You Are Not What You Eat... Do what you want

You are not what you eat. You are what you like or dislike. What you do or don't do. You are what you're interested in. You are what you're good at.

I'm just trying to reframe that phrase “You are”, because the only thing that you actually are is a unique individual. Just because you like to cook doesn't mean that you have to be a chef.

My point there is that you are not predefined. You can do whatever you want. You can learn whatever skill that interests you. You can move forward in any direction you choose, and there is nothing that is holding you back except for you. So keep an open mind. 

The first exercise that I want to do together, is about looking inward.

A lot of people I talk to have not ever done this exercise. And so what I want you to do now is I want you to take out a blank sheet of paper, if you have access to one. And then we're going to just we're going to create Some likes and dislikes

And it could be not necessarily things that you do or don't like, but it could be things that you gravitate towards or that you prefer to avoid. 

And then another thing that I want you to do. is down the other side of this piece of paper where you're going to start listing characteristics. I want you to look at in your personal life and your professional life, or basically in your jobs.

What I want you to do now is this exercise and it, has multiple benefits. What we're really doing right now is we are visualizing and we are, we tangibly identifying the things that we want to either gravitate towards or avoid. 

And so what I want you to do with this piece of paper, and we're gonna pause after we get started, because I really want you to sit down and take time to do this. And this can be a living document. You don't have to think of everything right now. You'll probably remember some things you could have added to this list during dinner or later on. It's going to be a living document.

What I want you to do right now is I want you to write down as many things that you can think of that you like, and they're going to need to be relevant to your career. Because this is the context of what we're talking about. But what types of things in the past, or do you know that you really like, or you're gravitated towards? Not just in your personal life, but also in your professional life, like past jobs, what types of things in your past jobs did you really enjoy? 

And I'll give you some examples from my own personal experience. Personally I like working with people. I like talking to people I like interacting with people. I don't like too much isolation. 

In my past jobs, I like what some people might say chaos, or I would call variety. I like to have a lot of different things in my work. I like to wear lots of different hats. I don't necessarily like routine. 

I much prefer a challenge or like hard work and I do not like easy work. If it's too easy, I get bored really fast. 

Let's see, what else? 

I like to work from home or out in the field. I don't like to be in an office. Or commuting, I don't want to commute and spend two hours a day on the freeway. 

These are just my things. I'm trying to just give you some examples. 

But what we're going to do is create effectively like a vision board. But this is for characteristics and what this is going to teach us is the types of things and characteristics of situations, both personally and professionally, that you want to gravitate towards. And so that once you do this exercise, you will be able to start identifying some of these things in say a job description or with a company.

The value in this is identifying these characteristics. In a way that you can remember, because if you're writing them down and thinking about them and actually writing them down on the paper, you're much more likely to remember, and then also recall those things when you're out looking at, say a job offer or a job description, or, something you're applying for.

And sometimes there's a trade off, but the point here is I want you to fill up as much of this paper as you can with the things that you like or gravitating towards both personally and professionally and things that you definitely want to avoid.

This would be the first step in creating a roadmap for the types of jobs that you want to attract into your life. 

So let's go ahead and we'll pause and I want you to work on this. And then we're going to come back once you have written some of these things down. And then we'll pick this back up.