Many students come to American River College with a goal in mind: they arrive with a specific major or career path they wish to take. What ends up happening oftentimes, however, is that at some point, sight of that goal is lost due to external stressors such as work or home life.

Find Your Motivation, a weekly workshop headed by Janice Klar, an ARC career counselor, is designed to help students find or rediscover their career goals while creating a balance between all the stressors a student may have in their life, all while in a group environment.

Klar created the process based on the “Circle of Life” method of coaching, in which participants take each aspect of their lives, such as health, self-esteem and finances, and develop a balance between maintaining the good aspects while trying to improve the weaker ones.

“[Find Your Motivation] crosses over life coaching, health and wellness coaching and career counseling in a great way,” Klar said. “I’m starting [at ARC] to see if it will help students be more focused on their goals.”

The meetings take place every Tuesday at the DSPS conference room in the Career Center through April 24, with the first half focused on health and well-being while the latter half will be focused on overall career and work happiness.

For the first meeting, participants were given packets which contained several assessment worksheets, starting with a “Circle of Life” assessment to see how strong or weak an individual is in certain areas in their lives.

Once those are determined, participants were then directed to highlight their strongest and their weakest areas, to emphasize that it is important to utilize one’s strengths to help shore up weaknesses, while at the same time addressing weak points and figuring out necessary steps to improve those areas.

The first meeting — though small, with just three in attendance — was full of useful information, and those that attended said they were able to utilize the information right away and identify what they need to work on.

Laurie Banks, who is pursuing a business degree, said she was able to hone in and reidentify her original goal of building a cooperative living community and learning how to do so through ARC.

“I liked honing in on areas I need to work on. I liked the focus on getting back to why I came back to school in the first place,” Banks said.

The next meeting will take place April 24 from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.