For followers of Your Creative Ally and my newsletter you may have heard a tid bit about Michelle Ward and how amazingly awesome-sauce she is a few times. Now, I have had the privilege of working through her wonderful workbook, Operation: Creative Career Cheer!, and I have some awesome nuggets to share with you!
At first glance I really didn’t think I needed this workbook. I already did a round of coaching with Michelle when I first started working as a virtual assistant so I was familiar with her worksheets and the way she worked. Plus, I really kind of have my career all figured out and I’m not working in a soul sucking corporate position that I am trying to get away from.
BUT (and it’s a big but…) I realized by going through the worksheets and the exercises that I really wasn’t fulling my passions and bringing them into my life.Sure I have a great job where I can stay at home and take care of my daughter, help awesome people and make a little bit of money, but a long the way I seemed to have lost what my true passions were.
While working through the workbook I realized there were a lot of things I could change in my business as well as in my personal life to make sure those passions were finding their way back into my life.
If you haven’t worked with a life coach (or really, even if you have in my case) the first few worksheets will be SO important for you. Finding your interests and then figuring out how those interests can morph together with your values is a big stepping stone to creating your ideal life/job/business.
My favorite worksheet was Peanut Butter Jelly Time (did I mention she’s hilarious and all of the worksheet titles are fun and quirky?!) where you start “mashing together your Skills & Interests” to find possible careers that will fit for you! Like I said, I wasn’t going into this to find a new career but by doing this exercise I was able to see how I might be able to add some additional offerings to my business as well as some side projects that would bring up my passions again! Hurray for more work for me! Wait…I need more coffee…
Pros and Cons for the Workbook
Pros:
- Beautiful artwork throughout the workbook byJess Swift
- The worksheets really make you stop and think and work through them. My advice is to work through them in sections and don’t try to do them all at the same time.
- When I was done, I really had something concrete that I could look at and work with as I move forward.
- Really a fabulous workbook for anyone looking for a career change.
- Also, equally great for rediscovering your passions which is what I really took away from this process!
Cons:
- The whole workbook is written in rhyme. It’s cute but gets kind of annoying after awhile.
- While the artwork really is beautiful I didn’t get to experience it because I printed the worksheets out to work through them, and color printing is expensive so it was all in black and white.
- The workbook took me about 4 hours (in two sessions) to go through and I didn’t go through the last few sections because they are really geared towards the career change process. I highly recommend setting up some sessions with yourself to go through the workbook because I kind of burned myself out going through it all together.
I highly recommend Operation: Creative Career Cheer!to anyone who is looking for a jump start in their business or anyone who is ready to find a career that is whole heartily YOU!
