I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was

August 7, 1995
Therapist Sher's guide to discovering and attaining personal and career goals was a PW bestseller for five weeks.

February 28, 1994
As a prequel to her Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want , career counselor Sher, writing with freelancer Smith, addresses the need to determine one's goals before pursuing them. Working from the assumption that people do best at endeavors they are drawn to, the authors offer a combination of self-analytic techniques and practical exercises to frustrated job-seekers and bored workers to help them discern their talents. Sher and Smith observe that people get stuck in vocational ruts for many reasons: fear of success, aversion to risk, asking too much (or too little) of a job, even being in the wrong field. They urge readers to look into their pasts to find the origin of the ``block'' that keeps them from moving out of the wrong job. Calling on case histories and a large dose of humor, the authors present exercises that include visualizations and lots of writing (keeping an ``autonomy notebook'' and answering want ads). Readers following the advice here may not discover a beeline to the perfect job, but they will be better acquainted with their personal likes and strengths. Author tour.