Professional Self

Hello and welcome to episode number 47 of the Strategy Corner, where our goal is to get you to take action. I’m your host, Michel Zink, the owner of Intentional Solutions Corp. So we’re continuing the month about talking about our big, bold, crazy goal and we’re going to be building on it today. But one thing I wanted to mention was that we’re setting this big, bold goal and we’re saying we’re gonna get it done by a certain amount of time. Right. Because we have to be very specific. And the reality is, is that I am willing to slow down and to lean into as long as it’s going to take me to create this goal. So when I was thinking about it over lunch and between taping some podcasts, I thought about how Brooke talks about how she has this 100 million dollar goal. But right now, she’s only not only I mean, this would be amazing, right? She’s making in the 30 millions of dollars and she’s got like seventy to sixty more million to make. But that’s not holding her back from actually continuing to set that as her big, bold goal, knowing even though she says it’s by the end of the year, it’s going to be whenever she can get there. Right. Because again, the main thing is to make our brains get to a place where it’s like, this is crazy. So, OK, fine. Let’s think about what we can do here and how we can make this goal a reality. And that’s why you come up with all the different ideas.

And last week, we kind of we dug into what are the qualities of the individual that you need to become in order to accomplish the goal that you set for yourself. So I talked about how I looked up Sara Blakely and Reese Witherspoon. I Googled them and asked what qualities do they have? And I came up with persistent, confident, humble, courageous, adaptable, inspiring, motivated. And then I also thought about Brooke Castillo. She wasn’t when I Googled her, didn’t come up with anything. But she’s not as famous as the other two. So I added in focus, determined, they all have faith, right. Faith in the ability that they can actually get the job done. They’re fun and they’re funny. So what I want us to do now is actually take these things that we want to lean into and create in our lives and put them into a professional document. Now, what a professional document is, is is a professional document that describes who we are. So our professional self. And what’s amazing about this document is we can put anything we want in there. Creating a professional self is just what it sounds like. We get to create it. Now, there are things in our professional self that are just innate that we’ve actually been learning and growing and adding into our professional self. Notebook. You know, as we’ve been in the workforce and as we’ve been out in the world.

So this is the next continuation of it. So if you have never created a professional self-document which lists words that actually define who you are as a professional, I would recommend that you do that. Or you could just go ahead and create a document that has the words that you now want to develop into the qualities that you would like to add to your professional self so that you could move towards this big, bold goal that you have set for yourself. So let me give you an example. I have a professional document. A professional self-document. It’s in word. It has words written on it. I’ve had a couple iterations of it. I started doing this with my coach probably about three years ago, and I always started with the words that I thought I was already. And then I always added in aspirational qualities that I wanted to grow into.

So that’s where I could add in these adaptability. The determined, the faith, the fun. I can add those to my professional self-document. And then I could also continue to have the ones that I have in there already. So what I have, again, is a word document. I have words listed and then I have a brief explanation after it. So I know what it means. So, for example, faith, that can mean many different things. So I would have faith and then I would put like a dash. And then I would put what it means to me. So faith in this situation, the quality I need to have is one where I believe in myself, where I believe I’m selling water, where I know that what I have to offer can really help individuals. That’s what faith would mean.

And then I would continue that process with writing down a word and then putting like a one sentence to explain what it means and how you want to live into it. So some of the words already had on my document, I went back and checked, were strategic. And that’s something that I’ve had in my life for a long time. Curious. I got to say, I’ve been curious since I was a kid. I ask a lot of questions. Effective communicator. That’s one where a point in my life I was in as good of a communicator. So I added that one probably about two years ago to become more effective. So I would read the documents, see that I wanted to be an effective communicator, and then do things that would help me to get there, write more emails so I can get better and hone my craft.

I read a bunch of books on communication. So that’s how I was able to lean in and grow that actual quality that I didn’t have at that point. I have grateful and I’ve always been someone who’s been rather grateful. But when I added this one to my document, I started each day writing down what I’m grateful for. To cultivate that quality. And then the last one I had that I want to share is I had thoughtful. And that’s just something I’ve always had. I feel like I’ve always been very thoughtful and I like to send cards to my friends. I love to tell people what I like about them because I feel like we don’t tell each other what we really like about each other, what we love about each other. And so I really try to be thoughtful and do that and share those things in front of other people. So people know, like this person is amazing at X, Y and Z.

So the call to action this week is to produce, create a professional self-document. And it’s easy. Don’t make this really complicated. Give yourself about. I don’t know, 30 minutes and sit down with those words that you’ve those qualities that you’ve created based off of the individuals that you’re trying to emulate, the ones who have already accomplished the goal that you’re seeking to accomplish, or could also be something where you feel like these people could accomplish whatever you’re seeking to accomplish and just write the word down in word like Solus. For example, if you had, again, faith, put faith there. You’ll label the top of the document professional self. Put a date. Always nice to know when you’ve created it. Put the words that are already you innately. So just list the words that you feel like you already have inside of you. And then put a brief description if you like. Or you can just go on and list those words. And then underneath that, put the qualities that you will want to develop and lean into, like who you need to be in order to grow to this next level of self. And then you could list those words and put like an explanation for them.

And why you’re doing this is so that you can look at this document, because, again, this is about creating your professional self. You could always create who you want to be. And so you have to have a document or I recommend you have a document so you can remember because life is busy. Things come up. It’s not always a perfect world. And we get torn and a lot of different directions. So having this professional self-document on your computer to review once a week on your desk, to review once a week, even reviewing once a month, just to remind yourself like this is these are the qualities that I want to start ingraining and myself. So what do I need to do in order to do that? Is there something I need to read? Is there someone I need to reach out to? Developing this professional self helps you create the person you need to be in order to kill that.

And I say kill. I mean, get it. Like take control of that big, bold goal and achieve things that you’re dreaming of.

Now, please go to iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play and subscribe to the Strategy Corner. Go to my website, intentionasolutionscorp.com, and sign up for my weekly blog post and the latest podcast. Now, I say that when you go to my website right away, a box will come up and you can sign up for my weekly newsletter that has my blog post and the latest podcast in it. Until next time, remember, through action and growth, progression happens. Let’s take action together. Thank you. And create an amazing week.