What Color Is Your Parachute?

important, to you.

Over the years the people I have been trying to help have invented various graphics for “That One Piece of Paper:” a parachutist and his/her parachute, a Grecian temple, a clown holding a bunch of round balloons, a tree with several branches, etc., etc. The common denominator has been that each graphic has had seven parts, as you might guess.

Ultimately we settled on a diagram of a flower, with seven petals, because readers preferred it above all other graphics. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because a flower is a living entity, beautiful and growing, and therefore a reflection of them more than graphics of inanimate objects can be.

It’s been refined over the years, of course. Here’s what it’s come out looking like:

Readers have asked to see an example of “That One Piece of Paper” all filled out. Rich W. Feller—a student of mine back in 1982, now a world-famous professor and expert in the national career development field—filled out his flower as you see, below. He said “That One Piece of Paper” has been his lifelong companion ever since, and his guiding star.

^{Rich Feller, a University Distinguished Teaching Scholar and Professor at Colorado State University, whose own personal “Flower Diagram” is on the facing page, first put his personal “picture” together almost thirty years ago. Here are his comments about its usefulness since, and how “That One Piece of Paper” helped him, how he’s used it, and how it’s changed.}

What the Parachute Flower Has Meant to Me

More than anything I’ve gained from an academic life, my Flower has given me hope, direction, and a lens to satisfaction. Using it to assess my life direction during crisis, career moves, and stretch assignments, it helps me define and hold to personal commitments. In many ways it’s my “guiding light.” Data within my Flower became and remain the core of any success and satisfaction I have achieved.

After I first filled out my own Flower Diagram in a two-week workshop with Dick Bolles back in 1982, I decided to teach the Flower to others. My academic position has allowed me to do this, abundantly. Having now taught the Flower to thousands of counselors, career development, and human resource specialists, I continually use it with clients, and in my own transitional retirement planning.

I’m overwhelmed with how little has changed within my Flower, over the years. My Flower is the best of what I am. Its petals are my compass, and using my “favorite skills” are the mirror to a joyful day. I trust the wisdom within “That One Piece of Paper.” It has guided my work and my life, ever since 1982, and it has helped my wife and I define our hopes for our son.

The process of filling out and acting on “That One Piece of Paper” taught me a lot. Specifically, it taught me the importance of the following ten things, often running contrary to what my studies and doctoral work had taught me previously.

I learned from my Flower the importance of:

1. Chasing after passions, honoring strengths, and respecting skill identification

2. Challenging societal definitions of balance and success

3. Committing to something bigger than oneself

4. Living authentically and with joy

5. Being good at what matters to oneself and its relationship to opportunity

6. Finding pleasure in all that one does

7. Staying focused on well-being and life satisfaction

8. Personal clarity and responsibility for designing “possible selves”

9. Letting the world know, humbly but clearly, what we want

10. “Coaching” people amidst a world of abundance where individuals yearn for individual meaning and purpose more than they hunger for possessions, abject compliance with society’s expectations, or simply fitting in

This technologically enhanced, global workplace we now face in the twenty-first century certainly challenges all we thought we knew about our life roles. Maintaining clarity, learning agility, and identifying development plans have become elevated to new and critical importance, if we are to maintain choice. As a result I’ve added the following four emphases to “Rich’s Flower”: Have, do, learn, and give. That is to say, I try to keep a running list (constantly updated) of ten things that I want to:

1. Have

2. Do

3. Learn

4. Give

Through the practice of answering the four questions listed above, I can measure change in my growth and development.

I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to share with others how much I gained from the wisdom and hope embedded within “Rich’s Flower.”

I humbly offer my resume, home location and design, and family commitments on my website at www.mycahs.colostate.edu/Rich.Feller. I’d be honored to share my journey, and encourage others to nurture and shine light on their garden as well. I believe you’ll find about 90 percent of the Flower’s items influence our daily experience.

Rich Feller

Professor of Counseling and Career Development

University Distinguished Teaching Scholar

Colorado State University

Fort Collins, CO

Okay, now to get to work:

The flower is essentially designed to answer three questions:

1. WHAT skills do you most enjoy using?

2. WHERE do you want to use these skills?

3. HOW do you find the name of that kind of job (or jobs)?

That’s the logical order of things. But we don’t do the Flower in its logical order. We do the petals that are easiest first, then work our way toward the more difficult exercises (because they require more thought) for those other petals.

So, our order will be:

1. WHERE do you want to use your skills?

Step 1: Favorite Special Knowledges

Step 2: Preferred People-Environments

Step 3: Preferred Working Conditions

Step 4: Desired Responsibility (and Salary)

Step 5: Preferred Geographical factors

Step 6: With these Goals and Purposes (and Values) in mind

2. WHAT skills do you most enjoy using?

Step 7: Your favorite Transferable Skills, in order of their priority for you

3. HOW do you find the name of that kind of job (or jobs)?