Mining the Treasures of Your Professional Experience

Each of us holds a great, untold tale.  It’s the story of our lives at work.  The uncountable minutes of making and doing, planning and considering, finishing and judging; that swirling sequence of work projects and occupational experiences.   Have you taken the time to consider its immense influence on your public self?  Have I?  Do we know our story of work in its wholeness, with themes and patterns recognized and celebrated?  For most of us, it simply grinds on, follows a linear time-path; remembered as a series of anecdotes punctuated by stress and achievement.

Certainly, we all have “highlight” moments we can recount -- and often and repetitively do so.  “Highlights” aren’t the story, though.  They’re just a lop-sided summary.   You can’t learn much from a summary, you must get into the details and the deep patterns to find anything of use. Like a miner, you are going to need strong tools and lots of energy for this labor.  And, maybe, some luck.  If you try to uncover the story of your life as a working person, you’ll unearth memories and connections of considerable value--not just the surface glimmerings of a lop-sided summary.

All good work stories begin with the details of one’s experience.  Generalized description isn’t a story-- it’s a resume.  Resumes are fine, but they cannot reveal the way values and behaviors took shape in your experience as a worker.  Only a story can do that.   It begins with your first work experience.  No need to skip things and stampede into the present time.  Since the first-step in proper mining is prospecting, we’ll use it as the first-step in finding your experiential treasure trove.   It’s there, somewhere in the body-mind ready to be discovered.   How will you describe it?  It doesn’t matter if it was paid or unpaid, only that your own time and energy was given to a task not self-chosen.  Think about that experience, take the time to remember it.  Now, it’s time to tell the story.  I think writing your story of work is preferable to speaking it, but that may be just my own bias.  If you do use speech instead of writing, make sure you record it, listen to its details and sequence.  The tale of your first work experience is like a vein of gold ore.  Write down (or speak) the what/where/when part of the story fully.  Ask yourself about the skills used, the emotional memories, the people you worked with, and pinpoint anything you consciously learned. 

My own first paid work experience happened about age 12, when my friend and I were “hired” to put warning stickers on cans of lead paint at the local hardware store. The job involved climbing ladders to reach cans stored on very high shelves.  I remember the air was very warm, and the room was noisy.  We got a dime for every empty sheet; worked for three hours then blew the whole thing on milkshakes and fries. 

How to “mine” this experiential treasure to identify what I learned, and what I may have become from it?  Let’s begin by noticing the skills, the action-base, of the work.  At first glance, there don’t really seem to be any of importance: sticking labels on paint cans.  However, both the physical and cultural settings are rich in clues about meaning.   First, this was a dangerous job.  Children climbing ladders holding sheets of slippery stickers, and reaching into the darkness of high shelving from a shaky balance point over and over again.  This is the context of the experience, and must be articulated.  How did I feel about doing such a dangerous job?  Frankly, I didn’t think much about it, was happy to have the opportunity to make a little money of my own.  It’s good to realize that about myself, it’s helpful to see an experiential viewpoint taking shape. 

Is there evidence here, in this short experience, of skills and character traits which might be significant to the overall story of my working life?  Certainly, the action shows determination, a kind of embryonic hardihood; also a streak of foolishness and impetuosity.  Further, to do the work properly we needed to be organized, do our best to manage things so the job got done and we had enough empty sheets to get our milkshake money.   All of these traits can be explored, considered as possible themes in a life of working, and the eventual construction of my professional sense of self.   It’s not a stretch for me to identify the times I’ve been impetuous at work, even foolish.  In a similar vein, I’ve tapped into my inner sense of hardihood to develop complex projects and assessments, and to withstand trials.  Did those qualities first emerge in that hardware store’s backroom up on that ladder?  Maybe not, but I can’t discount the possibility.  Are those traits still with me and, if so, how do I want to handle them now at this point in my working life? 

To do experiential “mining” properly, it’s important to understand that the personal you is not a separate entity from the professional you.  You’re all one person.  Does this sound obvious?  It isn’t always so.   Years ago, I taught a graduate seminar to a cohort of steel workers in Indiana.  They were studying for their master’s degree as part of a retirement preparation plan funded by the union.  All of these students had worked at the steel mill since the age of 17 or 18. They described their initial wonder of having money, and the fun of spending it.  Once they bought houses and cars and stereos, however, they found it difficult to leave even as they felt increasingly alienated from the work.  Every seminar participant believed his “real” self was the one who lived outside the plant, in the house to which to he returned after the whistle blew and the factory shift was done.  This belief caused a psychological disruption between the self working at the mill and the one who experienced life away from it.   Tragically, they weren’t able to “mine” their 30 years’ experience to reveal skills, values, lessons learned, and core behaviors.   They struggled to identify the array of practical and intellectual competencies they’d acquired.  We made some headway but much of those experiential treasures stayed hidden.   I fear their retirement lives may have followed a similar pattern of alienation.

I raise the steel workers’ psychological situation because it is not rare—it may be extreme, but it is not unusual.  As a whole, Americans tend to be dissatisfied with their jobs.  I’m not judging that, only pointing to how those feelings may drive a wedge between the activity of work and our ability to see the meaning of it from a holistic perspective.  In the meaning of our actions, decisions, risks, goals and aspirations we can find ourselves, integrate aspects, and continue to grow. 

How does your story of work begin?  Can you spot now-familiar themes and values in their earliest forms?  Let me encourage you to try.  Just stay with the beginnings for now.  They are rich in possibility and latent wisdom.  As you’re ready, move further into that vein of gold ore; explore who you are, and how your experiences became this-or-that factor of influence on your professional identity.   If you’re thinking of shifting gears professionally, or simply want to explore current conditions, taking a miner’s approach to your experiential storehouse may uncover just the wonder you’re looking for.

Reach out to learn more about mining your rich supply of experience.