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How To Get The Career You Want Using Archetype Analysis
Written by Colleen Guy   
Friday, 26 March 2010 07:09
Do any of the following statements ring true for you?
by ColleenGuy


Do any of the following statements ring true for you?

* I don't feel properly valued at work

* I don't get excited on Sunday evening about the prospect of the working week ahead

I'm unsure as to the best job that suits my skills

* I feel my learning-curve at work has flattened out

I don't get to use all my skills in my current role

* If I won the Lottery tomorrow I would give up my job

* I don't feel I have a life/work balance

There's a difference between agreeing to any of these statements occasionally and agreeing to them consistently. However, if you do find yourself saying yes to some of those questions perhaps it's time to take a look at what you're doing with your career and your life. You spend around eight hours of each and every working day at work; ideally you should be getting the most out of those hours that you possibly can.

It doesn't matter what kind of job you do, we all have negative feelings now and then about what we do. The work/life balance is discussed more and more and, even for those who love their jobs, is there to remind us that we need to make time for our personal and family lives.

I believe, from about twenty years of helping people with their personal career development, that in fact about two-thirds of people are actually in the wrong job or else have actually put their career development on hold and are 'just doing a job' which they are not enjoying. That's not only an unfortunate statistic but also indicates the wastage of lots of human resources. Yet it's not a statistic that will really surprise us when we reflect just how difficult planning and implementing one's own career development actually is.

Why is it so difficult? One of the major problems is that we don't know about a lot of the options open to us or have experience of other paths we could take.

However, this problem can be combated by research and time spent getting to know the industry. This problem tends to be more of an issue for new entrants to a particular industry or sector.

Secondly, and this is a major problem for all of us that very likely never really ever goes away: we don't know exactly what we can be.

In other words, we don't ever really know what we can do, what we're really good at, what we'd really like: we just arrive at approximations - guesses really - on the subject and go with them until some other, more apparently precise - approximation comes along. We are all too likely to go with the flow, pursue a job or profession that feel about right, and just get on with the job we've got.

Whilst this represents a problem, it also identifies an opportunity too. If managed correctly we can use this to develop ourselves and getting better at whatever it is we do. And, if we don't know what we can be, logic states that we also don't know what we can't be.

In fact, maybe we shouldn't compromise. Perhaps we should start thinking about the job we really want to do.

How do we achieve that?

An important part of the solution is to be determined. Don't accept failure in our working life and be prepared to search for other possibilities if we find ourselves challenged or frustrated.

Another big part of the solution, though, is to know more about ourselves. And this is where the powerful, intriguing and fascinating personal development tool of Archetype Analysis comes in.

Undertaking Archetype Analysis is a practice which helps to avoid compromises in your life and particularly in your working life. You know the type of compromises that seem even bigger when you wake up on a cold winter Monday morning and the car won't start.

The everyday meaning of the word 'archetype' is a pattern or mould from which copies are made. However, in the work of the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1875 - 1961), the word 'archetype' means something rather different: an attitude, belief or approach that tends not to be developed by you or me, but rather inherited from the past. Jung even went so far as to see archetypes as belonging to the collective unconscious and inherited by us all. At a practical level, though, it's more useful to see them as inherited attitudes that may be supportive to us but which can also be extremely restrictive.

The fascinating and powerful intervention of Archetype Analysis, developed during the past thirty years by the American personal development specialist Dr Carol Pearson based on Jung's work, is an inspired, proven and successful way of in effect saying to people: you are more hidebound by your inherited attitudes, approaches and ideas than you ever imagined; indeed, you may not even be fully aware of what your inherited attitudes, approaches and ideas really are. By understanding what they are and how they restrict you, you can get fully in touch with yourself and liberate yourself from the negative sides of your inherited hidebound 'story': that is, your 'version' of yourself that you have - possibly inadvertently - brought to every aspect of your life so far.

Information:

Want to find out more about Archetype Analysis? Why not read the full article Archetype Analysis, then visit Colleen Guy's site, Spirit Mystique for more information.
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