Welcome. or not.

Welcome to my blog – or if no one visits, that’s fine too.

I have my crafting blog over at Cheeky Craft Chick, but as 2010 begins to unfold, it seems I will be spending a lot of time looking inward, so that I may progress forward.

I would like to document this process for my own benefit. I think it would be very useful to track my thought process, review my progress, celebrate how far I’ve come, or even lament how little I’ve moved if that’s where it ends up.

I doubt it will end up that way. If nothing else, life and people rarely stay still. Even as I am frustrated in my lack of clear, focused movement in a particular professional direction, the many directions I have explored represent significant movement and progress in the direction of self-discovery.

In late January, I decided to being seeing a therapist specializing in cognitive therapy. I had recently become trapped in a cycle of thinking and habit that was sapping my motivation, which, in turn, was sapping my self-esteem.

This was step one.

Step two was recommended by a friend during a dinner and movie night. A Transition Coach. Having left my 9-5 job in Sept 2009, I’d say I qualify as being in transition. Honestly, I’m not sure I ever successfully made the transition from college to the real world – so we’ll see if I can’t straighten that out now.

I’ll refer to my transition coach henceforth as TC.

My TC and I had an introductory phone call last week, and i decided to move forward with at least 3 months of coaching.

The insight from that initial conversation was that I may be approaching my issue from the wrong direction.

I was looking at jobs and then “trying them on” – seeing if maybe they would fit what I thought my personality to be. This was eternally frustrating and not getting me any closer to an answer. By explaining her process of uncovering your strengths, working style, etc FIRST, my TC blew my mind – I’d been approaching it from the wrong way all along.

If we continue with the shopping for clothes analogy, what I was doing is seeing something pretty, trying it on, and continually being frustrated with the fit. I was also continually confused as to why it look so pretty on the hanger, but not on me. What my TC is suggesting is to spend time figuring out my size, how my body is proportioned, and what colors look good on me first. Then we can go shopping with the specifics in mind. Much more likely to find the perfect dress a lot more quickly with that approach, don’t you think?

I think that’s enough journaling/blogging for today. I will talk about our first face-to-face session and some thoughts on being an introvert tomorrow.