Weekly Reflection #10: November 16, 2016

My three values from my FOCUS 2 assessment are income, independence, and stability.  These three particular values all relate to a career, as opposed to some values that have to do with lifestyle off the job.  Income is my number one value, which doesn’t surprise me at all.  I know that everyone says that money doesn’t bring happiness, but in my opinion, it brings more happiness than sadness.  The second value of mine is independence in my career.  I also agree with this result, due to the fact that I prefer to work alone with little to no supervision.  I have been turned off of group projects mostly from high school experiences, where I was left to do the majority of the work for almost any group project that I was a part of.  This led to me wanting to do solo projects more that group projects, because they often required more work than group projects would if the tasks were equally done by every member, however, this was usually not the case.  My third value refers to stability in my career, as this would lead to a steady flow of income, my first value.  Stability not only makes the job easier, but it also makes it easier to plan events outside of work, and to know when you have free time to pursue leisure activities.  After combining my values with my personality assessment results, a long list of potential careers appeared.  The most common careers that popped up were engineering or relating to computer sciences.  Both of these job families contain careers that don’t have much variation, require the employee to be independent, and have high average annual salaries.  After doing this search, I decided to combine my values assessment results with my leisure results, as I believe that these two categories are the most important for finding a career that someone can be happy in.  This search only came up with four results, three of which were a form of engineering.  My leisure assessment results showed that I like to be outdoors and do lots of activities that have to do with nature, so it is no surprise that this would require a career that has stable hours and a steady schedule that allows for planning ahead.  Leisure essentially refers to anything that someone does for entertainment in their free time off of work.  I would not want a career that requires me to be on call, ready to jump into action at any minute, because this would not allow me to relax when I’m not working.  I want a job that when I clock out at the end of the day, unless there is work that I need to do at home, I’m done until the next day.  This freedom would allow me to pursue the leisure activities that I enjoy.  Overall, every FOCUS 2 assessment is important when comparing different career options, however, in my opinion, leisure and values are two of the most important categories for finding happiness.