Core Personal Projects: The Key to Future Happiness?

Hello fellow introverts! As I'm sure all of you are now aware, I have read Susan Cain's fantastic book 'Quiet'. This is yet another post relating back to one of the many things this book has taught me.

I'm sure I'm not the only one here who wants a happy life. As part of my happy life I want a job that I truly enjoy, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that either. However when I think about all the potential jobs out there the majority of them don't look that appealing to me. I know there are a number of aspects that I would not enjoy, and as a result I would end up hating my job. For example, I could never work in retail. I know myself, and I know that I would not be able to handle small talk at the tills and challenging customers. Just the thought of having such a job fills me with dread. And the same goes for higher paying jobs, deemed as more successful than retail, because I know a lot of them involve presentations.

Although I really want a job that I love, it just wasn't looking like I was going to be able to have that. That was until Susan Cain pointed out that introverts work with passion and enjoyment when they're working on something they really care about. She referred to the things that individuals care about as Core Personal Projects (CPPs). According to the book introverts don't mind, or even find it hard, acting in an extroverted way when they have to give a presentation relating to something they truly care about. I can totally relate to this. Once you get me talking about something I feel very strongly about, I talk with a great deal of passion, and it's pretty hard to shut me up -although telling me you 'really don't care' usually works.

A little later on she explains the three steps you can take in order to find out what your CPPs are. So, setting the book aside and grabbing a notepad and pen, I began work on figuring out what my CPPs were. I'm not sure how well I did at identifying them, but I managed to piece together four CPPs that I named: Personal Life Goals, Social Justice, Organisational/Planning Roles, and Statistics and Analysis -which is more of a sub-CPP of Organisational/Planning Roles than a stand-alone one.

So hopefully now that I've been enlightened a little, I stand more of a chance of landing the perfect job once I've graduated. And hopefully it stays that way, as the idea of unstable employment and being unemployed makes me feel pretty anxious.

If you would like to work out your Core Personal Projects then just follow these three steps, as detailed in 'Quiet':

1. What things did you love doing as a child? As a child what did you say you wanted to be when you grew up? -Analyse them for deeper meanings. 
2. What sort of work do you usually gravitate towards?
3. What things are you envious of?

From your answers to these three questions you can slowly group common phrases together and thus identify your Core Personal Projects.

For anyone interested in doing so, I wish you luck. Hopefully my brief instructions were clear enough without me adding examples. And if you'd be willing to share your CPPS, I'd love to hear what you came up with in the comments!

-Hannah. :)