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Don’t Waste Your Life – What Color Is Your Parachute – Finding Your Mission In Life

Don’t Waste Your Life

1 Week Spent Doing The Exercises In This Book Can Literally Save 5, 10, 20, 30 Years Of Getting The Wrong Degree, Wasted Student Loans, and Being Out Of Position & Miserable

One of the best books and set of tools the founder of BotBotBest came across in many years of studying career books, mentors and exercises is What Color Is Your Parachute.  He found the “Flower Exercise” particularly useful more than anything else he had ever come across in getting into the fine details of what you should be doing with your life.   In his opinion no high school student should select a major BEFORE having first gone through the Flower exercise.   This takes some time and considerable work as it delves into every aspect of who you are and how you personality, traits, skills, passion, and mission fit with what field of work you should select.  For example…. he went to college for Engineering because he was good with math and science.  However there are many branches of engineering.   Some more technical and abstract.   Some people focus in R&D, some in marketing or sales.  Some in a cubicle some out in the field.  ALL of these details matter VERY much in the real world and noone ever really talks about this when you are selecting a major or field of work.  Many nurses and lawyers find after spending years in college and getting student loans that they are miserable.  Many doctors hate the long hours.   People in every field.  Because they are OUT OF POSITION.  Imagine you are meant to be a goalie but are playing as a striker.  You are out of position.  You have not ideally matched who you truly are to what you should truly be doing to BEST serve the world.   Here is a post on this website from an attorney who got a law degree and was working with the Best Of The Best Of The Best in her field from Harvard Law, Stanford etc… yet she was miserable.  Why?  Because she was out of position.  She lost her WHY.

Finding Your Mission In Life

The Orange Pages Excerpt

FINDING YOUR MISSION IN LIFE

_______________

From the Original Writings of Richard N. Bolles

What Color Is Your Parachute

Turning Point

For many of us, the job hunt offers a chance to make some fundamental changes in our whole life. It marks a turning point in how we live our life. It gives us a chance to ponder and reflect, to extend our mental horizons, to go deeper into the subsoil of our soul. It gives us a chance to wrestle with the question, “Why am I here on Earth?” We don’t want to feel that we are just another grain of sand lying on the beach called humanity, unnumbered and lost in the billions of other human beings. We want to do more than plod through life, going to work, coming home from work. We want to find that special joy “that no one can take from us,” which comes from having a sense of Mission in our life. We want to feel we were put here on Earth for some special purpose, to do some unique work that only we can accomplish. We want to know what our Mission is. The Meaning of the Word Mission When used with respect to our life and work, Mission has always been a religious concept, from beginning to end. It is defined by Webster’s as “a continuing task or responsibility that one is destined or fitted to do or specially called upon to undertake,” and historically has had two major synonyms: Calling and Vocation. These, of course, are the same word in two different languages, English and Latin. Both imply God. To be given a Vocation or Calling implies Someone who calls. To have a Destiny implies Someone who determined the destination for us. Thus, the concept of Mission lands us inevitably in the lap of God, before we have hardly begun. I emphasize this, because there is an increasing trend in our culture to try to speak about religious subjects without reference to God. This is true of “spirituality,” “soul,” and “Mission,” in particular. More and more books talk about Mission as though it were simply “a purpose you choose for your own life, by identifying your enthusiasms.”

This attempt to obliterate all reference to God from the originally religious concept of Mission is particularly ironic because the proposed substitute word—enthusiasms—is derived from two Greek words, en theos, and means “God in us.” In the midst of this increasingly secular culture, we find an oasis that—along with athletics—is very hospitable toward belief in God. That oasis is job hunting. Most of the leaders who have evolved creative job-hunting ideas were—from the beginning—people who believed firmly in God, and said so: Sidney Fine, Bernard Haldane, John Crystal, Arthur and Marie Kirn, Arthur Miller, Tom and Ellie Jackson, Ralph Matson, and of course myself. I mentioned at the beginning of this appendix that 89 percent of us in the US believe in God. According to the Gallup Organization, 90 percent of us pray, 88 percent of us believe God loves us, and 33 percent of us report that we have had a life-changing religious experience. However, it is not clear that we have made much connection between our belief in God and our work. Often our spiritual beliefs and our attitude toward our work live in separate mental ghettos, within our mind. A dialogue between these two is opened up inside our head, and heart, when we are out of work. Unemployment gives us a chance to contemplate why we are here on Earth, and what our Calling, Vocation, or Mission is, uniquely, for each of us. Unemployment becomes life transition, when we can’t find a job doing the same work we’ve always done. Since we have to rethink one thing, many of us elect to rethink everything. Something awakens within us. Call it yearning. Call it hope. We come to realize the dream we dreamed has never died. And we go back to get it. We decide to resume our search…for the life we know within our heart that we were meant to live. Now we have a chance to marry our work and our religious beliefs, to talk about Calling, and Vocation, and Mission in life—to think out why we are here, and what plans God has for us. That’s why a period of unemployment can absolutely change our life.

The Secret to Finding Your Mission in Life: Taking It in Stages I will explain the steps toward finding your Mission in life that I have learned in all my years on Earth. Just remember two things. First, I speak from a lifelong Christian perspective, and trust you to translate this into your own thought-forms. Second, I know that these steps are not the only Way. Many people have discovered their Mission by taking other paths. And you may, too. But hopefully what I have to say may shed some light upon whatever path you take. I have learned that if you want to figure out what your Mission in life is, it will likely take some time. It is not a problem to be solved in a day and a night. It is a learning process that has steps to it, much like the process by which we all learned to eat. As a baby, we did not tackle adult food right off. As we all recall, there were three stages: first there had to be the mother’s milk or bottle, then strained baby foods, and finally—after teeth and time—the stuff that grown-ups chew. Three stages—and the two earlier stages were not to be disparaged. It was all eating, just different forms of eating—appropriate to our development at the time. But each stage had to be mastered, in turn, before the next could be approached. There are usually three stages also to learning what your Mission in life is, and the two earlier stages are likewise not to be disparaged. It is all “Mission”—just different forms of Mission, appropriate to your development at the time. But each stage has to be mastered, in turn, before the next can be approached. Of course, there is a sense in which you never master any of these stages, but are always growing in understanding and mastery of them, throughout your whole life here on Earth. As it has been impressed on me by observing many people over the years (admittedly through Christian spectacles), it appears that the three parts to your Mission here on Earth can be defined generally as follows: Your first Mission here on Earth is one that you share with the rest of the human race, but it is no less your individual Mission for the fact that it is shared: and

it is, to seek to stand hour by hour in the conscious presence of God, the One from whom your Mission is derived. The Missioner before the Mission, is the rule. In religious language, your Mission here is: to know God, and enjoy Him forever, and to see His hand in all His works. Second, once you have begun doing that in an earnest way, your second Mission here on Earth is also one that you share with the rest of the human race, but it is no less your individual Mission for the fact that it is shared: and that is, to do what you can, moment by moment, day by day, step by step, to make this world a better place, following the leading and guidance of God’s Spirit within you and around you. Third, once you have begun doing that in a serious way, your third Mission here on Earth is one that is uniquely yours, and that is: to exercise the Talent that you particularly came to Earth to use—your greatest gift, which you most delight to use, in the place(s) or setting(s) that God has caused to appeal to you the most, and for those purposes that God most needs to have done in the world. When fleshed out, and spelled out, I think you will find that there you have the definition of your Mission in life. Or, to put it another way, these are the three Missions that you have in life.

READ MORE in the book (Amazon link below)

What Color Is Your Parachute Exercises & Worksheets

The flower exercise and other worksheets in What Color Is Your Parachute are some of the best exercises the founder of BotBotBest found in years of reading and researching various books and exercises.   This is a Best Of The Best exercise that really reveals what you should probably be focused on in life.  What are your values.  What conditions you should work in.  What kind of people you should work with.  What are your priorities.  It is HIGHLY recommended to anyone selecting a major, or thinking about a career change or starting a business to set aside a week and go through this exercise in detail.

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We'll All Be Dead Soon. Do Something Great.

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