What are the 5 “D’s” of Self Discovery?
Posted on May 17, 2021 by Medha Johnson, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
In your journey of growth and development, have you ever wondered what an effective path looks like? I invite you to read about my discovery journey.
What are the 5 “D’s” of Self Discovery? Part 1
In my personal journey of growth and development, I have encountered this concept of the personal 5 “D’s”. If you do a Google search, you find the 3 and 5 D’s of Success, which are listed as Desire, Determination, Dedication, Discipline and Diversity or some slight variation of these. However, the list I work with is slightly different. It is Direction; Departure; Discovery; Destination and Distillation. I invite you to follow along with me in my learning as it relates to each of the personal “D’s”.
Direction – This seems to be fairly straight forward. The dictionary defines it as:
• a course along which someone or something moves.
• the management or guidance of someone or something.
We all want to know what direction we are going, be it broadly stated “in life” or “in my career”. For many, this seems to be an early life focus. If you read my blog on the Fifth Season, this would seem to align with a “Summer” of life focus. I think it is a concept we actually revisit many times during our life. It is the rare individual who picks a direction and sticks with it fully for their entire life. Don’t get too caught at this point in details. For example, you may choose to study law, pass the bar and practice this profession for your entire life; however, I would bet that in other areas of your life you experienced a lot more diversity and uncertainty. Think location, family, spiritual, friendships, and travel, all of the other aspects of your life where you have perhaps less of a fixed strategy. Most of us are encouraged to set career goals and then regularly check in. This aligns with the above definitions. But where else in your life do you apply this same methodology?
What if I were to challenge you to think about Direction as Vision? How do you know what direction to go, if you don’t know what it is you are looking for? Most of us take actions that we believe will move us in the “right” direction. We choose a job, or community, or some other aspect of our life and then see where that action takes us. My question is, how would it be different for you if you stopped, thought about this area of your life, and created a vision for what you want in that area? If you have a vision for it, you have a direction. If you have done any work with visions, you are probably aware that visions always keep you moving forward. They are less of an achievable target and more of an aspiration.
