Self Understanding Activities (docx 65KB)
To realistically begin building your future, you need to firstly assess yourself in order to gain a solid understanding of who you are as an individual and to know what factors are important to you. This process is often referred to as self understanding or self assessment and is the foundation of making good choices and decisions in your life.
Each individual has their own unique pattern of abilities, interests and personality traits. Self understanding pinpoints what your likes, dislikes, strengths, and other traits are, and inspires personal growth by helping you define your identity. The process of discovering who you are and what you can do can be beneficial to shaping your future. Understanding who you are as a person can get you to where you want to be, as you have more control over finding surroundings that are the best fit for you.
In terms of your career, finding the 'right' occupation is very much influenced by individual preference. Questions such as "who are you?" and "where do you want to be?'' are important aspects to consider when deciding what career decisions and directions you want to take if you want to achieve success and personal satisfaction.
This module will give you an opportunity to develop an insight of who you are by exploring your interests, skills related to your interests, your personal style, goals, and influences, which will assist you in making future career choices.
Having a clear idea about your own personal interests is one of the first steps in making a good career decision, as career success and satisfaction relies heavily on whether or not you enjoy the work you are doing.
Stop and ask yourself these questions. What makes you happy? What hobbies and academic subjects do you enjoy? What are things you would like to do in your free time? Your answers to questions like these reveal a lot about who you are and offer an insight into your unique personality.
Interests can also be known as hobbies, pastimes, recreational pursuits or extracurricular activities.
When discovering your interests, you are looking for what you would 'like' to do, not what you 'can' do. You don't have to be good at something for it to be an interest. You should also think about your dislikes, as they may provide clues to what you do like (e.g. if you don't like working individually, you probably like working in a group).
Things that interest you may be work-related or they may not, or you may have interests that fit in both areas. Therefore, it is important when looking for what you are interested in to examine all aspects of your life, such as work, recreational activities, social interactions, school involvement/academic courses, and even daydreams (e.g. your ideal dream jobs).
The more knowledge you have of what you are interested in, the more it will help you focus on picking the best university subjects and future career path for you.
Your personal interests can help you decide what career paths you would like to take, however it is your skills that largely determine whether you achieve what you want or not.
A skill is a learned ability to perform something in a competent manner. To advance or excel in whatever education or career path you choose, you must firstly know what you are able to do and what you are willing to learn to do.
However when exploring your skills, you should keep in mind that you may have skills that you are good at but they are not what you enjoy or what you want to utilise in your work. Therefore to obtain personal satisfaction it is important to have an understanding of what skills are required in relation to what your interests are, as these will most likely be the skills you'll enjoy learning more about and using.
Complete the following activity to help you identify those skills you enjoy using and the skills related to your interests
Part of defining who you are is your unique temperament and personal style. These are personal attributes that refer to your character, personality or disposition. Your temperament and personal style involve traits that relate to the way you think, feel, and act in different situations and towards other people, for example, are you punctual,enthusiastic, energetic, sincere?
It is important that you have an insight into your own unique traits, as it can help you improve personal relationships, find your ideal job, and accomplish life goals. Furthermore, in relation to career choices, knowing your temperament and personal style plays a significant role in your ability to perform a task, to determine the kind of people you work best with, or the amount of satisfaction you get from a particular job.
The activity for this part of the module will give you an idea on what your temperament and personal style is like.
Thinking about your goals... is another important element of Self Understanding.
Upon entering university, many students still do not have a clear career goal. Having an understanding of who you are and what you want out of life, however, can help direct you on the right path. The process of setting goals for your ideal future can motivate you to turn your visions into reality. The earlier you begin to think about your life goals, the easier it will be for you to make appropriate decisions and plans to achieve them. Also, this in turn will help build up your self-confidence. To achieve satisfaction, set goals that are of value to you and match these goals with your personal interests, traits, and skills you will enjoy using.
Setting your personal goals effectively is an excellent way for you to gain a general sense of direction in your life, as well as give you motivation to achieve the goals you set for yourself. Goal setting can help ensure you continue to move your life in a direction of your choice. Start deciding what your life goals are and pay close attention to them if you want to achieve personal satisfaction and fulfillment.
Here are several goal setting tips to get you started on achieving your personal goals. As you read through the tips add your goals and ideas to the tables below.
1. Start brain storming
Consider all areas of your life including your career, education, finances, relationship, family, friends, mental and physical health, assets, recreational areas, spiritual and community etc. Be creative and quickly write down all possible goals you can think of. There is no need for you to edit or criticise them at this stage as you can review them later.
2. Be in a positive frame of mind before setting your goals
Being in a positive state will make the goal setting process easier as it will allow you to become more inspired, optimistic and relaxed as you think about things you want to achieve in your life.
3. Consider short, medium and long-term goals
To ensure that your short term goals contribute to your medium term goals and your medium term goals contribute to achieving your long term goals, try establishing your long term goals first. Also make sure you can achieve what you want in the time frame you set.
4. Write effective goal statements
Writing your goals can help to clarify what you need to do. Written goals serve as good reminders of what you are aiming for. When writing goal statements use SMART:
Specific:
Ensure your goals are very clear and specific. Your "fuzzy vision" might be to become fitter and your specific goal might be:"you will increase your fitness levels by going for walks."
Measurable:
Find a way to measure your progress "you will increase your fitness levels by going for half hour walks at least three times a week."
Authentic:
Think of goals that align with your core values. If a goal is authentic, your motivation is going to be much higher, increasing your ability to achieve the goal. This is a very important aspect of goal setting. If one of your values is conserving the natural environment, then your goal might become: "I will walk the half hour to uni instead of driving during the week."
Realistic:
This is the reality check. Is your goal unrealistic? What evidence do you have that you can achieve this goal? Goals need to be stretching; however they become de-motivating if we don't make the progress we expect. Do you need to modify your goal in some way to make it achievable? "I will start with 10 minute walks for the first three days and then add another 10 minutes over the next three days."
Time Bound:
Setting a deadline usually means we put in the effort to meet it. Three months is a good period of time to see change. Revisit your "fuzzy vision" and then set your shorter term goals so they are one step towards creating that vision.
Turn one of your brainstormed goals into a SMART goal.
5. Prioritise your goals
Try ranking each goal on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being the least important and 10 being the most important) and pick 1 to 5 of the goals you have ranked the highest to focus your efforts on over the next few months.
» Determine the steps you need to take to achieve your goal
You should try imagining you have already accomplished your goal and work backwards, writing down each specific step you took in order to achieve your goal. Think about where you are? What you are doing? Who are you with? How do you feel? Also make a list of the resources you need to accomplish your goal, such as a reliable vehicle, a business network, information etc.
» Be flexible for unexpected circumstances/changes
Be prepared to make adjustments to your goals. For example, one of your short term goals may be to join a soccer team, but due to knee injury over the weekend, this may have to be changed to a long term goal instead. Also, be flexible in altering your strategies for achieving your goal.
When trying to understand who you are, what your personal goals are, and where you want to be, you should also think about what factors are influencing these. This is important to start thinking about early, as there are a large number of positive or negative issues that can have an influence on who you are now and who you become. Often you may not have the final decision over what you study, as the needs of the community and your family wishes are considerations that affect you. For example, your parents want you to become a doctor and therefore you enroll to study medicine at university. Whether this is a positive or negative influence depends on whether medicine is something YOU are interested in also.
Your personal and strong influences
General influences with little control
Past influences the present, together the past and present influence the future, and future aspirations influence decisions made in the present
Building Your Future is adapted from the Career Development Program of the Queensland University of Technology. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Australia License.