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Creating a Vision of your Ideal Job

Lawyers Assistance Program

Facilitated by Robert Bircher

Quantifying What you Want

• Making transitions in jobs is a normal part of career development-not an aberration

• In fact, the chances of being in the ideal job for you -after articling is remote

• Fortunately, law is a wide field offering many variations-legal, quasi legal and non legal

• Law offers many cultures including large firms, solo practice, corporate, government etc.

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What do you Want?

• Lawyers often do their career planning after they have practiced a while-the first clue being a sense of discomfort ranging from mild dissatisfaction to overt misery, anxiety or depression

• At this point lawyers are often lost and waste time hoping for “something to come along” - it rarely will

• The most effective first step is to get a more accurate sense of what you want or like

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What do you Want?

• Many lawyers are unclear about what they want-they have been conditioned to want what others tell them they “should want” parents, society, teachers etc.

• “You will be happy if you get a high paying job in a big firm” you may now have that -yet are miserable due to the long hours and pressure and feel the trade off for big money was a mistake

• Going to another big firm simply means you will have the same job in a different building-no real change has occurred

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Creating a Job Map or Grid

• You need to know your interests, skills, values, people and environment preferences

• It is like having a shopping list before you go shopping-you won’t forget things and you will go to the right stores if you have one-if you have no idea what you want you will wander aimlessly

• Interests-Subject matters to which you are drawn-topics that you read about

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Creating a Job Grid

• Skills-abilities you have developed over your lifetime

• Values-intangible guiding principles, motivators or drivers-everything you do is driven by your values-unfortunately they are often unconscious

• People preferences-type of people, how many, what kind of interaction with co-workers etc.

• Environment-office atmosphere, physical structure, work schedule, degree of freedom and flexibility

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Completing the Grid

• Creativity is a right brain activity, do not be “practical, sensible or realistic” i.e. asking yourself “how am I ever going to get paid for this” or “there is no such thing as a good paying job doing that”

• Focusing on how am I going to get it before you are clear on what you want is a grievous error!!

• When you are clear on what you want the how follows even if what you want seems ridiculous

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What do I have Passion for?

• EG.-”I want to be paid massive amounts of money to have coffee with interesting people and be on TV” sounds impossible until you talk with Oprah Winfrey

• Assume you will be paid what you are now or what you want

• Pick your top 5 in each area-use a highlighter or rate the qualities on a 10 point scale-

• Have a meeting with 2 others and defend your top choices

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What do I have Passion for?

• Do these qualities show up in my life, if so where? Are they “should” values-values I am “supposed to have” but they don’t appear in my life now or in the past

• If I say I am interested in psychology where does that show up in my life?-i.e... my library is full of psychology books-if I say I value health where does that show up?-weight-fitness level etc.-or do you say you value it but don’t live it-i.e.. overweight, out of shape, poor nutrition etc

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Complete the Grid

• Put your top 5 in each category• Complete what you don’t want• Stand up and read out what you want to

the class• Develop a visualization that you already

have it-feel it!!!• Surround yourself with people that will

support you in getting it• Take massive action but don’t worry about

how the exact way it will come about or that it is “impractical” you won’t get positive results with negative thoughts

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