You are creating big ripples of impact around you. I know this to be 100% true.
If you are wanting to create a Next Chapter or make a big decision of some kind, this fact is essential for YOU to know as truth. Even if – especially if – your current situation is not what you want.
Don’t let your but’s be barriers
When I coach people to break out of cycles of frustration and indecision and create a Next Chapter, they often don’t recognize or value the impact they are currently having. Conversation often begin with:
- “but I’m not…xxx”
- “but I haven’t…xxx”
- “but I don’t…xxx”
- “but my situation won’t let me…”
Instead, the exploration and resulting strategies are informed by testing the internal assumptions they are making, and revealing the impact they love having, and are having. The surprise comes in realizing that nothing can prevent us from having the impact we love having. While external forces are real, they do not prevent us from having the life or career of our dreams.
“The invitation is to curate a life and career at what I call the “sweet spot: the wonderful intersection of our own full body joy, with the impact that occurs in others – often in the same moment. This is what I have learned to call Purpose.”
Knowing what to “do next,” requires knowing yourself
The challenge – or rather the essential tool – is to sleuth out these “sweet spot” moments, observe and gather data about how you create them, and then nurture, embrace and honor them… so that you can create the possibility to have these moments every single day. You feel great, and others are being positively impacted in some way. A true win-win!
And yet, the reason I created this process, and now teach it in the Career (Life!) Breakthrough Academy, is that getting to this foundational self-knowledge is harder than it seems.
Think differently. Your uniqueness is key.
You have likely been trained to value skills and experience (all important) rather than think of what occurs to others when you apply those skills and experience.
Also missing – in fact often completely dismissed with a wave of the hand or shrug of the shoulder – is an understanding and appreciation for the unique “secret sauce” that you bring along with your skills and experience to create impact.
In job searches, I often found myself interviewing people who all had the same skills and experience. Often, they also all had the same “results” (increased revenue, etc.). I had to work really hard to try to pull out the unique attributes that would make them a great match for the hiring organization.
It’s easy to spot superpowers and impact when you’re thinking about people you know. It may be time for you to know it about yourself.
How YOU create impact when YOU feel joy… is the core of who you are!
We all have limiting beliefs about what our unique value is. Our unique superpowers are often unknown and unnamed. Do you have an ability to:
- connect others to resources that help them do their best?
- enroll and engage others on a path forward that they couldn’t imagine at the time?
- make someone feel seen, or an ability to diffuse conflict? You do all this in your own, perhaps even quirky, way. You’ve likely been doing “this” since a child. No one taught you how to do it, and it comes so easily to you, you may not even know you’re doing it.
Yikes!
The very thing that you love doing – or said another way: the very thing that occurs when you simply show up fully, that doesn’t require any effort, that has the most impact on others is… yet unnamed?!
An Invitation
This weekend, as you express gratitude to others, take a moment and make a list of all the ways you think you are making a difference in someone’s life – whether at home, in your network, or in your career. Divide your impact list into 2 columns: the impact that depletes you, and the impact that energizes you. The more you know about yourself, the easier it is to make Next Step decisions to live in your personal “sweet spot!”
To your success,
Kathryn
Your Next Chapter Coach
Creator of The Career (Life!) Breakthrough AcademyTM
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I coach people to break out of cycles of frustration and indecision and curate lives of impact and clarity of purpose – with ease, joy and financial sustainability.
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