How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success (Touchstone Books (Paperback))

Book was in excellent condition on quick receipt. A well written and thought provoking book to determine how to choose a career fit for your personality and strengths written by a career coach. Great excercises to get your thought organized.

Fast shipping! Book in great condition. Half way through reading this and it is a very good book if you feel lost on what career you want to pursue. It's a book that helps you get to know yourself a little better. It helps to guide you into that perfect career for you, while taking into account your personality type, interests, abilities, and values. Thanks!

I bought this book after coming across resume writing advice at the RockWell Institute website and reading reviews here at the store. I was given the impression that this book contains more resume writing advice plus formatting examples.

This is a fairly thick book and it is very useful for people, especially young people who want to find out what suit them best. However I was disappointed that the resume writing section has little more beyond what was freely available on their website.

Still I'll give it 4 stars for the help it can give. I am definitely keeping my copy for future reference. People who plan to read this book should be prepared to put in some hard work (in doing the exercises) to learn more about themselves.

Career counseling books always dangle the "perfect" career in front of readers knowing full well that at least 99 percent of Americans do not have and probably will never have a perfect job. According to this author the benefits of a perfect job seem to be unlimited: a longer, better, and more vital life; an elevated self-esteem and sense of humor; a life that counts; etc. Of course most of us by that standard are leading substantially diminished lives. But all is not lost because it is only your lack of courage or cynicism that prevents you from reaching the rarified air of the perfect career. The author's key question is, "Are You Up For It?" Can you give yourself up totally in your perfect job quest to coaching either via this book or a professional, which dovetails nicely with the author's career counseling business.
The path that the perfect job seeker must follow is daunting to say the least. Three primary lists of "wants, requirements and commitments, and questions" are to be maintained in a large notebook and filled via a rather vaguely specified manner with any number of self-assessments in such areas as your innate capabilities, personality, traits, decision-making technique, etc as well as assessments about the external world.
The biggest problem with the entire approach is that the author attributes far more expertise to people in assessing themselves and in knowing and controlling their environments than they have or even could have. Personalities, traits, and other personal characteristic often do not fall clearly on one side of the fence. In using the Myers-Briggs Indicator one may be both intuitive and sensory oriented or use both perception and judgment. Or it is quite conceivable that one is comfortable using both spatial and non-spatial or concrete and abstract tendencies. The distinctions between tribal vs. maestro and introversion vs. extroversion seem better drawn, but mapping personality assessments into jobs is far more complex than the author indicates.
A huge shortcoming of the book is the clear implication by the author that employees or potential employees can assess and control workplaces sufficiently to find perpetual job happiness. Workplaces in the U.S. have never worked that way. Your true happiness is not of much concern to employers. Few, if any, workplaces have formal structures in place with legal-like rights that permit employees to modify both the broader work environment as well the specific nature of their jobs. As it is now, most, if not all, of the adaptation must be made by the employee which runs counter to the main argument that the employee should not be doing what he or she is not wired for. Most jobs upon entry probably cannot be a perfect fit unless one is just lucky. The key is the flexibility to change the job and the environment to suit the person and still be an asset to the company.
The book has areas that could be applied more broadly than just in finding the perfect job. The author's model that depicts human behavior as going through cognitive filters and being subsequently modified via feedback from the comparison of actual versus intended consequences of the original behavior is interesting. The idea of executing a cycle of accomplishment of creation, action, and completion by creating goals and implementing projects has a very practical ring to it. The author also has an interesting chapter on the life-games that people play including the notion of one or more "master" games.
In lieu of suggesting that the lack of job happiness is due to poor personal assessment capabilities or strategies the author could have described the situation in European countries where high school age kids are permitted to sample apprentice programs and select one if so inclined. In addition some European countries have regional employment centers that perform some of the functions of assessing skills, paying for new or additional training, and placing workers. There is the recognition that requiring the unemployed to fend for their own has its limitations.
The author acknowledges "Given sufficient intelligence, the average human can do just about anything with reasonable competence." But what he did not say is that given adequate institutional support from an educational system, employment centers, and from a formal system of employee empowerment, most people would probably be able to find or create pleasing work. Dangling the "perfect job" concept in front of people without realistic tools or power to get there is not particularly helpful.

It's basically a motivational book. Within the motivational genera it's actually pretty good. But it wasn't what I was looking for.

I read the first chapter, maybe a little more, skimmed the rest of the book and put it aside.

There's mention of a hundred self tests in the description. One of these tests was written within the first chapter. I didn't come across any of the other tests. I'm guessing they were interspersed within the body of the text within various chapters. If there were a way to just get to a test and evaluation section, I would have taken the tests.

The author is definitely an expert in the subject of the book and is a very good writer. If you like reading motivational material, this will be a great book for you. However, if you're looking for a practical guide with tests and a straight forward program, this isn't it.

I received the book entitled: "The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career..." This publication has some very valuable information and should be a great resource for me, as I contemplate changing my current career.

This book is basically a collection of various reflective writing activities you can do. There does not seem to be a cohesive or logical sequence to the activities, and some of them seem like rehashed variations of each other. If you're looking for a step-by-step guide to revealing good career choices for you, this isn't it.

What a great way to distract yourself from taking legitimate action. I would spend two hours going through a chapter writing out paperwork that ended up feeling pretty meaningless. It may be helpful for you, and at the very least, it has a sense of humor. I gave up a third of the way through.

A great book that helped me realize certain things about myself, but honestly, my advice is to quit soul searching about what your perfect dream job will be. I think us millennials do too much sitting around thinking and not enough work. I've had enough of the job search, no job is perfect and you'll always have things about your job that you don't like - and I've held positions in non-profit arts, and the finance world. Everything has its pros and cons when you're working for somebody else.

And I was telling myself that there must be something better than this. I was looking for a book that would act a personal coach, help me to identify both the mental and physical obstacles that keep me from finding work that engages more of who I am. I was looking at the store and clicking through the career counseling books when I came across "The Pathfinder." The description of the book and the customer comments made it sound like it would provide the interactive approach I was looking for.

Now that I've read it I can tell you that I found it useful but not transformational. The author would say that I wasn't ready for the transformation. That may be true but I still think the book could have been better. My biggest complaint is that the exercises consisted of making lists. This can be useful for some things but when its applied to everything, it feels redundant and simplistic. I also found the tone condescending and overly positive. I finished the book feeling like I'm not enough of a go-getter to have the career I want. I think that the right audience for the book is sales and marketing people who love networking and making lists! The sections on figuring out your personality type and networking seemed very superficial and cobbled together from other career advice books.

On the plus side, it deals with some of the mental and emotional obstacles that make change difficult. In particular, it identified the the fears that masquerade as "being realistic" as "yeah buts." These are all the negative responses to attempts to do something new. "I could go back to school, Yeah but, it would be too expensive." For me, these are the most powerful stumbling blocks and the book doesn't try to minimize their power or their role as keeping one from committing career suicide or going into massive debt. However, the book does give some useful suggestions for how to cope with them.

Ultimately, the book was helpful in making me realize that I'm engage in a lengthy process that can't be shortened by reading one book no matter how good it is. My advise to you and myself is that if you want to change your life, take a big risk. Its not enough to just read about doing it.

I was at a lowpoint careerwise and contemplating a change when I discovered this book The Pathfinder. Through the many exercises and excellent instruction, I decided that my career was great for who I was and what I loved to do - it was the new job I had taken that had to change. From reading the book you will learn how to pursue living a life you love, how to get there from where you are today and how to design your career future.
For this book to really work for you, the exercises are a MUST! Trust me - this is how it pays off! I assure you it is worth it! You spend more time working than doing anything else (unless you are filthy rich which I am not) - shouldn't you enjoy it? This book is the blueprint to find THAT work!

I rarely write a review on books I purchased; but this book has provided me with so much insights, it's worth my time to write a recommendation here. Firstly, as my title said, it is a manual for living a happy and meaningful Life, starting with a great career.

Let's start with the review of the Rockport career design method. As an engineer by training and a highly analytical person, I found the approach of the method extremely logical. In summary, you will gather clues from all aspects of your life ( the book includes a very detailed list: from your innate ability, nature vs. nurture, preference, goals, values, workplace environment, etc.); you will then investigate the clues and YOU DECIDE what YOU WANT as your definitive career component. This is a back and forth process, which require extensive research and a decisive mind (you have to know what you want clearly - now, this is especially hard for younger people or recent graduates, I will get to this in the next paragraph). Simultaneously with the process of discovering which are your definitive career components, you are asked to list all the possible career ideas, research these jobs (the book recommends and I agree completely on informational interviews of people who hold the those job titles you're interested in). The end goal is to match your career ideas with your definitive career components and declare: This is what I am going to do !

Let's get back to why I said using the book alone may not be enough for younger people or recent graduates, myself as an example - This is also mentioned in the book. When self-assessing your natural talents and aptitudes, which requires you to think of examples, activities and experiences that you have done and decide if you possess those talents or aptitudes (or grade those talents/aptitudes on a scale). Being a younger person with limited experiences, I found it is challenging to pin point my talents accurately. In my case, I am considering the official testing program at Rockport to accurately find out what my abilities are.

As I said before, this book for me is a manual for Life in general. It provides much more than career finding. In the first 12 chapters, you will find very informative life lessons on how to make decision, conquer your Yeah-But (also known as limiting beliefs, in some forms of psychology therapy), create measurable goals and projects, the art of asking resourceful questions, research skills. Because the book packs so much information, here is my recommended strategy to use the book: read the first 12 chapter to gain a general skill set; some you may already master, but it's a nice reminder; some you may learn for the first time and will find extremely helpful. Then, starting from chapter 13, working on clues, research and build your definitive career components. It's important to re-visiting the skill set in the first 12 chapters to aid with the process.

Lastly, read chapter 6 "The Power of Commitment" very carefully because "Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness" - W.H. Murray

The time I invested in doing the exercises in this book couldn't have been better spent. I changed careers based on what I discovered and couldn't be happier with the choice. My new career (college professor) was way down the list of possibilities until I slowly revealed that this career would actually give me deep satisfaction. The best part was that I came to the same answer in a variety of ways that ranged from logical deduction to gut feeling. I'm quite a skeptic and I wouldn't have trusted the answer if I had only found it one way. It took me 5-6 months to go through the book - it's not a weekend miracle worker.

The Pathfinder is an amazing resource if you use it as intended. This is a book for you if you are 1) ready for major positive change, 2) believe that you can have anything you want, and 3) you're willing to do whatever it takes to get it. This book will deliver what it promises: a perfect career tailored to you that feels like ecstasy every day, but you have to put in the time, energy, and most importantly you have to claim full self-responsibility.

The Pathfinder is a coaching tool and it works like a charm if you are committed to getting your desired outcome. This book is for people who don't make excuses and don't blame circumstances or others for their problems. In order for you to get the maximum joy and pleasure in your career that this book can deliver, you have to be willing to challenge yourself.

Nicholas Lore makes these points clear: the book is to be used for people who can self-coach themselves. The reader must be willing to put 200% effort into each inquiry even if you don't feel like it. He also says the reader must do twenty times more career research than you normally feel comfortable with to complete the self-inquiries.

I found the whole process took me about five months to identify and choose my ideal career. Since doing so, my life has taken on a dramatic, immediate change for the better. Every day, I wake up and literally can't wait to get to work. All day long, I am thrilled to spend my time doing the work that I am doing, and I owe it to The Pathfinder.

This book has changed my life. I felt helpless, stuck in a job that I was so unhappy with. I was looking for a new career and I didn't know where to start. This book is very different from other career books, because other books give mostly concepts, provide some examples (usually success stories supporting the concepts) and a little bit of self-directed work. The "Pathfinder" is a very detailed, step-by-step program focusing on outer and inner work that will lead you to discovering a career you would enjoy. Author thought through all of the possible solutions, motivators, obstacles, discouragements and everything that you will encounter on your journey to finding a more satisfying and fulfilling career. The "Pathfinder" is very logical with spiritual twist to it (for inner self-work). The first 100 pages was a difficult read for me. I barely made through it without giving up on the book altogether. What a mistake I would have made! Starting from Chapter 2 the book just gets more interesting with each chapter. Don't rush through this book, as there is a lot of self-work involved that is crucial in discovering what you really want to do and what your values are. This is the best book so far I have seen in the market. Enjoy your purchase and a new career!

The Pathfinder is for people who are thinking about the possibility of a career change or for people who want to choose a new career - for people who are finding their current work difficult to do, boring, that do not allow their natural self-expression or for people who are finding that something is missing in their work.

The book consists of excellent inquiries that cover various essential components that are absolutely needed for designing and choosing a career that we love and fit us elegantly such as: Natural Talents, Personality Traits, Passion/Interest, Values, Purpose etc ...

There is also a set of tools given to help us deal with the commitment issues that we may have or the voices that tend to discourage us to take the actions that we need, so that, we move forward in designing and choosing a great career etc ...

Many of those tools and concepts work so well that they even can be used in solving problems for other areas of our life.

The book's main purpose resides in its practicality for people being able to really make things happen in their life by creating, designing and choosing a terrific career.

I took the Rockport Institute Career Choice program which used this book as the guide through the process. I worked my way through every exercise and it really helped me to figure out what things are holding me back, what I like and do not like in a job, and what fields I might like to work (and tons of other self-discovery happened as well!). Ultimately I was able to make a really big choice which meant a really BIG life change that I'm not sure I would have made if it had not been for the wisdom imparted in this book. I highly recommend this book for those of any age but I am in my mid-twenties and found it incredibly helpful (I also read Nicholas Lore's "What Next?" which is geared more toward my age group).

If you are ready for change your career or life direction, have the time and dedication to work through every exercise and are open-minded this book is the one for you. I am never going to part with my copy of the book because I find myself going back to it when facing difficult decisions.

Go for it!

Like so many reviewers here I absolutely love this book especially after reading so many other career books... This was the only one which resonates with me. I'm trying to find others who are working on this book to form a support group given how much information there is in this book that needs to be assimilated over so long. I've started one on facebook if you search "The Pathfinder Book by Nicholas Lore Discussion Group"

I saw this book recommended in another career book and got it from the library.....Using it for six weeks really impressed me, and now I am purchasing it for my own.

What I like about it/ why it is so useful for me:

positive, yet realistic attitude and approach
helps support my belief that I CAN have a job I love that suits me really well

fascinating exploration into how to make choices, what is free choice, so helpful

evident that it has been written from extensive experience counselling others;
feels very grounded in practical experience

GREAT and simple tools for getting in touch with wants and needs(I'm using them in all areas of my life) AND translating that into action

tools and inspiration that will be useful for me for many years, I can come back to it again and again, a rich resource

great simple guide to writing a strong resume

If there is anyone better equipped (or more entertaining) than Nicholas Lore in this field, I would like to meet him. Not only is this a great methodology for finding your true vocation in life, it contains many invaluable exercises for finding out more about what kind of person you really are. Lore stresses continually that his are not meant to be accurate psychological descriptions but rather practical working models for finding your true passion.
The sting in the tail with all such books and techniques is our built in ability to resist getting out of our comfortable sense of equilibrium. It then becomes inevitable that people become distracted from the process outlined in the book and soon find themselves drifting back into well-lit comfort zones.
The trick I think is to follow this book as accurately as possible, but FIND SUPPORT. Enroll someone else, a friend, lover co-worker or confidante and make sure that you feedback on progress within a predetermined time. The fact that so few of us wind up with jobs about which we feel passionate is symptomatic of a very real resistance to changing. The only way to get over the hurdle is to FIGHT IT.
This book has scarcely left my side for the last two years. I have discovered much, and continue to do so. Those I have recommended it to have not stopped thanking me. Of course, there is no silver bullet - but if you want it badly enough, this book is a necessity to speed you on your way.
Nicholas Lore can take you to the sweetest of waters. Buy this book and choose to drink.

For a variety of reasons, most people innocently approach their career search in the wrong way. You need to start your career search asking the BIG QUESTIONS (What do I want to do?, What are my natural talents and interests?, etc.), and I have found 'THE PATHFINDER' to be the single best book for this process. Lore has assembled a range of inquiries and approaches for self-analysis, decision-making, and implementation that I have yet to find in any other single collection.
There seems to be three types of typical career books: 1) the "how-to's" (how to write a resume, search for jobs on the internet, etc.), 2) collections of information that just scratch the surface of a topic (titles such as 'The Top 47 Jobs for the 21st Century', 'Careers in Healthcare', etc.), or 3) series of personal vignettes that may or may not relate to your situation. 'THE PATHFINDER' distinguishes itself in that it gives specific procedures for mastering the most important aspects of the career search process. It also correctly points out the relationship between your career goals and objectives in the other areas of your life.
Besides 'THE PATHFINDER', I also recommend `WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE' and 'DO WHAT YOU ARE' for required reading at the beginning stages of your career or job search. The best time to buy these books is right NOW. The research and reflection required to create a rewarding career is not easy, and can take from a couple of weeks to a few months. It is best if you can do this when you are still working, rather when the process is forced upon you. There is a good chance that you, the reader, need to purchase this book TODAY, since most people are unhappy in a job that does not fit them well.
The positive customer reviews and high sales rakings for these books attest to their usefulness. Of course, not everyone is going to find each of these books to be equally helpful, but the total investment is well worth making given the potential pay-off. Some reviewers have suggested 'Zen and the Art of Making a Living' as an alternative to 'The Pathfinder', which may better suit your taste. Best of luck in your career endeavors!

This is the bottom-up approach to career and life planning set out at length. Nicholas Lore draws on his and his institute's experience to lay out techniques for designing a new career direction to fit your goals, talents, personality, values etc and, most memorably, "how to deal with the yeah but voices in your head that keep you going back to the same ill-fitting job, day after day". The book is perhaps overly wordy, with a structure not the easiest to follow. But it is written by an acknowledged authority in the field and prospective career shifters would be wise to persevere. For the alternative top-down, demand-driven, passion-driven approach, where you identify a range of jobs that inspire you and systematically screen them for fit with your strengths, the reader should look elsewhere. But this is a landmark book in career guidance.

Vaughan Evans, business and career strategist
Author, BACKING U! A Business-Oriented Approach to Backing Your Passion and Achieving Career Success

After reading this latest edition, the two words that come to mind are thorough and effective. If you're not clear or have questions about the best career path for yourself, you WILL get clarity and certainty about everything from your most cherished job features as well as the personality traits and talents you most want to use in your next job. I really like that it also provides step-by-step methods for prioritizing those job criteria in a way that allows to focus on the components that make the career selection apparent.

Being a career coach for twenty years, I've worked with clients who have done lots of thinking and exploration about their next career path, and they're often either more confused or on information overload, and as a result, they find it almost impossible to choose and take action towards any specific career. The techniques used in The Pathfinder allow you to sift through all of the info you gather about what you want and need, and get to the bottom line job components that reveal your most fulfilling and fitting career choice. So for those of you who enjoy the do-it-yourself method, I can't think of a better book.

Because I help facilitate groups for people working towards dreams or goals (and those groups always include career changers), I read a lot from this general field. "Pathfinder" has some helpful exercises, but I would still recommend that career planners or changers start with the latest addition of "Parachute" first, as well as any of Barbara Sher's books. In fact, I was a little surprised at one reviewer's comment that Bolle's classic is just "OK" (seriously?). Nonethless, this book would be a good additional tool for someone making a major change.

After reading so many rave reviews of this book, I just had to buy it. Maybe my expectations were sky high, but I was not impressed. I found the author verbose and somewhat overbearing in tone, sorta like a drill sergeant. Y'know, all you need as motivation is a good kick in the seat of the pants.

On the plus side, the author does include a good description of various types of skills, talents, aptitudes -- some of which I had never thought of before. For example, it never occurred to me that there is more than one kind of problem=solving ability. Lore mentions analytical reasoning and diagnostic reasoning as kinds of problem-solving abilities. But the corporate world is far more comfortable with analytical reasoning (solving problems by organizing things/concepts/info in a logical sequence).

Diagnostic reasoning, on the other hand, is more intutitive, and Lore gives as an example Issac Newton's discovery of gravity when the apple fell and hit his head. An analytical reasoner, he says, would have concluded one should not sit under a tree with ripe apples when the wind blows. The corporate world is not so comfortable with diagnostic problem-solvers, as they may ferret out problems (and suggest solutions) to senior management, who may not even be aware a problem exists, and lead to the perception of this problem-solver as a boat-rocker.

Aside from a few juicy facts like these, I learned nothing that I didn't already pick up in other career book. ...

Okay, we all know the unemployment rate is nearly ten percent in the US. I have read numerous articles that say people who had have had the same job for years have been laid off, and the longer they are laid off, the harder it is to find a new job. What better time to consider new horizons? Many people have gone into fields that had looked promising in the past, such as computer programming. So now is the time to think about what you really want, and maybe bushwhack some new trails for yourself. Nick Lore can help you do it. His book is written as if he is sitting beside you, encouraging you to think about what you really want, and who you really are. Yeah, the job situation looks grim, and we need all the tools we can to deal with finding new employment. The Patherfinder is a great too for this journey.

Other than being full of very useful information, The Pathfinder has a great, conversational style, which makes reading it feel like you are talking to a buddy.
The author digs into a lot of big subjects - passion, purpose, meaning, decision making process, values - as well as specific and tactical subjects - resume, goals setting and achieving, self-inventory.

The book focuses a lot on the big career choice for the future, which is a bit outdated concept, since nowadays we tend to change jobs and careers more often and people see career more as a journey than a destination. Still, Nicholas Lore is able to tie the future to the present by clearly stating that even the planning for the future happens in the present and the present is all we have. So, at the end it all boils down to the little choices that we make in the present.

The book has a lot of information and it may be tiring to read through all the chapters, inquiries, and steps, but I'm sure it's rewarding for all the people wiling to do the heavy lifting and to get a comprehensive view of their career and the strategy for the days to come.

As a voracious reader of career- and other life-probing books, I found to my total glee that this one stands out far above most others. The content is fresh, intelligently written, and smartly laid out. The author understands the uniqueness and complexity of those seeking a career in which they will thrive most joyously, and offers up the most generous and wide-ranging array of tests and inquiries available to help you determine the work in which you would be the happiest and most fulfilled.

I can't help but feel a great generosity coming from the contents of this book--as if all the learning and wisdom that's been collected up to this point about career alignment and discernment is captured in its completeness here.

Buy this book and you will not question the author's "single-minded passion for the past 30 years... to help intelligent, complex individuals like you live remarkable lives...". I could not recommend The Pathfinder more highly.

Lore's comments are not only full of genuinely useful insights, but are a joy to read. His exercises are the best I have found in helping the reader to "know thyself." What I particularly appreciated was Lore's encouragement and honesty, because some of the exercises are hard work. Another refreshing change in his approach is that he has you taking advantage of your weaknesses rather than ignoring them or making unrealistic promises to improve in the future. He is also honest enough to tell you that if his book does not work for you, find one that does. Nicholas Lore does not claim to have all the answers or own THE ONE TRUE WAY to find your career, but he has some extraordinary exercises and insights you will find in no other book.

Nick Lore has written an original and street-savvy career guide that gets to the heart of the matter: career satisfaction comes from work based on passion. The self-tests and written exercises cut to the core to help the reader to make an inventory of deepest desires and wants and then to commit to them. I particularly liked his advice on overcoming fear (about change or approaching prospective employers). His networking approach is efficient, simple and savvy, unlike many of his contemporaries who advocate informational interviews ad infinitum. His resume format is concise and effective, but requires the reader to get serious about priorities, experience and abilities.
The book has an original, humorous style, appropriately jaundiced about conventional career changing/job hunting methods. There are many career books on the market (I think I have read most of them). Start with this one. You may find you won't need to read another.

I had been miserable in my career for eight years. This book helped me find the courage to take the necessary risks, and understand what truly energized me in my work, so that today I have a job that I didn't even know existed, but is everything I could ever hope to do in my work. I can't say this book is all it took, but it certainly was a wonderful contributing guide on my journey. Every time I see it on my bookshelf, I am grateful to Nicholas Lore for writing it.

I have found the Pathfinder one of the most humorous, down-to-earth and well-written books of any type. I have used it myself and recommend it to others. I especially value the section in the middle of the book on decision-making. I sometimes refer my coaching clients to read this section, even though we may not be discussing career change.

A caveat - this book is not for those that want practical advice after reading the book in one sitting (as some reviews noted) or as an intellectual exercise about career change. Actually doing the inquiries over a period of time produces quite a different experience (I used the book over a 9-month period).

If you're not experiencing turbulence and dynamic change, you must not be paying attention. The tectonic plates of human endeavor are shifting. As Nick Lore notes in his seminal work, The Pathfinder, we're witnessing an unprecedented explosion of career options and the old ways - serendipity, tradition, dumb luck - of choosing or re-choosing which career might fit are no longer sufficient.

Eight years ago, I used The Pathfinder when it was clear to me that, after 10 wonderful years, I'd outgrown my career as a diplomat. The Pathfinder's engaging inquiries and exercises and Lore's delightfully engaging style, led me to identify the outlines of the private sector role that would challenge, enrich and fulfill me for most of the last decade.

But I'm a serial adventurer, and its out on the edges of dynamic change that I'm most at home. There are big waves building in the world of work and I'm ready for a new challenge. My second time through The Pathfinder - I'm three weeks in - I'm discovering even deeper insights and am designing a new list of commitments to suit who I've now become. With a steady guide like Nick Lore I'm ready to tow-in to the really big waves - the ones most fun to ride!

If you're ready for work you LOVE and you're prepared to confront yourself - strengths, proclivities and foibles - squarely and honestly; if you're willing to engage in a rigorous and engaging exploration, then there is no better route to professional fulfillment than The Pathfinder.

I'm a career counselor in private practice, working with mid-career changers and young people making these decisions for the first time. This is one of only two books I recommend to my clients. "The Pathfinder" is the only book capable of completely guiding an intelligent person through the process of choosing a career direction. The author is probably the best career coach on the planet. He is a sort of humorous, down-to-earth Zen master, who understands you completely, and knows how to get you to look into all the areas of your life that are important to consider in making a great career choice. These days, many of the best career coaches/counselors/guides base their way of working with their clients on his methods. The book is both profound and practical. It will work for you if you are seeking a life of meaning and purpose and also if you simply want your career to fit you "like a custom-made suit".

I had very high hopes after agonizing over which book to purchase or company to contact to help me discover why after all these years, I'm completely dissatisfied with what I do, and really aching to find something that I feel good at and feel I am making a contribution. I have invested days and hours into the Pathfinder. I've worked through more than half of the exercises. But what I am realizing as I go through this extensive (very extensive in fact) exercise list is that these exercises are really to help someone who already has some inkling of what they want. This book will help someone who knows, even vaguely, what they want to do, but it does not help someone like me that is 37, a professional PhD. scientist and completely confounded on how to make a major career shift to match my own talents and likes. I don't know what I want to do. All I know is that I want to make a change. The Pathfinder will not help me target what I want to do. All it can do is help people who know what they want to do to work through whatever obstacles they perceive to get to their goal. It's more of Obstacle Jumping guide, rather than a Pathfinding guide.

I am a career coach with eight years of experience working with people wanting a new career - a better fit with their talents, more meaningful, a better work environment. I have to admit that, at times, I have felt that there was something important I didn't learn in my master's program in counseling. I have used books such as Parachute, Zen and the art of... and many others. They are o.k. but not great. I read a review here where a career counselor highly recommended The Pathfinder. I got it and it has changed my life completely. This is by far the best book for you if you are deciding on a career or thinking of changing, if you want a very fulfilling life and are willing to go for it. This book is about having not just a great job. It is much more than that, a book about having a great life. The author is a genius. Besides that, he has the wisdom of a real Zen master, but unlike most wise men, he has no pretensions about it. He is just a regular person, and very cool at the same time. Most importantly, The Pathfinder is the only book I have ever found that can actually take you through to the point where you have actually decided what you will do with your life. Get it. You won't regret it. I now use it with all of my clients. Not only is this THE book for people making their own choices, it is also the best book for people who want to be more skillful at helping their clients do so - coaches, therapists and so forth.

Recently I was between jobs and deciding what my next career step would be. A friend of mine had read the Pathfinder and recommended it as a great aid for helping me with my decision. Indeed it was!

I found the book to be extremely helpful. Nick does a great job laying out a practical, easy to relate to, process for self discovery and defining what's important to you in a career. Key was Nicks abililty to bring attention to and explain psychology of making a change. This was a straight forward look into the internal conversation people have with themselves about any change. Very Helpful! The notion of "yeahbuts" is so true and once understood liberating and helpful to make progress.

I got tremendous value from the Pathfinder. Nick is having a dialog with you and brings the coaching process to life. It's like you learning about yourself while you writing your next chapter in life. At times the assignments are tough....if you don't do them you won't get the same value from the process and you will end up making decisions by default. Which is probably why so many people are unhappy in their current jobs/career.

After the book, I enlisted the services of the RockPort Institure, the company Nick runs provides career coaching services. Part of the serviec invloves an in depth teting process that is truely revealing and critical in undertanding you and what type of career/role you are best suited for. If you have the interest, read the book than enlist the services of the Rockport institute. I've taken many tests and done all kinds of profiling over my career, this was by far the best!

I hope my feedback is helpful.

Good luck in pursuit of a new job/career....

As a career and personal coach I use the exercises in this book with clients. They're extremely productive. They're exhaustive. I challege any author to produce more thorough and effective exercises than this. In fact I recently I went to a large bookstore to see if anyone had done so. I looked through the career books until I was cross-eyed, and I found pieces-just pieces in this book and that, of the exercises Lore had laid out in exhaustive detail.
"The American Way of Career Selection" section toward the beginning ought to clue you in, reader. The wake up call - our schools and colleges' methods of helping students toward fitting careers is totally inadequate. They don't have the time or resources, and I've visited several of them. This fact needs to be published more often.
We are blessed to have someone who not only calls it to our attention in the book's beginning, but makes you laugh as you see yourself in the book - a human being who is seeking direction with a mixture of fear and dread; and hope and inspiration. The Artist's Way was extremely confrontational; this book was welcoming and compassionately honest. The author understands human nature.
"The Questions List" exercise alone is worth the price of the book. About 130 questions in 21 categories about your work preferences, which if you have or had answered in college, may have been instrumental in setting you on the right career path the first time!! No small feat judging by today's career satisfaction statistics.
My recomendation? There ought to be a course in every high school junior year called "Career Planning To Reflect Who You Naturally Are," with this book as the text. Oh, and by the way, this book and career testing by the Rockport Institute, founded by the author, moved me from my former to my current career. I'm a success story.

After reading this excellent book, I actually took tests with the Rockport Institute, founded by the author, Nicholas Lore.
The tests confirmed what the book had already indicated ... I was unhappy at work because I was not doing work that suited my personality and talents. I am now in the process of starting my own small business and I really do wake up every day feeling energized and looking forward to my work.
I was previously an HR executive and thought I had a good understanding of the world of career choice. I had read many career books and those books told you to find work you love - to think about your hobbies and try to find work that matched your hobbies. It was hopeless! I love to cook and garden, but am not good enough to do them professionally. I like to watch movies and read books - but who will pay me to do that?!
In Pathfinder, Nicholas Lore focuses not on what you do for a hobby. Instead, he goes deeper and enables you to identify your talents - some of which you may never have used during your career - or even in your hobbies.
His theory is simple - but incredibly powerful. I don't understand the reviewers who did not have the same experience as I did. All I know is that this book truly changed my life and that I am incredibly grateful that I picked it up one day when browsing for a new novel to distract me from my career misery!
If you are serious about finding a new path in life, this is the best book to help you get there.

Seriously, you may acquire this book to simply get some helpful tips on finding a satisfying "next job", however, if you invest the time and energy, you're likely to get much more.
...at any price this book offers so much for the reader. I bought two copies, one for myself and one for my son.
My son had just gratduated from high school and we were both anxious about what was next. He didn't have any strong interests, wasn't looking forward to college or anything in particular. Pathfinder opened some doors for Tim's thinking. It gave him ways of looking at himself and his aptitudes in a positive way, rather than the perspective he'd developed from teachers, family, friends and society.
For Tim, we opted to contact The Rockport Institute, the company founded by the author to provide more direct and personal programs for people engaged in a career search. Tim took advantage of their career testing program and through the results learned to look at himself in a new and different way.
I am 50 and at the time I purchased the book was in the midst of struggling with makiing a dramtic career change. I had spent 25 years in high tech, successful by many measures, but looking back I felt far less satisfaction than I would have liked. I felt spent vs. enriched by my experiences. I felt I was dying by "making a living".
I longed to find a way to thrive, grow and inspire others by "making a living".
Mr. Lore's effort is personal, bore of his own search. He will invite you to ask penetrating questions of yourself, and complete some simple exercises to concretize your thoughts and feelings.
This book can serve as a travel guide to your soul and in so doing, surprise you with things you never knew about yourself. Following some of the trails you may discover painful vistas that overlook past disappointments and loss. You may need to reevaluate the fuel you've been using as it might have been loaded with pathological and compulsive octanes.
Yet with courage, patience and perserverance, as with most journeys, you will find yourself at the crest. The wintery landscape of your past endevors behind you and the rich and verdant fields of your new life at your feet.

When I think about how people today in corporate america decide upon their careers, there seems to be a great deal of chance and luck that always plays in. Very few people have taken the time to think about what they want, what they are good at, when they are most content, or how they can translate these into a successfull career.
In The Pathfinder, the author provides a process to follow -- one which I believe many of us would benefit from. In this process, the author helps you look not just within yourself but also to the outside world, to better organize your thoughts with regard to how you make decision. He provides you with exercises that help you "name" skills or abilities or requirements you might never have realized you had. The end goal being that when you make your decision or decisions, you do it in a way that is aware and informed, and that propels you with further momentum and less self doubt.
I would recommend this book to all college students and any and all professionals who are still trying to find the career which is both a better fit with their personality and innate skills, while still trying to balance the "other demands" placed on them.
If you believe that life is a journey, I would suggest that you read this book early in your travels.