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5 Golden Career Rules Your Parents Taught You (And Why You Should Ditch Them)

Christine — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:41:26 +0000

Maybe you were one of those lucky kids whose parents were pretty sorted, and supported your self-actualization growing up?

I wasn’t, and neither were most of the people I work with.

It’s not that our folks were bad (okay, actually some were awful). Sometimes they just taught us too well how to fit into the world, and particularly to the world of work.

Here are 5 career rules I hear, their positive intention, and the dangers of swallowing them down whole.

You’ll never get on without qualifications

Mum and Dad knew from their own experience of either having qualifications or not that most businesses favor them. Of course they do. Qualifications say something of your general ability, your willingness to knuckle down and put yourself to the test. And, when starting out in your professional life they allow you to show that you have what it takes to stand out from the crowd. For many lines of work, you simply won’t be considered without them.

But the fixation for qualifications like university degrees has marginalized more artisan and maverick career routes. It can also stop in its tracks a natural talent to do a particular line of work without prior study. I think about some folks I know who have a raw talent for coaching, but who get put off by the hype that you have to have studied. My advice to them? Pay for the best supervision and start coaching anyway. Sure, you can get qualifications down the track. But for some things talent and badges of study should not be confused as the same thing.

Don’t job jump

Here, your parents were trying to protect you from giving the impression that you’re not reliable, committed and loyal. It’s true that recruiters look at the length of time you’ve stayed in any one job. For more professional roles, you have to give a job time in order to bring about sustainable results. If you’ve moved quickly from one role to another while claiming to have changed the world, hirers may be suspicious.

The downside of this rule is that you can feel obliged to stick at a job that you know in your heart of hearts isn’t for you. It’s one thing to create the brilliant career on paper, quite another to live it out day by day. There comes a point where hanging in there for the sake of following a rule can at best dent your confidence, and at worst make you ill. You need to protect your well-being. Without it, there is no career. Sure, if you quit a job quickly you’ll be challenged. The key is to be very clear and very positive about why moving on was the correct professional decision for you.

Don’t have gaps on your CV

It’s related to the point about job jumping and indeed is held up as a reason for not quitting something you dislike. Again, in teaching you this rule, your seniors were making sure that a pile of judgments weren’t heading in your direction about being lazy or unemployable.

However, it’s a myth these days that people work from cradle to grave. Increasingly, people switch track, have times of personal review and evolution, have years where they put parenting or other interests ahead of careers. The point is not to play these down or disguise them. The point is to know the cohesion and integrity in your own story and to be clear about what you offer now.

Put your career before everything else

What your parents were trying to instil here was the sense that doing well in anything requires focus and discipline. Again, of course that’s true.

The danger comes when that message gets interpreted as meaning you should be so single minded that you forever put anything other than work aside. What gets forgotten in this position is that there are not limitless opportunities on when we can enjoy things.

Take the example of a guy I spoke with recently. A board member of a highly successful firm, he had spent his entire life putting work first, in the misguided belief that he could have “life” at some point down the track. Now, a couple of years from retiring early and enjoying the fruits of his efforts with his family, his wife has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Amazingly, when we began talking at first, his first concern was how he could make arrangements for her to be cared for in order that he keep working.

You can’t make money doing what you love

The old dears were trying to save you years of wasted effort with this one; didn’t want you to go down a route that would leave you miserable and penniless. (And them without a successful son or daughter through which to be successful themselves.)

The danger here is that you instead spend years solvent, but miserable for other reasons. Locked into avenues of work and study you don’t care for; not allowing yourself to imagine how things could be different. Of course, we all live in a society where money is the collateral with which we fund life. But the challenge is how to do what you love and be financially viable. For a lucky few, both these things will be incorporated in their day-to-day work. But if that’s not you, don’t believe that you have to put your burning interest aside. Make sure to feed your soul by finding a way to do it as a sideline or hobby. It’ll enrich the side of you that works to ensure your cash flow.

Some of the career rules we get socialized to live out serve us well enough. But many serve our governments, societies, and the very institution of work better than they serve us. The trick is to be savvy, make conscious what rules you’re living under, and decide which ones you’ll keep. And, which you, frankly, need to kick into touch.
photo credit: BoonLeeFamPhotography

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Why You Need To Trust Yourself When The Wheels Come Off Your Career Wagon

Christine — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:48:09 +0000

What do you do when the wheels come off your career wagon?

That’s a question that brings a lot of people to me. People who’ve expected their work – and lives – to go in a certain direction. To have just the same enthusiasm today as they always had yesterday.

But then something happens.

Someone close gets very ill – or they themselves do. A relationship hits the rocks or, conversely, an unexpected one is kindled – an affair, perhaps. Unexpected performance feedback hits them deeply. A business they’ve expected to do well fails. Their job disappears, or is restructured in an alien way.

Maybe their passion for what they once did ebbs away and they have to confront the gnawing reality that something about them is changing.

Whatever, there’s suddenly a crisis of meaning. Life no longer bobs along in the same knowable, predictable way. Work just doesn’t feel the same or they don’t feel the same in it.

If you recognise yourself in this, you’ll recognise too the struggle to reassert yourself. You strive to get your energy and focus back to where they were, and you notice how exhausting that is. Because there is no going back, only forward.

You search for answers outside yourself; words of wisdom to buoy you up or give you some structure. These may work for a while, but sooner or later you have to admit to yourself that they’re not the real deal.

The decision to trust yourself

The only solution that in my experience really works, is to look inside yourself for the direction you need to take now, and for the resources that will help you. There’s so much noise out there. So many gurus with The Answer that it’s difficult to trust that your own being knows more about you than they ever could. But that’s how it is.

Of course such discovery work is often best done with a guide; someone who knows this territory and can help you make sense of and give shape to your journey. But the starting point for it is always you, and the self-belief that you can get yourself out of whatever porridge you feel you’re currently wading through.

Trusting yourself starts with a clear decision. Sure, it sounds easy, and does hard. But once you’ve made that decision you’ll be amazed at how your own and other people’s energy mobilise to take you forward differently. You need to be ready to pay attention to all of the subtle as well as obvious ways that will happen. The longer you hesitate, the longer you stagnate.

So, what about you? What’s stopping you in your tracks right now? How would trusting yourself help you move forward? What are you waiting for?
photo credit: ganesha.isis

Why Freelancers Hold The Key To Happiness At Work

Christine — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 12:00:12 +0000

Did you know that there are now 1.4m freelance workers in the UK, and 42.6m in the US?

That’s around 8% of our full-time working populations taking responsibility for their own livelihoods.

Interesting?

Even more interesting, freelancer workers are among the happiest.

Reasons for being happy?

They have more control over what work they will and won’t do.

They orient their work in the direction of the things they most enjoy.

They work outside the constraints of the normal “9 to 5″.

And they also believe that they have more control over what they earn, and when they earn it.

They are role model New Work Pioneers: brave, courageous folks, intent on giving themselves a more livable business experience.

And I wonder what their example says to you?

What lessons can you learn from them? What do you notice about their approach to things that differs from yours? What changes could you adopt, even in your full-time job, that might allow you to be a little happier?

I’d love to get your take on it.

photo credit: a4gpa

How To Maintain Your Work Detox In 5 Minutes A Day

Christine — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:00:57 +0000

Post six of The Two-Week Work Detox Series, and by now some of the angst and overwhelm you’d been feeling about work is starting to recede as you whip your work and life into shape.

The Detox In Brief

Here’s the journey we’ve been on that’s helping you get a grip on things:

First, Set Yourself Goals gave you an exercise to help you get clear about what you really, really want from life.

The Critical Few Activities That Need Your Focus challenged you to consider the key things you ought to be concentrating on if you’re serious about getting off the hamster wheel.

How Is Time Spending You? got you confronting the realities of how you’re actually spending your energies right now. And,

Time Shifting For Success had you figuring the difference between what you say you want and what you’re currently doing. And zeroing in on what really needs to change.

So, you’ve got lots of things that you’ve begun to put into action. But how do you keep up and build on your own momentum?

What Gets Focus Gets Results

The organising power of the brain is immense. Give something enough thought and attention and you’ll bring it to life. Consider this: all of the best works, be they artistic or entrepreneurial, began as ideas in someone’s head. It just so happens that their creators dared to put the energy and focus into manifesting them.

Those goals and plans you’ve just spent the last two weeks hatching now need similar commitment and belief from you. They need to be nurtured. They need you to have an active system of planning, doing and reviewing that turns them into hardcore reality.

Today’s challenge is for you to decide how to do just that.

What works for me is to hand write my goals in a beautiful notebook and review them regularly. 5 minutes a day is all it takes. I’ve got a routine of taking myself to my local coffee shop, treating myself to a good strong coffee, and checking in on myself. Every day, I figure out one or two key things that, if I do them, are going to help me progress my life plans.

Morning coffee might not be your cup of tea, if you’ll excuse the pun. But find your own routine. Your own positive habit that’s going to make an ongoing difference. And don’t just take my word for it that this kind of process works. Check out fellow blogger Karen Ruby’s view on it too.

Whatever works.

The point is to bring what you want to the forefront of your mind even if briefly every day. And if you can build in a longer weekly or monthly review so much the better. If that feels like a chore, find ways to put fun into the equation. Go somewhere quirky to think and write. Use funky pens or your favourite note-making tools. Put your favourite music on and rock it.

Make the decision to do it, and watch day by day as your life and work change.

So, that’s the end of the series, folks. Thanks for being here with me. I look forward to hearing how things are changing for you!

Time Shifting For Success

Christine — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 11:00:45 +0000

If you’ve been reading The Two-Week Work Detox Series, and following along with the exercises, I suspect you’re already starting to suss out that how you’re focussing your time and energy right now is out of step with what you really want.

In fact, if you take a look at the ideal week you created in the third post, with the 24 hour snapshot you made in the fourth, chances are you see quite a mismatch.

So, today your answers to three questions will help you zero in on what really needs to change.

What needs to stay in your life?

What’s already good that just needs to remain as is? Remember that change doesn’t mean throwing the baby out with the bath water.

What needs to go?

What are all the things you’re doing that have reached their sell-by date? What are the attitudes you’re holding onto, implicit in what you’re currently focusing on, that need to be ditched?

What one thing can you do right now to begin the process of moving away from these things?

What needs to be added to your life?

What’s missing that you need to start doing? How are you going to add these things? What’s the action you can take right now, today, that will get the ball rolling on this?

As you work through all three questions, think too about who can help you, and what resources you can lean on.

So, off you go and make some changes, not forgetting of course to share some of your decisions and insights with me.

Join me again on Friday, for a wrap-up discussion talking about how you keep your good intentions alive over the longer term. If you want to be sure not to miss it, sign up here to get it by email!

Earlier posts in the series

Introducing The Two-Week Work Detox

First, Set Yourself Goals

The Critical Few Activities That Need Your Focus

How Is Time Spending You?

photo credit: nnes

How Is Time Spending You?

Christine — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:00:32 +0000

So, if you’ve been following The Two-Week Work Detox Series, you’ve built a picture of what you want from your worklife, and what you need to focus on to achieve it.

But what are you currently focussing on?

You’ll get the answer to this question by looking at how you’re spending your time. Bottom line, if you’ve been feeling that work and life need a bit of a sort out, the chances are there’s a mismatch between what you should be focused on, and what you’re actually doing.

I take some of my coaching clients through this process in detail, and the occasional one says, “yes, but there are lots of things I have to do.” The thing is we don’t have to do anything. You may imagine that you have little choice about how you spend your time. That, my friend, is mistake number one. That, indeed, is allowing time to spend you. It’s giving over your focus to things that are not in keeping with who you are and what you say you want.

We’ll get into more detail about the whole mismatch thing in the next post.

But today’s exercise is all about getting to grips with what an average day in your life actually looks like.

A Day In The Life Of…

Over the next 24 hour, what I’d like you do, is step back and review your moment by moment activities. Set a half-hourly, recurring alarm using the timer on your computer, phone, watch or whatever. And when the buzzer goes, make a note of just how you’ve spent the last 30 minutes.

No need to analyse. No need to change what you do. Just observe and make notes.

Bring them back here on Wednesday, ready for the next stage in the process. If you want to be sure not to miss it, sign up here to get it by email!

What occurs to you as you set yourself the task of doing this exercise?

Earlier posts from the series:

Introducing The Two-Week Work Detox

First, Set Yourself Goals

The Critical Few Activities That Need Your Focus

photo credit: Robert von Bangert

The Critical Few Activities That Need Your Focus

Christine — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:00:42 +0000

If you’ve been following The Two-Week Work Detox Series so far, you’ll have a good idea now of what you want to achieve from your working life.

You may have noticed, as a few of the commentors did, that the questions around goals in the last post were deliberately open. They did not ask you to focus on your current job or your status quo life. They may have taken you, to use Marion Anderson’s words, into the realms on “how else…?” or “what else…?” That’s fine.

If they didn’t it’s time to go back to your answers to those original questions and challenge yourself. Are you really stepping up to your own plate in the way you’ve approached them?

Off you go and check. I’ll be right here when you’re ready.

Ready?

Today’s key takeaway point

Goals only get realised when you decide you’re going to achieve them, and then put your focus and energy behind doing just that.

It’s that simple. If you say you want something, but you do something else, you’ll get something else. In which case you haven’t got goals, you’ve got fantasies.

Exercise

So, what are the things you must do to enable you to achieve your goals? Start off with a list, or a mindmap, or whatever works for you when you’re thinking freely. Then look at your list, and figure out the few things that, if you gave them all your attention, would really allow you to motor.

Then

What proportion of your time would you ideally need to spend on these things to see them gain traction?

Note, I’m not asking you to think about what proportion of your available time after you’ve done your job and all your other chores. I’m asking, blank sheet of paper, if you were reinventing your life – because, in a way, you really are – how much time do your key activities deserve?

Draw yourself a blank grid of seven days and map it out. Or, better still, download my Ideal Week pdf and use it.

Create your ideal week, step back and feel how good it is to see your life mapped out in front of you, full of the things you really want to be doing.

This is the blueprint you need to take your work detox to the next level on Monday. Meantime, have a great weekend and don’t forget to let me know how it’s all shaping up for you!

Introducing The Two-Week Work Detox Series

First, Set Yourself Goals

photo credit: Dominic Sayers

First, Set Yourself Goals

Christine — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 11:00:31 +0000

This is the second post in The Two-Week Work Detox, a series of 6 posts coming at you this week and next.

Often at work and in life we become so accustomed to living out other people’s expectations of us we spend most of our time on automatic pilot doing task after task without consideration for whether it actually serves us any useful purpose or not.

What do you really, really want?

That’s really the crux of today’s post. Because unless you can answer that question clearly, and put your energy behind achieving it, you’re going to find it difficult to break free from any toxic work practices.

So, the first step of the detox process is to take time to figure out what your own goals are.

Now, I’m not asking you to regurgitate the targets you’ve agreed with your board or senior manager, or the goals you’ve written in your 2010 goal-setting form. They may – or may not – be part of the equation. Rather, I’m challenging you to think about yourself.

Here’s how.

Take half an hour or so – longer if you can – and set your imagination free. In your mind, picture yourself having the working life of your dreams:

What are you doing?
Where are you doing it?
Who is working with you? What role are they playing in your picture?
When are you doing it?
How are you doing it?
What purpose does this work serve in your life?
How does it reward you?
What else, other than work, is integral to this picture.
Who, other than your work colleagues, are important to you in this picture.
What are you thinking, and how are you feeling about considering your working life in this way?

That’s it for today, folks. The next post, and the next step in the detox process is coming up this Friday. Don’t miss it. Subscribehere for email updates.

If you want any help with this, email me at christine@adifferentkindofwork.com, pick up the phone on +44 (0) 7767 244977, or catch me on Twitter.

Oh, and don’t forget to leave a comment and let me know how you get on!

Introducing The Two-Week Work Detox Series

photo credit: TheMarque

Introducing The Two-Week Work Detox Series

Christine — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:00:31 +0000

Like I said in The Last Summer Holiday You’ll Need, a lot of people around me are frazzled right now, and ready for a holiday.

The problem is that, unless you do something fundamental to change your status quo, the feel good factor from your expensive break will last about two days.

Then you’re once more back on the hamster wheel, living only for your next break.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Welcome to The Two-Week Work Detox, a series of six articles coming to you over the next couple of weeks. It’s going to work like this:

Each post will have a brief but chunky bit of content, followed by self-coach homework and/or questions.
You’ll need something to capture your thoughts, ideas, and actions in. A funky notebook, a Moleskin, your iPad, laptop, or voice-recorder. Whatever works for you really.
Tune in on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for each update. Better still, make sure you’re subscribed to the blog to get each new post via email.
Bring your courage, enthusiasm and determination to kick your work-life in the ass.

Sound good?

So, before we get started with the series, I’d love to hear what aspects of your working life you’d like to change? And how can this series help you achieve that?

photo credit: coolinsights

Doing Your Real Work

Christine — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:00:06 +0000

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