Last night I attended a program launched by the National-Louis University to provide additional job search help to their alumni. This is something every university should be doing. After all, universities equip students with strengths, but few, if any, train them to understand these strengths and express them.

Why do these well-educated people need help crafting their value statement? Why can’t they do it on their own? Because to look at your entire life and distill it down to your one or two most important strengths is an extremely complex and difficult process. It can take weeks of concentrated thought before the patterns start emerging that point to what is most valuable about ourselves. And until we achieve this self-understanding we will be unable to express our value effectively, because we will not know what it is.

When I was recently working with Northwestern University alums I met an accomplished woman who was fortunate enough to be employed, and who wanted to take advantage of this. She asked me how she could do a better job at internal interviewing. She was going through a vetting/grooming process that, if managed successfully, would advance her to higher and higher levels of responsibility.

We went over a variety of topics, from theory Y leadership to communication, before I asked her to recount for me peak moments during which she was thoroughly engaged and in the flow, when the passage of time was meaningless and she produced great results. It’s an exercise that can help us understand our results-producing strengths. What was her response? After taking a minute to think about this she said, “I know I’ve had peak moments, but I can’t think of one and I should be able to.”

Knowing her, she will get an answer, but it may take time. Not because of her limitations, but because of the complexity of the riddle we call the self, the personality. Reducing one’s entire past to its most important expressions of strength and interest, of ability and emotional engagement, is no small task.