What Color Is Your Parachute? (40 page)

The late Barbara B. Brown, who was the first to bring
biofeedback
to the public’s awareness back in 1974
,
with her then groundbreaking book,
New Mind, New Body,
once gave a public lecture on what
brain scientists
had discovered—on the way to biofeedback—about
how best to gather information about yourself, so that you can make better decisions about your life
.

Barbara Brown said
brain scientists
had discovered there were three things you can do, that greatly facilitate such decision making.

Their first one was:
Put everything you know about yourself, on one piece of paper.
Jot down anything and everything that occurs to you about yourself. Write small.

Brain scientists’
second finding, according to Barbara, was:
Use some kind of graphic
on that piece of paper, in order to organize the information
about yourself.
A graphic—any graphic—keeps “That One Piece of Paper” interesting, and not just a mess of words and space.

Their third, and last, finding was:
Prioritize
all this information, when you have finished gathering it. Put it in its order of importance, to you. Number the top ten things about yourself that you consider most important (to You). That way, when you finally go looking for a dream job or career that matches
you,
if it is not a
perfect
overlap, at least you will know what you should make sure
is
included in the overlap.

I have followed these three prescriptions for the past thirty years, as I have taught millions of job-hunters and career-changers how to find their dream job.

We have called “That One Piece of Paper” by various names over the years:
The Beginning Job-Hunting Map, The Quick Job-Hunting Map, The What Color Is Your Parachute Workbook, The Flower Exercise,
etc.

And, over the years we have tried out various graphics on “That One Piece of Paper”: a parachutist and his/her parachute, a Grecian temple, a clown holding a bunch of round balloons, a tree with several branches, etc., etc. The common denominator has been that each graphic has had seven parts, inasmuch as any dream job has seven parts. Ultimately we settled on a diagram of a flower, with seven petals,
¹
because readers preferred it above all other graphics. Something about it being a living entity, beautiful and growing, I guess, and therefore a reflection of them in a sense.

Here’s what it came out looking like.

Readers have asked to see what “That One Piece of Paper” looks like, when it is all filled out, and done. Rich W. Feller, a student of mine back in 1982, now a world-famous professor and expert in this field, filled out his flower as you see
here
. He said “That One Piece of Paper” has been his lifelong companion ever since 1982, and his guiding star, as it has turned out to be more and more a description of where he has gone, and is going, with his life. I hear such testimony, again and again.

Click
here
to view a PDF version of The Flower Exercise.

What the Parachute Flower Has Meant to Me

More than anything I’ve gained from an academic life, my Flower has given me hope, direction, and a lens to satisfaction. Using it to assess my life direction during crisis, career moves, and stretch assignments, it helps me define and hold to personal commitments. In many ways it’s my “guiding light.” Data within my Flower became and remain the core of any success and satisfaction I have achieved.

After I first filled out my own Flower Diagram in a two-week workshop with Dick Bolles back in 1982, I decided to teach the Flower to others. My academic position has allowed me to do this, abundantly. Having now taught the Flower to thousands of counselors, career development, and human resource specialists, I continually use it with clients, and in my own transitional retirement planning.

I’m overwhelmed with how little has changed within my Flower, over the years. My Flower is the best of what I am. Its petals are my compass, and using my “favorite skills” are the mirror to a joyful day. I trust the wisdom within “That One Piece of Paper.” It has guided my work and my life, ever since 1982, and it has helped my wife and I define our hopes for our son.

The process of filling out and acting on “That One Piece of Paper” taught me a lot. Specifically, it taught me
the importance of the following ten things, often running contrary to what my studies and doctoral work had taught me previously.

I learned from my Flower the importance of:

1. Chasing after passions, honoring strengths, and respecting skill identification

2. Challenging societal definitions of balance and success

Rich Feller, a University Distinguished Teaching Scholar and Professor at Colorado State University, whose own personal “Flower Diagram” is on the facing page, first put his personal “picture” together twenty-five years ago. Here are his comments about its usefulness since, and how “That One Piece of Paper” helped him, how he’s used it, and how it’s changed.

Click
here
to view a PDF version of The Flower Exercise Example.

3. Committing to something bigger than oneself

4. Living authentically and with joy

5. Being good at what matters to oneself and its relationship to opportunity

6. Finding pleasure in all that one does

7. Staying focused on well-being and life satisfaction

8. Personal clarity and responsibility for designing “possible selves”

9. Letting the world know, humbly but clearly, what we want and

10. “Coaching” people amidst a world of abundance where individuals yearn for individual meaning and purpose more than they hunger for possessions, abject compliance with society’s expectations, or simply fitting in.

This technologically enhanced, global workplace we now face in the twenty-first century certainly challenges all we thought we knew about our life roles. Maintaining clarity, learning agility, and identifying development plans have become elevated to new and critical importance, if we are to maintain choice. As a result I’ve added the following four emphases to “Rich’s Flower”:
Have, do, learn,
and
give.
That is to say, I try to keep a running list (constantly updated) of ten things that I want to:

1. Have

2. Do

3. Learn

4. Give

Through the practice of answering the four questions listed above, I can measure change in my growth and development.

I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to share with others how much I gained from the wisdom and hope embedded within “Rich’s Flower.”

I humbly offer my resume, home location and design, and family commitments on my website at
www.mycahs.colostate.edu/Rich.Feller
. I’d be honored to share my journey, and encourage others to nurture and shine light on their garden as well. I believe you’ll find about 90 percent of the Flower’s items influence our daily experience.

Rich Feller

Professor of Counseling and Career Development

University Distinguished Teaching Scholar

Colorado State University

Fort Collins, CO

You’ve got talent, no doubt about that. You have special gifts, and skills. The question is:
what do you want to accomplish
with that talent, those skills, and those gifts? What values do you want your life, ultimately, to serve?

That is the question with which you must begin. Even before you inventory your skills.
They can be made to serve any goal or value you choose.
We saw this back in
chapter 2
. I mentioned there that the movie credits that roll at the end of a movie, show us how many talents and skills it took to produce that movie. You will see such talents listed as:
researcher (especially for movies set in another historical period), travel expert (to scout locations), interior designer (to design sets), carpenter (ditto), painter (ditto), costume designer, hair stylist, make-up artist, lighting technician, sound editor and sound mixer, computer graphics people, singer, conductor, musicians, composer, sound recordist, stunt artists, animal trainer, talent coordinator, camera operator and cinematographer, special effects people, continuity editor, director, art director, casting director, actor, actress, producer, accountant, personal assistants, drivers, first aid people, secretaries, publicists,
and many others, depending on the type of movie it is.

The point is: if what you most want to do is to make movies, it doesn’t matter what your skills are, because almost any skills you have can be put to use there.

And so it is, with all goals, fields, and values.

Figure out what cause, what problem, what values, you want your life to serve. Then, almost any talent, skill, or gift you later discover you have, or already know you have, can be put into its service.

The word “values” can refer to almost anything. Do you value chocolate over broccoli? Or do you value broccoli over chocolate? That’s a matter of your values.