Building your career resilience is an intentional, deliberate process. Leaving it up to chance is a recipe for failure. But what's the process for making change happen?  In The Joy of Appreciative Living (a book I can't recommend highly enough), Jacqueline Kelm lays out 5 stages for deliberative change that I think are instructive for those of us looking to become more resilient.  1. Awareness To make a change, you must first become aware that change is necessary. When it comes to resilience, you become aware that something has to change in your approach to your career. Maybe you find that you're on your 3rd layoff in as many years. Or you realize that you're in a constant state of anxiety over work. Somehow, the need for change pushes its way into your consciousness. It's the awareness phase that sets the stage.  2. Commitment After you become aware of a situation, the next phase is commitment. You must decide to make things happen.  Often I find that people become aware that change is necessary, but instead of committing to making a change, they push the awareness out of their consciousness--they go into denial.   Another response I've seen with people is that they assume that they have little control over their lives--that there are no actions to take, so commitment to change is not going to accomplish anything. But awareness is not enough to make change happen. You must commit to change in order to move to the next phase.  3. Action Once you've committed to making a change, you must now take actions that support the change you want to see.  This is another area where I see people having some problems. They know there's an issue, they are committed to making changes, but then they don't take action to make those changes a reality.  Often this is because they aren't sure what actions to take. Fear or confusion holds them back. But lack of action can also be a sign of the resistance that accompanies every act of creation.  Steven Pressfield, in Do the Work, argues that Resistance (with a capital "R") is the enemy of everything we do to create something new in the world. It is an external force that inevitably rises up to meet us when we strive to do something great.  Without action, though, we cannot build resilience. It is through action that we start to see the shifts in ourselves that are nessary to meet the challenges of the workplace.  4. Acclimation Assuming that we've begun to act, things will start to change around us so we must acclimate to the new reality we are creating for ourselves. This means adjusting to the new and letting go of the old.  This acclimation phase can be challenging, particularly in terms of releasing what no longer serves us. Often the changes we are pursuing will point out all of the old ways of being and doing that were unconscious before.  During the acclimation phase, we become more aware of old patterns and beliefs that we must let go of and we begin to see what the new patterns are creating in our lives. These new patterns will require us to adapt again.  I also find that during acclimation, we can struggle with feelings of uncertainty and doubt. Are we making good choices? Are we looking "stupid"? Are people judging us for the changes that we're making and how does that impact what we do?  Acclimation is the uncertain phase when we're caught between the old and the new. If we keep up with the changes, then that leads us to the final phase--Realization.  5. Realization This is the final stage of intentional change, when we've succeeded in creating new patterns of behavior. It becomes easier for us to make the right choices and to live the new patterns without having to think all the time about what we're doing.  This is also when we can more consistently reap the rewards of the changes we've made. Enough momentum has built up that we are in the flow of a new way of being in the world.  To build the four patterns of resilience--Clarifying, Connecting, Creating and Coping--we must be intentional about the change proceess. These patterns don't happen by accident. We must coax them into being through a conscious process of development.  What phase of resilience are you in? Are you stuck in a phase and need to move to the next level? How will you do that today? 

Video Blog 1--Limiting Beliefs - Computer from Michele Martin on Vimeo. I'm taking my own medicine--doing some experimenting and taking a bit of a risk-- so today's blog post is a video where I go over 5 limiting beliefs that get in the way of your career in today's economy and the alternative beliefs we need to put in their place.  I also want to point you to this post on 3 ways to create your own opportunities.  Let me know in comments what you think of these beliefs and any other limiting beliefs you think we need to let go of in order to be more resilient in today's economy. 

  I'm aware that for many people, a job change just isn't in the cards right now. They know that they are unhappy--or at least restless--but for a variety of reasons, changing jobs or changing careers just can't happen for awhile.  This is OK. In fact, it can be a good thing. Your current job can be the home base from which you experiment with some new possibilities. You just have to move yourself into experimental mode.  3 Steps For Change 1. Start by working with more intention--pay attention to where you feel positive energy in your work.  What activities do you most enjoy doing? Who are the people who energize and inspire you? Where do you feel like you are really leveraging your strengths and being the most authentic and effective?  I suggest logging these experiences for a week or two. Take a few minutes a few times throughout your day to note the energy of what's going on. Consider: What have I been doing? What activities have you been engaged in?  How do I feel about it? Note particularly the things you do that leave you feeling energized, interested and really "present" in your work. These may be things you want more of.  Who am I doing it with? See if there's something about the people you are working with or the conversations you are having that feels energizing to you. Or are you doing things alone? What does that tell you?  2. Write it down. You will be tempted to just think about these things, but I promise you that you will get more from the exercise if you keep a written log. You will be able to go back through your notes to find patterns and ideas in a way that just won't happen without the written information.  3. Follow the energy of More and find ways to change how you're working As you begin to see more clearly what gives you energy and inspiration at work, you can begin to look for opportunities to pursue those activities and experiences more intentionally.  Start with thinking about what you want MORE of at work. What relationships do you want more of? What conversations, experiences and activities do you want to have happen more often? How can you structure your day to encourage these?  For example, one of the participants in last year's Career Clarity Camp identified that having more meaningful, authentic conversations with colleagues and co-workers gave him a lot of satisfaction. So each morning, he looked at the day's schedule and spent some time thinking about what he could do to have more meaningful discussions with the people he would be talking to that day. What questions could he ask that would invite more engagement? How could he create safe space for people to be more authentic?  As he became more intentional about planning for what he most enjoyed, he found that he was more inspired and engaged than he'd been before. The tasks of his job hadn't changed. What had changed was the energy and intention he brought to the work. He changed HOW he worked and that began to create new enthusiasm for the work.  Other ways to re-energize yourself for a job that can't change right now include: Setting up personal learning experiments. What new skills could you develop within the confines of your current job? How could you try out new ideas or have different conversations? Take an experimental approach--maybe a 30-day Trial to start?  Connecting with like-minded peers. Create a mastermind group for yourself, working with others who want to explore and expand their opportunities. Maybe you can work on some group projects together or support each other in finding ways to expand at work. Remember, these don't have to be people who work with you. There can be great benefit to connecting with people online who or who work other places.  Experimenting with asking and reflecting on more positive questions. Often we begin to lose steam with our jobs because we are so mired in the day-to-day problems and negativity that can take over so much of our work lives. Reframing and approaching your work experiences from a more positive standpoint can help you begin to find new energy.  Checking out this list of 60 small ways to improve your life in the next 100 days. Pay particular attention to the section on learning/personal development.  Turning the job you have into the job you want. You may, in fact, have more flexibility to change your job than you think. This post on job crafting has some excellent advice on how to turn the job you have into the job you want. This could be a great discussion to have with your mastermind group.  The ultimate goal here is to reframe your relationship to your work--finding ways to create within your existing job more of what you want to experience, as well as using your current position as a home base from which to further learn and develop.  You can have a surprising amount of control over your current job if you choose to exercise it. The trick is in how you approach your situation, letting go of those things you can't control and putting your time, energy and focus into those things you can change.  _______________________________________________________________________ My Career Clarity Virtual Retreat on September 21 can be a great way for you to develop a plan for making your current job work better for you. Even if you aren't ready to make a job change, more clarity can help you bring more of what you want into your current situation. 

I was reading an article in the NYT this morning about How to Live Wisely. It describes a course at Harvard designed to get students to think deeply about their lives.  At the end of the course, students are asked to share one thing they've changed their minds about as a result of their participation in the course. The course is meant to be transformational and, of course, transformation doesn't occur when we cling to old habits, beliefs and emotions. This got me thinking about how open we as "adults" are to changing our minds. How many times do we approach a "learning" experience not with the intent of opening our minds to new ideas, but looking for ways to have our old ideas confirmed? I've been guilty of this on numerous occasions, I know.  Many of us hunger for transformation. We want to shed the skin of what doesn't work for us and don a new way of being or feeling. This happens in our personal lives, as well as our work lives.  Yet to do this, we must be willing to change our minds.  We cannot experience a transformation as long as we are clinging to the safe comfort of our old ways. Transformation MEANS change, so we have to let go.  If we are feeling stuck, yet hungering for something else, maybe the first question we need to ask ourselves is  What have I changed my mind about lately?  If the answer is "nothing," then we need to do something about that.  To learn and grow, seek not to change minds, but to have your own mind changed.  ______________________________________________________________________ Frustrated with your toxic workplace? I'm offering an online, self-guided course that can help you let go and move on! 

Last week I had lunch with my accountant and a friend of his who was laid off a year ago (at 62) and is now starting his own business because he can't find an employer who will hire him. We spent much of that lunch talking about how many people we knew who were in this situation.  For the past year, I've been facilitating the Speedy Startup--a 12-week program to help people who are unemployed start up their own businesses. With only a few exceptions, everyone I've been working with is over 45, laid off and unable to find new employment. I'm recruiting for a new Fall class and finding that the trend continues.  I also do a lot of  program work with "unemployment programs" in the US. Their biggest challenge is helping the 45 and over crowd find a new job. If these people do find new work, it's often part-time at a substantially lower salary with responsibilities far below their capabilities.  50 is the New 65 The reality is that when it comes to the workplace 50 is the new 65 and we're seeing a lot of people who in other eras would have been at the peak of their careers, getting booted from the job market with very little opportunity to find comparable work once this happens. It's a phenomenon that's particularly pronounced in certain industries (like tech), but it's pretty widespread.  We spend a lot of time advising new college grads on how they should manage their careers, recognizing that this s a period of transition. But I would argue that in our new normal, another period of transition we need to plan for is the 45+ transition.  I know you're thinking this won't happen to you--you work hard, you're flying high in your career. But I'm telling you, that's what all these other people were thinking too.  You may get lucky and have a healthy, satisfying career right up until you decide that you want to retire. But I wouldn't count on that.  Planning for 45 and Over Because lay-offs seem to heat up for people in their 50s, the time to start planning for it is in your 40s. This is also when a lot of people start looking around and thinking "Is this all there is?" If they've had dreams of working for themselves or making a career change, this is when those dreams become more insistent.  So what should you be doing? 1. Start Saving Up Make sure you have a cushion of cash that's readily accessible, not socked away in a 401k, where you may have to pay penalties to get at it. This may be easier said than done, so that why you need to. . .  2. Start Creating Multiple Income Streams Stop thinking of your job as your only way of bringing in revenue. Start thinking about creating multiple income streams. This is the time to start developing side gigs. The best time to work on developing new income streams is while you are still working at a full-time job that gives you some level of security. It can take a few years to begin generating enough revenue and you will be much less stressed if you work on your side hustle when you don't have the pressure of replacing your previous income.  3. Nurture and Grow Your Relationships Your relationships are going to help you grow and access new opportunities and provide you with support when you are laid off. Start paying attention to them now.  Shift from networking on behalf of your company and start thinking about how to build your own circles of connection that will support and sustain you in this next act.  Start making NEW connections. A lot of people in their 40's have settled into a pretty closed circle. But closed circles keep us from becoming aware of and accessing new opportunities. We are less likely to see new trends or possibilities. Broaden your connections and you will be better positioned for success.  4. Develop New Skills That Are Relevant to Today's Market If you haven't learned something new in the past year, you're already stale. You need to start working on a personal learning plan where you are developing new, relevant skills. Don't rely on your company to tell you what training to go to. Look around. See what skills are in demand and start working on them. You can do this as part of developing your side gig or by working on side projects that interest you.  5. Be Alert to Signals That You May be "Aging Out" of Your Job Monster has an excellent article on the signs to watch out for with your current company, things like promotions going to younger people and supervisors saying "You've been here so long!"  Also stay alert to shifting trends in your industry and occupation. If you start feeling like you're on the outside, start getting nervous. This is NOT a time to deny reality. You can't (and won't!) do anything if you aren't willing to see what may be coming down the pike! Again, it's tempting to hope that this won't happen to you, but believe me, you need to acknowledge and deal with reality.  6. Start Keeping a Career Journal Reflect on what is happening in your career--what you enjoy, where you're having success, etc. This will help you clarify what is going on at work and give you ideas for future direction and action.  7. Document Your Successes Create a portfolio and start keeping track of work products and projects. This can help you in job search. It can also be a great reminder of your competence and capabilities on bad days.  8. Work on Your Layoff Plan I posted about this awhile ago and it's worth a revisit. Note that these are strategies that will help you jumpstart your job search if/when you are laid off.  9. Acknowledge and Work With Your Emotions I've been focusing on more "practical" things, but there's a BIG emotional component here. If you are starting to deal with some of the signs of aging out of your job, then you will often encounter anger, anxiety and sadness. There is often a sense of shame, especially in a society where we put such a high value on youth.  If we don't acknowledge and deal with these feelings, we can find that we are taking things out on our families, our friends, our colleagues, etc. This, then, interferes with our ability to grow and maintain our connections, so it can be a pretty negative cycle. Use your emotions as a guide where you can. Try not to block them or deny that they are there.  Use Your 40's To Create Opportunities for 50 and Beyond All of us are working in a "new normal," where old rules are changing and the usual guideposts for our careers are shifting as well. Although it's tempting to see your 40's as a time to just sit back and enjoy what you may have created, in reality it's a time to start planning for that next major phase of your career in your 50's. It's all about resilience and to craft sustainable careers for ourselves, we need to be alert and responsive to the new types of transitions that are likely to come our way.  There ARE opportunities and we can create them. But to do that, we need to be alert, responsive and most of all proactive. Manage your career before it manages you.  _______________________________________________________________________ If you're struggling with the emotional fallout of being laid off, you may want to check out my new online course, Recovering from Unemployment: A 7-Day Course to Help You Let Go and Move On. Only $9.99, this course is self-guided and can give you the emotional boost you need to get back on track with your job search!  

One of the participants in my Toxic Workplace Course brought up the discomfort that comes with acknowledging to herself that she's in a toxic work situation. If she admits this then it opens up the question that she must DO something about it. And, of course, that feels REALLY uncomfortable.  But the discomfort of acknowledging reality and the various implications of our current situation is NOTHING compared to what happens when we deny what is going on.  Here's the thing.When we deny reality, the truth of our situation starts to pop up in other ways--usually physically. We feel exhausted or anxious all the time. We start succumbing to various illnesses. We can't sleep. We can't eat or we eat too much. We spend our off-hours in front of the TV or the computer, numbing ourselves out.  We can also start to see our relationships suffering. We anger more easily. Or we want to isolate ourselves from other people. We are there in body, but are not present emotionally or mentally.  We also see that our performance at work is suffering. We lose confidence in ourselves, our ideas and our ability to act. Our creativity suffers. We aren't doing our best thinking and we know it.  All of these things can be insidious, invisible. And that's what makes them so dangerous.  Here's what I've learned. Don't fear the discomfort of acknowledging when you are in a bad situation. Fear what happens when you don't. 

Ah, time. If there's one thing we're good at, it's listing all the reasons we don't have the time to do the things we say we want to do.  So many people I know have a great idea for a side business, but they don't start because they say they don't have the time.  Other people tell me that they'd really love to explore changing careers, but they simply don't have the time to do it.  Whatever amazing thing it is we want to accomplish in the world, our most enduring reason for not doing it is that we don't have the time.  So today, several ways to find time . . .  Keep a Time Log Start by really looking at how you're using your time. For the next week, honestly log the hours you spend on your daily tasks. How many hours did you spend working? How many hours were spent sleeping? How many hours on exercise, chores, etc.? How many hours were spent mindlessly surfing the Internet or watching Netflix?  Checking Facebook 5 times a day for 6 minutes at a time adds up to 2.5 hours in a workweek. What if you had spent that time working on your side gig instead?  Manage Your Interruptions While we're talking about how you use your time, let's talk about interruptions. Too many of us lose hours in our day because we aren't very good at setting the boundaries that will give us good opportunities to focus. Part of the reason we feel so exhausted at the end of a day filled with interruptions is because our brains are simply not built to constantly switch from one task to the next.  Take a look at this article on managing interruptions and try using this Interruptions Log to track the flow of interruptions in a week.  Once you've seen what's going on, look at ways you can manage these interruptions to buy yourself greater opportunities to focus in larger chunks of time.  Use the Covey Quadrants to Assess Your Use of Time The Covey Quadrants (above) are a REALLY useful way to look at how you're using your time. Ideally, you want to spend as much time as possible in the "Important, Not Urgent" column. These are the activities that will bring you the most satisfaction and that will get you closer to where you want to be. Sadly, many of us spend too much time in all the other quadrants.  Pay particular attention to Quadrant 4--Not Important and Not Urgent. This is where  a lot of mindless TV watching and other distractions takes place. Instead of ending your day with 3 hours of Facebook and Netflix, try spending at least one of those hours on your own growth.  Schedule the Big Rocks Another Stephen Covey principle is the idea of the "big rocks"--the priorities in your life right now. If working on your career or starting a side business or creating that nonprofit you've been dreaming about is a real priority for you, you need to schedule that work FIRST, not last.  This means literally putting times in your calendar when you will work on your project or business or career growth. These become your first priority and everything else gets scheduled around that.  Use the Pomodoro Technique The Pomodoro Technique is a nice way to help you chunk your time.  Here's how it works: Choose a task you want to accomplish. Set a time for 25 minutes (this is called a Pomodoro) Work on the task until the 25 minutes is up, then put a check mark on your sheet of paper. Take a short, 5-minute break. Every 4 Pomodoros, take a longer break (15-30 minutes--whatever it takes for you to feel re-charged). Note that if you are interrupted during your Pomodoro, then you must either postpone the distraction or end the Pomodoro to attend to the interruption and start over later. The idea is that you are working in focused bursts of 25 minutes, so if that burst is interrupted by a co-worker, a phone call, etc., then you need to either end that Pomodoro and start over after you've dealt with the distraction OR you postpone the distraction until you finish the Pomodoro.  Start by committing to do 1 Pomodoro a day to move your project forward. Then build from there.  Get Up An Hour Earlier Doesn't get much simpler than this. Commit to getting up an hour earlier each day. You can knock out 2 Pomodoros and start your day knowing that you've made your project your FIRST priority. This has the added benefit of setting the tone for your day, a tone that puts your growth at the center.  Do a Month of Sundays (or Saturdays) For one month, commit to spending large blocks of weekend time on your project. Seth Godin's altMBA project has people working from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every Sunday for a "5-week" sprint. How far could you move your career, side business, etc. if you committed to a sprint like that? Change How You Talk About Your Time Laura Vanderkam suggests that rather than saying that you're "too busy" to do something, you say instead, "This is not a priority." So instead of saying "I'm too busy to work on my career," say "Working on my career is not a priority." Or, instead of saying "I'm too busy to start my side business," say "Starting my side business is not a priority." It may be that those things are true. But you may also find that as soon as you say one of these things is not a priority, you realize that it needs to be.    Finding time to do what matters can be challenging. But it CAN be done. Stop saying that you don't have time to grow your career or start your side business or do anything else that's important to you. Instead, invest that energy in finding that time to invest in yourself.    ______________________________________________________________________ Frustrated with your toxic workplace? I'm offering an online, self-guided course that can help you let go and move on! 

What happens when you feel like you're stuck in a career rut? How do you get moving in a different direction? I think we make things more complicated than they need to be. Here are three steps you can take.  1. Admit that there's a problem. The first step is to recognize and accept the reality of your situation. As I've written before, one of the most important things you can do when you want to make a change is to take a scrupulous, unflinching look at what's going on. Be clear about what is and isn't working and where you want to see change. The more honest and complete you can be in this inventory, the more energy you will gather to make change. (This is what some of the people in the Recovering from the Toxic Workplace course are discovering)  One way to to do this is to simply write about your current experience. What is happening? How are you feeling about it? Who's involved? How long has this been going on?  Another way to explore the situation is through visuals. The Career Clarity Image Sessions are a great way to get clearer about what's happening and they can help you see issues and connections you might miss through writing alone.  2. Paint a vision of the future. Robert Fritz, in his excellent book, The Path of Least Resistance, says that the energy for creation comes from the tension between our vision for what we want and the reality of our situation.  In the first step, you looked at your current reality. Now it's time to paint a vision of what you want--what would your career look like if everything was in place? This is where visualization can again be helpful. Michael Hyatt writes that he regularly uses visual techniques to jumpstart his creative projects. He says that creating a visual: Makes it real. Sparks passion. Ignites creativity. Forces clarity. Defines a path. Encourages positivity. Your career is an act of creation and visualizing an outcome is a powerful way to create the necessary tension between your current reality and your imagined future.  3. Build a Bridge You have reality. You have your vision for the future. Now you just need to build a bridge from here to there.  I encourage people to focus on taking small, daily actions that move you in the direction of your vision. Often it feels overwhelming to plan some major career overhaul, but by dedicating some time every day to building that bridge, you can start to create some real momentum.  What kinds of things can you be doing? Here are some suggestions: Keep a One-Sentence Journal--At the end of each day, write one sentence about your experiences. What did you learn? What questions are coming up for you? What was a small win for the day? This can help you track what does/doesn't work for you.  Create a 6-month (or 3-month) plan of experiments--What are things you could try out? Maybe stretch projects? Learning new skills? Trying a side business or committing to reading some new books? Experiments are a way for us to learn more and to discover more about what we want to make happen. Plan these out in short increments with a focus on learning and you can start to evolve toward your new vision.  Do some de-cluttering--Sometimes our problem is that we need to do some mental de-cluttering to make space for a new vision. If you're feeling bogged down by a sense of "there's too much going on!" work on doing some mental (and possibly physical) de-cluttering. You may also want to focus on creating more time for yourself.  Schedule 50 Cups of Coffee--meet and talk with people who can help you clarify your thinking, learn more about a subject area, make new connections, etc. Relationships are the lifeblood of a career and the more we open up to diversifying our circles of connection and deepening those connections, the clearer things become for us.  Ask more questions--When answers are in short supply, we may need to start asking ourselves more questions. Instead of pushing yourself to "figure things out," try focusing on getting more curious.  Some Things to Keep in Mind You didn't get stuck overnight. Career stagnation is something that develops insidiously, over time. So don't expect that you are going to get miraculously unstuck within a day or two. Have patience and let things evolve. Also be aware that some of our sense of being stuck comes when our identities begin to shift and our jobs aren't keeping up. The things that used to engage us about our jobs may be changing. Or we are starting to care less about some things and more about others. Our sense of who we are and what we value changes over the course of our lives and often we get "stuck" when the personal changes and the professional realities are not in alignment.  Finally, you will not begin to get unstuck until you are willing to try some things out that may feel risky or "out of your comfort zone." The only way to get free of career quicksand is to start pulling yourself out of  the muck and onto firm ground. At first this may feel strange. You are used to being in the quicksand. But soon, you will begin to appreciate being on firmer ground. But you have to be willing to step over to it first.  _______________________________________________________________________ Are you stuck because you're mired in the quicksand of a toxic workplace? My new self-guided online course may be just what you need! 

A few weeks ago I launched two online courses on using expressive writing--one to recover from a toxic workplace and the other on recovering from unemployment. The more popular course by far has been the course on recovering from toxic work.  I have to say that this makes me a little sad, but also that I'm not surprised. Most of the people I know who are struggling with their careers feel this way because they are locked into work environments that are soul-killing. There are different flavors of toxic work--from jobs that feel useless, to working with colleagues and supervisors that bring you down, to dealing with the burnout of a competitive, 24/7 approach to work with Amazon as the latest example of this.  It's a growing and incredibly harmful trend that I feel we need to be discussing more.  I want to learn more about how you're feeling about toxic work. Is this something you are facing? How do you define a toxic workplace? How does it make you feel and how is it impacting your life? How are you dealing with it?  Drop me a line in comments or email me at michelemmartin@gmail.com. I want to know more about what you're experiencing. 

My husband and I have become obsessed with Naked and Afraid. In case you've missed it, it is the ultimate survival show. A man and a woman are dropped into a jungle somewhere with only one tool each--a knife, a fire starter, a length of rope--it's their choice. They have no food, no water and no clothes.  The goal of the show is that the pair must survive for 21 days in some really inhospitable locations. At the end of the 3 weeks, they must hike to the "extraction point," which is generally miles from where they've set up camp and usually involves a mountain to climb or a swamp to swim through. Remember, they have no clothes.  Each pair spends a lot of time building some kind of lean-to to sleep in and looking for fresh water and "protein." Everything is about "protein," which usually consists of bugs, lizards and if they're lucky maybe a bird or fish they've managed to catch.  They are living one day to the next, focused strictly on survival.  What fascinates me are their interactions.  A few of the pairs get along reasonably well throughout their 21 days of enforced naked togetherness. They support and coach each other and work together to locate those all-important protein and water sources. But more often than not one of them will start complaining that the other isn't "pulling his/her weight." This usually happens when one of the pair does things differently than the other person would have chosen to do.  Someone will storm off at some point. Someone will yell. Someone will cry. On more than a few occasions someone has "tapped out"--Naked-and-Afraid-Speak for dropping out before the 21 days are up. This leaves the other half of the pair on their own to finish out the 3 weeks.  Regardless of whether or not the pair gets along, the deeper into the survival experience they get, the crankier they become.  So what does all of this have to do with work?   Naked and Afraid is a portrait of people in survival mode--living in a hostile environment, lacking the tools they need to thrive. They are starving, sleep-deprived and I have to believe feeling vulnerable as hell. No shoes and no clothes in the jungle is no joke. For many people, their work is a version of this hostile jungle. OK, the food is better and they can find water. But sleep deprivation is pretty common. Lack of tools and a general sense of hostility in the environment are common too.  While occasionally the experience brings out the best in a Naked and Afraid pair, usually it brings out the worst. They become mean and petty, with lots of bickering in between treks for water. Many of them seem to battle depression and despair, sinking into lethargy as the days go on.  This can happen at work, too. It's the survival mode that brings out the dysfunctional team dynamic.  What saves Naked and Afraid pairs is knowing that they only have to do it for 21 days--there is an end in sight. Surviving to the end becomes a challenge.  But would happen if there was no end they could see? They were just in this survival mode for the foreseeable future?  I'm thinking that it wouldn't be pretty.  That's where surviving your job can be worse than Naked and Afraid. You may not be starving physically, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually, you're in a desperate search for sustenance.  And you're trapped with other people who are in survival mode, too, which brings out the worst in everyone.  Of course Naked and Afraid is designed for entertainment. It purposely looks for the drama and shows us select pieces of what happens over the 21 days.  Still, I can't help feeling that many workplaces are a version of those hostile jungles. And that many of us are just trying to survive. . .  ________________________________________________________________________ Are you in survival mode at work? Check out my online course on Recovering from the Toxic Workplace.  It can give you the tools you need to move from surviving to thriving. 

Yesterday was the first day of my Speedy Startup--a 12-week program I've been running in Bucks County, PA to help people who are unemployed start up their own businesses. We are super-focused on action and learning from doing, so they don't write a "business plan." Instead they set up a bunch of experiments and start testing the hell out of their ideas--seeing what works and what doesn't and pivoting when their original idea doesn't turn out to "the one."  This group is an especially ambitious crew. Several of them have already started working in their businesses and experiencing that learning by doing. How they are approaching their businesses can teach us a lot about our careers too, so I wanted to share some of what they've been learning.  Say Yes and Then Figure It Out One of the individuals in the group is starting a cleaning business. A client asked her if she stripped wood floors. She said "Yes I do!" (even though she'd never done it before) and then went home and spent hours on YouTube learning how to do it. The next day, she went in and did the work.  There was no "I've never done that before" or "I'm not sure I could do that for you." She was given a stretch assignment, said yes, and then got herself ready for the challenge.  Make It Yours Another Speedy Startup participant is starting up a fitness business. One of his offerings is called Club 10--it's a "club" version of working out, complete with club music and a DJ, glow-in-the-dark bracelets and strobe lights. He's taking the drudgery out of working out, making it fun and social.  Working out and fitness is nothing new. But he's putting his personal stamp on it, something all of us need to do in our work.  Work Through Resistance One of the women in the group was a few minutes late to the session. When she came in, she told me that in the week or so before the class began, all these bad things had started happening--kids getting sick, stuff coming up that was distracting her from doing the pre-work for the course. That morning, she'd thought, "This is too much. I'm going to have to drop out."  But then she remembered a video I sent them in the week before we started that talked about Steven Pressfield's concept of Resistance--this force that rises up to distract us from and disrupt our most important creative work. Pressfield says: We can navigate Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or purpose that we must follow before all others.  Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it. (my emphasis)  So she fought the Resistance and showed up.  This can happen in our careers, too--we are disrupted from our most important work and get off course. But when we recognize that this is just Resistance doing what it does, then we can course-correct and go through it. We can show up to do what we're supposed to do. We can create what we're supposed to create.  I'm looking forward to learning with this cohort of Speedy Startup participants. Every cohort has something new to teach me or remind me of and already this group is no exception. 

A few weeks ago I ran across the late Peter Benson's TEDTalk on how youth thrive. Long-time readers of this blog know that this is my goal here--to find ways that we can move from surviving to thriving and that the 4 patterns of career resilience are all about creating a thriving career and life.  What Benson found through his research with young people is that the foundation of thriving is knowing and expressing your "spark." Young people who had this opportunity had higher academic performance, higher engagement, greater compassion, a stronger sense of purpose and less violence in their lives.  Yet sadly, only 1 in 4 teens was on a path to thriving.  I know why. Because most ADULTS don't know their sparks, how to live a life in alignment with those sparks or how to support other people in expressing their sparks. I see it all the time.  What is your "Spark"? In Benson's research, teens IMMEDIATELY knew what was meant by "spark." It is: Your "best self" That skill, quality, talent, interest,  gift, or commitment to something larger than yourself that gives you energy and joy and provides a feeling of being alive, useful and purposeful.   Your prime source of meaning, self-directed action and purpose. Absorbing to the point that you lose yourself in the moment--you go into "flow."  Your spark comes from inside you. It is something that has the potential to make the world a better place for others. It is that "thing" that when you express it, you know you are being your truest, best self--you feel most like yourself.  Your spark can be music, art, writing, drama, design, leadership, sports, spirituality, relationships, social justice, science, programming--almost anything. But you know it when you're engaged in it. It's that thing that makes you feel alive and connected. You can lose yourself in it and you would pay someone else to just be able to DO it.  Your life feels richer and filled with possibilities when you are expressing your spark and it feels dead and numb when you are not.  Your spark is your way of being present in your own life.  And you know when someone else is expressing their spark. Their faces light up. They become animated and excited talking about it. They lean in and are engaged. You can feel the energy of their passion for it. It lights them from within.  Spark as a Source of Identity and Community While knowing our own spark is clearly the first step, Benson discovered that it must also be seen and acknowledged by others. We want and need to be seen, known and embraced by others for our spark.  When people acknowledge our spark--tell us that it is beautiful and appreciated and that the world is a better place for us expressing it--we feel seen in a way that goes beyond our roles in life or our credentials or experience.  I know that my own spark is about creating space for others to find and express their sparks--to connect to and express their best selves--and that when I receive compliments for that quality, I feel a sense of satisfaction and joy that I feel at no other time.  The Thriving Equation Benson and his researchers found that there is an equation for thriving, one that I find fits in perfectly with my patterns for resilience. This is it: Spark + 3 Champions + Opportunity Knowing your spark is tied to the pattern of Clarity. It is part of knowing yourself and how you fit into the world.  Having 3 Champions is part of the Connecting pattern--who in your life sees your spark, knows it, and actively works with you to help you find opportunities to express it? Who keeps reminding you that your spark is your THING, even when you may forget that?  Having Opportunity is all about the Creating pattern of resilience. How do you regularly find opportunities to express your spark, to manifest it and bring it into the world? How are you acting on the life-giving energy of your spark?  And all of this together--this is how we Cope and show care for ourselves. When you know and regularly have opportunities to express your spark, the rest of your life falls into place. You feel happier, more engaged, less stressed and more alive. Often if we look at why we may be feeling unhappy or anxious, it is because we have not found healthy ways to express our sparks on an ongoing basis. We are blocked from our best selves and that stresses us out.  Awakening the Inner Fire Imagine a world where we were focused on drawing out our own inner fire and the sparks of those around us.  Imagine what we could create for ourselves and each other if we saw, knew and appreciated each other based on those sparks. As Benson found, knowing someone's spark draws us TOWARD them. We are drawn to that light and see past everything else.  Imagine what we could create together if we combined our sparks--a beautiful roaring fire that warms us all.  What a wonderful gift this would be to both ourselves and our children.  Awakening and feeding our inner fire and the fires of those around us makes us Spark Champions. We need more of us in the world.  Human development doesn't come from the outside in--we do not grow by filling ourselves with facts and knowledge and external expectations. True growth comes from the inside out--from lighting our own fire and keeping it going. We are not vessels to be filled, but fires to be lit. What can you spark today? 

Yesterday I wrote about the power of finding your sparks--those talents, skills, gifts, qualities, interests or commitments to something larger than yourself that make you feel most alive, joyful and filled with purpose.  Today, I want to talk a little bit more about your sparks and how they do (or don't)  connect to your career.  Here's the thing. . .  In an ideal world, you would be paid to express your sparks. When we talk about people building a career on their "passions," this is really what we mean.  Many people are fortunate to find a way to get paid for their sparks and I personally believe that part of the value in developing multiple income streams is that you can often turn your sparks into a source of revenue for you.  Seeking to be paid for your sparks, especially in a culture that makes work so central to our sense of selves, is probably the easiest way to live a life in alignment with your sparks.  But although I'm an idealist at heart, I also have a practical edge. I understand that we live in a world that is largely about productivity and profit and that not all of our sparks are going to generate enough revenue to make a living.  I also know that sometimes what it takes to make your sparks generate revenue can kill the joy that you feel in them. Here I'm thinking of an artist friend I know whose graphic design and corporate artwork pays the bills, but a little piece of his soul dies every time he has to use his artistic skills for that kind of work. Unfortunately, the art that makes his soul sing isn't as lucrative for him.  In these circumstances, our work and "career" may need to be structured differently. We may want to look for something that provides us with the income, space and time to express our sparks in the non-work parts of our lives.  And rather than seeing our jobs or our work as our primary source of identity (as our society encourages us to do), we need to shift into seeing our sparks as "who we are." Work is something we DO,  in these circumstances.  But when we think of who we ARE, what makes us special and feel alive--that comes in our spark moments.  If you are able to integrate your sparks into your work and career path, then that's wonderful. But if not, I still think that finding and expressing your sparks should play a major role in how you think about and plan for your career. In this case, finding work that can support the expression of your sparks becomes the goal.  Here's what I know. We are at our happiest, most fulfilled and most alive to our own possibilities when we live a life that honors and expresses our sparks. If you can do that and get paid--fantastic. But if not, then find a way to have what you do to generate income support the expression of your sparks.   

To thrive, we focus not on trying to be happy all the time, but on becoming resilient in our lives. Here's my Resilience Manifesto. It's a work in progress.  Know your personal vision and formula for thriving--how does your life look and feel when you are focused on thriving? What does it take to get there?   Act from inspiration, not desperation.   Get curious about your life. Ask more questions and worry less about answers.     Words create worlds--how can you live into the story of your life and find the words to tell a story that celebrates your power and resilience, rather than what feels broken or stuck?   "To go fast, go alone. To go far, go together." Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Who do you want to run with?   Pay attention.   Live more of your own life and less of someone else’s.   Go for direction, not destination.   Seek clarity, not certainty.   Know when you have clarity, but need courage.   Have more conversations and talk about what’s most important, not what’s "acceptable."   Find your sparks. Share them with others. Become a Champion for others to find and express their sparks.    Be your own hero.   Stop being the hero for others and start being the host. Create space for them to find their own inner heroism.   Give yourself permission.   Plan less. Experiment more.    Set goals to please your future self.      Make your own path. Don't follow someone else's.   Trust the mess. Getting lost will help you find yourself.   Know the difference between stuck and resting. Let yourself rest.    Feel and listen to your emotions. Quit shutting them down. Let them tell you what you need to hear, especially  when you don't want to hear it.   Find ways to dance, sing, play and draw your way to transformation. Grow through your joy and ease as much as through your trials and tribulations.    If you don’t like something, stop complaining and change it.   Do these resonate with you? What would you change? What would you add? 

One of the problems we humans can have with setting and reaching our goals is that when we set them, we are thinking of the person we are right now, rather than the person we will become when we meet those goals. We haven't connected with that future version of ourselves.  For most of us, our future selves are like other people--people whose motivations, emotions, etc. we understand imperfectly. In fact, research shows that we treat our future selves as though they ARE other people. (And incidentally, this means that we are less kind and thoughtful about that future person) But research also shows that when we are more connected to that future version of ourselves, we are more likely to do things now that will take care of that person we will eventually become--whether it is the future of 30 minutes or 30 years from now.  Connecting to Your Future Self When I talk about the Connecting habit of Career Resilience, I'm generally referring to the connections we form with other people. But to achieve our goals, we also have to form stronger connections to our future selves. When we envision who we will become and use that to help guide our behaviors in the present, we are likelier to take the kinds of actions that will lead to longer-term health, wealth and happiness. So how to do this? Envision Your Future Self Start by envisioning the Self that you want to be. I personally believe that the most powerful way to do this is through collage--pasting images and words onto card stock or poster board. Start collecting images and phrases from magazines, books and the Web that capture the person you want to become. Then spend an hour or two arranging and gluing them to create a literal picture of who you want to be.  This is a process that can be really powerful, as it often uncovers thoughts or ideas that you may not have allowed into consciousness before the exercise.    Connect to Your Broader Life Dream  Psychologist Daniel Levinson found that most of us have a "Life Dream," something that is often connected to our "sparks"--those skills, talents, passions that bring us the most joy and fulfillment. Levinson found that the life crises many of us experience at different phases of our lives are often the result of deferring or not acting in alignment with achieving that Life Dream: "Major shifts in life direction at subsequent ages are often occasioned by a … sense of betrayal or compromise of the Dream. That is, very often in the crises that occur at age 30, 40, or later a major issue is the reactivation of a guiding Dream … that goes back to adolescence or the early 20's, and the concern with its failure."  By connecting to your own Life Dream and taking actions today that move you toward that dream, you are more likely to avoid these types of crises in your life and career.  So find ways to explore and connect to your Big Life Dream--what is it that THING you want to do or be and how can you take steps now that move you toward that dream? Write Letters to Your Future Self One of the most powerful ways to connect with your future self is to write him/her a letter. Begin the letter "Dear Future Me" and then go on to describe all of the things you're happy and proud about that this future version of yourself has accomplished in important areas of life. For added benefit, be sure to talk about HOW and WHY this future self has been successful. What did they do to achieve these things? This helps you create the bridge between who you are now and who you want to become.  I've found this to be especially helpful to do as part of shorter term planning. For example, write a letter to the Self of 3 months from now. What is he/she up to? How did they get there?  Send Emails To Your Future Self FutureMe is a free service that lets you send emails to yourself at scheduled times. This can be an excellent way to provide yourself with shorter term coaching and motivation. If you want to start changing certain habits for example, you can schedule a series of messages to yourself that ask if you've made progress on that goal. So if you're working on being more mindful, then set up messages that ask "Have you taken a 2-minute mindfulness break yet?" Or if you want to be more intentional about strengthening your connections, schedule daily emails that ask "Have you sent a note of appreciation to someone today?"    Connecting to your future self can be a powerful way to see more progress in achieving your goals. What do you do to support that future version of who you will become? How do you stay connected to him/her so you can take the actions you need to get there? 

A big mistake a lot of us make in our work is to confuse our careers with the jobs we have right now. This is a problem because we end up confusing job management with career management. And believe me, there's a difference.  Job Management When you are managing your job, you focus on: Accomplishing current tasks and responsibilities Attending company/organization-sponsored training Networking on behalf of your company Doing things right and meeting company/organization expectations There's nothing wrong with any of this. Job management is necessary to keep your current position and will help you develop your reputation for future opportunities.  The problems arise when every ounce of energy you have for work is poured into your current job, with nothing left over to think about and prepare for a future that most likely will not be with your current company or organization.  Job management is about pleasing your current employer. Career management is about creating your own path.  Career Management When you are managing your career, you still do some of the job management tasks I identified above.  But you are also carving out time, attention and energy for thinking through and acting on your own goals and desires in your career. You: Regularly reflect on your career--what you are learning, what you want to be learning, how you are using your strengths and sparks.  Seek out and create relationships that support your own growth and development. Are in charge of your own learning, recognizing that your knowledge and skills are YOURS and that they are one of your main sources of competitive advantage. Assess your company's professional development opportunities and know when it's time to strike out on your own.   Treat your career as an experiment, taking risks and trying out new ideas and possibilities. Pay attention to what's going on in the larger world--other industries and occupations--and to how these trends may impact your current job and your future.  Have a layoff plan, recognizing that no job--NO JOB--is permanent.  Most of all, you regularly assess and develop your habits of career resilience. When you build your resilience, then you are automatically paying attention to managing your career.    So here's the question for today--Are you focused on managing your job or managing your career?    I've published a free Resilience Assessment here. See how many "Yes's" you get!

    Often when we set goals for ourselves, the missing link between setting the goal and achieving it is accountability. We have a plan we intend to execute, but we haven't set up ways to hold ourselves accountable for following through. As a result, we later return to our goals, wondering what happened.  So how do we build accountability into our plans? Here are four ideas to try out. 1. Connect to Your Emotions Chip and Dan Heath in their book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, argue that for any change to happen, we need to connect to the emotional component of our brains. We assume that all action and decisions are logical, when in reality, most of our behavior is being driven by the more hidden emotional part of our brains.  When you are setting your goal, you need to dive into the emotional component of why achieving this goal is really important to you. Find ways to visualize your goal (this is where inspiration boards can be helpful) or write about why it's important to you to achieve this goal.  The more you can connect to your deepest emotional desires, the more likely you are to achieve the goal and to follow through.  And if you can't connect to the emotions, then you might want to ask why this is a goal for you. If you can't FEEL its importance, maybe it's not a goal worth having.  2. Email Prompts and Reminders to Yourself Last week I talked about planning with your future self in mind and pointed you to Future.me, a free service that allows you to schedule a series of emails to your future self.  The next time you set a goal, figure out what actions you want to take and set deadline dates for yourself to accomplish these things. Then fire up Future Me and set up a series of email prompts to be sent out on appropriate dates.  Use the prompts to motivate and inspire your future self. You can include images with your email, so maybe include some pictures that will inspire you or maybe some quotes. If you have videos that might be helpful (I have some videos that get me pumped up when I need to take certain actions), include those as links in your email too. Experiment with asking yourself questions, like "Hey--did you call those 3 people you were planning to contact yet?"  Or try positive reinforcement--"I know you've already made those calls--you should be feeling really good about yourself right now."  The nice thing about using Future.me as an accountability partner is that you can also use the emails as a way to plan ahead for the actions you want to take to achieve your goal. By planning out your email campaign with yourself, you're also creating a concrete plan for getting to your goal.  3. Get an Accountability Partner Last week I started facilitating the Business Leadership Academy I run for a local Chamber of Commerce. In the first session I have participants identify their leadership goals for the year and then what they want to achieve between now and our session next month. Then I have them partner with someone else to talk about how they can be accountability partners for each other. You can do this, too.  Find someone who is also working on some personal/professional goals and spend some time talking with each other about what those goals are, your timeline for completion and actions you want to take.  Then work out how you can each hold the other accountable for achieving your goals. Maybe you will schedule a weekly or bi-weekly check-in phone call with each other to talk about progress. Or you can set up a system for emailing and checking in.  It can be easy to blow off our accountability to ourselves when we are the only people aware of progress, or the lack thereof. But if we have to report in to another person, that takes accountability to another level. I'm working with an intern right now who is also building up her business. She told me that she's gotten more done in the past month to move her business forward than in the 6 months prior simply because she doesn't want to have to tell me that she didn't do anything to work on her business when we have our bi-weekly calls.  Having a partner can provide not only inspiration and motivation, but also a sense of responsibility to another person that can make the difference between action and letting things fall through the cracks.  4. Start a Mastermind Group If you want to take accountability to a whole other level, especially on an ongoing basis, consider starting a Mastermind Group.  This is a group of 3-5 people who share a desire to work on achieving personal/professional goals together.  Using a group to achieve goals expands both your network of potential supports and connections, as well as your access to resources and information. And if you think disappointing one person feels bad, try reporting to a group that you made no progress on your goals! If you want to use a Mastermind group, this tends to be a longer sort of commitment to working together, so you would only want to go this route if you really want to participate in this level of accountability and support. If you are serious about achieving your goals, though, this can be one of your most potent sources of support and accountability.    Building in intentional accountability strategies is key to achieving any goal. These are just a few suggestions for making yourself more accountable to yourself.  What experiences have you had with accountability strategies? What has worked best for you? _________________________________________________________________ How prepared are you for the age of permanent career management? Take this free career self-assessment to see how resilient you are!

In today's economy, 5-year and even 1-year career plans don't make a ton of sense. Too much changes too quickly and it's difficult to anticipate where things will be a year or 5 years from now. But beyond that, our careers are living, evolving entities that require regular care and feeding, work that is best done in a shorter time frame. The Problems with Longer-Term Career Planning One issue with longer planning periods is that it's easier for us to procrastinate. We feel like we have lots of time to make goals happen, so we keep putting off taking action toward those goals. But when we are dealing with a 30-day time frame, we can be more nimble and agile. We have a shorter horizon for achieving goals and this encourages us to take concrete actions. We can more easily "course-correct" and we are having to be accountable to ourselves on a more frequent basis.  Also, 30 day time frames encourage us to be more experimental with our careers. We can say "let's see what happens if I spend the next 30 day's focused on doing this." That's enough time to see some real results, but not so long that it feels like we're committing to something more "permanent."  How to Plan in 30 Day Increments 1. Figure out what you want to work on for the next 30 days.  Start by figuring out where you want to focus your attention for the next 30 days. I would suggest doing this Career Resilience assessment to give you a snapshot of where your career is at and what actions you might want to take. Or you may  know that you want to do some work in one of the 4 practices of career resilience (Clarify, Connect, Create, Cope).  Another way to start is by looking at your calendar for the next 30 days. What's already coming up and what does it suggest to you about the goals you want to work on? Where are opportunities for experiments coming up?  You can also look at where you feel like you're having problems or challenges. Are you totally stressed by work and feeling like you need to look at your time management? Then maybe that's a place to go. Have meetings been an utter bore and you want to change things up? Then put your focus there.  2. Decide on Goals and Actions Once you've figured out your area of focus, decide on goals and actions. What do you want to accomplish and how are you going to accomplish it?  Start by thinking about what you COULD do--brainstorm the possibilities.  Then look at what you WILL do--select the actions or activities that feel the most interesting and filled with energy for you.  So, for example, let's say that you've decided that you need to do more to expand and diversify your network (that "Connect" practice of career resilience).  You can decide that you will set a goal of meeting and connecting with 4 new people by the end of the month (1/week) and that you are going to experiment with some different ways to make those connections. Maybe you will try attending a local Meetup in an area of interest to you and making a connection there. You will also reach out to your existing network to ask for an introduction to someone you've been wanting to meet. You get the idea.  The point is for you to identify a goal and then the strategies you want to use in the next 30 days to get there.  4. Schedule the work! I'm a firm believer in putting your career activities on your calendar. What's scheduled gets done. So take some time to lay out your plan on your calendar, selecting specific dates and times to work on your plan.  5. Build in accountability and a plan for keeping track of your results. Figure out how you will hold yourself accountable for doing the work in the next 30 days.  I would also suggest building in some opportunities for reflection, at least at the midpoint and the end of the month.  6. Execute This is self-explanatory. 7. Evaluate At the end of the month, evaluate your progress, what you accomplished and what you learned.  8. Rinse/Repeat Use what you've learned to set new goals and actions for the following month. Where you want to focus now? How can you build on your progress so far?    Periodically (once a quarter, twice a year), you should take a step back to see where you've been and where you want to go. Working in 30 day increments doesn't mean that you don't take longer-term looks at yourself and your situation. You just plan and implement differently.  As you become more skilled at doing your 30-day experiments, you can begin to see longer-term patterns or ideas to explore--maybe you will spend an entire quarter focused on building connections and create 3 30-day plans that really help you dig more deeply into making that happen. Or you decide that you want to start a side gig in the next 6 months, so you lay out your plan in those 30-day increments.    With a 30-day approach to career planning, you can keep the focus on taking action, learning from your experiences, and then iterating into the next opportunity. You are more likely to stay focused on key goals and to keep taking action toward achieving those goals.  A 30-day plan can be one of your most effective strategies for career transformation and it's definitely one to try out--at least for the next 30 days. . .    _______________________________________________________________________ Are you stuck because you're mired in the quicksand of a toxic workplace? My new self-guided online course may be just what you need! 

  Meetings are an inevitable part of our professional and personal lives. If you're lucky, you are attending or running meetings that are structured to be positive and productive, but my experience tells me that not many people are that lucky.  Still, there are two simple things you can do in every meeting that will help you grow, regardless of the quality of the meeting. They are easy to incorporate and will help you make sure that you get something from every meeting you attend.  1. Build connections and deepen relationships. For every meeting you attend, be on the lookout for ways that you can either connect two people who don't know each other  or find a way to deepen a relationship that already exists.  For example, you're attending a meeting outside of your organization--look for a couple of people who may not know each other and do an introduction, explaining why you think they should know each other.  For internal meetings, where you are more likely to know everyone in attendance, look for a way to deepen the relationship. One of the best ways to do this is by asking someone a positive question, like: Tell me about a small win you've had this week--I'd love to hear about a success!  What projects are you working on that I could help you move forward?  What are you feeling most proud of this week?  What are you feeling most positive about this week? At first it might feel awkward to do this, but you will find that the more you practice asking these questions, the more comfortable you will become. These will also open up a more positive relationship with the person you are talking to.  2. Facilitate the sharing of learning The second thing you can do at every meeting is to facilitate the sharing of learning from the meeting. While someone may be responsible for keeping minutes, this usually is more about what tasks need to be followed up on and who will be in charge of that task. This is usually not about what is being learned. What I'm suggesting here is that you focus on what is being learned during the meeting--insights, information, etc.--and then volunteer to do a brief summary to be emailed to the group. If someone mentions a particular website or article, that could be included in the summary. If the group arrives at a particular insight or idea, that would be included as well.  This doesn't need to be long--often a few bullet points will do the trick. But if you get in the habit of being the steward of learning for a meeting, this will not only help you focus on what is being learned, it will also position you as someone who is helping the group learn from its experiences as well.    With these two simple tasks, you can make EVERY meeting meaningful. Try them out for 30 days and see what happens. . .  _________________________________________________________________ How prepared are you for the age of permanent career management? Take this free career self-assessment to see how resilient you are!

There's a fantastic African quote that's one of my all-time favorites.  To go fast, go alone. To go far, go together. I have a firm belief that when it comes to giving birth to a dream, we are more likely to make things happen when we are working with other people than when we try to do it all on our own. Making a dream happen is a marathon, not a sprint, and we need support along the way. Unfortunately, American culture is very hung up on the myth of the individual genius--the inventor who toils away alone in his basement or the "Lone Ranger" entrepreneur who builds a multimillion dollar business from the sweat of her (singular) brow.  Forget that these stories of not needing anyone else to be successful are completely false. They are an enduring part of the culture and they reinforce this idea that we are solely responsible for our own success.  But the reality is that although there are actions and tasks that only you can do when it comes to making a dream or project happen, working toward your goals with a community of like-minded people can turbo-charge your efforts beyond what you would imagine. Here are 6 reasons to connect with (or create your own) Mastermind Group to achieve your dreams: 1. Community Support When you are working on your own to achieve your goals, it can be very isolating and lonely. Humans are social creatures (even those of us who are introverted) and we do best when we feel like we are part of a community.  A Mastermind group of like-minded folks who are working together to achieve their personal and professional goals creates an environment of support and belonging that increases your positive feelings and helps you feel like you are connected to something larger than yourself.  You are also able to share your individual trials and tribulations and provide each other with support during difficult times.  And celebrations of success are much sweeter when you do it with a community of people who have been working with you on the way.  2. Accountability One of the most important reasons to work with a Mastermind Group is the accountability factor. Each time you meet, you share goals and progress and your fellow Mastermind Group members can help you keep on track toward achieving your goals.  Ideally you find people to work with who are willing to call you out (with compassion) if you aren't making progress. They can notice where you tend to get hung up and make suggestions and provide support when you stumble.  They can also give you the nudges you may need to keep making progress and be there to talk to when you need to brainstorm about how to deal with obstacles and challenges.    3. Resources Mastermind Group members can also be a great source of resources--be that information, new connections, ideas, whatever.  In fact, one good reason to create a Mastermind Group is to pool your resources and give each other access to your networks. You may find that there are services you could share or investments you could make together that bring multiple dreams into reality.  4. Feedback One of the best things I've gotten from my own participation in  Mastermind Groups is the opportunity to get feedback on projects or ideas. I can easily get stuck in my own head and when I present my project to my Mastermind friends, they are able to quickly point out where I need to get out of my own way or might think differently.  They are also able to offer me different perspectives and reactions. This has helped me revamp my projects or revisit assumptions I was making.    5. Inspiration Mastermind Groups can be great sources of inspiration. I've had multiple situations where talking through an unrelated problem or challenge for one member has given me fantastic insights into something I'm struggling with on one of my own projects.  At other times, I've been down about a project that has been dragging on and my Mastermind friends have been able to remind me of my original motivations or just give me  a badly-needed pep talk.  6. Opportunities Something else a good Mastermind Group can bring is opportunity. I've found in particular that when other people know what you're working on, they tend to be on the lookout for possibilities that might connect to your dream. More than once I've been given leads or new opportunities because of my involvement in a Mastermind Group. And I've done the same for others.    Whether your goals are personal or professional--or a combination of the two--a Mastermind group can be a key strategy for achieving them.  What's been your experience with Masterminds? Have you ever started or been a member of one? How has this paid off for you?    _________________________________________________________________ How prepared are you for the age of permanent career management? Take this free career self-assessment to see how resilient you are!

  I do a lot of work with people who are 45+, trying to navigate an economy that they didn't expect--one that doesn't necessarily respect longevity or loyalty and that doesn't always seem to value what these people bring to the table.  In this work, I've begun to identify some new career management skills that I think we 45+ people need to get better at in order to not only survive, but thrive in a new economy. Note that at 52, I fall squarely into the group of people I'm giving advice to, so this is coming from someone who gets you.  Here are a few skills that are essential to we mid-career folks: 1. Working gracefully for younger supervisors I talk to a LOT of people who have supervisors who are younger than they are--often 15 or more years younger. Some people are able to handle this, but I've seen a lot of people who can't. They make it clear that they don't have a lot of respect for the younger manager, questioning their judgement and generally assuming that this youngster doesn't know what they're doing.  Clearly this is a problem--one that will quickly get you tagged as someone who is NOT a team player. The reality is, more and more of us in the 45+ category will be working for people in their 20's and 30's. We need to get over the idea that this "shouldn't" be happening (it is) and figure out how we can create a productive, positive relationship with younger bosses.  2. Starting over A few weeks ago, I wrote about how 50 is the new 65 in the job market, and how many people are getting laid off at the peak of their careers. While some of us may be lucky enough to find new employment in our old occupation, many more people are finding that they have to completely reinvent themselves and their careers.  Having to start over when we are moving into that stage of work when we thought that things might ease up a little can be incredibly frustrating and disheartening. But it's a reality of the modern economy and a skill that our younger co-workers understand is part of the deal.  One of the reasons I am such a fanatic about multiple income streams and side gigs is because starting over is a lot easier when you've been building a bridge to something new already. It becomes less about starting over and more about gearing up in another area.  3. Diversifying and expanding our connections As we hit our middle years, we have a tendency to kind of hunker down into the relationships we've developed earlier in our lives. We can be less likely to be looking for new connections and groups of people because we may already feel like we're set with our circles.  But the reality is that at mid-life, we may need to be making new connections even more than when we were younger. These new people can bring in new opportunities, new possibilities, new information and new ideas. These are the things that keep us fresh and resilient and able to navigate whatever comes our way.  4. Letting go I talk to a lot of people in their 40's and 50's who are clearly unhappy with their work lives. They've settled into something that is either incredibly boring or deeply unsatisfying to them and they spend much of their time fighting the inner knowledge that it's time to move on.  I get this. Fear and the need to maintain a certain standard of living are powerful chains that link us to work that is long past its "sell by" date. But this inability to let go and move on can make you stagnant and bitter. And believe me, these are not great ways to be at work.  We have to get better at recognizing when the season for something has passed and when it's time to move on to something different. When we do this, we can move on our terms, rather than when someone else decides it's time to go, which means we're much less likely to have to start over.  These are a few of the skills I'm seeing a need for us to develop as we age in our careers. What career management skills do you see us needing to develop? And how are you handling this? 

I spent yesterday at a meeting with a number of smart, passionate people who want to make a difference in their industry. The industry doesn't matter because there are smart, passionate people in every industry, people who want to make a difference and create lasting impact. And all of these people encounter the same issue.  This was a strategic planning meeting, looking at opportunities and possibilities. It involved key stakeholders, all of whom share similar assumptions about how their world works. And that was the problem.  The people in this group don't know what they don't know.  They share similar world views, similar paradigms and make the same assumptions about how their industry operates and, therefore, how it should operate in the future. There is no one in their group who can say: "Hey--you know what? There are OTHER ways of operating, other ways of viewing and thinking about this work that you're doing. But you don't know that you don't know about them."  The "Homophily" Problem There's a word for what happens when "birds of a feather flock together"--that human tendency to gather with like-minded people who will tend to confirm, rather than test our core beliefs. That word is "homophily." And it's a problem for us in our work.  Homophily causes us to get into groupthink, where we quickly affirm for one another that we are on the right track, without testing our core assumptions--or even knowing that we HAVE core assumptions. We follow the same tired tracks toward solutions and have the same tired conversations because we don't have the new blood of different ideas.  While connecting to like-minded people can help us quickly create bonds of trust and communication, it also makes it less likely that we will be exposed to new ideas, new thinking, and new ways of doing things, which are key to innovation and resilience.  Our focus on "best practices" in our industries and occupations can contribute to this tendency. While of course we want to learn from what's working well in our fields, we also need to look OUTSIDE of our regular communities. What's happening in industries and occupations that are vastly different from our own? What could we learn from what is happening in other places and how could these ideas feed career and industry innovation? How to Find Out What You Don't Know One of the things I encourage people to do on a regular basis to develop their career  resilience is to connect to people in different fields. Do this not to persuade someone to your own way of thinking, but to LISTEN AND LEARN.  How are they approaching the work that they do? What trends and ideas are showing up in their work and how might it apply in yours? What's happening with technology? Could these changes be coming to your work or be used in your field? What "thought leadership" ideas are going on? How might they be brought into your industry or occupation?  This is an approach that needs to be applied on an organizational level as well.  Awhile ago I wrote about the problem of conference homophily and suggested that we need to find ways to bring people together from different industries and occupations so that they can learn from one another in a conference setting.  For strategic planning, we could do something similar--start with some learning sessions that expose people to ideas that are completely outside of "best practices" to give them some new frameworks and possibilities. The purpose would be to talk about how new ideas could apply in your setting, rather than simply focusing on implementing the same strategies that didn't work from your previous planning.  Resilience and growth come not only from our own, familiar circles, but also from areas that are very different from our own. What happens if you spend some time intentionally connecting with people and organizations that actually challenge your assumptions about the work that you do? What happens if you spend some time finding out what you don't know, rather than confirming what you DO know?

  After 20 years in the career development business, I recognize that there are two kinds of people in the world.  There are people who build their careers based on what's required.  And there are people who build their careers based on what's possible.  I have also observed that the people who are having the most difficulty navigating today's economy--who are most likely to be laid off, who struggle the most with growing and advancing in their work--they are the ones who have focused on meeting requirements.  The people who have focused on possibility? They have been able to be responsive and adaptive, assuming leadership roles in their occupations and industries. They are less likely to lose their jobs and more likely to be engaged in their work in meaningful, impactful ways.  Here's why.  The Problem of a Requirements-Focused Career We establish requirements in an industry or occupation or organization as a way of codifying what we think will bring success. Requirements are about rules and regulations, policies and procedures, job descriptions and KSAs. When industries and careers were more stable--when we stayed in a career for 30 years--creating your career path based on requirements made a lot more sense. Steps for advancement and growth were clearly delineated and success meant doing a good job of following those steps.  But now, we operate in a world where "requirements" change on a regular basis. By the time you've followed the instructions for what it means to succeed in your chosen occupation, you discover that those requirements no longer apply and that there are new rules to follow that you didn't realize even existed.  As workers, when we build our careers on what's required, we can be so consumed with following "the rules" and instructions that we miss how the world is changing around us.  Of course there are many good reasons to have requirements and many times we wouldn't get very far if we ignored requirements at work. You have to be able to follow the rules of a game if you want to play. The problems show up when we find ourselves spending most of our time continually asking about and focused on meeting requirements with little thinking about how the rules of the game might be changing without anyone really noticing. We are also assuming that other people actually know what the requirements should be. We are putting our trust in people and systems that often are as clueless as we are.  And we are also less likely to feel empowered about taking charge of our own career development and much more likely to be waiting for that promotion or for someone to send us to a training or class.  Career Planning Based on Possibility When we approach our careers from a place of what's possible, we have a different fundamental orientation to our work.  Yes, we may need to meet certain requirements--obtaining particular credentials, for example. But while we are mindful of where we may need to play by the rules of the game, we are also very aware of the ways in which those rules may change.  People who plan from possibility know and honor their sparks and their strengths. They ask themselves if they are doing work that aligns with their lives and they take steps to make changes when necessary.  Planning from possibility is also about asking a lot of questions. How could I create my own career path?  What impact could technology have on my career and how could I prepare for this?  What new trends and big issues are showing up in my industry and occupation and how could I integrate these into my own path?  How do I use my strengths and talents to create multiple income streams?  What experiences and education do I need that will help me evolve and grow in the ways that are most meaningful and important to me?  Ultimately, planning from possibility rather than from what's required is about doing what Seth Godin calls "Choosing your Impact": You can choose to merely do your job, to meet spec and to follow someone else's path. Or, you can dig in and transform your contribution. You can level up, taking advantage of the world-changing array of tools and connections our new economy is making available. Access to tools is a small part of it. Mostly, it’s about taking control over where you go and what you do with your gifts. When you choose your impact, you are in the driver's seat of your career--setting an agenda, rather than following one.  This isn't always the easiest path. One of the reasons people tend to focus on meeting requirements is because it's much easier to say "What am I supposed to do?" and then try to do it, than it is to figure out your own path.  However, taking the "What's possible?" approach rather than the "What's required" approach is far more rewarding and certainly gives you a greater ability to take control of the shape and form of your work. So here's your question for the day: Are you planning your career based on what's required or based on what's possible?   

Approximately 34% of the workforce is engaged in freelance/contract work, a trend that shows no signs of stopping. According to Forbes within 5 years, we could be looking at numbers as high as 50%.  Unfortunately, the career advice we often receive is based on more traditional ways of working and people are having to figure out for themselves how to manage their careers in a world based on projects and having to hustle to get your next piece of work.  Having been self-employed myself for the past 15 years, I'm well aware of the different skill sets it takes to be successful in a freelance world. These are some of the skills I see as being necessary to navigate this new landscape.  1. Building a career based on problems and challenges we are good at solving, rather than on job tasks and responsibilities.  In a job, we become accustomed to thinking of ourselves in terms of our daily responsibilities. Advancement becomes a matter of expanding our scope of responsibility and changing the tasks we are working on.  But in a freelance world, we need to shift our thinking. We become more aware of our skills and how we can bring them to bear to solve particular problems or to enhance specific projects. We learn to become aware of where our strengths and assets can do the most good.  2. Self-direction.  In a job, we learn to be an employee. We have bosses who tell us where to focus and what to do and we put our efforts in that direction. When we shift to a freelance mindset, we have to direct ourselves. This means we have to learn to work without the guidance of a boss telling us what to do. We are setting the goals, we are creating the outcomes and we are bearing the responsibility for both success and failure.  3. Creating and nurturing your own team. When you work for a company, your team is decided for you. You may have the ability to hire and fire people, but always within the context of what your company desires. In a freelance economy, you have to create your own team. This means thinking much more deeply about who helps you be most successful? Who complements your skills and abilities? Who challenges you and brings you new ideas? And how do you continue to develop and deepen relationships while you are also doing the hustling? 4. Working "out loud."  In a freelance world, people want to SEE what you can do, even more so than when you worked as an employee. You have to learn to document your work on a regular basis and to create a portfolio of accomplishments that you can share with potential customers. You also need to document your progress so you can learn from what is and isn't working. "Working out loud" means paying attention to not only WHAT you do, but HOW you do it so you can build on success and learn from failure.  Working "out loud" is also about working like a designer or an artist. They use sketchbooks to experiment, to write down ideas or questions, to reflect on and practice their craft. Freelancers need to work this way too. Often the seeds for your next opportunity lie in the scraps of thought and the stray ideas you keep in that notebook.  5. Asking good questions. Einstein once said that given 60 minutes to solve a problem, he would spend the first 55 minutes defining the problem and then the last 5 on the solution. Most of us suck at asking questions, grabbing at the first or most obvious framing of the problem without going any further. Success in a freelance economy is often about learning to ask better questions--helping people to be sure they're working on the right problem before offering solutions. I would argue that this is a skill that we all need to learn, but in particular it's a critical freelance skill as it helps you uncover where you can provide the most value.  6. Agile Learning Agile learners remain open to new ways of thinking and are focused on continuous learning. Freelance success depends on your ability to continue to grow your skills and to be incorporating new ideas and new information into your work.  7. Hustling Unless we are employed in sales, most of us don't have to worry about bringing in new clients. But in the freelance economy, it's all about the hustle. How are you creating new opportunities for yourself? How can you generate leads and turn them into paying customers? In a regular job, your mind is on doing the work. As a freelancer you are always thinking about two things--doing the work AND getting the work.  8. Self-promotion and branding. Most of us hate having to sell ourselves. One of the reasons we hate looking for a new job is because it requires us to market ourselves in ways that can feel uncomfortable, if not downright painful. In the freelance economy, you're always have to market yourself--while avoiding that nasty feeling that you are engaged in self-promotion. It's all about creating your "personal brand" and being able to regularly articulate that brand value.  These are a few of the new career skills I see us needing to be successful in the gig economy. What are your thoughts and reactions?