Healthy self-awareness serves as an important component of personal mastery.

In our previous blog: You are the chef or your own cuisine we learned that an awareness of one’s unique skills and strengths are crucial to discovering one’s purpose as well as being able to live life to the full. This week’s blog builds on the previous statement. Once you are aware of your skills and strengths these can be combined to write a story that is unique to the contribution you can make in life. In Xpand we labelled this process of story writing as one’s Creative Life Planning process.

Except for the importance this has for your personal mastery, there is another reason why it will be beneficial to go through a Creative Life Planning process: because of the 100-year-life concept. In their book, the 100 year life by L. Gratton and J. Scott, they show by means of academic research that people have started to live longer lives and that life expectancy is increasing. Based on this and how the pace at which the work environment is changing, it will become increasingly important for a person to recreate the “self”. Doing so as often as every 10 – 15 years. People are however uncertain of how to “recreate the self” which makes the Creative Life Planning process such a valuable tool for living in the 21^th century!

The updated version of Gratton and Scott’s book: The new long life was released after COVID 19 and still elaborates on how important this “recreating of the self” is.

The combination of longer lives and greater technological disruption will mean that in your career you will experience repeated transitions and shifts. At times this will mean you will need to upskill to safeguard your role, whilst at other times you will need to reskill – to move to a completely different type of work. (Gratton & Scott: 2021)

From this quote it is clear that knowing what skills you have and knowing how to upskill / reskill is imperative. In our Creative Life Planning process, we do however see this working with your skills as only one important element. The other chapters of your story involve your personality strengths, motivating environment and your life values. I can’t do justice to these 4 elements within this blog but let me give you a quick overview.

Like a hippo who only has his eyes visible above the water and his massive body hidden under the surface, a person’s personality strengths and motivating environment is not easily noticed. Making use of something like the DISC behavioural assessment will be of great assistance if you want to clearly define your personality strengths and your motivating environment.  Basically, personality strengths refer to your unique qualities that characterises your personality and your preference. So, if for example two people have the skills of working with numbers the one person could have the personality strength to work with big groups of people where the other one could have the strength of building strong individual relationships. Although they share the same skill their personality strengths will open up different career options depending on their strengths.

One’s motivating environment is more self- explanatory. What motivates you in any given environment to get things done and to excel? For some it is quick decision making, for others the opportunity to communicate and some people are motivated by a harmonious working environment. Again, the DISC assessment can give a lot of insight and your results will clearly give direction regarding suitable career changes.

Your life values. What do you dream about? Where do you want to make a difference? And which people groups are you passionate to serve? The Creative Life Planning process contains clear workshops that assist you in answering these questions to finally design your personal life mission.

Finally, Gratton and Scott states that as life’s lengthen, individuals will need to look more into the future and invest and explore possible selves. Your job and employer will define yourself less and less and as a consequence more responsibilities about your future career will be transferred to you. This brings a lot of exciting opportunities!

And some might be missed if we are not intentional to design our life and our career creatively.

Intentionality can refer to steps such as contacting a coach that can support you in a design process or even buying the Creative Life Planning book and venturing onto this journey of self-reflection. I trust that this blog encouraged you to take a small step in the process of creatively planning your life and your career path as you continue to grow in your personal mastery.

This blog was written by Chantal Ferreira.

To get in touch with a coach or to order your Creative Life Planning book, contact our office at office@xpand-sa.com or click on the link for our online store.