A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on the art of following through, in which I talked about the lure of the next shiny new thing and the difficulties we can have in completing our projects.  After reading that post, one of my regular readers, R.S. "Dick" Webster emailed me with some additional thoughts on how to finish what we start that I thought were well worth sharing: 1. Make Notes/Journal As Dick said, "Catch the meteors of creativity, ideas as they 'come to mind.'  'Write yourself out' as you go, preserving the fruits of your thinking. Then, when you wonder what to do next <grin> you can review your writing and pick an idea or two worth developing.  For myself, I've definitely found that it can be helpful to maintain a journal to capture all of the ideas and potential projects that can crowd out my focus on what I need to finish now. (I've written about career journals here and here.) I like Dick's point about "writing yourself out." Often if I just let myself go into flow, capturing all of the elements of an idea, then I will feel less pressure to do something right now about it. Of course I also have to make sure that I periodically review my old journals to see what old ideas I have lurking there.  2. Learn/Practice Saying "No!" to yourself and to projects you don't really want to do. Oh this is so HARD! Actually saying "no." What's interesting is that I will often passively say no to things by not following up, but the active, hard "NO!"--not as much as I should.  Saying "no" isn't just turning down new projects, though. It's also saying "no" to distractions--to the 15 open tabs in my browser, to the TV, to the unnecessary tasks that may call to me. The challenge in all of this, I've found, is that many times what starts as a "distraction," can actually turn into something really important for my progress. So there's always a delicate balance between being open to serendipity and going down the rabbit hole of the Interwebs.  3. Consider Your Capacity and Set Limits  Related to saying "no," is the recognition that we need to set limits. Dick suggests no more than 5 projects at a time, although as a self-employed person, I've never been able to stick to that. There are the projects that need to be done now to bring in the money and then the projects I need to be working on to fill the pipeline for later.  Still, I do try to at least pull together projects that can do double and triple-duty, building on what I'm doing in one area to move another area forward.  Some Additional Thoughts on Resistance In my previous post, I also discussed the idea that not following through is a form of Resistance, a concept that Steven Pressfield discusses at length in his must-read book for creatives, Do the Work. As so often happens when I start thinking about a concept, something arrives in my inbox that speaks to that point. In this case, it's a nice podcast from Michael Hyatt, exploring the idea of Resistance and Pressfield's strategies for dealing with it. He also responds to some listener questions that are particularly relevant to the concept of following through--including, "What do you do when your own creativity becomes a form of Resistance?" If you're interested in how your own habits of not finishing might be part of a Resistance pattern, I highly recommend starting with Michael's podcast as a good intro to the idea and then, checking out Steven's book.  As I've been saying, following through is an important aspect of career resilience. Hopefully these ideas give you additional insight into and strategies for dealing with your own problems in finishing what you start. 

  The other day I had lunch with one of the members of my recently-formed Mastermind group. We were discussing the keys to the group's success so far and one thing that we got into was how much easier and better it was to help each other when we were specific with each other about the help that we needed. It got me to thinking about how being better at connecting is partially about being better at asking for help.  Help Me Help You When I think about the power of connections for building our career resilience, one thing I see is that we need to be better at asking for and receiving help from others. In my career (and life) I've found that most people want to be helpful to me, but unless I'm specific about the help I need--or think I need--not much happens with that. People want to be helpful, but they need to be moved to action. They need to understand what, specifically, would be helpful to me. Once they get that, then they can usually give me exactly what I need or point me in the direction of someone who can help.  In our Mastermind Group, we meet every 2-3 weeks online to provide each other with ongoing support and feedback. We also have a private G+ community where we can interact in between our Hangout meetings. Right now, we're experimenting with bringing a specific problem or issue to the table and then asking for help with that. So, for example, one member shared a flyer she was working on and asked us to make suggestions on how to revise it to market to her target audience. Another wanted to discuss how we organize and keep track of our potential customers.  This has forced each of us to be clear about where we need help and to ask explicitly for that help. "Here's a flyer--I need feedback" or "I'm trying to figure out how to get to my target audience--what suggestions do you have for people I could talk to?"  I've learned three things from this experience so far: 1. It helps to have a structure for asking for help. We have purposely built into our group process a time and place for requesting assistance. It's a part of our agenda and it forces us to think in terms of where we need help and what kind of help we need. Without that structure, it would be easy for us to have positive conversations that didn't turn into actual help. We might feel good, but we wouldn't leave the discussion with anything that's actionable.  One of the benefits of Mastermind Groups, I believe, is that they can provide the structure for reqesting help. But you can build this into existing meetings and group processes, too. For example, what about ending a departmental meeting by having each person share one problem or issue they have and asking for feedback/advice from the group? Or starting a lunch with colleagues by having one person be able to ask for help in some area? Purposely building in this space for asking for assistance would be a great way to make it become a more intentional part of your life.  2. The act of asking for help creates focus for you and your project or issue. For our regular online meetings, each one of us in our group presents on our issue or problem and then explicitly asks for the kind of help we need. Sometimes we just need a sounding board, to talk through the issue. Sometimes we want specific feedback or we'd like connections to specific people. Having to focus our thinking in this way to present our issue to the other members of the group has created greater focus for us on our own issue. That act in and of itself can create new ideas and breakthroughs.  3. It's much easier and more productive to help someone else when they are clear about what they need from me. One of my ongoing frustrations in working with others has been when it's clear that they want some kind of help from me, but they don't aren't clear about what help it is they need. Sometimes I can ask questions to find out what they want--"do you want some advice here or do you just need to vent?"--but sometimes I feel helpless to do much because the person who's talking to me isn't very clear about what they need. So then I'm left to just sort of limply offer a helpful attitude without actually offering much in the way of real assistance. This is especially true if I'm talking to someone who's all over the place, as many of us are when we're caught in the grip of a problem.  But when people are able to explicitly state what would be most helpful to them, that gives me a good place to respond. I might not be the answer to their problem, but I could point them in the right direction. Or I could make an alternative suggestion where I think I could make more of a difference.  The point is that when someone asks for explicit action from me, then it gives us a good starting point for figuring out what kind of help I'm able to offer. It's a relief for both of us, really, because then we can focus on the action, rather than on generic platitudes about me being helpful at some point in the future.  I like to help and it feels better to do something specific when I can--even if it's just knowing that I've served as a sounding board for someone.  The upshot of all of this is that I've become much more aware of the role that asking for help plays in developing our connections for career resilience and much more intentional about how to ask for help. It's a shift, but it's one worth making.  How can you become more intentional in requesting and giving assistance? 

  ". . . the cycle of being-doing is also the cycle of remembering-forgetting. Like Persephone in the myth of Demeter and Persephone, you blossom, you die, you are reborn again and again. You contact the knowledge of who you are and what you need and then slowly, bit by bit, you forget, eaten up by life again. Then you descend and reconnect with yourself. . . It is an organic, spiraling process, and each time you retreat, you retain another piece of knowledge, courage and purpose, slowly honing your life into what you want." --Jennifer Louden   The other day, I had lunch with a good friend. She is coming out of a hectic several years of work that have forged her identity as a professional and she's looking at the other side of this time, seeing what comes next.  She was complaining to me about how little energy she feels, how little interest she can dredge up for her day-to-day work life. She is used to being charged up, accomplishing things on a regular basis. Now, it's hard for her to care, let alone actually move in a particular direction.  She's not the only person I've talked to recently who is battling these feelings about their work. They go through the motions, but it's more than the heat that's keeping them down. They are trying to force themselves to stay in the "doing" cycle of life, when it's clearly time for them to spend some time just "being."  We spend most of our work lives focused on the activity. What's our "action plan?" How crazed are we? It's a badge of honor to be active and busy. It proves that we're productive members of society. We feel good when we're accomplishing things. It assures us of our place in the world and that we are needed.  But that "doing" part of the cycle can only be sustained for so long. Just as we need sleep each night to rejuvenate for the next day, sometimes we need longer periods of silence and solitude to rediscover who we are and where we're going.  The trick, I've found, is in recognizing the call to retreat. When do we know it's time for some rest?  Sometimes we hear the call in the major transitions in our lives--we are approaching a big birthday or we're laid off from a job we loved or our last child is starting kindergarten and we're ready for full-time work again.  But sometimes the call is much quieter. We have to pay close attention to our own emotions, something many of us are not accustomed to doing. We can hear the call in a sense of restlesness we may feel, where our old work identity doesn't quite fit with our changing values and sense of purpose. It may be in the exhaustion we feel each morning when we have to force ourselves out of bed or in the deja vu of the same problem coming around over and over again. The call can come to us in the car on the long commute home or at 4 a.m., when we wake up anxious, our hearts pounding in our chests because we forgot to send an email.  Regardless of how we receive the call, it's critical that we pay attention to it when it comes.  For us to live healthy lives (and healthy work is part of that), we need to heed the call to solitude and deep inner work and reflection. Just as fields need to lay fallow in the winter in order to be ready for spring, we too need longer periods of rest and inner work at certain times in our lives.  I believe very strongly in the power of retreats and in honoring the call to periodic introspection and inner work as a way to build our career resilience. Next week I'll be announcing two upcoming virtual retreats I plan to run in September and October, so if you're starting to hear the call to retreat, stay tuned for those announcements!

  As a small business owner, I always think it's a good idea to see what other people in your space are doing. Actually, whether you own your own business or not, it's a good idea to know what's going in in your industry and with other professionals like yourself.  As I do this, though, I run into an internal comparison process where I'm looking at how I do my work and how other people do their work and I start thinking "Why am I not more like them?"  So in the career space, there are a lot of "motivational" types--people who can really jazz you up and get you excited and motivated. At least that's what their blogs and workshop copy tell me. And then I read what I write, which is quieter, not so "woo woo" and I start thinking "Hell, I need to jazz this stuff up! I need to make it all sound more exciting. I need to show them how I'm fun and exciting and will give them great energy!"  But here's the thing. While I can be fun and entertaining, that's not really the strength I bring to career work. I'm not here to give you energy where you can't find any. I'm here to provide the space--the container, if you will--for you to find your own energy, motivation and inspiration. I'm not the "woo hoo, GET PSYCHED!" kind of person at all. I'm more reserved, more gentle, more focused on finding out where you are and coaxing you into finding your own energy and passion and excitement. Sometimes this happens quickly and sometimes you find it more slowly. Either way, I try to be there. One of the major tenets of career resilience is  to "Clarify"--that is, being clear about what you bring to the table. What are your strengths and talents and how do they intersect with the work that you do? For me, my talents are not in the "woo hoo!" They are in the spaces between--in trying to ask questions, get you thinking and spark your own internal "woo hoo!"  For all of us, I think the value of clarity comes when we are clear about who we are and how we put our own special stamp on the world. It's easy to get caught up in comparisons, but I've found that's a sure road to an unsustainable career. We start trying to be someone we're not, rather than being more of who we really are. And the more we strive for that inauthentic role because it's "expected," the more out of touch with ourselves we become and the deeper we sink into our weakest areas.  So, my advice for today--and it's partially advice for myself here too--is to stop the comparison game. Stop trying to be someone you're not and start being more of who you are. That's the only way you can maintain your own personal resilience. That's the only way to build a sustainable career--and a sustainable life. 

Over my years of working with clients on their career dreams, one thing I've consistently found is that retreats can be a powerful way of discovering new options and connecting to career inspiration. There's something magical about the opportunity to spend focused time in individual reflection, supplemented by group interaction, feedback and support.  But I've also found that many people struggle with actually getting away. There's the expense and logistics, especially if the retreat location is far away from where you live. And for some people, the cost of travel and going to a physical retreat can be prohibitive.  So this fall I'm very excited to bring you another way--two virtual retreats where you can get all the benefits of individual reflection and group work without even leaving your home! And at a price that's right--only $129! (Newsletter subscribers, you get a special discount--be sure to check your email for that!)    The Career Clarity Virtual Retreat--September 21, 2013 If you're looking for support in creating a plan for your next career move, then the Career Clarity Virtual Retreat on September 21, 2013 is for you. During this retreat you'll: Identify your positive core, key strengths, your most important values and your vision for the future.  Write your Career Manifesto, your declaration of your career intentions and vision for work and the role you want it to play in your life.  Develop your Career Connection Plan-Who will support you in your journey and how can they help you make your Career Manifesto a reality?  Create some career experiments--what actions could you take, what things could you try out to explore new opportunities? You'll develop your Career Experiment Plan that will allow you to expand your horizons and safely begin to try out new things.  Create a new daily schedule--how can you re-structure your days so that you are making your dreams a priority?  This retreat will be all about getting clear about your career goals and creating an action plan to make them a reality.  Learn more about the Career Clarity Virtual Retreat here.    The Career Resilience Virtual Retreat--October 19, 2013 The Career Resilience Virtual Retreat on October 19, 2013 is for you if you want to develop your key career resilience skills in: Clarifying Connecting Creating Coping  Through this retreat you will: Explore the concepts of career resilience and develop your own personal vision for a resilient career.  Assess your strengths and challenges in each of the 4 key patterns of resilience.   Develop your personal resilience goals and your 6-month plan for achieving them.  Identify resilience experiments for building your resilience in the areas you choose.   Create a new daily schedule that makes building your resilience a priority and provides you with the time you need to achieve your resilience plan.  The Career Resilience retreat will help you start to recession-proof your career, creating a plan and habits that will sustain you through a lifetime! Learn more about the Career Resilience Virtual Retreat here.  What You'll Get with the Virtual Retreats With each Virtual Retreat, you'll receive: A pre-Retreat Guide to help you plan for and get the most from your Virtual Retreat A complete Guide and Workbook of individual reflection exercises for you to work through during the Retreat.  Access to 3 live teleconferences on the day of the Retreat. These will be recorded and available for later review.  Access to a private Facebook Group for discussion, feedback, support and accountability before, during and after the Retreat. Use of the VisualsSpeak online Image Center, an amazing tool I use with clients to help them tap into their right-brain creative thinking for greater insight and possibilities.  A follow-up conference call two weeks after your Retreat to check on your progress and provide you with additional support and feedback.  A variety of extra tools, links and resources to help you put your plans into action.  If you're feeling the call to retreat and want some support in finding career clarity or developing your career resilience, I'd love to have you join us. This will be an incredible opportunity to get the benefits of retreat without ever having to leave your home!   Related articles The Call to Retreat Do You Have a Wellness Approach or a Disease Approach to Your Career?

There are several tenets I try to live my career by including: Go out of your comfort zone Create multiple income streams Play to your passions About a month ago, I wrote up my 6-month plan and one of the goal areas I focused on was my art. This is something  completely unrelated to my primary work in career clarity and resilience, but it's another passion of mine that I've been reluctant to really dig into as a potential income stream. It's very personal and it's felt a lot safer to just have my art be something I do for myself.  I decided, though, that if I want to experience what it's like to REALLY stretch myself and to go into a place where I feel like a complete beginner--something that all of us have to get better at doing to develop our resilience--taking a risk with my art was a great place to start.  I'd already begun this journey back in January. I started small, really small--hanging my art in my own house and posting images on Facebook. I revived an art blog I'd had years ago and started posting there, too. Then I had business cards and post cards printed up of my art and started sharing those with people. These were initial tentative steps at putting myself out there as an "artist," an identity I'd never really claimed for myself before. But this is the work of career resilience--exploring and claiming multiple identities as part of claiming and clarifying your passions.  By the time I was sitting down to write my 6-month plan, I felt ready to take it to another level. I posted my art on Society 6 (where I've sold a few pieces) and was recently accepted to have a month-long show in November at a local coffee house. I've also submitted to participate in a local art show and sale in December. These felt like do-able things for me to begin to test the possibility of making money with this passion.  These steps have been a lot scarier. Now I'm moving beyond "hey--here's something I enjoy doing" into "hey--pay me for this thing I enjoy doing." But this, too, is another step in the journey of resilience. You have to see where there's an intersection between what you bring to the world and what the world wants and needs from you. I want to test if my art is something that can bring in income. I also just want to have the experience of trying (and potentially failing) at something I've never done before.  Now I may never make a lot of money selling my art. It may always be a small part of my total income pie. But that's OK, because it's also something I love doing and for me, making money on it is gravy. On the other hand, of course, it could transform what I do for a living, taking me into realms I never really imagined for myself. I don't know, of course, until I take the risk.  I share this story with you as a reminder that we all need to challenge ourselves as part of developing our resilience. We don't learn our true strengths and our true ability to cope and grow unless we put ourselves into situations that ask us to stretch and to consider that we might be someone beyond who we've thought ourselves to be.   One of the most important things you can do to develop your resilience is to devise for yourself the experiments that allow you to explore and test your passions and see where they will take you. Put yourself out there. Test what you can do. You may be surprised to discover what happens.  _______________________________________________________________________ Want some guidance on creating your own experiments and challenges? I'm running two Virtual Retreat this fall and both of them will include an opportunity for you to develop your stretch opportunities. More info here. 

  My good friend Christine Martell shared a wonderful story of career mentoring with me the other day. A woman was being sexually harrassed at work and went to see a labor attorney about it. After a few minutes of discussion about the situation, this was the conversation that followed: "Karen, I’m going to talk to you like we’re having a glass of wine, okay?" "Okay, I like those conversations," I responded with a small smile. Then she looked at me quite calmly and said, "What the f*$% are you doing?" Huh? It’s not often that I’m dumbstruck. The look on my face must’ve relayed my shock. "What the hell are you doing?" she repeated. "Clearly this organization is showing you that they don’t value you." It was like getting cold cocked right on the side of the head. "Here’s what you need to do. First, you need to have a better understanding of what your compensation really is. Fix that. Then, every single day, do something to get yourself out of there. Every. Single. Day."   I love this story for two reasons. First, is the absolute clarity that comes when you ask a question like "What the F*#& are you doing?" It cuts through all the crap and gets right down to basics. When someone says this to you after you've gone through your tale of woe, it pulls you up short. You say to yourself,  "Yeah, what the F*%# AM I doing?!" You need that periodically. It's a reality check that puts everything into perspective.  The other reason I love this story is the attorney's advice at the end--to do something every single day to move out of the situation. Every. Single. Day. It's easy to get stuck in complaining or worrying about your dysfunctional career situation. But this doesn't do anything for you in the end. You're still stuck. You need to focus on action--moving yourself forward into something new and much better for you. Doing something daily not only creates the forward momentum you need, it also gives you something else to focus on besides how much your situation sucks.  So. What the F*$# are YOU doing? And what are you doing each day to move your career forward?  _______________________________________________________________________ Trying to figure out what the F*$# you're doing? I'm running two Virtual Retreats this fall and both of them will help you get clear and create a plan for moving forward. More info here.   

  For the past few days I've been preparing for a radio interview I'm doing this afternoon about my work and The Bamboo Project. One of the things I had to do was come up with a list of 10 questions I wanted the interviewer to ask me. These questions needed to be designed to help me focus on the most important aspects of my business.  What occurred to me is that this is an exercise we could all do--whether we work for ourselves or for someone else. The process of coming up with the questions, and then the answers has clarified a number of things for me. It's forced me to really hone in on what I believe are the strengths and value of my approach and the most important pieces of work that I do.  So my quick piece of advice for you today is to think about what 10 questions you would want someone to ask you about yourself and your career to best play up your strengths and philosophy of work.  And how would you answer those questions in a radio or TV interview?  _______________________________________________________________________ If you want more clarity about your career, think about joining us for the virtual Career Clarity Retreat on September 21!  There will be lots of questions for you to work with to get clear about your next steps. More info here.   

Small Wins Journa -   The other day I had a good conversation with a manager about my post Six Positive Professional Development Strategies for the Toxic Workplace. He's dealing with a lot of work drama and interested in how you can address these issues.  One of the things I recommended in that post was to do a daily debrief with yourself to provide a sort of "reality check" on what's happening and to focus on learning. After doing some additional work with career journaling and reading more about the power of small wins, I think that there's real value in keeping a daily log of progress at work, both for people who are in a toxic workplace and those who want to focus on building their career resilience.  What the research shows is that when you focus on forward progress and what you want MORE of at work (as opposed to all the problems, etc. you may be facing) you are more likely to experience your work in a positive light and you are better able to build on your strengths. Even on the worst work day ever, you can find some small glimmer of hope and progress to focus on.  To help with that daily practice, I created a Small Wins Journal that you can print out and use for yourself. It includes three prompts: Today I made progress in . . .  I can apply what I learned today to. . .  What worked well today that I can do MORE of tomorrow . . .  Take a few minutes at the end of each day to respond to the prompts. This will help you see where you've made progress (however small) and keep you thinking more about what's working, rather than about what's not working in your career.  I'm finding that over time, as you pay attention to these small wins, you start to build up some valuable momentum and clarity. Your strengths and talents come more clearly into view and you see patterns in how you should approach your work and your environment.  For me, for example, I'm finding that the best days are when I build in some opportunities for interaction with others, something I forget is important when I'm toiling away at my desk. I can also see that I'm chipping away at several projects, even when I worry that I don't have the big chunks of time I think I need to work on them. This keeps me motivated to continue moving them forward. Feel free to download the Small Wins Journal and use it yourself. Let me know in comments how it's working for you.  _______________________________________________________________________ If you like the Small Wins Journal, you'll love my upcoming Career Resilience Virtual Retreat! We'll learn how to use this tool and many more to build your ability to respond to today's uncertain work world. More info here. 

Imagine crafting a sustainable career for yourself. Year after year, you perform work that makes full use of your skills and challenges you to develop new ones. Your work not only interests you, it gives you a sense of meaning. You enjoy opportunities for learning and development. You work with people who energize you. You are confident that your skills and competencies make you valuable and marketable and that you can access opportunities through your network. You are able to fit your work together with the other things in your life that are important to you, like family, friends, and leisure.--Monique Valcour, Craft a Sustainable Career   A few weeks ago I ran across Monique Valcour's Harvard Business Review blog post on crafting a sustainable career. It dovetails very nicely with what I've been writing here for months now on the need to develop your career resilience.  The ultimate purpose of career resilience is, in fact, to provide you with strategies to create a sustainable career path for yourself. In other words, the patterns and habits of career resilience  give you the roadmap necessary to create a sustainable career.  The post got me thinking more about what sustainability means in terms of your career. In the end, a sustainable career is one that will last for the long haul. It's a career that helps you focus on the intersection between your talents and what the world needs from you. It's a career that is diversified in many ways--diverse income streams, diverse connections, diverse projects and experiences. Homophily is your enemy now.  Above all, a sustainable career is one that SUSTAINS you--emotionally, financially, socially, dare I say, even spiritually.  If your career isn't doing these things, then you can't continue with it indefinitely. Eventually the cracks will appear and things will come tumbling down around you.  I agree with Monique that sustainable careers are built on: Recognizing that you are the pilot of your own career. Frankly, I've found that this is the number one change most people need to make in their lives. They don't recognize all the ways in which they let other people take charge. Developing your key talents and strengths and consistently using those to add value in the marketplace--whether that means working for yourself or for other people.  Being aware of trends and opportunities in your industry and occupation that you can leverage to your advantage. To me, this includes understanding the major impacts of technology on our careers.  Seeking opportunities to work with people who energize, challenge and inspire you.   Documenting your accomplishments and the ways that you've added value in the workplace.   I believe that sustainability goes beyond these things too. Sustainable careers are built on healthy habits, having a wellness approach to your career, rather than a crisis management approach. Yes, you are the pilot of your career. But you can't put your career on auto-pilot. You have to pay attention to it on a regular basis.  Sustainable careers are built on having multiple income streams, not relying on a single "job" but on multiple projects and opportunities. This is more critical than ever before. Full-time employment is in decline and we have to become more entrepreneurial about our careers.  Sustainable careers require us to use reflective practice and career journaling as tools for gaining clarity about ourselves and our work and as strategies for building on our strengths.  Self-awareness and intentional practice help us develop our skills and identify our opportunities.  A sustainable career requires us to be more intentional about our network-building and connections. Are we networking on our own behalf or to benefit our employers? Do we know how to ask for help in ways that allow people in our circle of connections to respond effectively? Are we seeking the right kinds of connections, going out of our usual closed networks and purposely connecting with people who may think differently than we do?  A sustainable career also asks us to pay more attention to our patterns of coping at work. What stories do we tell ourselves and how do these stories shape our behavior? What beliefs do we have about ourselves, our work and our colleagues? How do these beliefs support us or hold us back?  So what does a sustainable career look like to you? And what are you doing to craft a sustainable career for yourself?  _______________________________________________________________________ If you need help crafting a sustainable career, you'll want to sign up for the Career Resilience Virtual Retreat that runs on October 19. More info here. And if you want to better define sustainability for yourself, try the Career Clarity Virtual Retreat on September 21.