Tools of the Trade

What Are Your Tools of the Trade?

• Are they honed, clean and ready to use or are they rusty and dull? 
• Do you know where they are?
• Did you share them with someone else and never ask for them back?
• Have you forgotten how to use your tools?
• Have you concluded those tools are obsolete and useless?

Asking these questions is just one way we get started with life guidance. If we're talking career guidance, the tools will be specific to what you do, or what you once were trained to do if you've left that career area.

Whether or not you want to work in the field for which your tools were obtained, they may just come in handy in a new field. Let's take a look in your toolbox and see what we can find there that will translate into use in the area you hope to move into.

Here's an example. You went to culinary school and were trained as a chef. For some reason you gave it up. Let's say you got married, had a couple of kids and stopped working. You have a nifty German knife bag filled with knives in the basement. You have a toque and smock. So we begin:

You: I'm sick of staying at home. I need to be productive again, but I don't know where to start.

Shielagh: if you could do anything in the world, what would you do?

You: I have no idea. That's why I need your guidance. I was a chef--no, I was a cook--in a big restaurant, seriously hectic and on my feet all day. All I know how to do is cook, and to be honest, I'm sick of cooking for my husband and my picky kids. Okay, he's picky, too. I hate cooking for picky eaters. It gets me really mad! So what good is it if I can whip up an amazing stir-fry of julienned root vegetables with aioli reduction on a bed of quinoa if I'm the only one who eats it? They want hot dogs and tater tots. I don't even eat hot dogs anymore.

Shielagh: Okay, I get the picture. Here's where we start. Have a smartphone? 

You: Yeah.

Shielagh: I want you to gather all the tools of that trade together. Get everything out and take a photo with them all in one spot, on a cleared counter, dining table or even your bed. Arrange it different ways and take more photos. Put on your toque and smock and take a selfie. Before our next session, I want you to email these photos to me, and then write a page or less about how you felt handling your tools, and how you felt wearing the uniform. Send me that, too.

So that's how we might start trying to get at the root of the problem. You would get out the tools of your trade, handle them and ideas would pop into your mind. Memories, old dreams, good times, bad times, deferred goals, what you miss and what you would never want to do again. All of it. And then we take a good hard look at it together. One of my favorite tools in my work as a guide is the "pros and cons list."

You're standing at the crossroads. You, the erstwhile chef (or cook), might decide to take a nutrition course online or at the community college and branch out into becoming a personal chef preparing healthy foods for someone with the money but no time. In fact, you might add an accounting course for the entrepreneur so you could handle the business end of working for yourself.

What are the tools of your trade?