DISCOVER YOUR CAREER DNA

BusinessBlog Post

Apr 10

I’m sure you may be asking yourself, what is a “Career DNA?”

It is a term and method I coined as “evidence of environmental occurrences of your unique journey” throughout your hobby, habits, and/or working lifetime. These are the traits acquired or paused by larger influences impacting your choices that have disrupted and/or course-corrected your career to where it is today and where it’s going tomorrow. Knowing your Career DNA can help you formulate a purpose statement, refine your personal brand vision, and “understand the WHY” behind you.

Below is my C-DNA path as an example; feel free to read through or skip ahead. However, I will reference my story for examples of evidence. Then I’ll show you how you can outline your Career DNA and find the evidence in your life to define your multi-passionate pursuit.

My Career DNA: Since I was a young girl, I have had endless evidence that my creative pursuits were always centered around specific themes, designing, artistic creation, and invention. These interests led me to fashion, modeling, hair/makeup styling, and brand design. However, what took more time to flush out was my business and communication skills. Fast forward to just after 9/11, I departed the city and fashion industry for a change. The city was uncertain, and having lived in Chelsea at the time, I felt a need for security. I relocated and became a Mortgage Broker. Being in this new industry, I was kind of a fish out of the water, as most saw me as a “Sex in the City” character, too fashionable for the business of mortgages. Many even suggested I pursue real estate sales, as I had a “face” for that. But I pressed on nonetheless; I was supportive of my clients and helped them finance their starter homes or refinance to a better financial future. I was in the role for about a year and a half when the fashion bug began to bite again. The city was stabilizing, and I started returning for castings between my morning and evening meetings with clients. Eventually, I did return to fashion as a primary pursuit after three years as a mortgage broker. Still, the lessons I learned during my time in the mortgage industry would last a lifetime. Returning to fashion and modeling was a process, and the skill of reinvention was necessary, a skill that I've applied throughout several stages of my professional career. I’ve reinvented my career and brand during times of deep personal and professional changes. During one reinvention, I sought to become a licensed stylist further to enhance my on/off-camera fashion industry pursuits. Then a big life milestone happened, and I started a family, which made me rethink my purpose altogether. I pursued a career in education within the beauty industry. Several years later, another powerful personal life event would make way for a career as a digital marketer, along with daughter number two. Ultimately, all roads led to the work I do today as a brand strategist, web designer, and online business educator.

Now let’s see how to apply the C-DNA.

Unlocking your C-DNA:

Now that you’ve read a brief rundown of my C-DNA, we can get to unlocking yours. Using a timeline method, I want you to list out every pursuit that brought you joy or that you had a clearly definable interest in. That’s everything from comic book collecting as a kid to hobbies as a youth t to your latest interests as an adult. Whatever is evident regarding your attention and joyful energy in your life. Please also include any exuberant one-off moments that stand out in your mind. Moments that made you feel incredible that you didn’t think were possible and jot down the feelings that came from that.

Now that you’ve timeline and defined each of your passion pursuits and one-off exuberant moments, let’s look for environmental changes that caused you to move towards or away from those things in your timeline; this is what I call environmental factors. These are important to recognize because it allows us to see the impact of those factors and the importance of why you moved forward or away from your passion pursuits.

For example, I left NYC after 9/11 for safety and security. At the time, I didn’t have the conscious mind to realize that a lack of security would lead me to abandon my passions and drastically switch careers. Today, I empathize with my former self and come to terms with her decisions. I utilize the evidence I’ve learned from that experience that when my safety feels jeopardized, my knee-jerk reaction may be to abandon my passion for a protective solution. But before I validate this evidence as a truth in my life, I have to see if there is evidence of this kind of “like” behavior elsewhere in my timeline.

Once evidence is found as reoccurring themes, you can note them as an environmental evidence action.

Once your passion pursuits, one-off moments, and environmental influences are defined, you can begin to bucket word themes from each of those groups.

Using my example: my C-DNA themes of design, creativity, service, exploration, and education come up as passions for me; I have found many points of evidence throughout my timeline. My one-off moments included public speaking, event planning, and curating experiences. The environmental evidence of my life includes avoidance as it pertains to my security and/or career pivots when faced with powerful personal or professional life choices.

But before you begin to refine your word buckets, you want to first to understand that environmental evidence has two important uses. First, we now know what moves us forward to pursuing our biggest dreams and what will derail future pursuits if we are not conscious to course correct them when they come up. And let’s face it, life gets hard for everyone at some point or another, and we need to know how to face our deepest truths in a conscious and loving way, taking the evidence we’ve found to heal and grow stronger from.

The second use of environmental evidence is to help others with similar challenges. You now have the knowledge to provide insight, empathy, solutions, or products to help resolve challenges for others.

Using my example: I use my applied evidence by helping multi-passionate entrepreneurs pursue their dreams despite the challenges they may face in their professional or personal lives. I recognize avoidance in myself (and can relate), offering support and encouragement without judgment. This is a vulnerable space that I honor in others and in myself.

YOU, TOO, CAN TURN A CHALLENGE INTO STRENGTH AND USE IT TO EMPOWER OTHERS THROUGH

YOUR CAREER CHOICES, SERVICES, AND MORE.

Now for the fun part…

You’ve worked through environmental challenges and are ready to define your C-DNA!

So I want you to think through your word bucket themes and see if patterns or commonalities within them come up, but make sure to keep the buckets separate for now. However, you are likely to find overlap with a few words from group to group, and some words may have different meanings within the different buckets. If certain words don’t have a common theme to the larger grouping, that’s ok too, as they will become clearer as you dive into the process. Once you have drilled down your word buckets, see if you can turn those words into a mantra statement and a passion theme of truth for you.

Using my example: I initially had word themes that were easily identifiable, such as design, art, decorating, crafting, curiosity, and play. But going more deeply, what came through was education, teaching, learning, exploring, helpfulness, joy, support, and meaningful connections, among many others.

My passion theme is: “Creating emotional connections through design, exploration, joyful communication, and meaningful exchanges brings me unbridled creative joy. I feel inspired and in a state of flow when my energy stems from curiosity, creation, and collaboration.” When I embody this statement, work doesn’t feel like work; it feels like exuberance. When applied to my brand vision, it becomes the due north plan towards a creative and collaborative space of ideas. This is the purest version of myself and my brand.

My mantra statement from my C-DNA discovery is: “I’m a person of service who gets joy from making others happy. I work best when I’m solving problems, sharing ideas, and inspiring people to find that joy in their truest pursuits. I am a tireless worker when I am doing what I love, and what I love is being creative in various mediums, whether personal or professional. Self-care and security is the most important thing I can do to honor my passions and maintain balance in my life and business.”

What does your C-DNA mantra say about you?

Were you able to come up with a passion theme and a mantra?

What were your common patterns of environmental evidence?

Whatever you have unearthed from your own path, know that this is just the first step to understanding your deeper truths and finding the things that you light up. Hopefully, you now have a clear statement to drive your passions forward should you wonder, “Where do I go next” in your personal or professional life? Revisit your C-DNA; the answers are right there for you to discover and take action to take the next step. Ultimately, what brings you joy will provide endless energy to pursue your goals and dreams. Having an understanding of what motivates you and what may deter you can allow you to take steps towards gratifying work and fulfilling life.