The best way to avoid, or cope with, being thrown off the merry-go-round

Kate Duttro* made a great comment on Former Finnegan No. 3, and I thought I would reflect on it before going on with my personal tale. One of the best ways to arm yourself against the varied chances and changes of life is to keep on learning, as I have learned from my own experience.

Don't believe me? Well, consider this. If you have a job or pastime you like, keep learning to do it better. You'll become an indispensable asset to those you work with, and you won't be bored. Stay on top of new developments in your field, and you'll be ready for change when it catches up with you --  when a better position opens up, you'll be well-prepared to move into it. Or if your area of expertise is beginning to pall, start exploring related fields, and prepare yourself to make a lateral move.

If you are stuck in a routine job and can't see any immediate opportunities to move up or out, you can spend your leisure time learning something new, just to keep yourself from going crazy or perhaps to meet new people. Even if you stuck on the assembly line at the widget plant, you can become a cracker jack softball coach or salsa dancer or taxidermist or water rescue volunteer in your free time, and know that you are living a "value added" life, not just subsisting. And you won't make the dreadful mistake of identifying yourself by what you do for a living.

Another way to learn is to "re-purpose" something you already know. I ran across a woman on Facebook who is obviously a sympathetic soul and an avid crocheter. She became aware that cats with spinal injuries or leg deformities often develop friction sores from dragging their paralyzed rear legs; such animals often wind up in shelters but the unsightly sores frighten away prospective pet owners. This kind lady began crocheting little leggings for the kitties -- simple oblongs with yarn ties to secure them to the legs -- and found that they help protect the cats' legs and also appeal to prospective owner. Now she has a non-profit organization called "Leggings for Life" to help crippled cats. Take a look: 

I've read of other people who dealt with job loss either by promoting a hobby to a business (a stamp collector who opened his own online business after he lost his job) or learning to make a living in a related field when they couldn't find work in their own (a man laid off from a good job in network security who retrained as a locksmith and now installs and maintains home security systems). The fact is, such people succeed because they are able to shift gears without trauma, and they are able to do so because they are willing to learn.

My experience tells me that the happiest people are those who know how to learn, and have made a practice of doing so. When the ship of your life is wrecked, you'll have a better chance of survival if you've already learned how to get to the life boats, and don't cling to a sinking vessel. If the lifeboats are crowded, you'll be less likely to get tossed overboard if you know how to row, or can to learn to do so quickly ("fake it 'til you make it"). And if you've been shipwrecked before and have learned from the experience, you won't have to panic the next time it happens (you did learn to swim, didn't you?).

I once knew a motivational speaker who liked to say, "You're either growing or you're dying." Change is inevitable, but you should decide what kind of change it is -- do you want to grow, or do you want to stagnate, rust, rot, die? ("Gee, when you put it like that, Finnegan ...") If you are learning, you are growing, changing for the better, even if the knowledge you're gaining seems "useless" in your present circumstances.

*By the way, I looked Kate up after responding to her comment and found that she is a career change coach for academics, who has learned from her own personal experience as well as professional training. Check out her web site, Career Change for Academics.

What I learned between Finnegans: Learning to be your whole self

Back when I was casting about for something new to do after being booted out of my lousy job at the blood center, one of the jobs I interviewed for was a position with the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation, a non-profit organization that offers aptitude testing for people contemplating a change of life -- for instance, high school students trying to figure out what field to pursue in college, or adults experiencing career burnout. They offer a battery of tests that identify a person's natural talents and innate abilities, and then help the client find an occupation that makes use of those inborn gifts. Since the job I was applying for involved administering the tests, interpreting the results, and counseling the client, my interview process allowed me to undergo the testing myself, and to be counseled on meaning of the test results, at no cost. As a result, I learned some valuable lessons, about myself and about what we need to be happy in life.

Before I tell you what I learned, let me describe the process a bit. Anyone reading this who feels him or herself at a crossroads in life, or who perhaps feels unhappy or uncomfortable in what is, on the surface, a successful and fulfilled life, would be well advised to consider spending the money it costs to take the Johnson O'Connor aptitudes tests-- the benefits may prove invaluable, as they have been for me.

One thing I found was that this aptitude testing was nothing like the kind of standardized testing that school kids or college students take. The Johnson O'Connor battery of aptitude tests included things like manual dexterity, spacial memory, and the ability to discriminate musical pitches, as well as inductive reasoning and something called ideaphoria. In the course of the tests, I found myself doing such things as picking up tiny metal rods and sorting them into groups of five, while being timed; or seeing how much I could write non-stop over a set period of time, in response to a simple writing prompt; or trying to reconstruct a complex 3-D puzzle. There were also the kind of word-association tests that reminded me of the verbal part of the SAT, and intelligence tests I'd taken as a kid. Almost all of these tests were timed, but I was told not to hurry because speed was not necessarily a virtue (high-testing subjects were sorted into "slow-accurate" or "fast-accurate" results). While I didn't take the entire battery of tests, I was tested on eleven of the sixteen aptitudes, which I was assured would give a representative sampling.

After I had taken the tests, I met with the counselor to go over the results. I was eager to see what she had to say because I figured even if Johnson O'Connor didn't hire me, what I learned could help me find the right  kind of job. First, the counselor told me that, of the eleven aptitudes for which I had tested, I scored either "high" or "very high" in nine of them. Well, I'm sure I beamed with pride -- I'd always been a good test-taker, and was glad to know I hadn't lost my edge. But the counselor just sighed and shook her head. "No," she said, "that's not necessarily a good thing. It means you will always find it hard to be truly happy, because there will probably always be some natural abilities that will go unfulfilled. this can make you feel frustrated and dissatisfied with your life."

No infringement of
Looney Tunes copyright intended!

For a moment I felt like I was Wile E. Coyote, and had just been flattened by one of those giant Acme weights of my own devising. In my benumbed state, I heard the counselor going on to explain that most people have aptitudes that cluster neatly together, making it relatively easy for them to find occupations (job or hobbies, or both) that let them do what they naturally do well and, thus, it would not be difficult to achieve happiness once they understood what their natural talents were and found ways to use them. But since my inborn aptitudes covered such a disparate range, I would probably have difficulty satisfying all my natural inclinations at any given point in my life. I could try multi-tasking like crazy, or decide that, rather than trying to do everything at once, I would just do different things at different points in my life. But, one way or the other, I needed to realize that at any given moment I would feel "unfulfilled" in one way or another.

After I got used to the idea, I found my newly-acquired self-knowledge liberating. I'd always felt that there was some clearly-definable vocation with my name on it, something that I needed to find and claim, but now it seemed like that wasn't the case. I could quit my quest for the elusive "right thing" and just find something that was good for now, that would let me develop some (perhaps still buried) talent, knowing that a few years down the line I would probably need to change direction again. In other words, it looked like I was going to need to keep re-inventing myself from time to time, just to avoid being miserable. I've worn many hats since then, and have been happy doing so, even though sometimes I feared being a "Jack of all trades, master of none." I can see now that what seemed to be a wandering course was really just leading me up to the place I am now, which in many ways is the best place I've been so far. And this I owe, in part, to what turned out, in the end, to be a failed job interview.

You see, I didn't get the job with Johnson O'Connor, although they wanted to hire me, and I wanted to work for them. It seems the corporate powers-that-be wouldn't agree to keep funding the position, so I had to look for another line. (Sometimes I wonder what would have happened in the long run if I'd hired on with them, but things turned out alright anyway, as you'll read in the following posts.) But I'll always be glad that I was able to find out about the valuable work they do and to benefit from it myself.

The good news for all of us is that every single person has a unique combination of innate abilities that can be discovered and developed so that we can each live happy, productive, and fulfilling lives. They don't all have to be exercised in our paid employment -- plenty of people have routine jobs but happy lives, because they exercise their talents in other venues, such as hobbies, volunteer work, clubs, athletics, or just caring for their families.

If you're feeling dissatisfied with your life, or don't know what to do next, take the opportunity to reflect on the kinds of things you find most satisfying and see if you can find new ways of employing those abilities. Sometimes just a small life adjustment can produce huge satisfaction.

Have you ever discovered that you had a natural talent you'd never suspected? Or do you have some pastime that helps keep you grounded when the rest of your life is driving you crazy? Please leave a comment and let me know.