Career Test for the Soul, Step 1.Prioritizing Life ValuesThe assessments we offer on this web site are selected excerpts from the "Finding Your Calling" section of our book, Your Soul at Work. We often look with envy upon those who seemed to have found their true calling in life. Finding one's calling can be interpreted in a spiritual sense as being called by a higher being. It can also be seen as building a career that is consistent with one's innermost values and aspirations. People who have found their calling are pursuing careers that provide real nourishment for their souls. |
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But how do we define "soul"? In our book, as in our consulting practice, we use a specialized definition of soul that most people, no matter what their unique spiritual beliefs, can relate to. For career purposes your soul is the inner you -- the center of your being. It's that part of you that knows your deepest needs and aspirations and that's the source of your energy. If you leave your soul at home and have no time for it later, your job won't be very fulfilling. Bringing your soul to work requires specifying and meeting your own, not someone else's, expectations. You have to define your own, independent personal criteria for success before you can decide what career choices will best help you meet them. Some of the most important criteria you need to define are your life values Difficult choicesMaking a long list of values is usually the easy part because most of us want everything with no contradictions. For instance, I want to live in a small, low-pressure town and have all the status and money of a job that may only be available in a large city. However, if I face the unpleasant reality that there are contradictions and I can't have everything, I'll discover I have priorities and want some things more than others. Accepting someone else's - organization's, peers' or teacher's - value priorities will rob me of many things I want most and substitute things I don't want nearly as much. The following exercise will help you establish your unique personal value priorities. It asks you to rank 20 typical life values by dropping them one at a time. This will not be an easy task but it's an important one. The process of establishing clear priorities may force you to make some conscious tradeoffs you've been avoiding, particularly when you compare what your top priorities are with the values you are actually spending most of your time pursuing today. |
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If you would like to read more background, please see the free chapter on "Prioritizing Life Values" on the Your Soul at Work web site. Note. This Assessment may not work in older browsers. If the buttons do not seem to work correctly for you, return to this page and try the low-tech version instead.
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