Motivations:
After gaining a deeper understanding of my top 5 motivations during my internship, I was able to develop a deeper sense of connection to what is important to me in both my career and personal life. These motivations from TruMotivate helped guide me throughout my internship experience by exploring each of them in a work setting. I will unpack my top 5 motivations and their importance each one has had on my career readiness.
First motivation: Gaining ownership- I believe I am more motivated when I am able to exercise ownership and control what is mine. It is now fundamental for me to find a work space where the work culture is to promote individual control over a significant part of the business. A job where I can plan to scale so that I have the flexibility to add my personal touches. Health coaching does exactly that because you get to input methods of what you think will work best for your client.
Second motivation: Develop- Development activities are what brings purpose and impact to my professional life. In my internship experience I had a lot of tasks in which development of nutritional plans for clients needed to be created based on underlying health issues. I realized the impact it had in understanding myself but also the connection it had with my developing motivation.
Third motivation: Meet the challenge- I think this motivation means the most to my own personal and professional life because it is how I am able to reach my goals and aspirations in life. This motivation brings impact and purpose to my life when I know I have met challenges and have more that I want to meet for my own personal and professional development.
Fourth motivation: Experience the ideal- This motivation helped gain a better understanding of myself and how I think as well as what inspires me. I am always motivated to make intangibles real as well as giving my life meaning purpose, which is what the internship brought me and gave me insight on what I want in a job.
Fifth motivation: Achieve potential- This motivation gave me a deeper understanding of myself by examining how achieving potential is important to me based on the stories I have shared. The last motivation kind of helps me tie in my other motivations as well as help me figure out what work environment is best for me professionally.
Career Competency:
The one competency I used the most in my internship was critical thinking because we constantly had to think of creative or innovative ways to keep our clients committed to the food regimens we give them based on their current health status. A lot of patients have different underlying health conditions which requires us to add those changes accordingly. The health coach always gave me the opportunity to share my input on what might be best for the clients so that I could practice that form of thinking since it is an important part of being a health coach because all clients are different and require different food regimens based on their needs. After every consultation or follow-up I felt more confident in weighing out options and feeling confident about my decisions based on what I had observed and learned from the health coach. It helped me practice the skill of alternating different benefits for the client, which is something I will continue to cultivate by learning more about different food related diseases and what can help them.
Product:
One of my biggest accomplishments this semester was conducting a presentation with a board of health coaches who cover different health related topics and how we can keep them functioning optimally by the foods that we eat. Every health coach shared their different approaches, which helps us gain outsider insight and more methods of helping the clients we receive.
I overcame my first learning objective of using semiology as a way to identify a state of nutritional imbalance by explaining how our lymphatic system reacts when our bodies are not balanced and how this may externally and internally present itself.
I overcame my second learning objective of using social networks to educate and gain insight on the prevention of diseases that are related to poor nutrition. In this case I had different networks since the board of health coaches allowed me present and proved my point of view followed by their feedback and insight on the topic of the lymphatic system.
I overcame my third learning objective of being able to establish a nutritional plan for clients because the first half of my internship consisted of learning and observing the type of questions and methods the health coach applied. The second half of the internship consisted of the health coach letting me practice on my own by developing a nutritional plan for the clients we would meet that would be reviewed by him and he would guide me in providing feedback on what I did correctly and what I needed to change. By the end I was able to develop these nutritional plans with little to no revision.
Advice:
The advice I would share with new interns is to take chances and try new things. A lot of the time my supervisor offered me projects to do just to learn that were optional but I always chose to participate in them even though I felt scared or felt that I did not have that much knowledge yet but everytime I did them, I learned so much about the job but also myself and how I work. I think every experience provides you with benefits because you either learn what you enjoy and what you don’t enjoy. Overall, I encourage future interns to take initiative and take any learning opportunity given to them.
