Style- Lookin' Good in God's Eyes?

What kind of lifestyle do you want? Who will you serve? Will you have work/life balance? What sacrifices will be required? What are the rewards? Are the tradeoffs worth it? 

Answer what questions you can. You can do this exercise repeatedly for each career option. Don't worry, we'll be coming back to this topic repeatedly.  You might be tempted to cull a few careers after going through a few tough questions and that's ok but remember God is more concerned with your spiritual development than your personal ambitions for fame, glory and riches.

To answer the following questions, reference each Career's Summary Report. Click on the link, type in the career and click on the career to access the Summary Report.

Who will you serve?

List Career Option and scan over the career's Summary Report.

1. How does this profession contribute to the universal mission or benefit society?

2. If you work for a company, who do they serve? What good comes from that product or service? Do they conduct themselves in an ethical, sustainable manner? If the organization disappeared would it matter?

What are the benefits? What are the tradeoffs?

3. Will this profession allow me to have sufficient work/life balance and achieve my personal goals? Will I have sufficient time and resources for other things meaningful to me? (family, travel, volunteer, etc)

4. Does this profession require sacrifices to my personal comfort and ambitions? Does the salary warrant the required educational investments? (1st year salary > college loans)

5. Does this profession give me personal satisfaction and a sense of purpose?

What does it take to obtain competency?

8. What are the initial educational requirements? (degrees, certifications)

9. What are the professional development requirements? What internships or entry level jobs are usually required before you get to your dream career? How much time to achieve this goal?

10. Are you willing to invest the time and energy to reach the end game?

What does the day-to-day job look like?

11. Working hours and at what times of the day? Travel required? Overtime expected?

12. Where are those hours spent? At the desk or in the field?

13. How are those hours spent? Individual or team work? Sedentary or mobile work? Laid back or stressful? Rigid or flexible? Level of extrovert/introvert intensity of those hours?

14. Is your personality type a good match for this day-to-day reality? How many matches do you have out of the 8 Rapid Fire Personality Test questions? Did you find any non-negotiables?

No one can serve two masters, you will hate one and love the other- Jesus

Congratulations! You've survived the process of discovering a variety of potential careers that lie at the heart of where your satisfaction and skills come together. 

It's ok, if you weren't able to fully answer most of the Style questions. These will become questions to answer as part of the Discern phase.  The next step is designed to fully flesh those questions out.

Hopefully, the Style questions helped trim back the weaker options so now we're ready to separate the wheat from the chafe. I don't think half my audience understands that reference. What about a more modern analogy like, let's separate the Reeses' from the Milk Duds and Whoppers in that stupid Halloween mixed pack. Don't think we don't know what you're doing Hershey's! Sorry, back to work. Now you're ready to Discern!