Introducing The IMAGINATOR

 

Quick review from my last post:

In the Human-Centered Resume, WHO, WHY and HOW are the 3 KINGS.

The message is:

WHO I am as a person, WHY I chose my past experiences, and HOW I went about doing them drives WHAT I've done, WHERE I did it and WHEN I did it. Therefore WHO, WHY and HOW  are the best indicators of my ability to succeed in the job I'm applying for.

Then I left you hanging with this suspenseful phrase: The resume itself looks like:

Drum roll please…..

CONSTRUCTS ( aka SUPERPOWERS)

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

EXAMPLES:

            Short (one line)

            Story based

            Tie in with previous employment AND non-employment experiences

The first construct/superpower I’ve developed for my personal resume is “The Imaginator.” 

The IMAGINATOR

Never content to do something the conventional way if a better way is possible, the Imaginator always has an eye to possibilities.

When empowered in my workplace, I also have the efficacy to make improvements and experiment to help already awesome organizations spiral toward even more greatness.

As the Imaginator, I improved the line for more efficient and ergonomic short order cooking for two seasons at Stanley Baking Company. Ask the manager Becky about this; she was game to try nearly every suggestion I put forth. I also executed a number of wild lesson plans as a Teaching Assistant in the Sociology department at UMass Amherst to increase student engagement. Imagining a brave new life, I’ve lived in a new location every six months for the past 5 years.

 Woah, Woah, Woah. What Just Happened There, Mary?!

Notice how I gave some job history/experience information, a tie in to a reference, and demonstrated how this superpower works in two vastly different work situations.

One reason I wanted to create this kind of resume is because I’m transitioning out of my “career” as a seasonal line-cook and into any kind of work that nourishes my mind, body, and soul.

Housing my variety of experiences under a construct/superpower is so empowering for me because I’m a Meaning Maker (it’s another superpower). I see continuity in my life where others see chaos and skills-based resumes represent my life as disjointed and confusing to employers.

Wait she was a Teaching and Research Assistant for two years at a top university and then she worked for free at a Buddhist center and then became a line cook working in a town I've never heard of in the-middle-of-nowhere Idaho?

Actually, yes. That’s my life. And it may well be yours, too. Bold folks do weird things, ya know?

Keep In Mind

This is what I wrote off-the-cuff without a specific job posting/position in mind. 

My vision for the Human-Centered Resume is to tell relevant, short, simple stories that illustrate things at the intersection of:

·      Deep personal resonance in terms of illustrating who we are as gifted and capable humans

·      Deep resonance for employers in terms of our ability to rock their world by meeting eligibility requirements and then some

Value-added at every turn and completely in the realm of “show not tell.”

I am from The Show Me State after all.

 

As I play with this more I also want to make it visual. For example, “The Imaginator” would be represented with a symbol (e.g. imaginator x-ray goggles). I’ve just begun exploring how the visual element can be incorporated, but I love the idea of images and words dancing together on a page.

 

My first ask:

I'd love your feedback on the concept I've presented here. What, if anything, gave you an "aha" moment? What, if anything, made your brow furrow in skepticism? How can I make this better or present the idea better?

Compassion-fueled feedback is welcome; be aware this is rough and I am tender.

Reach me at marykoppes at gmail dot com

 

Photo Credit: photobunny

Human-Centered Resumes (are the way of the future!)

Since I attended StartingBloc mid-February, I've been full of excitement, ideas, and energy. One major benefit of attending SB is that I got some perspective on a personal blind-spot. I was among a group of 100+ do-ers n' entrepreneurs. 

Though I think of myself as more of a be-er than a do-er, the blind-spot that I got some insight into was my own ideas ---> action gap. Sometimes I have "good" ideas but they seem "minor," so instead of taking them seriously and pursuing them, I just dream up more ideas. Having some insight into this blind-spot has piqued my curiosity about what would happened if I fully explored even one of these "good" ideas. 

Follow thru, baby.

To make this all more concrete...

I've had numerous conversations with folks in the past several months about the process of applying for jobs, constructing resumes, writing cover letters and interviewing. I'm (f)unemployed and so are a number of folks I know so these kinds of conversations surface frequently.

In all my conversations about the job-hunting process, I've never heard anyone say, "I love it. I wish I could be a professional job applicant. Chronological resumes make my heart sing!" 

I myself may have used a couple expletives in expressing my views on the topic. My frustration has fueled what I'm now calling The Human-Centered Resume project. It's part of my practice of harnessing the power of "negative" energy and channeling it into building something better which, along the way, converts the "negative" quality into a "positive" one. It also shines the light on my blind-spot.

Bi-product: Happier Mary. Happier world.

So this: 

"I f*&%ing hate searching for jobs. It's so $#%&ing frustrating to make a resume that reflects who I am." (Full disclosure: I was stuck in this thought process for about two months.)

Became this: 

What would a swoon-worthy resume and job-hunting process look like? Why am I so irked by the current process? Considering those irksome properties, how can I build something better that eliminates them?

Then I actually started to build it... The Human-Centered Resume was born.

Let's start by examining the logic of the current resume model...

.

I call it: 
The Skills-Based Resume. 

It treats WHAT, WHEN, and WHERE as the 3 KINGS. 

The message is:

WHAT I’ve done in the past, WHEN I did it , and WHERE I did it are the best indicators of my ability to succeed in the position I’m applying for.

On the resume itself, this looks like:

A description of duties in previous positions and/or professional titles (WHAT) 

Displayed in reverse chronological order, showing "progression" in career (WHEN) 

Headed up by the name of the organization & the physical location (WHERE)

Here comes the irksome part.

WHO I am as person, WHY I chose to do the the things on my resume, and HOW I went about doing them is:

a) considered irrelevant and ignored

b) matters (at least a little) and is assumed to be reasonably well derived from looking at the 3 KINGS

or

c) we’ll figure it out if we decide to interview or hire you whether we want to or not (e.g. Damn, that guy's got a a major anger problem. His work is brilliant but it sucks working with him. Who knew?!)

Taken alone I was irked that the WHO, WHY and HOW are exiled from the resume kingdom by the 3 KINGS. So my frustration was compounded when I realized that the resume-exchange and hiring process are but a microcosm of (and entry point into) the whole dehumanizing* system of workplace organizations. 

Build a Better System AKA (to SB LA '13-ers) "Show 'em the clean glass of water!"

In the Human-Centered Resume, WHO, WHY and HOW are the 3 KINGS.

The message is:

WHO I am as a person, WHY I chose my past experiences, and HOW I went about doing them drives WHAT I've done, WHERE I did it and WHEN I did it. Therefore WHO, WHY and HOW  are the best indicators of my ability to succeed in the job I'm applying for.

Here's a side-by-side comparison.

On the resume itself this look like:

STAY TUNED! The next post will reveal the secrets of Human-Centered Resumes. They really are the way of the future, folks.

 

*My intention in using the word "dehumanizing" isn't to trigger ya. I mean it as literally as possible. We are literally reduced, in our resumes, to skill sets, past experiences, dates, titles, etc.  I think that even in the least human-friendly organizations there are elements of humanism, but on the whole organizations (especially large ones) take on a bureaucratic tone and are essentially dehumanizing. Read some Max Weber.

Practice makes progress

Through my dabbling in Buddhism a great love of the idea of practices and practicing emerged.

When I was first exposed to the idea of mind training as a “practice,” I was really opposed to it. It was a visceral reaction and when I explored it further, I realized that my aversion was stemming from an idea that the actions and behaviors that have become habitual for me were “natural.” I thought that practicing a different way of being, thinking, and behaving was going against what was “naturally Mary”.

Then I had to ask myself whether I loved all of my thoughts and behaviors and thought they were effective to achieve the ends I was seeking. You can probably guess what the answer was.

I decided to give some of the Buddhist practices a try. One simple, but nevertheless difficult to execute, practice was to not kill anything. I’m not a natural born killer by any means, but I was in the see-a-bug-and-stomp-on-it camp for a while. And, what’s worse, I did it totally unthinkingly. Especially if it was a spider. Get the shoe. You know what I mean?

But then I became one of those people who does spider and bug relocation. I don’t love spiders so it took some self-control to remain calm at first. I had to practice reacting in a new way. Now it’s second nature.

Relative to some other practices we can adopt, spider relocation is easy. Try practicing non-judgment or flipping negative thoughts in an effort to shift your perspective. Try practicing kindness.

Really. Try it. Since it’s a practice it is also:

a) experimental, b) set for a finite time, and c) allows for you to screw up over and over again. After all, you’re just practicing.

So you could feasible attempt to practice kindness for the next hour and never get it “right”, and still feel like you accomplished something. That something is awareness. Which is sort of like the Buddhist “get out of jail free” card. (I kid.)

It’s helpful if our practices are specific. So it would be even more feasible to practice smiling and maintaining eye contact in every interaction you have with a co-worker, family member or store cashier for the next hour.

It’s also helpful if our practices are framed as “do’s” instead of “don’ts” or “won’ts.” Because you can’t do a “don’t.”* If you say I won’t be mean, but you’re accustomed to being mean, what will you do instead? If it’s not already your established habit, you’ll reach for something in a good-faith effort to practice your practice, but you may not find anything if you didn’t establish possibilities for new behaviors when you set your intention. Thus, the suggestion to offer a smile and maintain eye contact, rather than saying, “don’t be such a jerk to cashiers, Mary!”

What are you (inspired to begin) practicing?

*Hat tip to Marshall Rosenburg for this idea.

Photo Credit: Bill Hails

Rearview Mirror Syndrome

“…(Marshall McLuhan) contends that most of us are incapable of understanding the impact of new media because we are like drivers whose gaze is fixed not on where we are going but on where we came from. It is not even a matter of seeing through the windshield but darkly. We are seeing clearly enough, but we are looking in the rearview mirror.”*

The usefulness and insight of this metaphor extends well beyond new media.

It is one of the ways we get stuck on the path to a more deliberate and happier life. We see ourselves and our corner of the world through the rearview mirror.

Looking through the rearview mirror, we see or create continuity in our lives, firming up a dynamic self often in ways that do not serve us. When we keep looking backward, it is easy to get stuck in who we’ve been, what we’ve done, and what we’ve had. We start to think this is who we are, what we’re capable of and what we deserve. Period.

What about looking forward through the windshield and imagining new possibilities for ourselves and our lives, challenging ourselves to be, do or have more than we have been, done or had in the past? Even in the absence of “evidence” from our lived experience that this is possible.  Though I assure you, if you go looking for it, you’ll find some “evidence” in your past to help support the future person you’d like to be. Evidence is often found in anything that disrupts the continuity of the story of who you are. I want to be X but I’m not a risk-taker. But there was that one time…

This is what I mean by human potential. We can’t see what we’re capable of or imagine a bigger, bolder, happier (insert your dream “-er” here) life for ourselves by looking backwards.

And we limit ourselves, too, when we look to past models about how to live and mistake them for the only options. When we overlay past models onto our paths we take a personal, winding road and turning it into a superhighway. A pre-mapped venture rather than the organic, wild adventure that will occur when we’re looking through the windshield and keep moving forward, no matter how far we can see or how clear the view.

* Marshall McLuhan’s “Rearview Mirror Syndrome” metaphor as described by Neil Postman in Teaching as a Subversive Activity (also in the running for one of my favorite books of all time).

Photo is from my personal vault.

Your purpose.

“Your purpose isn’t a perishable event subject to obsolescence. It is situation-free. It endures into eternity. Vision and mission are subject to change. Your purpose is permanent and ever aspiring to inform your new challenges and circumstances. Continual personal learning is the cornerstone to remaining a viable On-Purpose Person. Expect the expression of your purpose to change and mature over time; but the essence of your purpose remains unalterable.”

Kevin W. McCarthy
The On-Purpose Person: Making Your Life Make Sense, a book I highly recommend for folks who are wondering what's my purpose?

Photo Credit: dandeluca 

The Connection Manifesto.

This is the first post in a series designed to bridge the gap between ideas and action. I love the world of ideas, but the fact remains that lack of information is not the problem in our culture. There's plenty of good information, readily available. We have an action problem.

These practices and exercises will ask you to do something if you feel compelled. (Often we do feel compelled to try things out, but we stop ourselves and excuses ourselves. Not everything I post will call to you, but when one does, go!)

The first exercise asks us to examine how we want to be in our relationships and interactions. We spend a lot of time in our culture thinking of how we are (as if our identities are fixed) or how we were (in the past). We spend less time pondering how we'd like to be. In the ideal.

Living deliberately (which I wrote about here), with integrity, means we have to know what we stand for and the kind of person we want to be.

This exercise, from The Buddha's Brain by Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius, guides us in this endeavor:

 

"Now write your personal code of unilateral relationship virtues. This could be a handful of words. Or more extensive dos and don’ts. Whatever its form, aim for language that is powerful and motivating, that makes sense to your heard and touches your heart. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful, and you can always revise it later."

"Personal code of unilateral relationship virtures" sounds a little, ummm, stiff to me. So I call my list The Connection Manifesto. (I like manifestos, maybe you've noticed?) Here it is:

Keep empathy at the forefront my awareness.

Listen attentively.

Whenever possible, leave it (mood, energy level/quality, level of inspiration) better than you found it.

At the very least: Do no harm

If you fail to meet this guideline, reach out later and make a repair.

Speak honestly to support living with integrity.

Remember: Human beings are complex creatures. Everyone is acting and speaking in an attempt to meet their needs. You don't have to understand why people do what they do to be kind. When people are rude, mean, or snarky, it's not about you, it's about them. 

I'm learning to apply the same rules in my interactions with myself as I stumble along trying again and again to put this into action. I aim to review my manifesto as often as possible (at least once per day) to help keep the guidelines in my awareness. As the guidelines are more and more in my awareness, so is my awareness of every violation. But, like I said, human beings are complex; I am not exempt. And I don't even have to understand my own self to be kind to myself as I practice.

Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds

(de)LIBERATE yourself.

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I’ve been thinking, writing and talking about some version of deliberate living for a while. Sometimes I call it choice-full living, conscious living, living on purpose, intentional living. I also love Chris Guillebeau’s conception of these similar ideas—he calls it the Art of Non-Conformity. It's true, living deliberately is a non-conformist act.

The main reason I chose to use the world deliberate is because of what is contained within it—deLIBERATE.

Living intentionally and being choice-full about our decisions, actions, and behaviors liberates us from the status quo and from acting in accordance with amorphous but well understood societal expectations we may or may not resonate with.

Being in touch with our deepest values, frees our mindspace from drama, worry, anxiety, confusion, and angst that are often brought on trying to “live up” to expectations that we ourselves never consciously chose for ourselves. These are replaced by a mindful awareness of what’s most important to us, which guides us along choice by choice, moment by moment, and which grows in parallel to our conviction to act in alignment with our beliefs.

Guided by an internal compass, we are free from trying to follow the single route on the societal map to success—a sadly one-size-fits-all formula for a population of wildly unique individuals.

 Photo Credit: Walt Stoneburner

Gotta do it.

What if you showed up to your life as if by threat of firing or, better yet, by promise of promotion, success, fame, etc.?

Maybe you’re thinking, “Well, Mary, sorry to disappoint you but I don’t really take my work that seriously.” I feel ya. I’d also be willing to guess, though, that you show up the vast majority of days that you’re scheduled to do so (and you probably have a schedule) and when you can’t show up, you call in or get your shift/work covered for that time period. I imagine you think some about your work outside of your work hours and do some “planning” even if that just translates to picking out your outfit for the day or packing you lunch.

You probably don’t even realize the many things you do that are part of taking your work seriously….even if you hate your job.

And that’s what I’m asking you to do with your passions, with those things that you “wish you had more time for” or that you “really want to do but (insert excuse here).” We don’t often find ourselves making excuses for why we can’t go to work today. And it feels justified because that’s our livelihood. That’s how we pay the bills. Nevertheless, that feeling of obligation, of “just gotta do it” is something that we self-impose (which is, no doubt, buttressed by a host of outside influences). We made it up harnessing the power of our minds. And, congratulations on that one, because it’s powerful.

We can use this ability we've created in our minds, the "gotta do it" attitude and the actions and behaviors springing from it, and use it in ways that serve us by transferring it to the work or projects that you feel drawn to and inspired by (talents, passion, purposed-based projects). If this feels overwhelming, do a micromovment. Commit yourself to experimenting with this for, say, 10 minutes a day for a whole week. To keep going beyond this, notice how this "pays off" in terms of your mood or level of energy or inspiration. (Here's why.) Depending on what your passion is, it might also pay off monetarily (e.g. selling handmade wares on Etsy).

What project do you gotta work on this week?

Enough.

"When we follow our intuitive sense of what's true and right for us, and do what we genuinely feel energy for, we always seem to have enough money to be, do, and have the things we truly need and want." Shakti Gawain from "Creating True Prosperity" Skakti was writing about prosperity so it makes sense that she writes about money in the quote above. When I read this quote I sometimes plug in the words "resources," "energy," "support," "courage" or "conviction" in place of the word "money," because it feels more expansive to me. Do you ever walk into something you are obligated to do, but strongly do not want to do and notice that things just seem to keep getting worse? That's how we got the expression, "When it rains it pours." In both cases, the same principle applies. So I guess the question is, what's it raining?

That's what I want.

Where do you see yourself in one-year? Five-years? Thirty years? We are encouraged to think about these things, set goals, and create strategies (we usually call them “plans”) to achieve them. For me this is an anxiety provoking activity because it directs my thinking only to professional accomplishments (the career path) and to specific personal accomplishments that are linked to things (buying a house, buying a nice car, buying a boat) or to fulfilling cultural norms (getting married, taking sweet vacations, having kids, etc).

Though thinking about where we want our career and personal lives to go can certainly be useful, I wonder why we don’t spend time reflecting on who and how we want to be in addition to what we want to have.

Especially because when we think of what we want to have or accomplish, it points directly to how we want to be, what we need and value and, the big one, how we want to feel.

What we want is directly related to the feeling we believe we will experience when we get it.

Here’s a personal example:

When I was a student, I never wanted to cease being a student. I excelled in the academic environment and was rewarded with good grades. Naturally, I decided to extend my education, attend college and then graduate school. Being a professor, I thought, would be supremely awesome because I’d get paid to hang out forever in the academic world.

There was one problem though. I hated graduate school. It was a rude awakening for me about politics in academia. It wasn’t just about learning, researching, reading, and teaching. I slogged it out for two years enduring all kinds of physical ailments (a good indicator for me that I’m out of alignment with my values) and mental anguish. It was difficult, but I finally decided to leave.

This happened four years ago and it’s taken all four of those years (and the 23 before them) for me to understand that graduate school and academia was a strategy.

It wasn’t that I wanted the PhD or the career of a professor, per say. It was that I assumed that those things would give me: a sense of purpose, fulfillment, and contribution, meaning in my life, a constant well of creativity and stimulation in ways that mattered to me, and a whole host of other things that would meet needs that I have. And when those needs were met I’d be happy.

It was difficult and devastating to make the decision to leave graduate school and walk into the great Unknown because I was so attached to that strategy as “the one” that would lead to happiness.

What’s so expansive to realize now is that there are infinite strategies that can stimulate the feelings we want to be feeling and to contribute to the needs we are trying to meet. The key is to be in touch with what we want to be feeling and then to examine many elements of our lives and ask ourselves: Are these activities bringing me more into alignment with the feelings I want to feel, or less? And then, make changes accordingly.

How do you want to feel?