One of the hardest questions for me to answer is "what do you do for a living?" Unlike most people I know, I don't have one, simple bite-sized nugget to describe what I do.  Depending on who you are, I might tell you that I do one or more of the following:  Help people work through career transitions and develop their career/professional development plans.  Work with government agencies and nonprofit organizations to help them develop programs and services that support unemployed and disadvantaged workers, such as people with disabilities.  Provide training and technical assistance on how to use social media for job search and to support workforce development programs.  Develop and facilitate leadership academies and training sessions. Facilitate communities of practice. Educate on reflective practices.  You can see the connections between some of these "jobs", but some you can't see. As a self-employed professional, the work I do is largely based on the skills I've developed and places in the market where I've seen a need. At any given time, I'm doing work in several of these areas.  Marci Alboher wrote a few years ago about One Person/Multiple Careers, referring to a phenomenon she called the "slash career"--people pursuing multiple careers simultaneously. Marci was a woman ahead of her time, as I believe increasingly many of us will be pursuing this kind of career path. While some of us may become hyper-specialists, others (like me) are building a multi-pronged career where we pursue multiple opportunities at the same time.  For the most part, I think this is a positive. I diversify my funding streams this way and a "slash career"  keeps me fresh and exposes me to different people and different ways of viewing the world. This career path also keeps me from getting bored.  But there are downsides too, like what to put on business cards and my LinkedIn profile?  How to build an "online brand" that doesn't confuse people? How to divide up my time and ongoing professional development so that I'm building skills that will help me in all these different areas?  What is most challenging is helping other people to understand what I do when so many of us still have fixed in our heads the idea of a single career path or "job." People want to hear one single thing, like "I'm a nurse" or "I'm a career coach" or "I build bridges." It's hard for them to accept that you can be doing several different things at once.  Many of us are going to have to figure this out though, because in a world of diminishing full-time "jobs," more of us are going to be pursuing the "slash career." It's going to be the key to our career growth and survival.  And honestly, it's a return to how things used to be--think Benjamin Franklin as your career role model.  One book that helped me think through this a few years ago was The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One. Another was Refuse to Choose: Use All of Your Interests, Passions and Hobbies to to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams. (A side note--why do all non-fiction book titles seem to require a colon? It's a trend that disturbs me.)  At any rate, I'd love to hear from those of you who may be pursuing the Renaissance Man/Woman approach. How do you manage your different paths? How do you continue to grow and learn professionally, especially if your skill sets aren't particularly related? What do you love about your path? What do you struggle with? What do you think of the slash career as a professional strategy? 

In our ongoing career and professional development, there are times when it's helpful to look at our past. It may be that we're bored and contemplating a change. We may have been laid off and had change thrust upon us. Even as part of our ongoing reflective practice, mining our past experiences can give us great fodder for the future.  One way to look at your past is to use a technique pioneered by Ira Progoff as part of his Intensive Journaling process called "Stepping Stones." This process allows you to create a sort of career timeline that can give you greater insight into current career dilemmas and possibilities for new directions.  What Are Stepping Stones? Stepping stones are "the significant points of movement along the road of an individual's life." A stepping stone is  an event, image, sensation, a thought, or milestone of your life that comes to mind when you review your life from the beginning to the present. Stepping stones aren't tied to fixed periods of time. One stepping stone may last a few months and the next may last several years.  To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, here are my career stepping stones.  What Will I Be When I Grow Up? I'm going to be a lawyer College teaches me that I'd HATE being a lawyer. HR Manager  Kids make careers complicated Government work Turning my job into self-employment My Slash Career What's Next?  Stepping Stone 4 lasted a couple of years, but Stepping Stone 7 was about 7 years; you can see that time isn't really how you define a stepping stone. It's more about a phase of life that hangs together naturally.  Finding Your Stepping Stones To find your Stepping Stones, follow this procedure: Find a quiet space where you'll have between 10-15 minutes to yourself. Sit back and breathe deeply for a few minutes, letting your mind play over your life and various career experiences. Keep in mind that sometimes your career isn't about working. Notice that in my example, there was that period of exploration that covered childhood and college, times before I was working but when I was still thinking about what I wanted to do when I grew up. I also had a period when I was home with my children, but I still consider it part of my overall career trajectory.  In a few words or phrases, capture the essence of a particular stepping stone by writing it down in a journal or career notebook. You may find these in chronological order or they may show up in chunks. When I did this, I actually started with my last stepping stone and then went back to the beginning to trace to the present.  Don't spend a lot of time evaluating and thinking about this. Usually your stepping stones will appear relatively easily and should fall into place without a lot of critical analysis.  Working with Your Stepping Stones Once you have a list of your stepping stones, it's time to work with them. You can do this  in a few sessions or in one marathon session where you go through all of them. I've found that it's better to take them in chunks--maybe 2-3 at a time.  To start the work, first read through your entire list, trying to keep a neutral frame of mind. Suspend judgment if you can help it. Look for patterns or themes. Is there something that ties together two or more of your stepping stones? How do you feel looking at your list? Do some of the items evoke particularly positive or negative reactions? I've found that it's helpful to write down these general observations and reactions before I move into working with individual stepping stones.   Once you've looked at your overall list, you then want to turn your attention to individual stepping stones, describing them in greater detail. Some questions to consider:  What was happening in your career at that point? How were you feeling about your career? What else was going on in your life?  How did your career and life fit together during that time? What kinds of questions and issues were you dealing with then?  Were there any roads not traveled?  What relationships were important during this time? Were there bosses, colleagues and/or mentors who were particularly important? How did those relationships impact your career?  What lessons did you learn during this period? What did this time of life teach you about yourself and what you did/didn't want in your career?  A good way to begin your description is with the phrase "It was a time when. . . " This can be an excellent springboard into the memories and feelings of that period of your career.  Using Your Stepping Stones Once you've described your stepping stones in greater detail, there are many ways you can use the information.  Usually particular patterns or themes will emerge that you can use in decision-making and growth. For example, you may notice that the more postiive, growth-filled points in your career coincided with the times when you had a mentor to guide you. Or you may notice that you tend to get bored and need a change after somewhat predictable periods of time.  Something I noticed in my stepping stones is that every 3-4 years I need to find a new challenge--some new skill to master or some new area of research to immerse myself in. Recognizing this helped me to better understand that this is a theme for me, something I can anticipate and actively nurture. Some people have seen a pattern of foregoing career dreams in favor of the "practical" approach, while others have found that they repeatedly sacrificed their own career goals to help someone else.  The process of detailing your stepping stones can remind you of long-buried bits of yourself--interests you used to have or skills you haven't used in years. Once revealed to you, these can become nuggets to build on for the future.  Looking at your career life as a series of stepping stones can be a powerful way to mine your past for insight that you can use for your future. It can help you uncover long-lost career dreams as well as patterns of self-sabotage or "playing it small."  The point of the stepping stone exercise is to help you place your current circumstances and career issues in a longer timeframe. You are where you are in part because of decisions and experiences from your past. Exploring your stepping stones can help you put your present into context and give you new ideas for moving forward.  

Jessica Hagy of Indexed fame has an excellent illustrated post on Forbes--20 Ways to Find Your Calling.  Number one on the list is Ignore the future, deal with the present:  The question, "What should I be when I grow up?" is wrong. Ask instead, "What is next today?" People become fat one bite at a time, and we become adults one hour at a time, so what we do today matters. One of the things I observe with career clients is how potential futures can pull people away from what they are doing in the present. They spend a lot of time crafting a vision, but much less time paying attention to what's happening in front of them. While it's important to have a vision for the future--and this is something I notice many people lack--at the same time, we have to pay attention to what we are doing right now, today. What choices are we making about where we spend our time and put our priorities? What unconscious habits have we adopted that may actually be moving us further from our future dreams? How are we putting one foot in front of the other and how is this carrying us toward what we want, rather than further into what we don't want?  Like overeaters, we may find that one bite at a time, we are headed down a road that is unsustainable. Suddenly, we look up, after years of thinking about a future we do nothing to enact, and realize that this future is actually our past. Then we scramble to fix what we subconsciously created.  I'm a big fan of mindfulness--although not always so great at walking the talk. I think Jessica's reminder that we need to pay attention to what we are doing in the present is a good one. So how do we use our present to create our future? Ask Yourself Some Questions Start by asking some hard questions.  What is going on around me that I need to pay attention to? What trends are happening in my job, my company/organization and in the larger world that will impact my future?  How am I making choices today that take me closer to what I want in the future? How are my choices taking me further away?  How am I prioritizing my time and my resources? If I keep doing what I'm doing, where is this going to lead?  What is the elephant in the room? What is right in front of me that I don't want to acknowledge? How is this influencing my choices?  Try journaling about these questions and using them to change what you're doing in the present.  Build 1-Minute Reflections Into Your Day It helps to build more reflection into your day. I tell people to pay attention to how energy is flowing for them. Set your watch to do a 1-minute check-in every hour or two. Is your energy up or down? What have you been doing and how does this seem to impact your energy level? Keep a log and start looking for trends. As much as possible, focus on those activities and people that bring you energy, not those that drain it. If your entire day is an energy drain, start taking steps to make bigger changes.  Use Your First Hour to Set the Stage How are you spending your first hour? This sets the stage for the rest of the day. Create the right intentions at the beginning of your day and you are more likely to take present actions that support your future.  Change Your Habits The chart above is from Charles Duhigg's  The Power of Habit in which he argues that much of what we do in any given day is driven more by habit than by any thoughtful or intentional process. To live in the present means to recognize the extent to which our lives are merely a series of habits strung together by cues and rewards. To change the habit, we must become aware of what triggers us, what reward we get and then find ways to insert new, more positive routines between our cue and reward.  Use Your Present to Shape Your Future Ultimately, doing the right things today that are in alignment with what we want in our careers is the most potent tool we have for shaping the future we want. Being clear about where we want to go can be helpful, but if we don't take actions today that are in alignment with that future, we will never get where we want to go. 

I've found that figuring out what you want to do in life is both a science and an art.  The "science" part is the practical stuff, the step-by-step, "research this, try out that, reflect on what you discover" approach. And there's something to be said for researching occupational and work trends to get an idea of where the demand for your skills may be and what kind of education and experience you need. This is information you need to sell yourself and to get on the road toward that new career.  But before that is the decision to DO something to change. And that's where the "art" piece of it comes in. Because art, at it's heart, is about following some voice inside of you to create what it is you want, whether it's a painting or a career. Art is fueled by intuition--we might call it "the muse"-- and it is the muse that breathes life into every act of creation we take. But we have to listen to it first.  One thing I've found in myself and through working with others is that in our quietest moments, we KNOW the right next step. Our intution has been whispering to us about this for awhile. And when we don't listen to the whispers, it starts screaming.  "TIME TO QUIT," it will say. Or "YOU SHOULD BE USING YOUR TALENTS THIS WAY!" Or "IF I HAVE TO DO THIS ONE MORE DAY I WILL LOSE IT!" But we repress that voice, tell it to shut up, to be more "practical."  We argue with it and tell it all the ways that it's foolish, irresponsible and a "dreamer." We push it down and keep plowing ahead on this other course we're on, until we simply can't take it anymore. Or sometimes the decision is made for us, when we are laid off or fired or a big contract comes to an end.  Sometimes the best place to start in our career explorations is with the things we DON'T want to hear or acknowledge, the elephant in the room we keep trying to ignore.  What keeps going through our minds on a repetitive loop that we've managed to tone down to a dull roar? That's our intuitive voice, telling us what we need to hear, but that we don't want to listen to. Intuition can be our best teacher, when we stop repressing it.   What wisdom is your intuition trying to share with you?  Maybe it's time to start acting on that. . . 

Allison Jones has a great blog post today on places where she finds career inspiration. She says: When it comes to career advice, it is very easy to focus on tactics: how to write a resume; how to use social media to find a job; how to network. However, in the time that I have been blogging about nonprofit careers, I have realized that while tactics are important, they make it too easy for us to ignore bigger questions about our careers: what are we good at? What are we willing to commit to? What do we value most in our work and our lives? To that end, many of my favorite places for career advice, aren’t entirely career-tactic focused. Instead they focus on sharing powerful stories, asking compelling questions, and encouraging me to slow down. Then she lists some of her favorite sources, including friends, children's books (love that one!) and going inward.  Allison's post got me thinking about some of my own sources of inspiration that I wanted to share.  Social media connections Through social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogging, etc.) I'm connected to a lot of different people from all over the world working in a lot of different career areas.  In fact, Allison's blog post came to me via Facebook: I find that on any given day, someone, somewhere offers me a little nugget of gold that can spur my thinking. It might be an inspirational quote or a link to something interesting they're working on or even a complaint they have about their jobs. In some form or fashion, though, I get a little jolt that can keep me going--or at least gets me thinking.  TEDTalks One of the things that I can count on my social networks bringing to me are great TEDTalks. Some are oldies but goodies, while others are newly posted. Often the right talk comes to my attention at the right time--a little piece of serendipity that I try to notice and that boosts my day. My Journals  I keep two types of journals. Actually, three. The first is a diary-type arrangement where I write about what's on my mind, from the personal to the professional. It's an emotional and mental dumping ground that helps me clear my thoughts. It's also a place where I take notes on books I'm reading, including recording key quotes that "speak" to me. I also keep an art journal where I draw, paint, collage, make lists and generally express myself visually. This is can also a dumping ground of sorts, but it is more often a source of inspiration. And the process of art-making can get me in a good head space for dealing with a problem or seeing something in my life differently. The image below is from one of my visual journals.  The third type of journal I keep are idea books. These tend to be more professionally focused and will contain all of my notes, thoughts, articles, etc. related to different project ideas I have. I'm very interested in the power of conversation right now, so I have one devoted to that. I also want to do more face-to-face retreats, so I have a book on that. Some of these idea journals are a mish mash of different smaller ideas, but others--like the Conversation project and the retreat stuff--merit their own book.  Reflection Key to my journal-keeping is a regular practice of reflection on my journals. I will set aside time to go back through what I've written, which often leads me to see themes that have been happening for awhile across my personal and professional spheres that I've done nothing (or very little) to address. Although I find it relaxing and helpful to dump things in my journal, what is even more helpful is having a regular practice of reviewing and reflecting. At a minimum, it shows me where my blind spots and ongoing dreams are. When the process works really well, it will spur me to action.  Conversations  While I love time to think and reflect, I find that talking to other people can be a powerful source of inspiration too. Sometimes narrating what's going on with me gives me a way to hear myself say things that I didn't realize I was thinking. I also enjoy hearing what's happening with other people. I like asking them what they want MORE of in their work, which often helps me further refine what I like and don't like. I also like finding out what problems and issues people grapple with, as this sometimes gives me ideas for things I might be able to do to help fill in the gaps. For example, last year's end-of-year women's retreat was partially the result of conversations I was having with different women in my life who expressed a need for reflection and connection time. This spurred me to put together a weekend retreat that gave all of us space to do that together.  Reading I am a voracious and eclectic reader. I have business books, novels, psychology texts,  New Age chakra books and art collections littering my bedside. My Kindle is an equally weird conglomeration of whatever captures my interest at the moment. What I love is that eventually (always!), there will be some strange coming-together of ideas from two disparate sources that somehow spark my thinking. Plus I'm usually able to pull something from my reading that I can use in conversations (see above) to further inspire discussion. Retreats In the past few years, I've gotten in the more regular habit of going away on weekend retreats to give myself time and space for reflection and conversation, often for a particular reason.  I already mentioned the end-of-year women's retreat I did last December, which I plan to do again this year. That retreat was all about transitioning from 2011 to 2012. This past weekend my husband and I went away to a little cabin in the Poconos where we both worked on some of our creative projects. We returned home, thinking of some projects we want to work on together, as well as feeling renewed in our relationship and in our sense of what we want to be working towards in our lives.  For me, retreats are a critical inspirational experience. I try to enter into them with intention (What aspects of my life do I want to work on? What do I want and need to experience to feel renewed?). I give myself time for both quiet reflection and writing time as well as for conversations and connection because I find that both are needed for me to feel truly inspired and clear about where to go next. I've never been disappointed and I'm now becoming more purposeful in planning them. (BTW--West Coast friends--check out Christine Martell's upcoming Women Unplugged Retreat if you're feeling the need to go away!)  So these are my major sources of inspiration. . . let's keep the ball rolling. What are your sources of inspiration?   

Sometimes I find that when I'm stuck or I'm working with people who are stuck, what keeps us in the same place is that we're asking ourselves the wrong question. We don't realize we are asking this question, but we are. This is the question we're stuck in: What's wrong with me?  This post by Andrea Sher about her struggle with infertility reminded me of how often we can get stuck in this question for any part of our life that doesn't seem to be moving the way we want it to. This can keep us in a victim place that prevents us from really finding a way out. This is how Andrea describes the experience:  I had a session with my life coach. And she said, "Okay. So there’s a lot of self-pity here. What about the anger? Where’s that? Aren’t you pissed off and frustrated? Where’s the ‘why-the-f***-hasn’t-it-happened-by-now?’ Aren’t you mad at God or your body or somebody?!" And that’s when I got it. As I stepped into the anger (okay, rage) I felt my strength, my fierceness, my aliveness in addition to my longing. I also saw how little power there was in the self-pity. The victim place is just that- totally helpless and impotent. And I had been there a long time. As we explored the anger, I found my feet firmly planted on the ground. I practiced role playing with her. We pretended people were asking me how it was going, and instead of my usual "It’s so hard…" and crying almost immediately, I practiced saying, "It f***ing sucks!!! We’re f***ing frustrated!!!" Andrea is talking about infertility, but honestly, this conversation with ourselves can happen for any part of our lives, including our work. We have to stop asking "what's wrong with me?" and start asking some different questions.  Andrea suggests two that I think can be helpful: How can I help myself?  Where can I get support? Questions that have helped me in this situation are: What can I learn from where I am now?  Where's the energy in my life right now and how can I follow that? What do I want more of and how can I get it?  It changes your sense of the issues when you recognize that underneath all the "stuckness" is the question "What's wrong with me?" Seeing that question and how it disempowers you, then finding new questions that give you strength and courage can make a huge difference.  Try it. I promise that it works. 

The most common career advice around is to "follow your passion." But for some people, this is easier said than done. They may have lost sight of their passions or they may have a bunch of them. Sometimes it's a matter of re-framing things. So here are a few other strategies for re-defining your career that may work better than "follow your bliss." Focus on a Problem Maybe instead of following your passion, you need to find a big juicy problem to work with. Look around. Is there something in the world that you'd love to fix? Often this can be the best guide to our sense of purpose.  And working on important problems can lead you to doing your most important work.  Find Your Positive Core Where do your deepest talents lie? What is it that people come to you for again and again? Often who you are will provide the best clues to new career ideas. If career satisfaction comes from being authentic, then a career based on your unique gifts makes sense. That's where it becomes important to define your positive core.  One great way to explore your positive core is through Marcus Buckingham's latest strengths book and assessment, Standout. It helps you identify your two core strengths and gives detailed information on how you can use these to get yourself to the next level. I took it and found that I'm a "Stimulator/Provider." It gave me some great new insights into my strengths and how I could use them more effectively. Definitely worth a look.  And for the more visually inclined, one of the best tools I've used is the VisualsSpeak Image Center Career Clarity process. It gives you deep insights into your greatest strengths. Plus you can print it out and hang it over your desk for daily inspiration! Don't Choose One Passion Sometimes what keeps people from following their bliss is not that they can't find it, but that they have what they perceive to be, too many passions. They want to find that ONE thing, but can't seem to settle because several passions draw them in.  In today's economy, I think it's smart NOT to choose just one passion. If you have the energy and commitment to pursue career opportunities in several different areas, I say do it. This is how I've built my career and it's worked well for many people.  Career clarity can come in many different forms. If the "follow your bliss" frame isnt' working for you, try another route. 

One of the ways that I think we learn best is when we hear the stories of other people's career experiences. When we're in the middle of figuring out our own next moves, it can be helpful to see that someone has made a successful transition and how they did it.  With that in mind, I'd like to start a periodic series here at The Bamboo Project on successful career transitions featuring . . . YOU. If you--or someone you know--has made a successful career transition and you'd be willing to do a blog interview with me about it, send me an email at michelemmartin(at)gmail.com. I'll send you some questions and we can take it from there.  Let's learn from each other and the experiences we've had!

  I know a lot of you out there have big dreams--creative ideas for how you want to move ahead in your career or as an entrepreneur. Many of you have projects that have been kicking around in the back of your brain, waiting for you to give them some air and space to emerge. I want to help.  Last year I went away to  Pendle Hill, a  beautiful Quaker retreat space just outside of Philadelphia, in Wallingford, PA. With 10 of my friends, I looked at my life and the projects I wanted to work on this year and got great clarity and insight into where to go next.  That experience was so powerful for me and for the women I went away with, that I wanted to recreate it again, this time with some more structure and intentional activities to help others bring their creative dreams to fruition.  So I'm excited to announce that I'll be running the Dream It/Do It Weekend Retreat on November 9-11, 2012. It's for anyone who has a career or business dream they want to work on. You'll have dedicated alone time to plan for your dream, as well as group activities and supports that can help you build and refine your plans. All in a beautiful, peaceful setting that includes home-cooked meals made from locally grown ingredients, a fully-stocked art studio (seriously--it's amazing), and 23-acre grounds with walking trails for when you just need to move.  Running this retreat is one of MY dreams. I want to help you benefit from the same alone time for reflection and opportunities for community support that have helped me make my own dreams a reality.  There's much more on the retreat, as well as information on how to sign up here. I think it's going to be an amazing experience! I hope you'll join us. . . 

Jay Cross, one of my favorite learning experts, announced on his blog last week that he has a "new muse":  For the better part of forty years, my work has focused on adult learning. I’ve strived to make learning at work more effective, relevant, enjoyable, and cost-effective. Today I am shifting direction. My new muse is well-being. I'm intrigued by how and why people make the career transitions that they do, so I asked Jay to do a blog interview with me about his new direction. Here it is. Can you give us some background on your career to date? Upon graduating from college with a degree in sociology, I had no idea what I wanted to do for a living. I became a mainframe computer salesman. After a couple of years, I became an Army officer and managed computer operating in Germany. Returned to the U.S. and earned an MBA. Had a miserable time as a market researcher. Developed curriculum for an educational start-up that eventually became the University of Phoenix; refused to move to Phoenix. Joined a start-up that trained bankers how to make decisions; spent fifteen years selling, managing sales, and directing marketing to very large banks. Tried my hand in a medical software start-up, a wholesale financial service start-up, and a tracking software start-up. A dozen years ago, I went on my own -- Internet Time Group -- to champion first eLearning and later, informal learning. You are well-known in adult learning, with 40 years of experience and accomplishments to go with it. What is it like to go from being an "expert" in your field to doing something where you are more of a novice? As of yet, I don’t have much experience in my new field, well-being, so you may want to take my temperature on this one a few months from now. Thus far, I am thoroughly enjoying "beginner’s mind." It is liberating. "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few," wrote Sunryku Suzuki. I am painting on an immense, blank canvas. I get to set my objectives anew. I am free to think big thoughts. I can ask any questions I want. I can mash up everything I know from other fields to spark innovation. Who are the best people to talk with? What are the top things to read? How big a dream can I take on? This is much more fun that pontificating on topics I already know about. (If anyone reading this has pointers for me, get in touch via jaycross.com). Can you tell me about the process that led up to you deciding to move in this new direction?  My first significant paper on informal learning came out in May 2003. Since then I think I’ve said most of what I have to say on the topic. I can answer most question on auto-pilot. Informal learning was getting old. I want to learn new things and make new discoveries. What got me going with informal learning originally was the anomaly that most learning in organizations is informal yet training departments have nothing to do with it. I saw an opportunity to improve the way business is conducted by getting things into balance. My new interest is the impact of well-being on business. Research suggests that happy people sell more, produce more, and come up with more creative ideas. Neuroscience tells us that people are driven by emotion, not logic. Yet "business-like" means without emotion. Most workers hate their jobs. There’s a giant opportunity to make people feel happy and fulfilled while simultaneously boosting profits. That’s noble cause. I think well-being is going to be an easier sell than informal learning. Sixteen to twenty years in school has brainwashed people to the extent that they confuse schooling and learning. They argue that informal learning is out of control. They’re right. I think that’s good; the schoolers disagree. I began the year at a meeting on a Swiss mountain top where an interdisciplinary group sought ways to reinvent management. I’m convinced that the goal of a business is to delight customers. How do you delight customers? By delighting employees. Happiness is contagious. Marty Seligman’s latest book, Flourish, sets out five areas that contribute to well-being. One is having a purpose greater than oneself. I am getting on in years. I want to make my dent in the universe. If I can help at least 10,000 people lead happier, more fulfilling, and more productive lives, that accomplishment will make us all feel happier. In June, five friends and I spent the weekend at Asilomar Conference Center, a wonderful retreat center on the coast between Monterey and Carmel, to talk about our lives and aspirations. I rated myself on the five things that lead to well-being that Marty had described. I lacked that "purpose larger than myself" and needed to work more closely with others. I determined that My calling is to create happier, more productive workplaces.  What kinds of activities have you been engaging in to make the change? How are you learning about your new focus and how is it changing your daily work? I believe in learning by doing, so I’m following routines to make me happier personally. (And they appear to be working). I’m setting up ways to curate what I find. I’m making lists of books to read and people to talk with. Soon I’ll begin hitting up my network for suggestions. I’m reading a lot and I have feeds plucking things from the internet for me. I’m having fun setting up the processes I’ll use get to know the field. Unlearning is going to be a challenge. When I see people making ridiculous claims about informal learning, I feel compelled to respond. I’ve got to stop that. There’s only so much time in the day.  What are you most looking forward to with this new career identity? How are you going to be integrating it with your identity as an adult learning expert? It’s a lot more enjoyable meeting new people. Well-being is more fun to talk about than learning. I don’t really think of this as a new identity. I been saying for several years that my field is helping people work smarter. Well-being falls under that umbrella as well as learning. My beliefs about learning are so deeply ingrained in my psyche that they will shape my ah-ha’s and discoveries. Well-being and informal learning are each related to freedom, autonomy, recognition of accomplishment, meaningful relationships with others, trust, and transparency. I expect my mash-up of the fields of well-being and adult learning to produce innovative approaches. What advice do you have for others who may be thinking about moving from a very established career into something different? What has surprised you most or challenged you most in all of this? Expertise is overrated. I am hopping into this new area with no fear. Determine what you’re after. Marty Seligman’s Flourish was my touchstone. Choose a role that lets you use your signature strengths. Take the VIA Survey of Character Strengths to identify what yours are. A few things that stood out for me in Jay's interview that I think are applicable to a lot of people: Having a "purpose larger than ourselves," is a big driver for Jay, as it is for most of us. I find that when people start to be dissatisfied with their current career trajectory, it's often because they start to become aware that they are not working on a larger purpose.  The ideas for change have been percolating for awhile, but some events--the conference at the beginning of the year and the retreat in June--really moved him to take action.  I find that while reflection will get you so far, it's getting together with like-minded people who are also thinking about what they want that often pushes us forward.  There's a process we go through in shifting our energy and attention away from our former career into the new one. Jay talks about "unlearning" as a challenge and needing to disengage from the conversations around his informal learning career interests because "there's only so much time in the day." Again, this is a common situation for people--we often are operating in the same networks of people, so we see the same conversations and have to discipline ourselves to not engage at all or to engage in ways that are tied to the new career focus we are developing.  Jay talks about enjoying being in "beginner's mind," approaching a new subject area with fresh eyes. I've found that, especially for people who are life-long learners at heart, this process of getting to learn about a new field is what can make a career change even more compelling. It's an opportunity to explore something different and really immerse yourself in the learning process.   Thanks to Jay for his willingness to share his thought process and experiences as he embarks on this new direction in his career. I think he offers us a lot of ideas for how we can pursue and think about our own ongoing career development. I also think he offers a terrific model for how to go about change as we pay attention to our shifting needs and interests in the career life-cycle.   ______________________________________________________________________ If you need time and support to plan for your own career transition, join me on November 9-11 for the Dream It/Do It Retreat.