Is it Right in Front of You?

Have you ever lost something, your keys, your wallet, your phone, only to find it was in your pocket – or right in front of you – the whole time?

Two weeks ago I signed up for a three-day career planning workshop. I was at a career crossroads. I'd always felt like a square peg in a round hole, but I've been feeling it a lot more as the economic situation here continues to decline – and work is becoming scarce.

The first day of the workshop we dove into personality, skills, interests and aptitudes assessments. I've been doing the MBTI, or it's internet cousins for 25 years. I was hoping for different results – maybe that somehow I'd left a personality stone unturned and that I would magically churn out a completely different (maybe captain-of-industry?) personality – but no dice. Same results.

On day two, we finished off the assessments and began exploring possible career options. One of the assessment results churned out no career matches for someone with my particular combination of letters. Among some 5,000 possible careers – zero. I had been hoping for a bit of a breakthrough on day two, but nothing.

On day three, we did some preliminary research on possible careers. I put together a short list of career possibilities for the final session of the workshop, none of which I was enthusiastic about.

With about two hours left, it was time to evaluate the career options and set goals for each. As I was copying my short list onto the evaluation sheet I involuntarily marked down Web Business – Wealthy Affiliate (which hadn't come up in any of the assessment work so far).

Why not, I thought.

When I ran this option through the evaluation – objectively comparing all my values, strengths and skills against this shortlist of possible careers – my Wealthy Affiliate web business came out on top. The other possibilities I'd penciled in weren't even close.

Sometimes that happens.

I'll lose my keys and hey, there they are.

Right in front of my nose the whole time.