The Occupational Adventure Guide TM system is based on a simple definition of passion: “The energy that comes from bringing more of YOU into what you do.” Simply put, when you are in alignment with who you are and what you’re naturally drawn to, it’s energizing.
The system follows a 7-stage process:
- Passion Core: Create your internal compass
- Destination Exploration: Generate ideas for potential career paths and evaluate them using your internal compass.
- Travel Toolkit: Identify the resources – internal and external – you can tap into on your journey.
- Map It: Identify your goals and steps to get there, and map the obstacles – internal and external – in the landscape.
- Hit the Road: Take steps to make it happen and incorporate ways to make your efforts sustainable for the long-term.
- New Destination: Congratulations! You love your work!
Passion Core
If passion is the energy that comes from bringing more of YOU into what you do, the obvious question is how do you consciously do that?
Creating your Passion Core gives you a concrete, specific tool that you can use to both generate ideas for possible career paths and evaluate options. Your Passion Core is the internal compass that allows you to make your career decisions based on what energizes and engages you.
It consists of the underlying reasons why you love what you love. The basic idea is simple. By identifying the underlying characteristics that tend to be in place when you feel in the groove (i.e., by identifying “who you are”), you can make decisions that bring more of those characteristics into the picture.
Referring to your Passion Core every step of the way will keep you on course for a career you love.
Destination Exploration
Once you’ve identified your Passion Core, you can explore where you want to go.
The Destination Exploration stage is a two-step funneling process.
In the first step, brainstorm as many potential career path ideas as possible. Use your Passion Core to help guide your exploration. Look at it and ask, “What destinations have these characteristics? What careers incorporate these elements?” The idea is to get beyond our blinders and expand our horizons to see the full scope of possibilities.
Think of this part of the process as filling a funnel. Let all the ideas flow without critiquing, analyzing, or evaluating. At this point, it’s about quantity, not quality. The goofy ideas are lubrication for the good ones, and there will be time to eliminate them in the funneling-down process.
The second step of the Destination Exploration process focuses on funneling those possibilities down. Using a multi-step approach, you will narrow the possibilities down from the broad range of ideas you have generated to a handful of options that you can then research, explore, and get a deep understanding of before making a decision on a new career path.
Think of it as a distillation process. At each stage you eliminate possibilities that have a light concentration of Passion Core elements, leaving those with a heavier concentration of Passion Core elements.
Ultimately, you will identify the career path that feels best for you.
Travel Toolkit
Before you start figuring out how to get to that new career destination you have identified, take stock of the tools you have to help you get there.
Those tools include:
Skills: What skills do you have to apply to your journey? What are you good at?
Knowledge: What knowledge and insights do you have that you can apply to your journey?
Lessons learned: Keep track of lessons learned along the way. Every mistake has the potential to add tools to your toolkit.
Resources: What external resources do you have to support your journey?
Map It
Once you have a career destination in mind, it’s time to create a map for how you’re going to get from here to there. Again, it’s a two-part process.
In the first step, identify your goals and the steps you need to take to get there. Look at it from both a long-term and a short-term perspective. Where do you want to go and what will it take to get there? Break your long-term goals down into progressively smaller chunks until you get to steps you can start taking right here, right now.
In the second step, look at the topographical landscape you will be navigating as you pursue your Occupational Adventure. What are the obstacles in your way, both internal and external? How will you navigate around them?
Hit the Road
All of the above exploration is nothing but armchair traveling if you don’t continue on to the next vital step – hitting the road.
To travel anyplace, you have to move. You have to set things in motion. Cliché at it is, the old adage about “a journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step,” really is true.
Your first step is to commit to doing it. Tell yourself you’re going to. Say it out loud. Write it down. Tell a friend. Ideas have a way of becoming reality once you start to give them life.
Your next step is to act! Today! What can you do right here, right now, to move you towards your goals? It doesn’t need to be a huge step, but forward motion leads to more forward motion, and without it you’re stuck. Remember, action creates opportunity!
Be willing to take small steps as you travel. Your destination will probably be the cumulative result of smaller interim destinations.
Starting is the first step, but to make it happen you have to maintain that momentum. Build things into your journey that will help you stay motivated and engaged.
New Destination
So often, people focus on a destination in their career and say, “that’s where I want to go. That’s my goal.” When they reach their goal, they find themselves surprised when they start feeling that wanderlust again. They’ve fallen prey to The Final Destination Myth. In reality, nothing stays “right” forever. Until your career is over, there is no Final Destination. You will always be changing, shifting, and growing, and so will the world around you.
The Occupational Adventure Guide isn’t just a model for figuring out what to do next. It’s a model you can use over and over throughout the rest of your career, and even into retirement, to help you make decisions that will lead you to meaningful, fun ways to spend your days.
Throughout your life, you will return again and again to the Destination Exploration phase to identify the next stage of your journey. The alternative is stagnation. That feeling of wanderlust is a natural and healthy piece of your career progression. Approaching your career journey with that in mind, and using your Passion Core as a compass to guide you every step of the way, will help you continue to create and re-create a rich, fulfilling career.