Find your Fulfilment

I wanted for this short blog to help you to find fulfilment in your life. For me this comes from three main sources - my state of mind, my work and my hobbies. There are other sources though I have intentionally kept the main ones largely self-reliant. In previous blogs I have covered a lot about state of mind and encouraging you to focus on positive thoughts and to find ways to reframe negative ones into positive thoughts and words. Hobbies to help you feel fulfilled will be driven by what you enjoy, what makes you feel good about yourself and what you deem important ways to spend your time. This blog is about your work and finding fulfilled there. I hope that you find it of use in looking at where you are now as well as in your career planning and journey moving forward. Perhaps you will use the thinking that this blog stimulates to make changes within your current work and environment. Perhaps you will also make a plan for a bigger change. The three tools that I suggest that you use here are your work personality, your work values and skills strengths that you also enjoy using. In my previous blog I referred you to Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) which is a personality instrument used worldwide often in the workplace to help with self understanding knowledge and development. It is also used and applied in team development. Other uses include career diagnostics. I am suggesting that you use in this way to find work that fulfills you as it aligns well with your personality. If you visit www.16personalities.com you can complete the twelve minute free test and have the outcome e mailed to you. The result will be four letters followed by a further letter that indicates your level of confidence in your thinking. There are 16 possible results. These relate to four areas of your personality preferences - where you have a preference for your energy source, what kind of information you pay attention to, how you prefer to make decisions and your lifestyle preference. It makes sense that matching these preferences with your career will help you to feel fulfilled. Once you have your result revisit the same website and take a look at the type of careers and the elements of work that your personality is pointing to. For example, as an ENTJ I like to lead in my work. I work for myself so that makes sense. If you would like more help on the MBTI exercise please get in touch via this website. I offer help with this through my work, including full career diagnostics over two appointments. To better understand your work values you can start by brainstorming what is important to you in your work as well as researching top work values. Brainstorm what is essential to you in your work. My top five are freedom to act, self and others development, learning and growth, creativity, all things psychological and philosophical. Working for myself counselling and coaching people meets these values and gives me fulfilment. The third tool is to think of your skills strengths that you also enjoy. Consult with your work colleagues, family and friends. What do they think that you are good at that they can see you are also enthusiastic about. Many years ago a person close to me said that he saw me excel in one to one conversations helping the other person move forward with a goal or task. I added in enjoyed skills from this including asking deeper questions, actively listening for things others may miss and people problems solving. From this point I studied psychology and philosophy and then a host of other studies continued. This culminated in me starting my own coaching and counselling practice. What skills have you used past and present that you enjoy? Think of this question over the next week or two when you have reflection time. Your MBTI type, your values and your enjoyed skills will help you to think of work projects that will fulfil you in your existing career. They may also point you to other options for your consideration. If you would like help with this exercise or any other goal that you are exploring please contact me through the form on this website.