Page 132 - Talane Miedaner - Coach Yourself to a New Career_ 7 Steps to Reinventing Your Professional Life (2010)

120 COACH YOURSELF TO A NEW CAREER

simply want to know things even if they do not have any practical
application to your life. The quest for truth and knowledge may
not seem sensible to those around you with different values. The
more practical person might say, “Why do you want to learn about
that? I don’t see the point.” The point is simply the acquisition of
more knowledge. This person will require a job that challenges
his or her knowledge and provides the opportunity to learn new
things in order to feel satisfied at work.
Another client, as I noted earlier, had three top values: power,
money, and service. He was an entrepreneur, so he could run the
show (power), and he was brilliant at making money, but he wasn’t
satisfied if his business didn’t help others, so he set it up to direct a
percentage of the profits to his favorite charity.
Give some thought to your hidden or not-so-hidden motivating
values. What informs your choices in life? When couples fight, or
when we can’t understand why someone would make that “ridicu-
lous” choice, it is often because the parties involved hold different
values. If you think it is nuts to own a car that is always in the shop,
you probably value practicality more than beauty. If you are reluc-
tant to spend money on the finer things in life, again, that practical
nature holds sway. If you spend time poring over magazines devoted
to fashion or decorating or would buy a gorgeous pair of shoes even
though you really should buy a new toaster, beauty may be your
thing. If you always prefer to be the one in charge, then power may
be one of your top values. If you spend a ton of money every month
on books, or if you play bridge or chess for fun in your spare time,
then knowledge may be your leading value. If you spend time help-
ing others, then service may be one of your main values.
It helps to think about what is really important to you in life.
Doing so makes it easier to make the right choices. The chiroprac-
tor I mentioned earlier in Step 3, who wasn’t sure whether to grow
his practice or shrink it, just needed to take stock of his motivat-
ing values. He valued beauty and knowledge. In his spare time
he’d read books on the top of a mountain. Not expensive habits
or hobbies. The irony is that even though money and power were