Several months ago, a great mentor and friend of mine recommended I read the book Finding a Job You Can Love by Ralph Mattson and Arthur Miller (here’s a page on Arthur Miller’s site about the book). As part of his recommendation, he acknowledged that the title is a horrible fit for the content in the book. The book, which comes from Christian perspective, uses the first few chapters to reminder the reader that each person is unique, and that there’s great value in reflecting on those unique qualities to help you determine a career path that you will love.

The middle of the book then shifts into an exercise based on System for Identifying Motivated Abilities (SIMA). The idea of SIMA is that you identify stories from your life “about activities and times in [your life] where [you] felt great joy, success, and satisfaction”, and then analyze those stories to identify what motivates you.

Based on the exercise, which I found valuable, I created this Simplified SIMA Template in Google Sheets — you can copy this template into your Google account, and then fill in stories from your life where you felt joy, success, and/or satisfaction, and then analyze those to see what patterns emerge. I found this so useful while reflecting on my next chapter of life!