Previously in the Create Your Path program, we identified your passionate interests and strengths. By listing or using the Mind Map activity, you mapped those interests and strengths out to create a visual representation of you. Now, we want to essentially zoom out in order to zoom back in and bring it all together. The goal at this point is to identify which artifacts show your specific strengths, interests and/or values in action. We want to either find an artifact you have already created – perhaps without knowingly building an artifact – or create a new one that represents your experiences.
What is an artifact? Here is how the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it:
a : something created by humans usually for a practical purpose; especially : an object remaining from a particular period
b : something characteristic of or resulting from a particular human institution, period, trend, or individual
We can create our own artifacts that visually show our own lives. An artifact is helpful, because it helps both us and others to understand through the visual or object. In our digital era, an artifact could be a webpage, comic, blog post, audio file, slide, or video. Artifacts like these are easy to create and equally powerful to help you understand and share your story.
At the next level, you can be purposeful about your creation and use of your personal artifacts. I recommend using your artifact to show and tell the story of your strengths, interests and values in action. They are great to include in portfolios, or to bring to interviews and presentations. An artifact will make it easy to portray that story to others. The most important thing is to gain more insight and clarity into these aspects of you that are working together, how they fit together, and how they align to create a flow experience where you are at your best. Maybe your artifact showcases one of those key experiences we looked at earlier in the Create Your Path program.
This article is taken from the online video-based program Create Your Path. Sign up for a free sample workshop from the program here, see details on the full program at InnovateYourself.com, and see other programs, speeches, and more at DarinEich.com