-paced, deeply verbally abusive working environments. Defining my personality traits and favored working environment made it obvious that I do best in a gentler, slower environment where I don't have to deal with external clients. This was illuminating because I used to think that hard-driving, aggressive environments brought out the best in me by challenging me at every turn. I was wrong.

Reason #3: Writing down the results of my Flower Exercise really made me focus my search on jobs that would honor my values, strengths and traits. How could I ignore them anymore? I couldn't. I had written them down. And now that I had written them down, I was going to pay attention to them and find jobs that honored them. The Flower Exercise also provided the basis of a great sales pitch I could use in interviews.

Reason #4: Completing the exercise excited me. Writing down my results gave me a list of things to look for in a job. I was excited to find a job that offered these things because once I found that job, I knew I would be in a great environment where I could stretch my skills without breaking my psyche.

The bottom line is that the Flower Exercise was very useful in helping me discover and then define my skills, values, traits, favored subject matter, favored working environments and preferred geography. Defining these factors helped me explore career alternatives I would not previously have considered and focus my job search only on alternatives that honored these factors.

The end result has been great. And I'll explore that in a future post.

Looking For Career Advice? How About First Defining Your Values and Strengths

This post is the first in a series on aligning work with one's values, strengths and traits.

Some economists and political pundits are opining that our economic recession is over. I heard that on Reuters last spring. I'm hearing that elsewhere today. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now for the following reasons:

* CNN tells us there are no job prospects for the man on the street, and that he's lucky to find contract positions without benefits.
* Bloomberg confirms this gloomy picture, reporting that national unemployment in September hit a 26-year high.
* That same Bloomberg article states that nationwide July 2009 foreclosures topped 300,000 for the sixth straight month, 50% higher than the number of foreclosures in July 2008.
* Another CNN article reports 650,000 consumed the last of their standard unemployment benefits in August and that the flood of people like them is just beginning.

What's a person in need of income to do? I challenge those looking for work to search for work aligned with their values, strengths, and personality traits.

There is ample material addressing the link between personal satisfaction and success on one hand, and personal values and strengths on the other. Books "What Color is Your Parachute" by Richard Bolles and "Do What You Are" by Paul Tieger and Barbara Barron, talk about this relationship. Blogs Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk, and Start Being Your Best by Jason Barr do too.

But does linking values, strengths, and work in a golden triangle really lead to personal satisfaction and success, or is it just career planning propaganda? I wasn't sure, so I contacted friends, I asked my parents, and talked to total strangers about finding satisfaction and success by aligning their work with their values and strengths. I asked each of them questions like these:

1) How do your personal strengths, personal values, and current work compliment and align with each other?

2) How is this alignment different than how your personal values and strengths lined up with jobs you have held in the past? If the alignment is different, how has that difference impacted your success at each job and your personal contentment during that period?

3) How important to success and personal contentment is finding alignment among personal values, personal strengths, and work? If you think this is garbage, tell me why.

4) Anything else you think I should know about the relationship between values, strengths, and work?


Nearly everyone I asked said the following:

1) They believe that aligning their values, strengths, and work certainly leads to personal satisfaction and can lead to success,

2) their current work aligns better than their past work, largely by design,

3) that improved alignment has increased their personal satisfaction at work and outside of work, and

4) one can find alignment by choosing work that is not life-consuming and then pursuing one's passions outside of work.

I was struck by the variety of ways in which people sought alignment. For example, my Dad has purposely spent most of his career at small companies so that he can shape his working environment in a way that plays to his strengths and values. Another friend of mine engineered her alignment by pursuing graduate studies, teaching yoga, and spending her time in other stimulating ways that speak to her unique values and strengths.

My next post will address how I am trying to find alignment. Until then, how are you finding alignment? What do you think about the whole idea of aligning your work, values, and strengths as a way to find personal satisfaction and success? Leave your answers in the comment section.