Recall a recent party/event/vacation that you attended. As you recall the event, which of the following descriptive words do you primarily use in describing the event: (Choose ONE)

SEEING WORDS–Big picture—view—see—clear to me—looks like

HEARING WORDS–Sounds good—listen—do you hear that—it is so loud

FEELING WORDS–Feels right—rubs me the wrong way—how do you feel

B. Indicate your birth order in your family of origin:

(Choose ONE)

First born

Second born

Third born

Fourth born or more

Last born

Only born

C. Family Roles:

In our family of origin, we each played two

roles: a “doing” role (how we appear to

others) and our “being” role (the role we

choose when we are emotionally upset).

Choose TWO roles that describe you:

Label one “doing” and the other “being”

10. High achiever—does what is right—successful

11. Defiant—rebel—“black sheep”—lots of friends

12. Withdrawn—quiet—super-independent—

13. Hyperactive—“clown”—super cute—

humorous—charmer

D. Emotional Energies:

We each have four basic strategies for using our energy. We use all four of them once in awhile, but there are TWO dominant energies that we use to solve problems. Choose the TWO energies that you use most frequently.

14. Analyze—organize—has plan of action—sets

goals

15. Evaluates decisions by the reactions of

others

16. Believes in solutions—helps others to reach

decisions

17. Flexible in decision-making—playful with

solutions—imaginative

E. Myers-Briggs Personality Profile:

This last section is harder to do in that you

must choose one answer from each group so that you will end up with four answers for the whole section.

For example, your answer might be 17-19-21-23 or 17-20-22-23—whatever answers you choose will be four numbers (one number from each of the following four groups).

Basic outlook on life? (Choose ONE):

18. Interested in outer world of actions and persons

19. Interested in inner world of concepts and ideas

What do you most pay attention to? (Choose ONE)

20. Taking information in through five senses

21. Taking information in by “sensing” what is going on

How do you decide? (Choose ONE)

22. By organizing information in a logical way

23. By organizing information in a more personal way

What life style have you adopted? (Choose ONE)

24. Lives in a decisive way to control events

25. Lives in flexible way to adapt to life

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A.Neurolinguistic programming (choose one):

1.

2.

3.

B.Birth order (choose one):

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

C.Family roles (choose two):

10.

11.

12.

13.

D.Energies (choose two):

14.

15.

16.

17.

E.Myers-Briggs Personality Profile (choose one from eachpair to have four numbers):

18.OR19.

20.OR21.

22.OR23.

24.OR25.

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Part of my imperfection is that I really need the affirmation of others to believe that I am okay as I am. I can accept it today, since most other people feel the same way. Acceptance of my humanity makes it possible for me to be me and to let you be you.
Today my intuition is better than it once was, thanks to the Steps. I can feel when I’m not being authentic, when I’m searching more for affirmation than I should. I’ve also been blessed because the people I’m close to also accept me as I am, and they don’t require me to be other than that.
Do you believe you’re good just as you are? Are you glad you are who you are?

A

B

There is a Beauty Within In You#19: Finding the Butterfly Hidden Within the Caterpillar

C

5 Steps to Channeling Your Very Own Greek God/Goddess

Creativity and Successful Brain Aging: Going With the Flow

D

E

F

Fired! Do’s and Don’ts for the Recently Laid Off or Let Go

G

H

How to Extract Your Best Business Idea

How to Finish What You Have Started

I

J

K

Keep a Positive Folder to Boost Your Mood: Thank You, Ron Pies

L

Learning to Love Ourselves

Are You Feeding Yourself a Well-Balanced Life? Hungers That Lead to Overeating

Losing Weight and Feeling Misery–When Defenses Come Down, You Get a New Life

M

10 Ways to Bring Meaning into Your Life 

N

O

P

Do You Have a Dependent Personality?

The Personality of the Workaholic and the Issue of “Self”

Q

Two Questions You Must Answer to Live the Life You Want

R

S

Attending to the Undervalued Self

Self-Esteem Teams

Dealing with Setbacks as a Person Who is Addicted to Achieving Success

T

U

Build Your Self-Esteem During Unemployment: A Starter Guide

V

W

What’s Missing From Weight Loss: Self Love

Who Do You Think You Are

Women Who Rule

The Hustle for Worthiness

X

Y

Z

Please, please spend some time on the Holland Codes to determine your best career directions.

John L. Holland is a psychologist who spent much of his career at Johns Hopkins University. He received his B.S. from the University of Omaha and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.

Holland is the creator of the RIASEC career development model often referred to as the Holland Codes.

This information is a reprint from Wikipedia(July 25, 2007):

Holland Codes are career types created by psychologist John L. Holland.

Holland mapped these types into a hexagon which he then broke down into the RIASEC job environments:

• Realistic- practical, physical, hands-on, tool-oriented
• Investigative- analytical, intellectual, scientific, explorative
• Artistic- creative, original, independent, chaotic
• Social- cooperative, supporting, helping, healing/nurturing
• Enterprising- competitive environments, leadership, persuading
• Conventional – detail-oriented, organizing, clerical

Holland argues that 2-3 types dominate in each person.

For more of the Wikipedia definitions, use this link.

The North Carolina State Occupational Information Coordinating Committee has a free self-assessment exercise using the Holland Codes.

The Holland Codes are used frequently in choosing careers and/or college majors because they are based on natural interest. One of the largest sites, HollandCodes, has free college search and career information. This site has extensive information and links to sites specializing in the Holland Codes.

More Holland Codes links:

1.  Take the quiz–Rogue Community College.

2.  Holland Codes–Powerpoint by Salesforce.

3.  A great article about career clusters and Holland Codes–iseek.

4.  Holland Career Codes matched to industry–by careersmarts.

5.  A large site with many Holland links–HollandCodes

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Our conscious mind is where thoughts are formed. Our subconscious mind is where our creative mind takes root. As we learn to harness the vast power and energy of the subconscious mind, we are tapping into our real source.

Transactional analysis therapists estimate that we each have 25,000 hours of internalized negative self-talk. We are generally taught what is wrong with us by our authority figures at home, school, church, etc. In an effort to understand who we are, we accept these self-limiting labels as who we are. However, we each individually are the only one who can truly “know” who we are, or, at least, we are in the best position to make the best educated guess. Learn to challenge the “voices” (one of friends called them “the committee”) or negative self-talk you carry around in your head. Listen to what you tell yourself about you.

In learning to monitor your inner critic, learn to first determine if the criticism is helpful. If you find the suggestion to be helpful, next check to see if the inner critic is kind, gentle, and polite to you. If it is in a condemning voice, ask you inner critic to speak kinder to you.

The techniques you may use to change your inner critic from enemy to friend are: speed up the volume, mimic a falsetto voice, etc. My favorite ploy when I was learning this was to scream “Stop”. It is better to practice these techniques while alone. As someone has suggested—learn to join the airwaves until you own the station.

Self-esteem comes from how we evaluate and accept or reject input as well as the foundation we’ve created from the successes we’ve experienced. By learning to focus on our strengths rather than on our weaknesses, we have each take charge of our own destiny.

After learning how to utilize our inner critic, we next need to take charge of our thoughts. What we choose to focus our thinking on determines what we will think and feel about ourselves. You are what you think you are. By substituting positive self-talk for negative self-talk, we are re-programming ourselves for positive action.

Other posts about self-discovery:

1.  From Chris Bailey (Bailey WorkPlay): “An Ode to Fellow Late Bloomers”:

Now I’m getting pretty close to 40 and the ticking I hear isn’t the oft-discussed biological clock. It’s more like the drumbeat of societal (possibly personal) expectations compelling me to finally figure out my place in this world. When given voice, it’s a critical one questioning why I’m not further along on a career path, not more renowned in a chosen field, not closer to the top of my game. It should’ve all happened by now…right? Is this a sign that marketing/branding/customer experience just isn’t the right place for me? I confess I often feel like Leo: when all his peers are able to write eloquently and eat without making a mess, he’s undoubtedly wondering if his time will ever come.

And yet…

A completely different way of looking at it might be that those of us who are on this journey are the lucky ones. Our longer-than-intended quest for professional meaning and self-discovery can help us to be even brighter and shinier than if we had it laid out for us in black and white.

I do take comfort knowing I’m not the only one who took time to figure out the meaning of their lives in their work. Several creative geniuses showed us that success comes at any age.

Julia Child didn’t achieve culinary acclaim until her late forties.
Alfred Hitchcock directed his finest achievements between the ages of 54 and 61.
Paul Cézanne’s greatest works were painted in his sixties.

And here are a few more curated posts:
Late Bloomers: 7 Authors Who Prove It’s Never Too Late To Start A Writing Career
The Late Bloomer from Forbes Magazine
Late Bloomers from Malcom Gladwell

2.  From Debbie (Two Minutes of Grace): “7 Rules of Self Discovery”:

Hardly anything else reveals so well the fear and uncertainty among men as the length to which they will go to hide their true selves from each other and even from their own eyes.    ~ A.W. Tozer

To help us remedy our inclination to hide our true selves from each other and even from our own eyes, Tozer came up with The 7 Rules for Self Discovery:

1. What we want most
2. What we think about most
3. How we use our money
4. What we do with our leisure time
5. The company we enjoy
6. Who and what we admire
7. What we laugh at

A. W. Tozer wrote this inventory long before the self-help sections began to overflow at Borders and Barnes and Noble. I decided to concentrate on the one question that might give me the most insight about myself and to choose the question that might help me tell me the most about another.

Photo credit.

Peter Levitt

ISBN 0-609-61048-1

Amazon link

Peter Levitt has worked for over 30 years with writers, artists, and others who wanted to explore their creative depths. He relates that before starting something new, we feel excited, anxious, frightened, hopeful. Often times a feeling of joy—that feeling that comes from expressing ourselves in a new and creative way. In the author’s note he refers toour inner critics which he calls the “hungry ghosts”. My favorite name for them is the “committee”. They ran my life for many years until I learned how to shut off the voices.

Levitt weaves stories throughout the book from his students to suggest that the path to joy includes: starting in silence, risk, everything is permitted in the imagination, how to feed a hungry ghost, the narrow place, a need to know, when the stone woman dances-the mute bird sings, divine breath, naked mind, naming, the bones beneath the bones, the riddle of the hands, there are hundeds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground, a matter of chance, paradise now, time to die, and bull’s-eye.

The following is an excerpt from “there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground” (I have chosen it because he found this title from one of my favorite poets—Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi who lived in the fourteenth century).

“I want to explore prayer from a perspective that may be quite new in the West. Afterward, when you write, I’m sure you will see how to use this teaching to creatively bring your deepest self to life. In the Sufi tradition it is taught that all thngs in the univrse are constantly in parayer: every leaf and tree, every stone, the snowfall on every mountain, and all the night sky stars that whirl invisibly throughtout the day. According to this teaching, all things seen and unseen, know, and unknown, are simultaneously and constantly in prayer. When you hold a flower, or a baby, or your friend’s or lover’s hand, you are holding a life in prayer. I think it is fair to say the tradition also believes when you hear a song coming from across a field—for example, a song filled with its own beauty as the prayer of gratitude I somehow became—then singer and song and field are prayer. In other words, being and prayer are synonymous.”

The Changemaker Test, designed to provide personality indicators–called labels–so anyone has some tools about themselves that they can study to see why they make the decisions and choices they make.  Then from this foundation of self-discovery, he/she can continue exploring and recreating themselves through her/his lifetime.

The Changemaker Test Categories are:
(1) NLP–Neurolinquistic Programming
(2) Birth Order
(3) Family Roles
(4) Our Emotional Energies
(5) MBTI– Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

During the energy you spend in re-inventing yourself, you will learn new career choices for your personality labels. The labels can be quite effective at weeding out what you love to do and what you’ve taught yourself to do against your basic nature. Find what you love to do and life will be a continual joyful experience.

Some of my links about career:

(1)   John Holland Personality Types

(2)  Finding the Career You Were Born to Do A-Z Links Directory

(3)  Finding Your Passion A-Z Links Directory

(4)  Changing Jobs A-Z Links Directory

Some longer posts you may enjoy reading are:

(5) Reinventing Yourself at Good Life Coaching has some good tips: take it at your own pace, look at where you want to go, maybe take an interim step, deal with the flak and remember that reinventing yourself means creating a new identity.

(6)  Reinventing Yourself from Mike Bellah is about the fundamental quest at midlife. He quotes Ross Goldstein: “The fundamental quest at midlife is to figure out who we are and who we want to be as we get ready to embark on the second half of life.

Photo credit.

Accounting and finance

All Jobs

B

C

Chemist jobs

College Grad Job Center

Computer jobs

Computer work

Construction jobs

Construction (mechanical,electrical, and plumbing jobs

Creative jobs

D

Disabled persons jobs–

Disability jobs

Diversity jobs

E

Executive jobs

6 Figure Jobs

ExecuNet

Employment Guide ( by city)

F

Federal jobs

Federal Jobs Digest

USA Jobs

G

Groove Job: Part Time Jobs, Teen Jobs, Student Jobs, Hourly Jobs, Summer Jobs

H

Healthcare, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and science jobs

Health Careers

Higher Education jobs

Hispanic jobs

Hospitality jobs

Human Resource jobs

I

International jobs–

Best Jobs USA

Seek-Australia

Australia’s Careers On Line

Canada jobs-Workopolis

UK jobs-Jobsite

UK Jobs-Guardian jobs

Euro Jobs

J

Job search engine

Job board search engine

Job dig search by state

Job Hunt

Job Bank USA

Job search made easy: Simply Hired

L

Latinos jobs

Law jobs

Find Law Jobs

Emp lawyer Net

Librarian jobs

Local jobs anywhere

M

Marketing jobs

Medical jobs–

MedZilla

MedHunters

 N

Niche career communities

Non-profit dream jobs–Idealist

Non-profit jobs

Nursing Jobs

Nursing blog

O

P

Part-time jobs

Jobs for Ph.D.s

Police jobs

Public service jobs

Q

R

Retail jobs

S

Show business

Sports jobs

Science jobs

T

Teacher jobs

Technical Writers jobs

Technology jobs-large discussion forums section

Telecommuting

Temporary jobs

Snag a job

Cool Works: Jobs in Great Places

Summer jobs

Resort jobs

Net Temps

Truck jobs

U

V

Volunteer jobs

Volunteer Match

Servenet.org

National Park Service

Global Volunteer Network

World Volunteer Web

W

Wall Street Journal Job Search

Wall Street Journal Career Center

WITI – Women in Technology International–

Women job

Women jobs

Women Jobs List

Workforce–workers over age of 50

Work at home

Writing jobs

X

Y

Z

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Jorge Cruise

ISBN 0-06-050538-9

Amazon link

Jorge Cruise tells how his weight loss plan works:

“Follow my 8 minutes in the Morning program and you will see amazing weight-loss results in just 28 days. But it doesn’t stop there. I will also give you the tools you need to stay lean for the rest of your life. You will be working on three things every day:”

“Your emotional fitness. Before 8 minutes in the morning routine, I will help you build your own motivation with my daily Wake-Up Talk. It will give you the emotional advantage you need to move beyond self-sabotaging thinking and motivate yourself to love your new fit lifestyle.”

“Your physical fitness. My proven”two superquick moves” are the center of the program. They take 8 minutes a day, but the results are tremendous. Each day, I will give you two new strength-training moves specifically designed to help you speed up your metabolism, get firm, and burn fat as effeciently as possible.”

“Your eating habits. My Eat Fat to Get Fit nutrition program is simple to follow and will never leave you feeling deprived. You won’t have to count calories or cut out your favorite foods.”

“Finally, 8 minutes in the Morning connects you to a community of your peers. I invite you to visit my web site at www.jorgecruise.com to get more advice from me and to chat with the millions of others who, like me, are well on their way to achieving new health and happiness.”

I visited the above site on July 28, 2007 and found ads for Jorge and contact for him. He started a blog in June, 2007, but I found no evidence of a community online. There are several really good weight loss communities which we have listed on a separate post.

On your road to self-discovery, remember to look for guidance among persons that are on their individual path of growth. If anyone wants to tell you who to be, that person is not growing but is trying to avoid growth by “changing” you. Some people call this codependency.

Yet we all are probably codependent at one time or another. It is the nature of love to sometimes be giving more than we are receiving from another. But the codependent uses concern to gain power over others in the classic position of “top-dog”. Shared power is the only ingredient in relationships that determines how healthy the union is.

When You Find the Buddha in the Middle of the Road–Kill Him is the wise title of a good book by Sidney Kopp. No one knows what is better for anyone but that person. We each have our own answers. Even those trained in counseling techniques can only see what is revealed. Tendencies may be seen and certainly personality indicators will be there. But the work of change is a person’s individual choice.

Other points of view about self discovery:

1.  From

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