How Do You Apply Story Telling To Your Purpose In Life?

Psychotherapy normally uses this method to help people focus on their inner ambitions and help them re-discover their buried wishes, fears, dreams, etc. A job, a career, and the way you perceive yourself are very closely interrelated.

You must have heard about the saying, 'If you think you can, you can. If you think you cannot, you cannot.' This is exactly what it means when perceptions come into picture. People who consider themselves winners, usually are undaunted by the obstacles that fall into their paths. They fall ? without falls there is no advancement ? however, they never stay down. They do not believe that staying down is their destiny, so they get up and reach out for their goals again. You know what ? this is how you succeed! Try, try, try and if you fail, try again!

In order to re-discover your real talents, your aptitudes, your niche in your life, you will need first to re-discover yourself. Use story telling to describe what you want. Do not start from the outside, i.e. what are your values, what skills you have developed, or what educational qualifications you have earned. Start the story telling from inside, i.e.

• What you wanted to be when you were young?
• What gave you utmost pleasure then?
• When you changed your ambitions?
• Why did you change your ambitions?
• When you decided about your present career?
• Why did you decide to take it up?
• What led to choosing this course of action?
• Was it smooth?
• Who and what influenced you when you were young?
• Why did you admire this person(s) or their actions?

Now, slowly turn your past story into the present one and see what comes out now.

• Have you found that you could be better in some other set up, but cannot take it up because you are qualified for the present career? [this often creates a mid-life crisis]
• Why does it give you pleasure more than the present one?
• Do you love your career?
• Would you have chosen it again, if you had the chance to wind the clock back?
• What gives you the most satisfaction?
• What annoys you the most about it?
• What would be your end destination in the career you chose?

Keep the story on this platform and build a fantasy to superimpose over the realty.

• What would be your ideal occupation if you would have total freedom to choose your career all over again?
• Why do you think this was your ideal occupation?
• Why cannot you reach out and make your job fantasy come true?
• What is your greatest obstacle in your path today in changing careers to your 'dream career'? Is it surmountable?
• Can you at least your present job, or take up something that remotely involves what you wanted it to do otherwise?

Lastly, apply what you are learning about yourself through these sketches to you present occupation and career graph.

• Did anything of the past help you enjoy, overcome or win any circumstances during your job?
• What did you learn about yourself? Your inner fears? Your basic likes and dislikes?
• What do you plan to do to achieve the utmost satisfaction in your career?
• Is this career the right career for you?
• Do you have the strength, capacity and/ or means to change it if you wanted?
• How difficult it would be to change tracks from this point of your career?
• If you are happy with your career, name some instances when you were proud about yourself. Why were you proud of yourself in that instance?
• Is your present career taking you in the right direction from the growth point of view?
• Can you hurry it along? Can you take any type of shortcuts [further studies, networking, own business, etc]

You will find that you actually have not known yourself at all. Most people live their lives in a world of make-believe in which they force themselves to wear certain mask in order to survive ? at home, at the office, among the friends, etc. This role acting usually over imposes your actual personality. The actual traits, wants, or fears break free from time when there is tremendous trauma and/ or sometime of major obstacle in your path.

You can work it before and without any crisis trigger. You can find out about yourself through story telling. Keep working diligently about and with these questions and slowly you will learn new insights about yourself.

With the help of the new insight about yourself, prepare a new story; a narrative that you could use at an interview at the question, 'tell me something about yourself'. However, now use all the positive strengths that you rediscovered about yourself and put forward a powerful and very confident 500 words on your past performance and future career plans. Include one or two success stories as briefly as you could joining your best inner aptitude with the requirements of the job you are appearing interview for.

Needless to say that with some practice, the power of re-discovering your real strengths and knowing (and understanding yourself) would reflect you as a person in charge of himself/ herself who would be able to take good and bad with equal dexterity and confidence.

In other words, you would come across as a WINNER!