Mining Your Memories

The color quiz can start you in the right career direction, but you may want to take a step further.  By carefully examining your past, you can discover qualities about yourself that will lead you to a rewarding career.

To begin, recall a time when you had to accomplish a task-something you were not sure you could do.  In doing this project you found that you could not only complete it, but that time had slipped away.  You were in a state of "flow" and ordinary linear time disappeared.

Try to remember those environments in which you've been most creative and happiest.  They can be school, work, Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, summer camp-wherever you've felt that you were completely satisfied to be doing what you were doing and in the way you were doing it.  See if you can isolate any common themes.
 

On a blank piece of paper...jot down the following:

What I Was doing When I Felt Happiest?
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For some of you critical thinkers, this may be a tough task, so we've developed a reverse twist to jog your memories!

Times When I've Felt My Worst?
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The purpose of this second list to help you figure out what was lacking in those experiences.  You may then be able to work backwards to create your list of what conditions encourage you to feel happy and creative.

After you've finished your lists, select up to three specific memories in which timelessness was a key ingredient.  Those are times when you were so involved in completing a project, accomplishing some task, or solving a problem, that time slipped away, and you couldn't tell how long you'd been working.  When you recall these specific occasions, jot them down .
 
 
 
 

This web page was created with information from:
Careers & Colleges, Careers 2002, January/February 2002