Phase 4. Capabilities and resources. Six-phase method.

After looking at the barriers, it is time to shift the focus. Before projecting yourself forward, it is worth gathering what has already emerged along the way. The logical levels revealed support and habits that you may not even have recognised as resources; the Wheel of Life highlighted the areas where you already function well; and the reframing work from the previous phase brought to light skills you use without necessarily naming them: asking for help when needed, navigating bureaucracy, maintaining a routine despite fatigue.

You are not starting from zero.

The question is no longer what prevents you from moving forward. It becomes something very different: what do you already have, even if you have stopped recognising it? Many people reach this point convinced that they have little to offer because for years they have associated their capabilities only with a job they lost or a profession they can no longer practise. An injury, an illness or a major life change may alter the way you work, but it does not erase everything you have learned over the years. That learning is still there, even if the place where you use it changes.

Transferable skills

The first tool involves identifying transferable skills: knowledge and ways of acting that retain their value in situations different from those in which they were developed. Many go unnoticed because they are part of everyday life.

Managing medical appointments over many years requires organisation. Coordinating different healthcare professionals involves planning. Dealing with architectural barriers every day develops initiative and problem-solving. Learning to use assistive products requires continuous learning. Defending your rights when dealing with different public administrations strengthens communication, negotiation and perseverance.

What is significant about these experiences is not simply having lived through them, but discovering that they may also have value outside the health or personal sphere.

Researcher Hannah E. Fry and her team studied vocational self-efficacy —a person’s confidence in their ability to function in the world of work— in 192 unemployed adults with disabilities in 2020. The ability to connect with others, family support, adaptation to disability and fatigue were significantly related to vocational self-efficacy, and the final model explained 43% of its variation. The findings reinforce an important idea for this phase: relational, adaptive and personal resources form part of the conditions from which a person approaches their professional future.

The “As if” exercise

Next comes the “As if” exercise, applied to the specific limitation identified in the previous phase rather than to a general goal.

Imagine that you have already learned how to manage that particular barrier. What would you do differently? Observe yourself in that scene: your behaviour, your inner dialogue, the support you use and the decisions you make. Then extract something real from that image: what could you begin doing this week, what support could you ask for, what small routine could you try?

Imagination here is not a substitute for action. It is used to make a possible pathway visible and then turn it into concrete behaviours and steps.

Internal mini-SWOT

The phase continues with an internal mini-SWOT. You identify your strengths and areas for development without turning them into a list of virtues and flaws.

A strength is of little use if you do not know in which situation you can apply it, and an area for development stops functioning as a label once you can identify what you need in order to work on it.

How you write it matters.

“I am disorganised.”closes the conversation.

“I need to improve my weekly organisation.”points towards a concrete, limited and achievable task.

The first formulation turns a difficulty into an identity. The second opens a field for action.

External support map

Finally, you create an external support map. The aim is to explore the environment systematically and make visible resources that often already exist but remain scattered or have never been placed together on paper.

The map can be organised into six broad areas:

Relational and community —family, friends, mentors, associations, support groups, local networks—.Professional and institutional —employment advisers, coaches, employment specialists, teachers, social services, public programmes and disability organisations—.Education and training —courses, workshops, online learning, certificates and scholarships—.Technological and digital —assistive products, accessibility tools, software, employment platforms, remote training or remote work—.Physical and logistical —transport, accessible spaces, adapted housing or equipment—.Financial —benefits, grants, scholarships or microfinance—.

Fry and her team also identified family support among the variables significantly related to vocational self-efficacy. This reinforces the usefulness of viewing support networks as part of the employment pathway rather than as something peripheral to it.

Building this map means recognising that asking for help is a strategy, not a weakness.

Think for a moment about your own life. If tomorrow you had to face an important professional change, who would you call first? Who would give you reliable information? Who would listen without deciding for you? Who could open a door or connect you with someone else?

Those resources often already exist. They remain invisible because you have never placed them together on paper. This phase is precisely about discovering that, alongside the skills you already possess, you also have a network capable of supporting the journey when difficulties arise.

What should remain at the end

At the end of Phase 4, the person has a clearer map of their capabilities and resources, identifies skills that can be transferred into the world of work, has explored a specific limitation through the “As if” exercise, has distinguished strengths from areas for development and has made visible the external support they can activate.

This material forms Zone 4 of the Life Map: internal and external resources and transferable skills.

Operational summary

Objective: Recognise and activate capabilities, transferable skills and internal and external resources.

Main tools: Resource recovery · Transferable skills · “As if” exercise · Internal mini-SWOT · External support map

Central question: What internal and external resources can this person activate to move closer to their aspirations?

Outcome: Zone 4 of the Life Map —internal and external resources and transferable skills—.