There’s a story about this eBook that one day I will tell separately.

For now, I just wanted to be shamelessly self-promoting and let you know that The 7 Most Soul-Sucking Career Mistakes Ever (And How To Avoid Them) is available for free download to newsletter subscribers.

There’s more great digital stuff coming to the blog over the next little while. Still, it always goes out first to the special group of folks on my mailing list.

So, if you want to be in on more of the fun and games, join them here.

Oh, and when you do, please email me any feedback you have on the book. Alternatively, feel free to leave your comments here.

No related posts.

It’s epidemic.

Smart, talented people, out of touch with how capable they are.

Waiting for some fairy godmother to come along and make it okay for them to wear the coveted crystal slippers.

You know how it is. The boss you want to endorse you. The client you want to adulate you. The community you want to follow you.

Of course, that’s not what you show the world. Out there you put your best face forward and get on with things. But behind the mask, the theater make-up is cracking.

You come to me because you feel you should be more than you are. Confident, successful, happy. A mixture of all three. You want to stop feeling so fearful and anxious about things that other professional people seem to sail through.

Cinderella, you just don’t get that the crystal slippers were yours and yours alone in the beginning.

And, while you’re getting your head round that last line, here’s a little more story to share how the metamorphosis from ugly sister to Cinderella happens.

Feeling phony

In the beginning you use words to describe yourself that bring tears to my eyes.

“I’m pathetic,” you’ll say. Or, “I’m crap.”

“Any moment now and I’ll be discovered for the phony person that I am,” you say.

Like your years of study count for nothing. Like your hard work has never been translated into great job offers, promotions and client wins. Like there’s not a group of folks around who have only solid respect for you.

Indeed, you share your surprise for the nice things people say about you. It confuses you. Doesn’t make sense.

I offer back your paradoxical positions. That other people rate you. That you don’t rate yourself.

You start to get a little curious of the gap.

The Gap

You start to see that it’s such a painful place to live. And yet you know it so well. It has been a constant throughout your life.

Except now it’s killing you. You’re tired of it. The energy required to keep managing the difference between the outside and inside you is huge, and taking its toll.

You do a little reading around or even talk to some other folks. There are badges you can wear to explain why it’s okay for you to think like you’re an Ugly Sister when you’re really Cinderella.

Control freak is one with which you identify. Closely followed by Perfectionist.  There are loads of them in the business world. At least identifying with them gives you a faint sense of belonging.

Dig further and you might find some psychologists telling you that you have an Inferiority Complex. That you live in a perpetual state of needing to prove to yourself and others how good you are.

They may even snigger and nod and tell you that most of the people in top jobs and in positions of power have this kind of thing going on. That it’s what drives them to set higher and higher expectations for themselves from which other people benefit.

I ask you if these labels really serve you; if they really help assuage the tension in your soul. If they help the Cinderella locked inside, tending to the fireplace, when she really wants to go to the ball.

You tell me, “Not really.”

How come?

But you do want to understand how come Cinderella got locked away in the first place. And, en route to unleashing her, we spend some time on the backstory.

Often there’s the tale of the bright child whose ability was so taken for granted that you were never able to cement it in the foundations of your own being. The parent who always went looking for the missing 2% of a 98% exam success. And how you learned from this never to see how phenomenal your achievements are, but to focus instead on your inevitable human errors.

Alternatively, I hear the one about the parent whose own need to be validated and endorsed was ahead of yours, leaving your hunger for positive mirroring unsatisfied. So, that you learned to seek, but not to expect or take in, validation from folks you interact with.

Poor Cinders

I feel sorry for your pain.

But we don’t dwell there. Ugly Sister thinking may have held you back in the past, but it doesn’t mean you’re destined to feel like the poor relation forever.

So I ask you what was missing from back then that you need to give yourself right now.

“Permission to be okay,” you say. “No matter what.”

“Permission to sparkle and shine?”

As I ask you that, I see you cringe. You don’t want to be big headed and pseudo-egotistical like some of the people you brush up against.

So, I now challenge you with the polarity of your options. “On the one hand, you feel you need to disown your strengths. On the other, you think you have to rub them in people’s faces. Isn’t there another way?”

You shall go to the ball

You’re silent. Thinking. Daring to touch the gift of who you are.

“I suppose there’s also my own way,” you say.

“Your own way?”

“Yeah, just allowing me to be myself.”

“Stepping into your own Cinderella slippers and rocking?”

You laugh. You’ve changed state and I can hear and see it.

I ask you how it feels to connect with your own way.

“Liberating,” you say. “Like I’ve just cast off the weight of the world.”

“That’s because you have,” I say.

This is no fairy tale

Thing is, this is not a fairy tale. It’s the kind of place people get to in daring to do deep change work on themselves. It’s the kind of work I love being party to. And I’ve seen it for real, in different formats of this, in my life and work this week.

So how about you? Do you have what it takes to step out of Ugly Sister thinking and into Cinderella’s shoes.

Or are you going to keep waiting for someone else to do it for you?

photo credit: Denzil~

No related posts.

Personal Development is one of the fastest growing niche markets on the web, and lots of people are setting themselves up as a leader, guide or mentor in their field of expertise.

In this day and age where so many of us are searching for answers, we’ll identify with those who seem to offer an understanding of our challenges and the journey needed to overcome them. But can we be sure that appearances are more than skin deep?

Here are 5 things you should know.

Not all gurus are equal

The place of guide or mentor belongs to those who themselves are on a path and continue to travel it daily. Their own journey will be different to yours and they recognize that. But their dedication to their own development gives them a wealth of hardcore experience from which to support you.

Contrast the position of the unscrupulous or hopeful searcher, who has decided, because there’s such an opportunity in the market, and no barrier to entry, that he or she can just write a website and set themselves up. They may be able to knock out interesting blog posts based on material they’ve regurgitated from others. And they may have very slick marketing skills.

But, when the chips are down, and you need some big support with a major bump in your road, do they really have what it takes to help you through it?

Beware gurus who promise a quick fix

The self development master knows that you have the resources in you to create opportunities and change in your life. As much as helping you work through from where you are, they know that a vital part of their role is to help you build your own self-development muscle enabling you, more and more, to tap into your own resources.

But this takes time.

The would-be guru likes to focus on quickly actionable stuff. It meets the needs of our healing on the hurry-up lifestyles. Now, instruction and practical stuff has its place, but too much “tell”, without any attempt to get to the core of your challenges, only fosters your dependence on them for the answers.

Beware gurus who will only attend to one part of your reality

You are your past, present and future. The master is comfortable to constellate all of those in an integrated and positive way as they work with you.

The would-be tends to want to focus on only one or two of these, excluding and often discounting the other. Their discomfort, or misguided belief, robs you of some of your depth.

Be cynical about gurus who project the illusion of the perfect life

The true guide is imperfect and okay about it. They see their fallibility as a strength because they know it means that they’re human. It gives them empathy in their quest to relate to others.

The “life is sorted” brigade are not just being insincere; they are setting themselves up to be better and hence apart from you.

You may initially think that it’s very inspiring to have a totally sorted person as a role model, because you see them as someone you want to be like. But you’re setting yourself up to be miserable, because totally sorted doesn’t exist.

Be cautious of those happy to give themselves the guru title

Real guides and mentors – folks who are indeed “gurus” – shun being defined by that word. They sit in their expertise and own it confidently. Yes, of course, they may use 21st century marketing practices to let you know who they are, but they’re not bumming it.

The folks to watch out for are those who’ll give themselves the title and brag about their expertise and achievements.

To avoid playing the personal development game – lots of apparent discussion and action with no real progress – you need to be smart and discerning. Remember this is your life you’re talking about. Treat it wisely.

Have you ever come across any of the practices above? How did it affect you? How did you deal with it? Are there any other unscrupulous practices you’ve seen around the web or in the personal development world at large?

photo credit: Irene Stylianou

No related posts.

Corporations often dish up beliefs as truths and then manage you through that lens. I see it all the time in my coaching work. There’s an implicit set of assumptions that underpin the culture of a business. These are all well and good if they happen to jive with your values and beliefs, but crazy-making if they don’t.

Take Bob who was living in the grip of one such “truth” when I began working with him.

A young, talented and ambitious accountant, he’d recently been disappointed to find that he hadn’t even been nominated for the promotion process that would eventually allow him to apply for partnership. But the icing on the cake was the following advice dished out to him by his HR Director:

“You can’t have a career and a good work life balance,”

When I asked him to help me understand, he shared that he wanted to have a life, as much as he wanted to have a career. He was no slouch. He’d work the hours to finish audits on time, and he’d conduct after-hours client review meetings no problem. But when the pressure was off, he’d leave work at six and spend his evenings with his wife and two children, instead of doing the politically required thing of staying at his desk.

This went against the grain for his firm. So, if he wanted a career there he was going to have to choose between two parts of him that he did not want to experience as ever being in conflict.

Reframe The Belief

The first step in our coaching work was to challenge the assumption in the belief.

“Is it true that one cannot have a career and a rich life beyond it?” I asked.

As we talked it through, it became obvious that, while it was true of his company, he could think of lots of other people in his life and in the public eye who had good lives and good careers.

Take Back The Power

Next up was for Bob to consider whose picture of a professional life he was going to follow: his own or his firm’s.

In the former, Bob himself could set goals for himself and decide what was and wasn’t okay for him. In the latter, he’d hand over much of his power to his firm. They’d decide what was appropriate, and Bob would moderate himself to fit in.

He decided that constantly measuring himself against some external standard, as he had been until that point, was no longer for him. Deciding to put himself in the driving seat of his own career allowed him to feel much more confident and resourceful.

Can You Get What You Want Here?

He decided to test out his current firm by having a further conversation with the HRD about how much latitude there actually was on worklife issues. But he returned to me disappointed.

“The partnership is a club,” the HRD had said. “It may say it values worklife balance, but really it expects complete loyalty. Either you’re happy to play by the rules or you’re not.”

We looked at the kind of club this partnership actually was and whether it was one of which Bob really wanted to be a member. He reflected on the phenomenal professionalism on the one hand; on the other he spoke of the failed marriages, the confirmed singletons, the relationships that appeared to exist purely on convenience. He started to square up to the possibility that this was not a club to which he would willingly belong.

Where Can You Get It?

With my support, he then went off and began having tentative chats with people in his professional network. He was trying to get a feel for how life was in other accountancy and professional service firms. Many of them seemed to have similar cultures. But some of the mid-sized, more entrepreneurial ones appeared more open to the possibility that their people might want to have more in their lives than work.

Finally, he was offered and accepted a senior management role for a smaller firm, with a fast-track route to partnership based on how things mutually worked out.

The last time I spoke to him he’d just been promoted, and was delighted.

Bob’s is just one example of how career rules can work against individuals, and how it’s possible, by getting clear of what’s true for you, to find a better fit.

What career rules might you be unduly struggling against? How might using Bob’s example free you up?

photo credit: Aerokev

No related posts.

The other day I was doing a thorough review of the analytics of my site with Marketing Coach, Jim Connolly.

We discovered an interesting thing.

Lots of people are reading my stuff at 2am.

There could be two reasons for this:

Either you’re so passionate about what you’re doing that you’re burning the candle on social media searches. Or some problem is keeping you awake, enticing you online in search of solutions.

My writing and outlook on life can be very upbeat. Sometimes I struggle to get across that I know what it’s like to see no solution to your problems. But the truth is I’ve been there myself in spades. Which means I’m not just well equipped, but also delighted to support you find your way through whatever challenges you’re currently facing.

You’re unlikely to disclose what’s going on for you on a post comment. But I just want you to know that I love getting emails and calls out of the blue from people who have read the blog and just want to reach out confidentially.

So, if there’s something you’d like help with, email me on christine (at) adifferentkindofwork.com, or pick the phone up to me on +44 (0) 7767 244977.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Related posts:

1. How The Threat Of Lay Off Can Scare You Sh*tless (And What To Do About It)
2. 4 Reframes To Get Your Career Groove Back
3. A Comprehensive Guide To Slaying Your Vampire Boss

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?

Related posts:

1. Who Else Wants A Free Worklife Makeover?
2. The Birth of a New Work Pioneer
3. How Safe Is Your Career From Extinction?

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.

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?

Related posts:

1. Looking At Life Through The Eyes Of A Child
2. How To Get Paid For Eating Chocolate Cake
3. Who Else Wants A Free Worklife Makeover?

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.

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

Related posts:

1. The Birth of a New Work Pioneer
2. Deviation From The Norm – My Different Kind Of Work
3. Up in the Air: food for thought for New Work Pioneers?

Lots 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?

photo credit: alicepopkorn

Related posts:

1. Doing Your Real Work
2. The Birth of a New Work Pioneer
3. The Silent Rise of the New Work Pioneer

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?

No related posts.