What Don't I Want?

(This article is taken from the latest issue of my newsletter)

Strangely enough the question "How would you like this to be?" is a very difficult one for many people to answer. I used to find in the days when I worked for the Church of England that asking people what they would like their church to be like often produced nothing more than a puzzled stare. Yet if their Vicar did something they didn't like, they were only too quick to complain. So they may not have had a clear idea of what they wanted their church to be like, but they had a very clear idea indeed of what they didn't want it to be like!

We often find ourselves in much the same situation. We may have a vague sense of dissatisfaction with our job or our work, but we don't really know what we want to do in its place. We may have decided it's time to move from our present house, but we have very little idea of where we'd like to move to.

Often the first step to defining what we do want is to define what we don't want. This will help avoid the situation where we move jobs or houses or whatever, but find ourselves facing exactly the same problems as we did previously. Once we have decided what we don't want, we are in a much better position to decide what we do want.

For example someone might write down the following if asked what they don't want about their new job:

• I don't want to work excessively long hours
• I don't want to have to commute
• I don't want to waste my skills
• I don't want to have someone interfering with what I'm doing all the time

Once you've made this sort of list then it's much easier to ask yourself: "If I don't want to work excessively long hours, what do I want?"

In this way you can build up a much clearer picture of the direction in which you want to move.

Comments

[Deb]

Having changed jobs recently, I have been disappointed to find that I just don't like it at all. When I made the change I was convinced that it was the right move but maybe I just didn't ask the right questions. I don't have a clear picture of my ideal job so I am going to start with your suggestions to see what I don't want, first.
Thanks for the idea!