You’re frustrated with your present job, which 9 times out of 10 begs the response; I’m going to have to learn a new skill set so I can change my work environment. There’s no question this is a legitimate response, but I promise you it’s a limited perspective.
We all understand that quote/unquote learning a new skill comes along with a plethora of immediate challenges and roadblocks which no doubt has stopped countless individuals from taking any kind of action, and we now have our proposed problem.
The Problem
Not being able to envision much less achieve changing one’s work-life pursuits as there seems to be not nearly enough time, money, opportunity (you fill in the blank), to actually learn and develop a brand new skill set.
The Solution
Take serious stock of every one of your skills, strengths, and attributes that you already own…make a list. This should include technical skills, soft skills, intellectual skills, artistic skills, literally everything that makes you the unique individual you are. Now, take that list and put your imaginative and creative talents (which you also already own) to work synthesizing that information to either create or shift into a new work environment “that you’re already equipped to handle,” and just haven’t been able to see.
Some Thoughts
Let me give you a sterling example of the range of possibilities available in an exercise such as this, as well as showing you how inept we can actually be in this area.
I looked into discovering how many songs have been written in human history. Obviously, there will be no “definitive” answer to this, but here are a couple of facts to ponder. There are over 26 million songs on iTunes alone, and that’s just going back about 15 years. I did find someone that actually made an effort to research this question (as much as humanly possible), and his conclusion was there have been over 623 million songs written, historically.
Now, here is the point I want to you to seriously contemplate in this inquiry. There are only 12 notes in the language of music…that’s 12, total! If we decide our researcher’s conclusion is even fairly accurate, over 600 million tunes have been written by the continuous arrangement and rearrangement of only 12 notes.
With that revelation in mind, I now ask you to consider the validity (or potential absurdity) of a position such as this:
There’s just nowhere for me to go (no song for me to write per se) when I look at combining and rearranging all the personal attributes I’ve listed and know I own.
Whew…kind of makes you dizzy.
I encourage you to step back and take a close look at your possibilities – your unabridged already in place full-on possibilities. Creatively synthesizing all of your attributes in the connection/creative economy we now live in can open more doors than you can imagine, and imagine is the key word here.
