What Color Is Your Parachute?: Your Guide to a Lifetime of Meaningful Work and Career Success

by Richard Nelson Bolles

A comprehensive research study[6] has shown that job seekers can at least double their chances of succeeding in finding a new job or career (or changing career fields) by doing the following six things: Update your job-search techniques. Improve your professional networking skills and connections. Make a comprehensive inventory of the job skills you can claim proficiency in with confidence. Create a targeted resume for each position. Set concrete goals and be proactive about achieving them. Ask for support from family, friends, and mental health or therapeutic resources when you need it.

You may want to consider using Google Docs, calendar updates, or free project-management sites and apps such as Trello, Monday.com, or Basecamp Personal to manage your search step-by-step and day-by-day.

Set up rewards for taking action, regardless of the outcome. Seek support when you need it. Silence the inner critic and focus on gratitude and what went well each day.

Knowing who you are, what you like and do best, what kindles your brain, and what enables you to do your best work has never been more important than in this reimagined workplace that is already here. Don’t ignore this step in your job search.

We create our own reality, not by being in denial, but by choosing which aspects of our life to focus on. And, since we can choose what to focus on, choose the positive aspects. Finally, a third principle tells us to ask ourselves better questions to get better answers. So instead of asking yourself, Why is this job search so hard? or Why can’t I get more done? try asking yourself, What would I like to see more of in my life now? or What would I like to focus on today to move my job search forward?

The best work, the best career, for you, the one that will make you happiest and most fulfilled, is going to be one that uses your favorite transferable skills; in your favorite subjects, fields, or special knowledges; in a job that offers you your preferred people environments, your preferred working conditions, with your preferred salary or other rewards, working toward your preferred goals and values. This requires a thorough inventory of who you are. Doing the Flower Exercise will help.

To make it more fun, take a large piece of white paper and then, with some colored pencils or pens, draw a picture of your ideal life: where you live, who’s with you, what you do, what your dwelling looks like, what your ideal vacation looks like, all of it. Don’t let reality get in the way. Pretend a magic wand has been waved over your life, and it gives you everything you think your ideal life would be. Now, of course you’re going to tell me you can’t draw. Okay, then make symbols for things, or create little doodads with labels—whatever works so that you can see all together on one page your vision of your ideal life, however primitively expressed. You could also make a vision board by cutting pictures and quotes out of magazines (or from the internet) and gluing them onto a piece of paper. The power of this exercise sometimes amazes me. Reason? By avoiding words and using pictures or symbols as much as possible, it bypasses your logical mind and focuses on your creative mind, whose job is to engineer change. Do fun things like this, as you’re exploring a new life for yourself.