Career Beginnings
When I was in my twenties, I was hired by a government agency, initiating a 33-year long career, moving through various positions and promotions and even physically relocating for the job. As time went on and I reached retirement age, considering the idea of retirement became more compelling, knowing that I could leave at any time, but I didn’t take it seriously for several years. Naturally, since I had been working for the same agency for all that time, the thought of disconnecting from it was pretty unsettling. What would be my identity without that job, after I left? Was the time really right to go? What would I do with my days? These are very personal choices, but as common knowledge asserted, you know when it’s time. So feeling sure that it was the right decision, I made my move.
Retirement Experiences
Retirement was exhilarating! No more deadlines, no schedules, no alarm clocks, no traffic. I spent the first-year traveling, reading, cooking, just enjoying doing nothing. Then slowly, that stopped being enough. I began to miss the camaraderie of shared goals, shared office space, being part of something larger than myself. The thought that I might lose some of the skills I had gained over the years definitely concerned me. So, I began to look around for things to do, especially to find things I thought I’d enjoy doing.
I drifted into the world of nonprofits, joining a board and learning how to fundraise and write grants. I began to attend various volunteer training sessions and events, and started to meet the people who were working in this sector. I found that there were many things I enjoyed, some of which called on the skills I had learned in my last career, and I became more engaged. Eventually I returned to work, taking a job as a nonprofit executive director, which seemed to consolidate all the management skills I had attained over my career, along with my interest in helping, and giving back.
Intentional Choices
Luckily, it all worked out serendipitously for me. But having discussed our upcoming seminar, “Capitalizing on Your Dependable Strengths” with Anne Scholl Fiedler, LCPC, Frederic Community College Career Services, it’s clear that there can be a more intentional approach to finding your next best engagement. According to the Center for Dependable Strengths’ website, the goal is to improve lives through the identification of strengths in individuals. They assert that there is excellence in everyone, and that each person has a unique pattern of core, motivated strengths that can be brought to light to bring out their best.
Why is this important and why is This Point Forward offering this workshop? How better to help you decide what opportunity to grab on to, either in a job, or a volunteer activity, than to have discovered and identified what you’re good at and what you enjoy. Taking this workshop will help you uncover your Dependable Strengths via activities defining your Good Experiences, how you’ve used those strengths and how that will translate to helping you make your next phase of life the best it can be.
To further illustrate that point, here is a quote from a blog written by Ms. Fiedler several years ago: “We live in a fast paced world, but there is no time like the present to reflect back on our Good Experiences so that we can become our own heroes, innovate in areas of motivated strength, and create a better community.”
Discover Your Potential
Our 1 ½ hour workshop will take you through the basics of discovering your potential, in a more compressed time frame than the full course, although you can decide to pursue that for further insights if you choose. However, you will come out of this session with a list of your Dependable Strengths and information about how to use them to contribute to your future success and satisfaction. We encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity. Register today!
