Taking a Personal Inventory

image credit: jobhuntersbible.com

I've been missing in action the last week because I've been spending my time on one thing. I've been focusing most of my energy on completing Richard Bolles' inventory from his book, What Color is Your Parachute?

When I wasn't doing the inventory for myself, I was helping Christian go through it.

Now most people would think I know what I want or where I want to go, and before this week, I would agree with those people wholeheartedly. Today I would say a week ago I didn't know myself - or not as well as I thought I did, anyway.

Originally we got the book out of the library for Christian to figure himself out (seeing as we're still in a transition period as a family). I thought I would go through the process myself because I was curious, and it's always a good idea to take stock of yourself every now and then. Who knows? You may have changed in the last few years. It happens.

So I did, and frankly the results surprised me. Okay, the geography portion didn't, but my top values did (in order of priority):

1. Spirit
2. Heart
3. Conscience

And then my top preferred skills were interesting to me as well. Writing was #6 on my ranked list. The top 5? Take a gander:

1. Acting on gut reactions in creative situations or with new people 
2. Speaking to groups of people or in intimate situations 
3. Being in front of an audience, leading a workshop, or performing music/drama 
4. Inventing/creating fictional stories, organizations & manuals/guides that address issues 
5. Designing curriculum on a variety of subjects, sculptures,home furniture, plans & processes for organizations. 

I'll just tack on my writing skill so you can see how I phrased it...

• Writing personal blogs and articles, fantasy and scifi novels, and short stories

Now I need to figure out what type of careers would fit with these skills and allow me to focus on my top values. Does writing? I guess, or at least it could. But now I'm not so sure. It seems I really like to be in front of people and I really am interested in using intuition and focusing on matters of the spirit. The question is, where does that take me? Do I continue to write fiction? I do love to write fiction, but it seems like this might not be where I'm really called to be. I'm just not sure. I need to think hard about this.

What are your thoughts? Have you gone through an inventory process? Were there any surprises? What were your conclusions? Leave a comment below!