Seven steps in the right direction
By Jim Bright | | 24 January
Whether you are feeling the negative effects of this downturn, or simply feeling you need to change direction, here are some ideas to help.
There are two fundamental and complementary ways of achieving personal change: you can take action, and you can change your mind. Taking action can change your mind, and changing your mind promotes action.
Thus, my model, which I call Beyond Personal Mastery, involves seven action and seven mind steps. I'll cover the mind steps next week.
The seven action steps are: inspiration; patterning; learning; emulating; combining and adding; strategising; and doing.
Many people make the mistake of starting out by setting objectives and strategising. You'll notice that comes towards the end.
If you are without a direction, it means you need ideas. Do this by experiencing things that you store away as memory traces.
It won't necessarily transform your life but these experiences will be useful in all of the steps.
Inspiration
It literally means "to inhale" and suggests the link between action and inspiration. The more you move, the more you need to inhale and the more you move, the more chances for inspiration. Seek out others' ideas through meetings, conversations and invitations. Expose yourself to new ideas via books, classes, training, newspapers, magazines, television, internet, theatre, galleries and museums. Choose things that are novel to you - break the routine. The aim here is not directly to "get a job" or even direction. The idea is to be exposed to many different and varied experiences.
Patterning
As you gain new experiences, look for the structures, the hidden meanings and the ideas contained within them. How is the experience presented, structured? What does it mean to you? What are the common elements that occur frequently throughout the experience, what are the essential aspects of it? What could be taken away from the experience without it marring your enjoyment?
Learning
Which experiences did you like and which didn't you like? Why? What do all the things you like have in common? What do all things you don't like have in common? What do you know now that you didn't know before you embarked on step one? How could that learning be useful to you?
Emulating
In this step you practise copying and reproducing an activity you enjoyed. Often trying to do something is a great way of getting a deeper insight into an activity and a good way of testing whether you really are interested in it or not. In business and the arts many successful people never get beyond this stage. For instance, in Bangladesh they have just built a replica Taj Mahal and Melbourne has a giant wheel similar to the London Eye.
Combining and adding At this stage you go beyond copying and create something original and uniquely suited to you or your circumstances. This happens when you make links between things you have learned - your experiences - and other stored experiences to create something new. It is about combining pieces of your jigsaw in a new way to produce a new pattern you know will work. The more pieces of the jigsaw you collect through experience and learning, the more patterns you can create.
Strategising
Once you see the new pattern and possibilities, you can work on how you are going to get from where you are to where you need to be. This is where a lot of the traditional and rational ideas about evaluating alternatives and planning goals fit.
Doing
Finally, you need to act and at the same time go back to stage 1 and cycle through the steps. The model is a dynamic one that is based on the premise that we are continually in a state of both being and becoming.
Next week, I will cover the thinking strategies that complement and support this approach.
Jim Bright is professor of career education and development at ACU National and a partner at Bright and Associates, a career management consultancy.
Email ladder@brightandassociates.com.au
