Today’s topic is about taking personal inventory. What that means is you should always be keeping a good written record of your top skills and every major personal and job achievement throughout your life. Take this advice from me. Having held more than 20 different jobs during a long and sometimes wild life & career. One thing I’ve done my whole life is keep a list of my biggest and most important achievements both professionally and personally. For every job I’ve held or every major personal experience, I’ve written down my biggest accomplishments and sometimes my thoughts/feelings. This helps me with processing many of the most interesting, exciting, happy and sad things that have ever happened to me.
This inventory list records your personal life story. For example, in my lifetime I helped several nonprofits do many great things—to help people learn to read, to build homes for families who would not otherwise be able to own a home, to helping raise more than $250,000 to build a clock tower in the main park in a small city in The OC, and I organized one of the funnest themed annual parties in my hometown that has been held every Memorial Day weekend for 20+ years! This annual Crawdaddy Party I created with a small group of friends in the 1990s has been an annual tradition featuring several hundred friends, my family, 3 kickass bands, 10 kegs o beer, and a partidge in a pear tree!
Back to my topic— taking personal inventory by writing every skill, talent, experience, achievement, and every favorite part of your life will help you in a couple great ways. First, you could use this master list of achievements to create a resume. You could also use your personal inventory list to find out what you really love and what you really don’t love about your life. And your personal inventory also comes in handy to show your parents, friends and frenemies what makes you so special, so unique. It is written that loving others starts with loving yourself. That may sound corny but the truth is if you don’t keep track of your greatest attributes and achievements both personal and professional—who will?
