The fun way to find the true you

At Light on the Path, we’re always looking for new ways to help people live life fully and happily – and to help others to support that.  In one of our European projects, we discovered a tool in Dublin that we knew could make a big difference to people here too.  While it’s originally designed for people who haven’t been working for awhile and have lost confidence and a sense of career direction or awareness of their skills, the core of the tool is actually really useful to anyone to get a greater insight on what’s important to them, what their strengths are and how they work best.  And the best part is that it’s fun, easy and quick.  No boring questionnaires! You can find out a bit about it in the video below from our Dublin Study Tour, then I’ll tell you more….

In January, we got funding to go to Dublin and learn how to use the EGUIDE tools and to try it out for ourselves.  Fascinating and fun, and I have to say that I could see why the career advisers there said people sat up straighter and felt better when they got the feedback from using the tools.  When I got the feedback about me, I was really touched that it identified the true me – including parts I hadn’t been  putting to full use but care about.  The work environment preferences part was also pretty enlightening.

While most of the patterns in work preferences were what I would have expected, my rating on the “agreeable” scale was a lot lower than I thought it would be.  I think most people would consider me pretty agreeable, but at the other end of the scale is “independence”.  It happened that during the course, I was sharing a twin room with my dear colleague and had the unusual experience (for me) of being in someone’s company 24 hours a day.  I couldn’t figure out why I was getting increasingly irritable – and disagreeable – when I was with people I love to be around, doing something I was excited about it a place I love.  But with that scale, it suddenly all made sense.  Back to my own space, I’m agreeable again.  But I’m also better informed about how to approach our plans for getting new premises later this year, so that I am my best self with everyone.

And that is what the EGUIDE is all about: being your best self, and recognising opportunities that fit that, so that you play to your strengths and flourish.  It doesn’t matter if you’re unemployed and more aware of your weaknesses than strengths, or you’re a chief executive wanting your venture, yourself and your staff to do their best.  It’s all about knowing what works best for you so that you can act accordingly and flourish.

One of my colleagues is fantastic at supporting people recovering from different problems, and I was thinking about recommending her for a project using inventive art activities to strengthen people’s appreciation of their environment and their self-esteem.  But I didn’t know if she was interested in arty things because art had never come up.  Then she did the EGUIDE Interest Explorer and came out top for artistic and for social support.  Now I know that she would be doubly good for the project, but I might have skipped asking her without that knowledge.  You see, even in the same job, you can discover opportunities that make use of your previously hidden strengths.

With that in mind, we are delighted to be able to offer the tool to individuals or teams, and will also be running training for employability and other support practitioners to use the tools with their own clients, to bring out the best in them.  In addition, we’ve just submitted an application to the EU Lifelong Learning Programme to spread the tools to Sweden and Holland too, to try out the feedback with peer mentors and to develop an app version of the tools. If we’re successful, that will be available next year… but we didn’t want you to have to wait to get started!  If you’d like to find out more, contact us with your details.