What If There IS No Work?

July 30, 2010 by 16 Comments

job huntingSo, here’s the thing: some of my clients are in the unusual-for-them position of having no work right now. They’ve either been made redundant from their firms, are watching their businesses hit the skids, or are just generally less well employed than they’d really rather wish to be.

Their hearts tell them they’d love to buy in to the New Work Pioneer ethos.

But to a greater or lesser degree the fear of becoming the proverbial bag lady brings them back to doing what they know how to in this situation: get on the market and hustle for another of the same kind of job.

They can pay attention to this “doing what you love” stuff in the future. When things are sorted. When they feel more secure and stable.

You know how it is.

And with more redundancies looming here in the UK, at least in the public sector, even just getting more of the same is not the cakewalk it once was. Here are a few tips for staying street-savvy, without giving your soul over to the whims of the economy.

  1. Don’t panic

    Easier to say than to do, perhaps. But, seriously, panic drives you to take action and make decisions that you may regret later. That’s because, when we’re anxious, we’re cut off from the most confident, resourceful parts of ourselves.

    So, first things first, do what you need to in order to nail down key concerns.

    The biggest one is usually money. Face this fear head-on, and early on. Figure out what you need and what you want, budget and keep a tight reign on things. If you need to talk to banks about refinancing or having mortgage payment holidays or whatever, do it proactively.

    Knowing that you’re in control of your money, rather than it being in control of you will give you personal and psychological breathing space.

  2. Listen to your heart and your head

    It’s tempting to let your head rule at times when work is tricky. It can definitely help you figure things out and do things cleverly. But it won’t always take account of your intuitions or feelings. They need attention too.

    What do you really, really want to do in this situation? What opportunities do you see that your logical mind wants you to ignore? What does your gut tell you about interviews you’ve gone for, or not? What if you paid attention? Where would that take you?

    Now, how might you use your mind to logic the next steps?

  3. Focus on what you can do

    There’s a lot of “can’t” around at the moment. Can’t work. Can’t afford. Can’t progress. What if you shift your attention off of these things and onto where you can direct your energy ?

    Networking is a pretty obvious one. You can do this on or offline. And, since things seem to be changing around you anyway, what do you have to lose by pushing the barriers and experimenting with new networks or new media that you haven’t tried before?

    Updating your skills is another. As, indeed, is taking them in a completely different direction again. Money doesn’t need to be an obstacle. There’s a ton of resource online and either free or relatively inexpensive.

    If you’re looking for a similar job, get yourself the smartest CV and the best support you can buy to position yourself well in a crowded market. Julie Walraven is a fabulous resource on both fronts.

    And if you really do want to use this opportunity for bigger change, find yourself a coach that understands this space and invest in your own transformation.

  4. Be pragmatic

    I’m seeing folks take months right now to find work they are happy with. It all depends on what level you’re at, how much you’re earning, and how much networking you’re prepared to do for yourself.

    Meantime, you may still want to put cash in the bank.

    I’m counselling people to take a long term view of things now, separating out what they need to do to earn the money to support themselves, from finding work that they will be happy with ongoing.

    That could look like choosing to take a job that you know is a compromise of some sort for you in the short term, but using it as leverage for future endeavour.

    Or taking interim contracts, if you can find them, to tide you over.

    The trick comes in making these decisions consciously and tactically. You do not need to imagine that a short term solution defines you. It doesn’t. It just keeps your spirit alive in the longer term.

  5. Don’t beat yourself up

    Finding paths forward in the current economy is fraught with challenge and set-back. Clients tell me of writing emails for jobs and never getting response. Or, of headhunters who were gushing and warm in getting them to interview never following up with the outcome. It shouldn’t be like this, but sadly, sometimes it is.

    Don’t, whatever you do, take it personally. It’s really not about you.

Times are tough, but keep the faith. Keep your sense of direction and take action you can believe in. That’s what’s going to see you through.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Robert S. Donovan

Filed Under: Reinventing work, Thriving @ work Tagged With: , ,

Looking At Life Through The Eyes Of A Child

July 28, 2010 by 29 Comments

My most favourite nephew in the world is staying with me this week from Glasgow. He also happens to be my only nephew in the world, but that makes him more, not less special. Suffice to say, we’ve been having a lot of fun.

As I wrote elsewhere, James has the smartest way of looking at the world of anybody I know. I’ve been paying attention to the things that define him in the hope I can learn a thing or two.

Excitement

The term “zest for life” sounds like a cliché around this wee guy. He whoops and whirls and has this take-your-breath-away enthusiasm for things that’s just so compelling. We’ll be chilling in the garden, or walking along our little countryside pathways, when he’ll spot something. A kite flying directly overhead. A rabbit darting into a hedge. The wild ponies on the hill. His entire being lights up as he sees it and stops in his tracks mesmerised.

His sense of wonder in things is so refreshing.

And it makes me consider how much we take for granted in our adult world. How retrieving a sense of awe would feed the child in us.

Fun

My living room currently resembles an art studio. I’ve got quirky hand drawn posters of my village in one corner and a cast of toys lined up in another. My iPhone, Mac and music library have been commandeered for video making purposes. Not kidding, but this child is teaching me how to use iMovie :)

He squeals out loud when he finds something funny. There’s no self-judgement or monitoring.

And he causes me to think about how much – or, indeed, how little – we allow ourselves to unreservedly indulge our playfulness. How we sometimes just need to relax and allow a belly-laugh to knock something crazy into shape.

Spontaneity

Can’t do something we imagined we might? No problem for James, there’s always some other exciting possibility of where to direct his attention. Can’t do that walking route you’d mapped out because it’s raining? Let’s make another video, or even go into town and watch Toy Story 3.

“Holidays are for chilling,” he told me the other day as I was obviously getting a little too structured in my planning of things to do. So I backed off and let him chill.

His approach made me reflect on how often, when things don’t work out as we imagined, we get caught up in our disappointment, instead of putting our attention where things can work out for us.

“Are you having fun?” I asked him today.

“Yes,” he said.

“More so than when you’re at school?” I asked. Perhaps I was looking for admiration. Perhaps putting onto him my expectations that school would be boring, holidays not. Whatever, his reply surprised me.

“No,” he said. Huh.

“So, you like school and holidays equally?” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“You’re pretty happy with life in general, whatever you’re doing?” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

“What is it about life that you so enjoy, then?” I said.

He gave this question some serious thought. A flash of inspiration suddenly caught his face.

“Basically, I enjoy anything you can get yourself stuck into,” he said, smiling widely.

Flippin’ ten year old wisdom. You’ve got to love it!

Filed Under: Reinventing work, Work and life Tagged With: , , , , ,

A Review Of A Different Kind Of Work – The #7 Links Challenge

July 26, 2010 by 18 Comments

Ben Lumley across at 6aliens drew my attention to the 7 Links Challenge that’s sweeping the blog world right now, thanks to Problogger.

The main aim of doing this challenge is to create a list post that highlights some of the posts in your archives to new readers (a sneeze page), that links out to another blog and that hopefully is a little fun (and not too much work) to do.

A Different Kind of Work just turned a year old, so what a great time to step back and look at things. I’ve really enjoyed putting this post together and would love your feedback on it.

My First Post

A Different Kind Of Blog

Can’t you just feel the euphoria in this post?! I know I certainly do as I read it back and connect with the part of me that had just cracked the technology involved in getting a WordPress blog set up. Now I smile at myself, of course, because it all feels so easy.

The Post I Enjoyed Writing The Most

How To Make Sure You Never Get Ahead

Michael Martine, who was fabulous in helping me get this blog off the tracks initially, told me that he thought I should use my wicked sense of humor on the blog. And so, I channeled it into this post, which I have to say was a complete blast to write.

A Post Which Had Great Discussion

Split Work-Life Personality? Join The Club

This was a fairly open and contentious post in which I shared some of the different bits of my own identity around work, not all of which are an obvious fit with one another by traditional or even logical standards. Lots of people resonated. Others saw professional compromise. All views were welcome.

A Post On Someone Else’s Blog I Wish I’d Written

Is Spiritual Business A Contradiction In Terms?

Written by the amazing Mark Silver this post appeared on Copyblogger. I’ve had the experience for years that a lot of work can be soulless. But how to get the spirit back into it without resorting to new age woo-woo language and completely disenfranchising the mainstream? Mark cracked that question here.

Your Most Helpful Post

10+1 Steps To Make Coaching Work For You

I think lots of people would like to do coaching, but as a client don’t really know how to navigate themselves through it. This post gave pretty concrete advice about being a powerful coaching consumer.

A Post With A Title You’re Proud Of

Unhappy At Work? A Different Look At This Weeks Job Satisfaction Statistics

I like this title because it summed up the post really well. Also, although it was written this January, it still drives most search traffic to the blog.

The Post I Wish More People Had Read

Work Detox: 5 Coaching Questions That’ll Change Your Life

This was one of my earliest posts and, although I’d sharpen up the style significantly now, I thought the content was better than the response indicated. Still, it’s all about learning!

So, some personal reflections and a bit of reading to get to off to a good start this week. Don’t forget to let me know what you think. And if there’s a topic you’d like to see me writing more about, let me know!

Filed Under: Reinventing work Tagged With: , ,

Workshops: The Most Powerful Form Of Coaching?

July 23, 2010 by 5 Comments

This week I’ve been talking to a number of people who are attending the Work Life Balance Workshop I’m running on September 24th. Besides asking me about what to expect, the conversation has often moved into questions about my motivation for creating the event, and why I chose a workshop format at all.

I decided to write this post to share why I think that workshops are such a powerful form of coaching.

Work Life Balance Workshop

I created The Worklife Makeover because everything tells me that “work life balance” is something people are struggling with more and more these days.

Particularly in the current economy where people – assuming they’re working at all – are working harder for the same or less money than before.

Where many things that folks once took for granted about the security of their jobs has disappeared. Including in the relatively more “safe” public sector.

Where business owners are having to really hustle for their livelihoods.

Where expected career paths are evaporating in front of people’s eyes.

Where once certain retirement plans have become unclear.

In corporate speak, while the government plays the game of digging the country out of its black hole of debt, consumer confidence is tanking. And, unsurprisingly, employee engagement measures are hitting the deck.

People are understandably feeling the pressure. Something my good friend Judy Martin wrote about just this week.

Companies are offering their own solutions to these challenges, as Judy clearly points out. But this isn’t universally true.

Besides, I wanted to offer a service, an event, that allows people to look at their lives more broadly than to what extent they help fulfil a corporation’s agenda of them.

I wanted to support people find their own voices, and retrieve a sense of personal power in the chaos that’s going on around us.

Workshops: The Power of the Group

In one to one work, I endorse and support people to find their own path.

But with certain topics, getting a small group of kindred spirits together has enormous value of its own. People, who don’t know each other from Adam in the beginning, meet around a shared concern, and become one another’s sounding boards.

Of course it takes strong facilitation and coaching to quickly create the safety that allows people to share. And highly focused content and coaching exercises to help people hone in on what’s right for them.

But beyond that, as I help people rethink their lives, see new possibilities, and shift old mindsets that keep them stuck, the power of the group plays a role too.

It mirrors back to you who you really are. It witnesses your casting off of stuff that no longer suits you. It amplifies for you the positive decisions you make in going forward in your life.

Workshops: You are not alone

With skilful leadership, the group develops its own energy. People come to understand that they are not alone in things. A community emerges that supports itself.

Often, that community extends beyond the workshop in ways of its own. I just have to watch my Twitter feed these days to see the interconnections that go on between the online folks who attended my last workshop, and that’s not to mention some of the off-line stuff I am part of too.

So, don’t underestimate workshops. Well run, they can be transformational.

What workshops have you attended, or indeed run, where the power of the event and the group rocked your life?

Filed Under: Reinventing work, Work and life Tagged With: , , ,

The Last Summer Holiday You’ll Need?

July 21, 2010 by 12 Comments

Did you see the recent research that reckoned it takes only two days back at work for all of the benefits of being on holiday to disappear?

How sad is that?

Still, it echoes a lot of what I hear and see around me: people completely frazzled ahead of the school holidays, bouyed up by the prospect of a couple of weeks in the sun and putting off any big decisions about life till the autumn.

Streets of Valbonne
Creative Commons License photo credit: beamillion

All of which has got me thinking about what that says about how much – or rather, how little – we value ourselves and our lives.

How we tend to see work and holidays in a very black and white, all and nothing kind of way.

The extent to which we adapt ourselves to fit our society in ways that don’t suit us.

And how it might be if we took holidays, less as a recovery from some punishing schedule, and more as a welcome pause to refresh and recharge our generally happy existences?

In my coaching work, people learn to free themselves from the tyranny of loving only to hate their work. They come to understand the interconnections of their work as an aspect of their whole lives. They begin to find their own way of being in a society that would prefer them to conform. To live authentic lives and to feel the sense of peace and happiness that brings. In that scenario, they’ll find their own rhythm about what effort versus what rest they need and what that looks like. Whether they take rest in big blocks, or they weave it into their daily lives. How time off feeds them and how they can hold on to its nourishment when they resume their endeavours.

They take lovely holiday, for sure. But they rarely need them.

And, yes, it’s hard work to get to this place, but breaking out of the vicious cycle of work and holidays is entirely possible.

What about you? What do holidays mean in your life? What single thing could you do differently that would allow the benefit of holidays to have a more lasting effect for you?

Filed Under: Reinventing work Tagged With: , , , , ,

Getting Ahead By Not Being A Cliché

July 19, 2010 by 7 Comments

Meet Eduard Ezeanu. A regular commentor here on the blog, today he’s giving us some fabulous, tangible advice on how we can be extraordinary.

One thing which I find amusing is how most people expect to get out of the ordinary success and satisfaction in their careers, without doing or being themselves out of the ordinary. They hope that just working hard will be enough.

The world of work is in my perspective filled with people who are walking clichés. They dress like everyone else, they act by the same rules and they say the same things in only slightly different words. When you suggest to them doing, thinking or saying something which is beyond the conventional, they pin you to the wall for being inappropriate or breaking the norms.

3 (sharp?) suits

Differentiation is the key

Being different in the workplace seems to be a misunderstood factor. Being different is not the same as being competent. And competence is also an important factor for a great career. But it is not enough. Differentiation is what allows you to make the best use of competence.

Differentiation is like a bridge which creates the proper context for your work to reach the right target. When instead of being a cliché, you are different, this allows you to stand out. And when you stand out, three essential things happen:

  1. You get noticed;
  2. You get remembered;
  3. People get curious about you.

And from there, all sorts of great things can happen in your career, which the conventional worker or businessman rarely sees happening. I believe that most people need conscious practice and guidance to learn how do differentiate themselves and stand out. So, here are my main points for not being a cliché:

  1. Understand your uniqueness. Differentiation starts with knowing yourself and especially what makes you unique. It’s much harder to stand out if you don’t have a good idea what are the ways that you specifically can stand out. Take some time to really get to know yourself and to answer questions like:
    • What are my unique strengths?
    • What values that I believe in make me stand out?
    • What is unconventional about the way I live my life?
  2. Dress with attitude. The first impression you create is by the way you look. And this is your first chance to differentiate yourself. Move away from the conventional business uniform and add something unique to it, which makes you stand out visually from the crowd. For example, I will usually wear a business suit, which is conventional, but it will have a light color and I will not wear a tie, which is unconventional and allows me to stand out the moment you see me.
  3. Talk spontaneously. A common pattern for people in the workplace is to think too much before they say anything, and make sure what comes out of their mouth is always safe, is always the right thing. Unfortunately, this is a recipe for never standing out. Give yourself permission to be spontaneous when you talk at least to some extent, and you will express more of those thoughts which make you unique, in your unique way.
  4. Express the divergent opinions. In particular, one thing most people will avoid expressing at work is those opinions which are different from the opinions of other people. They are afraid to upset someone, to take risks. It’s one of those things you will need to push through. Divergent opinions are one of the critical ways to differentiate yourself, and it’s essential to put a lot of them on the table.

Ultimately, in my perspective, differentiation is about understanding that deep inside, you are a unique person who naturally stands out. Your task is to let that uniqueness out in everything: what you say, what you do, how you look, how you live. This is the key to getting ahead by not being a cliché.

Eduard Ezeanu is a communication coach with an attitude-based approach. He helps others to improve people skills they find relevant and get top notch results. He also writes on his blog, People Skills Decoded.

Creative Commons License photo credit: cookipediachef

Filed Under: Guest posts, Inner work, Work and life Tagged With: , ,

Wanted: Smart Professionals Ready For Better Work Life Balance

July 15, 2010 by 13 Comments

Kickstart Your Life This Autumn

Join me in London on the 24th of September for The Worklife Makeover, a serious power day, guaranteed to give more shape, focus and energy to your work and to your life.

Perfect if you’re heading into the summer holiday season thinking that things need to be different when you get back from vacation; if things have been a little, how shall we say, crazy recently given everything that’s going on in the world; or if “balance” has felt like an unattainable dream for you.

Or, if you need to just take a day away from your busy schedule to pause and reflect on where your life is going right now.

The first Worklife Makeover was a huge success. A group of fabulous people who’d never previously worked together joined forces with me and made some serious shifts in the direction and focus of their work and of their lives. To a person, they found the energy, and gave themselves the permission they needed to do things that, until that point, they’d perhaps just been flirting with.

Don’t just take my word for it. Read just some of their testimonials and feedback here and here.

Focus On The Key Things That Make A Difference

During the day:

  • You’ll learn what it means to live the “well-lived” life, and see how yours measures up.
  • You’ll create a blueprint for your own worklife design and highlight for yourself the goals and actions that’ll really bring it to life.
  • You’ll discover the success secrets of the world’s most fulfilled and happy people and figure how adopting even one of them could bring more enjoyment into the mainstream of your life.
  • You’ll unearth the biggest current barrier, standing between you and your dreams, and you’ll unlock yourself from its power.
  • You’ll anchor all of your decisions and actions in a way that will allow you to integrate what you’ve learned and be able to take your new energy immediately into your life.

Be Coached And Supported Throughout

This is not a day of wall to wall PowerPoint, so don’t expect it. Instead, you’ll get short bursts of juicy content, interspersed with lots of different coaching exercises, getting you working with your own challenges and issues live time.

I’ll also be keeping numbers small, so that we can have the kind of rich, co-coached discussions that really make a difference.

Early Bird Offers Available Till 6th August

I am offering a limited number of early bird places at £325.00 plus VAT until 6th August. After then I’ll be reverting to the full workshop price of £385.00 plus VAT.

Added 3 August 2010: Sorry, there are no more places available on this workshop. But I’d still love to hear from you. Email me at christine@adifferentkindofwork.com or phone me on +44 (0) 7767 244977 , if you’re interested in joining the waiting list for this or other similar events in the melting pot.

Or if you’re a company that’s passionate about your talented staff’s well-being, get in touch to chat about how I can run this in-house for you.

Filed Under: Reinventing work, Self Development Tagged With: ,

Doing Your Real Work

July 12, 2010 by 21 Comments

Farmer at Harvest

Today I’m delighted to welcome the super-talented Tara Sophia Mohr. Her beautiful piece challenges us to consider what our real work is – and how we can do it, irrespective of what job we might currently be doing.

Work Worthy of You

There you are. You. A sacred human being, with your particular form of brilliance. It may be a form of brilliance that school teachers knew how to recognize, and they at school could assess, but probably not. It may be a form of brilliance that your parents saw and spoke to you about, probably not. But don’t be confused, your unique brilliance resides within you, and the world needs it.

Then there is your heart, your desire to create something of value, something that heals or enriches or improves the world. There is your desire to be part of something good, something ethical, something meaningful.

Work can be about all of this. Work can be the experience that uses your gifts and fulfills your desire for contribution. Work can be the ultimate expression of what you came here, to this planet, to do. Work can be worthy of the sacredness of you.

The Mind Baggage

Here comes the mind-baggage, the voice that rushes in to say, “but I could never make a living doing something that I love.” The belief that you could never be more than an easily exchangeable part in the vast economic machine. There are all the fears – of failing if you go your own way, of what other people will think, of the risks of dropping out of the mainstream way. There is the fear of ending up starving on the street.

It is up to each of us to question these fears – are they true? Are they guiding you in a wise way? Do they reflect a realistic assessment of risk? Are they voices of reason, or simply voices of fear?

If you set all those fears aside, place them outside the chamber of your thinking, what do you see now, about what you want? What do you see now about what is possible?

Your Job vs. Your Real Work

In my work with coaching clients, we make a distinction between their jobs and their real work. Their jobs are whatever they are doing to earn income at the moment.

Their real work is what they feel called to do, the work that feels right in the soul. It’s the work that ignites their passion and releases the adrenalin in their veins. It’s the work that makes life feel more alive and colorful, yet more calm and balanced, all at the same time. It’s the work that makes them feel stronger, that makes them feel like themselves.

I stand for this: everyone can do their real work – no matter what their job at the moment. Everyone has the opportunity to begin doing their real work – in some way – no matter what their external circumstances — financial constraints, family responsibilities, lack of time.

If your real work is protecting the environment and your job is trading stocks, you can do your real work through volunteering, political action, and philanthropy. If your real work is teaching music and your job is web design, you can teach music to a person in your community, once a week.

It’s the self-sabotaging voice within us that makes it either-or, black and white. That part of us loves the melodramatic idea that you had to give up your passion long ago, that there is just no way to keep it alive now that you have a mortgage, family, demanding job…you fill in the blank. That part of us sees us as stuck, powerless victims when it comes to creating fulfilling work.

Why? Because doing our real work is scary. It’s real. It’s emotional. It’s vulnerable. It evokes to fear to start claiming our real lives, to start living more authentically, so a part of us tries to keep us safe in the known status-quo.

But you are bigger than that, and smarter than that, so notice the fear, notice the resistance, and start doing your real work, in some manageable, doable way.

You’ll find that the joy and energy you get from doing your real work is so big and rich and powerful that even small amounts of time spent on it will change your life.

Create the Relationship Between Your Job and Your Real Work

As you do your real work more and more, you get to decide: what do you want the relationship between your job and your real work to be? They can be one and the same: you can make your real work also the thing you do for income. Or they can remain separate. Or they can overlap somewhat, but not entirely. You get to decide.

At different stages of our lives, and based on our different personalities and needs, different solutions work. For example, Carol’s real work is helping struggling youth, and she thinks one day, maybe after her kids have left the nest, she’d like her job to be in that field. For now, she really appreciates a less demanding, moderately fulfilling job that allows her flexibility and lots of time with her family. For the time being, she works with youth organizations as a volunteer and board member, and she loves it. Mark, another client, recently decided that it just wasn’t fulfilling enough for him to keep his job and his real work separate. He made a major career change and started a finance business run in a socially responsible way, pursuing his real work calling.

You get to decide what you want the relationship between your job and your real work to be, but there is no excuse for turning your back on your real work.

Your real work will reduce stress and resentment and pessimism in you, and it will bring more humor, lightness of spirit, and emotional balance into your life. It will bring more meaning and vitality into your daily existence. And it will give the world what the world is so thirsty for – human beings showing up in their full vitality to contribute for the good.

Tara Sophia Mohr is a writer, coach, and personal growth teacher. She writes the blog Wise Living. You can receive her free Goals Guide, “Turning Your Goals Upside Down and Inside Out (To Get What You Really Want)” by clicking here.

phCreative Commons Licenseoto credit: h.koppdelaney

Filed Under: Guest posts, Inner work, Self Development Tagged With: , , , ,

The Vocation Myth

July 9, 2010 by 12 Comments

Neptune with dancing water spiritsLots of people get sucked into the current new age wisdom that we all have one unique thing we’re called to do in life.

They spend years, not to mention thousands of pounds, on the next book, coach or workshop that offers the key to the holy grail.

Meantime they feel pretty miserable doing whatever it is they’re doing – or not – right now. And beat themselves up for being a lesser person because, unlike the zealous peddlars of the vocation myth, they haven’t found what work it is they’re really supposed to be doing.

Experiments

In working with clients having this experience, I encourage them to take all that forward-looking pressure off themselves and live in the present.

What if they could allow themselves to find something meaningful in what they’re doing right now?

What if they saw their current work or lack of it as an experiment, telling them something about themselves, their lives, and what they most enjoy?

What would they discover? How could they use that learning to course-correct their current situation, or future work decisions?

Not one calling but several

In my client work, as in my own life, I see time and time again how what we do shifts and morphs over time. The picture of vocation as a static, certain thing into which we can plough ourselves for endless years is misguided.

Sure, some people know early on that they’re called to be a doctor or singer or lawyer or whatever.

But for others it’s a discovery process of finding one jigsaw puzzle piece of ourselves after another in the different things we do. Without valuing the purpose of the bit we’re doing right now, we’ll never get to understand the full picture.

Implications

If you’re someone searching for your one big calling, I encourage you to sit and think about this today:

How might you be diminishing yourself by constantly yearning after some other thing than what’s right in front of you?

I’m not saying that there’s not something bigger waiting for you.

What I am saying is that, if you put yourself back into the flow of what you’re doing right now, you’re more likely to find it more quickly and more powerfully.

What do you think?

Creative Commons License photo credit: alicepopkorn

Filed Under: Inner work, Reinventing work Tagged With: , , , ,

Want To Learn Faster? Stand Next To The Master

July 5, 2010 by 10 Comments

On Saturday morning I went to my regular Bodypump class. I was a little later than usual in getting there. Walking into the studio to set up my equipment I couldn’t help noticing that the other participants had already done so in a cluster at the back. Nevertheless, I took my place as usual at the front, right next to the instructor.

As the class started, I had a completely unimpeded view of her posture; how she was lifting her weights; and how she was moving in time with the music. Somewhere in my peripheral vision was the mirror’s reflection of the rest of the class. For sure, some of them were pretty fit and pretty good. But many hadn’t quite got the technique right, or were moving out of time with the music. Still, I didn’t have to be put off by any inaccurate postures or discordant tempos, because I could screen it out and look straight ahead to the teacher in front of me, and her model of what good exercising looked like.

As with most things I want to do well in life, I went straight to the person from whom I could learn the most, the best, and the fastest.

Looking back on corporate jobs I’ve done, the ones I most enjoyed were those where I aligned myself to people who were great leaders, both of people and of their business discipline. And as I’ve learned how to coach well; deepened my skills in psychology; and cracked the use of social media, I’ve always sought out people who were already at the top of their game and who stood out from the crowd of those who would imitate them.

In other words, I’ve stood next to the masters.

There are many imitations out there. Lots of people who herd together following the movements of those closest them, fooling themselves that that’s mastery. And it’s not like those people don’t have their followers, because they do. But ultimately there are a lot of echoes in our whole human system, because being an echo is safe.

It’s much more difficult to step away way from people who would be good and put yourself in the position of deciding not to leave the development of your mastery to chance.

In days gone by there was a way to develop oneself to the best of one’s abilities. It was called apprenticeship. A fledgling artist or crafts person would pay money to sit alongside the masters of their time and mimic their skill.

When the apprentice could easily reproduce what the master could do it was time for her to put her learning to the service of expressing her own art or craft. Thus her own journey to mastery began.

Now, I’m not suggesting you formally apprentice yourself to anyone. But the model of identifying the best person you can learn from, and actively getting alongside them is a useful one if you have the vision of being at the top of your game in any field.

Indeed, you may want to identify several masters from whom you can perfect distinct aspects of your craft.

Think about it: what does mastery mean to you? Who are your masters? What’s stopping you from standing more closely to them?

Filed Under: Inner work, Self Development Tagged With: ,
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