Strategies for Determining a Contribution

In one of my electives for my Ph.D., I took a class with my brother from Barclay Burns about strategies for figuring out what your path in life could be--a specific area where you could add value. We talked about several interesting ways to find a goal and how to get there, two of which were particularly memorable.

Value Genealogy

One of the first activities was we had to make a timeline of our lives--all the activities, work experiences, etc. that made us who we were. From that "genealogy" we were to deduct something that we could do well, based off of our life experiences. As we created the timeline, detecting different patterns and sharing the timeline in a presentation, we learned more about ourselves and our "natural path" to a particular value.

My presentation looked something like this:

While you could "deduct" several different paths, doing this activity helped me see many of the significant life experiences I had and how they could possibly "fit" together.

Value Ecosystem

Once we figured out what we were supposed to do with our lives, another activity was to come up with our value "ecosystem," a chart of all the individuals and/or organizations who could be stakeholders--people/parties who would be interested, who could help fund the project, who would have policies the project would need to fit, or who would be helped by our particular value. This activity made it apparent who I would need to talk with in order to contribute in the ways I wanted.

These two activities could help those who are trying to blaze a new trail to their own "niche" and do it well.