When I create a resume for a client, I always start the conversation out with this question: if you could describe three standout characteristics about yourself, what would they be?
Lately, I’ve been imagining what a LIFE’S resume would look like. You know, instead of parceling out the highlights of your career onto one page (with the appropriate buzzwords!), illuminating the moments and high points of your life’s most significant work (buzzwords not needed). It’d probably contain the same subjects: overcoming impossible odds, persevering towards a goal, exceeding expectations, switching roles.
You start out with a goal. Where do you want to be working? What type of impact would you like to be making? How are you qualified?
For a LIFE’S RESUME, the goal might vary: to remember, to become self-aware, to get clear on personal strengths, to find patterns.
After clarifying what you want in your future, you explore things past and present.
A common response I get from interviewees when examining their past and current experience is: Well. I do everything.
“Well. I do everything” is the traffic jam of resume interviews. You must find a side street, and get on with it. Otherwise, you’ll never get to where you’re going within an hour’s time.
The way I get around “Well. I do everything” is: Okay. Out of that everything, what are you most PROUD OF?”
This gets the gears turning.
People share their most exciting moments—projects they innovated that got an overwhelmingly positive response from colleagues and clients. New technology they learned in record time. Customers they went above and beyond to help.
In my LIFE’S Resume, I’d want to highlight the same things. What am I most proud of so far? Could that fit onto a page? What are 3 characteristics about myself that I truly love and admire and I think uniquely contribute to the mass population / society / my community of friends / my own growth and well-being?
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- Enthusiastic about learning things that improve myself and my perceptions
- Equally enthusiastic in sharing those things with others; listening and identifying tools that could help get them to where they want to be going
- Inspiring others to push forward in their pursuits through acknowledging their unique contributions and sharing possible avenues where they could proceed in making those dreams come true, be it connecting them with someone I know, or just having a vision for them that could help move things along
- Self-love (Its Absence, Presence, and Wisdom)
- Taking Risks (Courage, Having faith, Moments of Awe)
- Traveling (By Choice, Not by Choice, Attachment, Wonder, Liberation, Fear)
- Writing (First Love, Lost Love, Forcing It, Fitting In, Rejection, Letting Go)
- Love (Its Pulse, Joy, Commitment, Willingness, Forgiveness)
- Wisdom (Other People’s, God’s, My Own)
