If you have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to write our own job description, you know how empowering and challenging it is. The trust and confidence that is placed in you by another person is affirming regardless of your level of experience or self-confidence. The affirmation comes through the recognition of you and your capability, especially if it comes from someone who you respect. Their trust acknowledges your ability to know what will be best for you and the organization.
Defining your own role is such an unusual event that many have never even considered. For those that have written their own, you know that the actual crafting of your job description is no small undertaking. Past job descriptions, experience and other roles that you know of can be difficult to get beyond. They can form constraints through which you see your abilities and what your future role can be.
Considering the needs organization and yourself can help get beyond the constraints of the past. In the normal course of our work lives, we don’t typically have a chance to think about the organization that employs us in this way. Nor do we typically give enough consideration to our capabilities and aspirations relative to our role in it. Bringing the two together evokes a sense of responsibility that can be unexpected. A responsibility that can lead to defining a role that is both challenging and rewarding for you and beneficial for the organization and those it serves.
Since writing your own job description is so unusual, it is no surprise that writing your own life description, or its equivalent, is seemingly unthinkable. How would you approach it? What purpose would it serve? What would you do with it once you had written it? Each are some of the many unknowns that can stand in your way.
Just as writing your own job description can be affirming in your work life, writing your own life description can be affirming and transformational for your life overall. To clarify, I don’t mean literally writing a life description that parallels the typical job description with responsibilities, qualifications, required experience, a pay grade and so on. The equivalent is thinking about yourself, your life and what is essential. Not only thinking about it, but knowing it, capturing it in a tangible form and pursuing it in your life.
Like with the constraints we can perceive relative to our jobs and job descriptions we can perceive constraints in our lives and what they can be. Unlike with writing your own job description, there isn’t anyone who needs to give you the opportunity to write your own life description, or personal life philosophy. Nor does anyone need to approve it. It’s entirely up to you and your fortitude to define and pursue how you seek for your life and the world to be. It’s an investment in yourself that has lifelong benefits that reach into all parts of your life. It is also one that you can undertake at any point in your life.
