I am in the visioning business for a living.  My greatest pleasure is opening new possibilities for others, whether it be for one person or the likes of a fortune 100 corporation.  A part of that process is really taking stock of where things stand in the present.  In this way we attempt to gain a clearer way of giving real credit to what is so.  Often a new set of eyes is required to see what is happening in our fast changing world.  It could be that by focusing on your work from different angles you can understand your real skills in completely new ways.  Working over your resume' is a revealing experience !

Each time I am asked to perform the visioning service there usually comes the request to explain why I might be qualified to lead such a significant pathfinding expedition.  Of course, there is the usual request for the resume'.  It's not needed for the person requesting the service, you see, it's for the boss or the senior management team....the non-believers.

Nevertheless, since I am an aggressive learner, it seems like a perpetual art to keep my resume' and  skills profile up to date.   And, lately it has felt  like the standard written ways of understanding who I am  and how I am valuable is not, in any way, an honest reflection of what people need to know.   I am completely sure that the academic credentials that adorn the classic resume' are nearly the least useful ways of describing my competence.  The people who pursued grades and degrees have sometimes been among the least competent people I know.  Corporations have never once asked me  for those credentials.  They want work experience and more.

So, early on I  began using the resume' to take stock of the other ways I might describe my value and competence to others.  It was a creative exercise.  The first breakthrough came in placing a topical description of my actual service next to the corporate clients I have served in the past... like:    visioning ....for General Motors. 

 Although I was still sure that this technique was a long way from explaining my real qualifications, it did at least give the new clients a way to insure that the services had at least been practiced on others and they presumably had also exercised some kind of screening procedure first.  Any blame could now be shared with others.  I personally found some meaning in the inquiry. 

The next rewrite included some specific and very practical descriptions of my actual skills.  The list included things like:  can navigate in 50 cities on the planet without a map.....has over 2 million miles on his frequent flier record....carries nearly a gigabyte of portable color memory on his hip. 
To me, I was now beginning to really distinguish myself from the field, and yet ....it seemed I was still miles off target.  The real reward was simply that I had now by-passed the traditional  categories I had been experiencing with the original resume' protocols I had attempted. 
 
My next pass was an attempt to really get at the range of pure experience I had amassed.  So, in addition to the clients' names, I began adding specific adventures that would speak more elegantly of any wisdom I might have gained as a result of my greater exposure to the work.  This was fun ... and added some descriptions like:  played drums in a gamelon band in Burma, hunted with the Maasai, led paratroopers in combat.  Now we were beginning to add some character to this set of descriptions.  I am by this time getting really interested in peeling the onion back further and further to find out who was actually present for duty in my body...!   The process is growing on me and out of me. 

Now I  reach further by asking questions that help me understand who I am, incidently by taking stock of what I really valued in others.  The  categorical winner was the highly valuable capability to connect in a relationship with others  and create trust and nearly instant rapport with people.  I found that from that place, the honesty and bone deep needs of any situation surfaced everytime. But, if I was considered as one who had that capability, in what manner could I explain that  on a resume'?

Before enumerating the number and types of professionally intimate relationships I had with others,  I concluded that it would only be properly understood after a brief but personal connection with the client about to read the resume'.  Fortunately, we have powerfully intimate instruments to work with in these times, like the telephone for connecting with people.    Through the telephone, listeners can experience minute variations in tone, hear subtle breathing changes and even feel vibrations spoken directly into the inner ear at point blank range.  This was a case ofprofessional  intimacy, after all, and must be understood clearly as such.  But, discovering the number of personal intimate relationships I  have and their unique qualities  set me off on a new journey.  Now, my inquiry process was actually directing my  adventure into the future. 

Taking stock was leading me to take new steps.

So, as a result of valuing intimacy in a new way, I decided to create a whole new set of very intimate relationships !   In addition to professional intimacy, I fashioned categories like gender intimacy with my men's group, and emotional intimacy with several people using the tools of Robert A. Masters (RAMOS).  Then there was a really delightful new physical intimacy with dancing partners and contact improv playmates.  This is the kind of "suprasexual" intimacy that Barbara Marx Hubbard speaks about.  She speaks of vocational arousal.   In truth, it could be the technology of love that the planet has been waiting for so long.   For me, the channels of intimacy have continued to expand among people of like mind.

 The circle continues to grow.  In an interesting way, a lot of pressure has been removed from my primary partnership.  The other heartful experiences in my circle of friendships have actually boosted the quality of the primary partnership.    It seems to me, marriage, our only current social convention has placed way too many expectations on relationships in two's. 

Next, I stumbled into another category of value that sort of surprised me.  But, the questions again changed the direction of my life.  Since everyone I knew thought that taking care of the planet was a new but very primary value, now I asked myself how I would describe my personal contribution to the Earth itself. After a fashion, I was able to claim that I had managed to place over one hundred acres of land into a state of primal and protected forest.  Then several years later I could claim that I had personally put almost 300 specific plants in the ground using the systems approach called permaculture created by Bill Mollison of Tasmania.  Again, I was aware that this information did not necessarily belong in every resume' that I sent out, but there was deep satisfaction in having noticed the gap and filling it.  It seemed like a bio, I mean a real BIO.  It was a comment about character.

Then, I recalled that part of my genuine worth could be measured by talking about my children. There again, in certain quarters the quality of my children's success would definitely be a measure of my abilities...two well-balanced young adults, both financially solvent and committed to lifelong learning.  Then I ran into the whole business of qualitative description again ...graduated from, etc.  Still again, I was so happy for the chance to revisit the parenting  department and I was naturally provoked to see if there was anything more that I could do to support my kids in their adventure.  The tool was beginning to be clear about balance.

The same kind of result came from asking the question about what, if any, kind of contribution I had made to the cultural situation around me.   That led to a lot of my current work in social architecture, most of it conceptual and contained in the articles of a bioregional newspaper.   But the new category led me to redefine my current profession.

The inquiry was now driving me to a very rewarding balance in my concept of myself.  I was acquiring meaning .  It felt really rewarding.  The self-esteem went way up and not only was the quality of my written resume' improving, but I was growing much more agile at explaining myself verbally.  I could now much better answer the question:  WHO AM I AND HOW AM I SPENDING THIS PRECIOUS LIFETIME?

But, there is more.  One day, while continuing my intermittent but enjoyable habit of taking stock, I happened to ask a question about the quality of my knowledge base.  After some sobering thoughts about how really little I actually knew, I realized how really little we know as a civilization and as a planet.  It seems from listening to the news day after day that we have everything just about figured out.  Then you ask the question about our relationships with the non-human life on this planet... 

It's embarrassing to realize how little we know about the other sentient life around us.  Three quarters of it is underwater.  We still frame our understanding of animals based on whether they are like us, or could be.  Never mind the qualities they have in a pure state.  What do we really know about them?  Then there's the embarrassing questions about what we are made of and where we really came from?  My GOD we really know so very little.

Then, my thoughts extended to the magic that we are a part of in every way.... The beauty of our lives as sentient beings, the mystery of our evolving relationship with the planet and the local universe, the magic of the encounters we have with our own intuition.  It wasn't quite an epiphany ....but in terms of taking stock....we really own very little of that connection.  Once realizing that I was now completely awed by the grand situation of which I was a part....I wanted to describe that awareness in the resume' also.  I am really hooked on the process, you see.

I began to simmer.  Then the realization began to take a deeper hold.  Then like a freight train it hit me....I am a huge and deeply committed spiritual being.    The process has finally uncovered a major capacity, heretofor not noticed.

This changed everything.  The writing on the resume' remained the same but the paper it was printed on turned to gold. 

Taking stock is more than just an inventory.    This process caused me to begin a whole new examination of my capabilities and shortfalls.   In the end it catapulted me into exciting and  ground breaking territory.    So, it is just another way to better construct a presence that can be consciously developed.