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?Myths and Legends: What role do they play in career counselling??

Presented by Claire Stirling-Hawkins

• Career Consultant,   Career Services rapuara, Palmerston North
  

Claire led a very interesting and inspiring 3 hour workshop exploring the role that Myths and Legends can play in career counselling.

As a group we explored the thoughts and feelings generated by looking at 6 key words; Unity, Emotions, Reflection, Challenges, Sacrifice and Understanding. We were able to quickly draw on a rich supply of stories and myths and legends which would bring out such themes as these.

The objectives of the workshop were to increase our awareness of mythology and to learn how to use its themes to help people understand their own experiences and influence others

Mythology as narrative enables us to communicate clearly and concisely about the kinds of issues that have depth and breadth, subtlety and colour, time and texture.

The narrative use of mythology is not simply pleasing forms of memory, or a convenient means of conversation. Myths are a fundamental human tool for understanding and remembering our experiences and communicating what we learned from them. They also allow us to influence others to consider our lessons in light of their current situations simply because they allow the listener (or reader) to see themself in our context. Therefore matching a myth to a particular workshop for a group of students is very important.

We participated in an activity whereby we looked at two very well known New Zealand myths, The Legend of the Creation and Maui and the Sun. As we identified the themes within each story, it was quickly apparent how easily identifiable were common concepts of co-operation, team spirit, challenge, planning and perseverance, consequences, conflict and we could readily reflect back to the main 6 key words to see they all featured in some degree.

The revealing stage of this activity was to look at how we could apply and relate to a careers context for our client groups. The Legend of the Creation lent itself to illustrating such concepts as making change; it?s OK to stand along, dealing with failure, perseverance and revising strategy. Maui and the Sun could comfortably illustrate a career planning circle, essentially to identify the problem, make a plan, put into action, evaluate and review.

Claire highlighted that mythology, while explaining the past, helps indigenous people maintain dignity and self-respect in the present.

At the conclusion of the session, we were to reflect on a quote by Witi Ihimaera ?If the children of the present are not involved in the telling of the stories of the past, New Zealand will have an incomplete future.?

Helen Van Toor