Do you need to listen to what your busy-ness is trying to tell you? During last Friday's meeting with my Mastermind Group, we did a VisualsSpeak exercise together, exploring where we felt we were at right now in terms of our career/business development and where we wanted to be. Here's my image from that activity: The left side is how I'm feeling now. Notice all the frantic, jagged lines in it and the general sense of overwhelm. Seeing it in images like this, all grouped together, really brought home for me the extent to which I'm feeling under pressure and a little out of control. Especially when I looked at this in contrast to the right side, which is where I want to be.  My fellow Mastermind Group members, Nancy Seibel and Catherine Lombardozzi came to similar conclusions about their own work lives, which led us into a discussion of our "busy-ness" and how we could address it. We all feel a little harried right now, working with so many moving parts, and it was helpful to discuss this with each other.  Nancy went home from our meeting and did some more thinking, deciding that she wanted to try to learn more about what her busy-ness was trying to tell her. She's written a terrific post  on her thoughts about this, identifying some key questions she wants to ask herself. I wanted to share here because I think these are questions that could benefit all of us:  What is the purpose of busy-ness in my life? Does busy-ness give me something? Is busy-ness protecting me from something? What happens if I give up my busy-ness? How do I feel when I am "too busy?" How do I feel when I am just busy enough? Is there a risk involved in giving up the busy-ness? Do I want to give up my busy-ness? What will I gain if I give up my "busy-ness"? What I love about how Nancy engaged with this issue is not only that she came up with great questions, but also her willingness to accept the situation and try to learn from it what she can. Rather than just blowing it off and continuing to act without mindfulness, she decided to directly inquire into what this experience is telling her.  This is an incredible career resilience strategy, integrating habits of both clarifying (understanding more about the role that "busy-ness" plays in her life) and coping (providing Nancy with some potential strategies for addressing her busy-ness patterns.)  If you're feeling frantic right now, take some time to do some journaling and reflection on these questions. What is your busy-ness trying to tell you and how can you learn and grow from that?   _____________________________________________________________________ If you're looking for greater clarity about your next steps, my virtual Career Clarity Retreat on September 21 may be just what you need!  Click here for more information and the link to register! 

  Joe Nocera's Op-Ed in the New York Times, How Not to Stay On Top, is a description of what happens when companies ride the wave of their strengths for too long and forget to pay attention to what's next.  I think this is a bit of a cautionary tale for us in our careers, too. Sometimes we become very good at what we do, where we do it and how we do it. We are fooled into believing that this ride will last forever (or at least for our working lives), so we focus only on riding that wave. We don't pay attention to the next wave coming over the horizon.  Increasingly, though, this focus on our current circumstances can get in the way of us asking "What's next?" Just like BlackBerry and Wang found themselves outmoded within the space of a few years, this too can happen to our careers. It's a good thing to periodically lift your head up from what's working right now and ask yourself if it's going to keep working in the future. Don't just focus on what you do well. Also focus on what's next.  _____________________________________________________________________ The Career Clarity Retreat on September 21 can help you figure out "What's next?"  Click here for more information and the link to register! 

On Project Eve (a career site for women that I follow) there's an article from a few days ago by Debra Pickett on her Plan 40--a two-year plan she embarked on at age 38 to "get her sh*t together" by age 40.  I'm turning 50 next month, another big birthday, so this notion of taking stock and figuring out what isn't working and needs to change is on my mind lately. I'm planning a personal retreat to explore where I'm at and where I want to be as I head into my "Crone" years. It feels like this is a good time to take a breath, get clear, and then move again.  I'm also thinking a lot about transitional moments as I watch my Facebook feed fill up with friends sending their children off to college for the first time. For many people (especially women) this becomes another key moment to step back and see where changes need to occur in their lives.  What I've found is that there are times when we feel almost compelled to assess our situations and make some bigger changes.  Often this happens when we are experiencing a shift in our identities, like as we approach a big birthday or when we become an empty-nester. It can also occur as we head into a new season--September and January in particular seem to invite this kind of thinking. Or when we realize that things are so out of control in our lives that we have no other choice but to step back and take stock.   Regardless of the motivation, this periodic reevaluation and adjustment is important to our personal and professional growth. It's what allows us to get into better relationship with ourselves and with the people in our lives and helps us to maintain our resilience as our circumstances change.  Recognizing this call is the first important thing. The second is to actually heed it--to make the space in our lives to see where we need to get our sh*t together if we want to create the life we want. This, I've found takes courage more than anything. Courage to get clear and learn about what will have to fall away. Courage to make the changes that need to be made. The payoffs for this courage can be amazing, though. Well worth the price of admission.  So, is it time for you to get your sh*t togther?   _____________________________________________________________________ My Career Clarity Retreat on September 21 is a good place for you to start thinking about how you want to get your sh*t together.  Click here for more information and the link to register! 

Last week I had an opportunity to be on The Delco Show, an Internet radio show broadcast through Brandywine Radio. I discussed The Bamboo Project and the habits of career resilience, as well as some of the major trends we're seeing in the economy. The host, Tore Fiore, was particularly interested in the origins of the name, so if you've been wondering where the idea for "The Bamboo Project" came from, here's your chance to find out. I also share what got me focused on the issue of career resilience and doing the work that I do, as well as the different challenges that younger and mid-career people are facing. We even spent some time on reflective practice, career journaling, the power of blogging for professional development and dealing with a toxic work environment. We actually covered a lot of ground in 30 minutes! You can listen to the podcast here.   _____________________________________________________________________ The Bamboo Project is on Facebook! Follow our Page for links, updates and occasional cat photos. 

  Do your frenemies have something to teach you?  In some email conversations with folks lately the idea of frenemies has been coming up. You know who I mean--those people you work with whom you're friendly, but with whom you share a rivalry or who drive you nuts.  We've all had them in our careers. Sometimes they help drive us to greater accomplishments. The friendly competition keeps both of you on your toes. I tend to see this dynamic more often with men, but also with women who have been involved in sports as they grew up. I think there's something about what happens on the playing field that supports that kind of friendly rivalry. You spur each other on to greatness.  But I also see the frenemy dynamic in the people who make us crazy. In those circumstances, we often feel more of the "enemy" part of frenemy. These people annoy or frustrate us and we and are only friendly to the extent that we have to be in order for things to go smoothly at work. But really, the people who are making us crazy could help us learn a lot about ourselves and what we aren't owning in our personalities. And what we aren't owning can be both good and bad.  I had a business partner for a few years who I'd first met through my last job. He really drove me crazy. Very self-promotional (to my mind), very "pushy." Later, after we'd both quit to work on our own, he contacted me to help with a project he was pursuing. I resisted, remembering all my negative feelings about him, but he was persistent and I agreed to meet with him. We ended up partnering on several projects and I started to see where his "pushiness" was something I needed to own in myself if I was going to be a successful business person. Watching him, I learned a lot of things about what I did/didn't want to do.  What changed the dynamic was me being willing to take a friendlier approach to him--to embrace the "friend" part of being frenemies so I could learn from what was making me crazy. As it turned out, he learned some things too, especially about developing empathy and knowing when the "soft sell" would be more effective than the hard sell. It was embracing that frenemy relationship that helped us both grow.  Today, look around and ask yourself about your frenemies, especially those who drive you crazy. What would happen if you approached them as a friend? How could you learn from them? What could they learn from you? How can your frenemies help you build your resilience? And if you have a story about frenemies at work, feel free to share in comments. I'd love to hear about it! ________________________________________________________________   Learning from your frenemies can be a great career resilience experiment. If you want to learn more about experiments and developing resilience, join me for the Career Resilience Virtual Retreat on October 19. More info here. 

  Over the weekend, I had an email conversation with a friend about this post on fear of change at the fork in the road. My friend is supporting a change process where the focus has largely been on the nuts and bolts of the change--training, materials to support new products and services, etc. What's been missing from the process is the real acceptance of the EMOTIONS that come with change--specifically feelings of fear and loss. There hasn't been a venue for acknowledging and dealing with those feelings and they are forming an invisible barrier of resistance to all of the change efforts.  I told my friend that I've begun to believe that we need more ceremony and ritual in our work life if we're going to cope with so much of what comes our way. In our rush to be "productive," make profits or "do good" in the world, we lose sight of the fact that we're talking about people here. And when you're talking about people, then you are inevitably talking about emotions. It's one of the hallmarks of our humanity, yet when it comes to work, we're supposed to check our feelings at the door.  As a species, we've developed rituals and ceremonies to mark major transitions in our lives--the passage from one state to the next. We have rituals for expressing gratitude, for building community and for connecting to spirit. We have ceremonies to celebrate and ceremonies to mourn. Across cultures and throughout history, these ceremonies have been deep, rich and meaningful, meant to provide catharsis and opportunities for closeness to one another as human beings.  But when it comes to our work lives, our rituals and ceremonies are weak shadows of what they could be. Teambuilding exercises and "onboarding" are not what I have in mind here. I'm talking about ceremonies that grab us in our guts and invite us to really feel that we are alive.  It seems to me that part of what keeps us brittle at work, less able to deal with the stresses and emotional ups and downs of our experience is in part a failure of ceremony.  My friend told me that he'd once heard Leo Buscaglia talking about a time when his father had been laid off. Buscaglia's mother cooked up a big Italian dinner and invited the family to celebrate and support the father--a sort of wake for the lost job.  I don't expect any company to be offering this sort of support soon, but isn't this something that we as co-workers could do for someone on our own?  I recognize that many of us can turn to people in our personal lives for this kind of support, but there's still something in me that believes we'd all be better off if the places where we spend at least a 1/3 of our time were also more thoughtful about the power of real ceremony and ritual. It's why I'm a big believer in things like circle practice and art of hosting techniques, which build on our human ways of celebrating, connecting and talking about what's most important. These are the kind of person-centered practices that acknowledge our humanity first, before getting down to business.    Where do you see and feel a need for more ceremony and ritual at work? How can we bring more of our humanity into the work that we do? 

  This morning my LinkedIn feed served up this "gem" on Why Productive People Work on Sundays. I clicked through to see what sage advice was being offered (a long list of things I could be doing with my Sunday to get a "jumpstart" on my week) and then scrolled down to the comments. I was pleasantly surprised to see that most people disagreed with the author, arguing that Sundays at least should be reserved for family, friends, hobbies, outdoor activities and the rest and rejuvenation we all need if we're truly going to be productive.  This feels like progress to me. I've talked to so many people who seem to think that the 24/7 work mode is somehow a measure of their personal morality. Relaxing and taking time for yourself are seen as signs of weakness (at best) or some essential character flaw--Sloth, one of the 7 deadly sins, perhaps.  I think that in part it's been a sign of the recessionary times, where people have been afraid that their jobs will be on the line if they don't give 200% of themselves. And certainly the fact that companies are "doing more with less," (despite record profits) has been driving people to feel like they must work every day.  I'm happy to see, though, that some of us are beginning to fight back against this insanity. We're standing up for our Sundays--and our Saturdays too. Let's keep it up. Working on Sundays is one thing we should NOT be doing! Sundays are for brunch and snuggling in bed for a few more hours, not for managing your inbox or catching up on your networking.    _____________________________________________________________________ Joing me on September 21 for the first Career Clarity Virtual Retreat.  Click here for more information and the link to register! 

  Usually when I wake up, I make a pot of coffee and then make my bleary-eyed way to my computer to begin my work day. I get my best work done in the morning, so I try to capture as many of those minutes as I can.  For the past week, though, my husband and I have been trying something different. After the coffee is made, rather than beginning the work day, we take a few minutes to crawl back into bed and spend some time talking to each other. Nothing major--mostly things like how we slept, what lies ahead for us in the day. But those few minutes of intentional connection before the day starts have become really important to us. They ground us in the reality of our life together, which then gives us energy and motivation for our work and everything else the day holds.  We've been calling this the "soft startup" and it's something I'm beginning to think would benefit most people if they added it to their day. There's something about connecting with the people you love most first thing in the morning that can give you a quiet grounding in what's truly important. It's a reminder that you love and are loved before you head out into a world that's not always kind.  For me, the soft startup has calmed the sense of anxiety and tension that can build during the day. I've noticed that I'm less reactive to annoying situations and frustrating people and that I'm better able to return to my personal center if things do start to rachet up. No doubt it has also improved my relationship with my husband--we find that we are more connected to one another and able to respond to the usual daily stuff with more patience and kindness.  I know that this kind of thing may seem "out of place" on a career blog, but the reality is, we are people first and workers second. Everything we do that benefits us personally, that builds up our resilience muscles and our self-awareness, also impacts our careers. More and more I see this connection and this need to recognize our humanity first.  So your homework for next week is to experiment with the soft startup. Find a way to spend 10-15 minutes each morning intentionally connecting with those who you love. It could be snuggling in bed with your significant other, calling your mother, petting your cat or sitting quietly on the sofa with your child. Anything you can do to ground yourself in the love you have in your life will benefit you for the rest of the day. I promise.   _____________________________________________________________________ During the Career Clarity Retreat on September 21, we'll be talking about other ways you can build support and nurturing into your life. Getting clear about work also means getting clear about all that you need in your life!  Click here for more information and the link to register! 

  I'm currently re-reading a book I bought a few years ago, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Boundaries of Nature and Psyche by Bill Plotkin. It's a beautiful piece of work that I highly recommend for those who want to go very deeply into their life's purpose and personal development.  One of the concepts Plotkin discusses is the idea of our "survival dance" vs. our "sacred dance." This comes from Harley Swift Deer, a Native American teacher.  The Survival Dance Our "survival dance" is what we do for a living, our way of supporting ourselves economically and physically. We must first develop our survival dance as part of our drive to self-reliance. The survival dance can be a paid job. But it could also be creating a home and caring for children or living in a monastary where our spiritual and physical labors contribute to community.  The survival dance is the first dance you must do upon leaving home and you must establish one before you can turn to your sacred dance. It is the survival dance that teaches you the social, psychological and spiritual skills that prepare you to seek out your sacred dance.  The Sacred Dance Our sacred dance is something else altogether. Say's Plotkin: Once you have your surivival dance established, you can wander inwardly and outwardly, searching for clues to your sacred dance, the work you were born to do. This work may have no relation to your job. Your sacred dance sparks your greatest fulfillment and extends your truest service to others. You know you've found it when there's little else you'd rather be doing. Getting paid for it is superfluous. You would gladly pay others, if necessary, for the opportunity.  Another way to think of your sacred dance is as dharma--the intersection of your unique gifts with what the world needs from you in this moment.  In my experience, when we look around and see people who are perfectly content in their own skin, people who seem to have an endless well of passion for their work, even when it's hard or frustrating--these are the people who have found their sacred dance. We are not jealous of their success, as much as we long for what they've found.  Back to Soulcraft: Swift Deer says that once you discover your sacred dance and learn effective ways of embodying it, the world will support you in doing just that. What your soul wants is what the world also wants (and needs). Your human community will say yes to your soul work and will, in effect, pay you to do it. Gradually your sacred dance becomes what you do and your former suvival dance is no longer needed.  I've found this to be true, too. So many people I know have found their sacred dance and have found that the more they embrace it, the more they work to make that sacred dance a reality in their lives, the more the world rises up to support their path.  This isn't to say that there isn't hard work and frustration along the way. There absolutely is. But when you are dancing your sacred dance, you feel in your bones that the hard work is for some essential good in the world that you must express.  There's a difference between working hard at your sacred dance and working hard just for survival.  I believe that too many of us put too much effort into holding on to our survival dance. We become deluded into thinking that we are here merely to survive. We look for ways to make the survival dance BE our sacred dance, but that usually won't be the case. Survival is not the same as living your purpose. So. . . have you found your sacred dance? What can you do to start looking?  Take a step on the journey toward your sacred dance during our virtual retreat on September 21. You'll have a chance to explore some key questions about yourself that could begin to point you in the right direction.   Click here for more information and the link to register! 

  A few months ago, I met a young woman at a networking group with whom I immediately "vibed." She has a ton of energy, great ideas and insight and I really enjoyed talking with her. She's in the process of starting her own business and so picked my brain about how I do things at The Bamboo Project. At the same time, I shared with her that I'm also an artist and showed her some of my artist business cards. She immediately fell in love with my work and started talking with me about all these ideas she had for how I could promote the art.  Since then, we've been meeting regularly, collaborating on some projects, but also providing each other with advice, ideas and a sounding board for our work. Yesterday she came over to my house to talk through a presentation for an entrepreneurial competition she's entered and spent most of the day at my dining room table, working on her plan.  I've been reflecting on the value of this relationship and thinking about how this kind of mentoring is benefiting both of us. At 28, she looks up to me as someone who is more "established" as a business person and picks my brain for how to handle things like setting up contracts and developing client relationships. I recommend books for her to read (she told me that she feels like she's back in college with my "syllabus") and suggest resources for her to check out.  In this process, I am able to step back a little and see myself in a different light. I see my strengths and what has made me successful and that's been a powerful reminder about what I want to do more of in my work. Talking through what I do and how I do it has also helped me see where some parts of my work life are growing too small for me and how I am wanting to move in some different directions. Our conversations clarify for me what needs to shift.  What has also been powerful is her mentoring of me. She brings a different perspective and a "beginner's mind" to things that is helpful. She asks good questions and shares insights that make me think. And her enthusiasm and energy are infectious, so if I start to lose steam or second-guess myself on something, she's able to re-energize me and keep me moving.  Understand, we've fallen into this mutual mentoring relationship somewhat accidentally. There was no formal pairing of us as mentor/mentee. Instead, we followed the energy, realizing that our interactions with each other were inspiring and supportive and that we both wanted that to continue.  I also feel that what makes it more powerful is that it's mutual. I'm not just acting from a place of being this older, more experienced person dispensing my wisdom to a younger colleague. I'm benefiting from the relationship too, possibly more than she is. Mentoring, I believe, has to be a two-way street to really get you anywhere.  So today, I'm celebrating the power of the mentoring relationship, recognizing how it is enriching my work life.  What about you? How are you mentoring someone? How is someone mentoring you? What makes that mentoring relationship rich and meaningful?    Developing a circle of support--including mentors--is just one of the things you'll explore in the Career Clarity Virtual Retreat on September 21.   Click here for more information and the link to register!   

  My friend and colleague Nancy Seibel over at Keys to Change is looking at our busy lives and gathering some information on how we cope with our busy-ness. I wrote about Nancy's questions to help you diagnose what your busy-ness is telling you a few weeks ago and now she's posted a survey to learn more about how busy we are. Definitely stop by to fill it out and learn more about Nancy's work.  I'm finding that for myself, I'm trying to be more mindful of being busy. When is it what I consider to be "good busy," where I'm involved in projects and activities that feel meaningful and create forward momentum and when am I in anxious, stressed mode? If I've moved into stress and anxiety, that's usually a clue that I need to either take a break or that I need to to step back and start saying "no" to some things.  I find that working with my busy-ness is an ongoing challenge, something that always seems to creep up on me. I suppose it's the nature of our lives these days, which means it's even more important for us to get a handle on it.  How do you deal with your busy-ness? 

  In work, as in life, there's a fine line between creating and allowing.  I've seen a lot of people (myself included) put a lot of effort into pushing for things to happen. We look around to see what actions we should take, what more should we DO to move toward what we want.  But there are times in work, as in life, when we have to sit back and allow things to be as they are. Maybe we've done all that we can for right now to create change or forward momentum and now there's a need to just let things be, to let them percoalte a little. You've planted the seeds. Give them some time to grow without digging them up all the time.  I find that this is particularly true when I'm going through a maelstrom of difficult times. I will flail about frantically, trying to do ANYTHING to get me out of what feels so painful. Action--any action--seems preferable to being stuck where I am at that moment.  But often (not always) that's when it becomes apparent that this is when I most need to let go, to surrender to how things are right now and just let the lessons come through to me. Sometimes you have to leave the space for the change to happen.  The thing is, what we planned to have happen isn't always the best thing. Maybe there's something even better that we didn't realize could happen and it's only later, in retrospect, that we can look back and say "Oh, that's why I wasn't making progress the way I thought I should be."  I know. The waiting is hard. The "allowing" sucks. It feels like somehow you're just giving up. But you aren't. You're resting, you're leaving space for change to happen. You're allowing the seeds to take root and grow. That's part of the process too. 

  So many people I talk to are overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by choices, by information, by an endless stream of "shoulds" and "coulds." We can get caught up in this fire hydrant spray, finding it difficult to get our bearings.  Sometimes the way forward is by releasing and letting go, rather than grabbing on and holding harder.  The "Stop Doing List" We all have a "To Do" list and for many of us, this list never ends. It only grows until it's a sucking hole that reminds us of our inability to keep up. It's not your fault though. It's the list.  This week, starting today, try writing a "Stop Doing" list for yourself--things that you will no longer do.  Look at your "To Do" list--are there things that really don't add value to your life, that you could get away with not doing? Remove them. And release the worry. If you need help deciding what items to remove, check out this article from the Harvard Business Review.  What bad habits do you have that keep you stuck? Mine are time-wasters like going down research rabbit holes ("just one more article . . . ) and getting caught up in worrying about things I can't control. Whatever yours are, put them on your "stop doing" list.  Are you doing work that doesn't play to your gifts and talents? Let go of what you aren't passionate about doing. Just because you're skilled at it doesn't mean it's something you should be doing. If it isn't a gift and it doesn't create flow for you, stop it. Are you investing in people and situations that are all pain and no gain? Either find a way to turn things around or start finding ways to disconnect. Either way, stop engaging in the same old ways.  What thought patterns are getting in your way? Vow to stop feeding them. Find ways to change your frame so you can change the stories you're telling yourself.  We can make room for the things that count, for creating a life that feels right for us, when we stop doing all the things that leave us with no emotional or mental space. Our "stop doing" lists can help us find our way back to hope, inspiration and passion.  So what's on your "stop doing" list?  

  Found an interesting article on Fast Company this morning about how the team at productivity app Any.do analyzed what happened with people's "Someday" tasks on their To Do lists: Regardless of the task Any.do discovered that if a "Someday" task hadn’t been moved up to a Today, Tomorrow, or Upcoming list within six weeks, the probability of it ever happening dropped off drastically. What’s so special about six weeks? Says Perchik: "We think six weeks is the window where people are the most enthusiastic about doing something. The sense of novelty and excitement are great catalysts for getting things done. Planning a trip or fixing something around the house might be projects you feel up to today, but after six weeks they may have lost their original luster." That realization can provide you with valuable insight. "Once the initial inspiration has had a chance to wear off, you’re left with your true intentions and that can be a very powerful piece of information," says Perchik. In other words, if you put "take skiing lessons" on your Someday list, and six weeks later you still haven’t researched the lessons (much less signed up for them), that’s a good sign that skiing isn’t a big priority in your life right now. All of us have that "someday" list of projects or tasks we know we want to do. But what can be disturbing is to find that there are many items that can languish there for a good long time. Putting off a trip to Bali is one thing, but having "find a better job" on indefinite Someday status will be problematic.  I think it's worth keeping track of your Someday goals and looking at how long they stay on the list. If you don't do anything about them for 6 weeks or more, then maybe it's time to take a closer look at why that is. Are they really not priorities for you or is there something deeper going on?  For me, I've found, that many items that stay in the Someday category remain there because of my own fear of doing them. I'm challenged and inspired by them, but at the same time, moving into actual action can scare the hell out of me. My recent decision to "do something" with my art is an example of the kind of risky business that I'm talking about here.  I've talked to other people who have "Someday" goals to start a business, learn something new or go on a retreat. They may say that it doesn't fit with their priorities right now, but if you dig deeper, these tasks are in Someday mode because of the fear.  I get it. I really do. It's hard to take the risks. But we need to at least be honest with ourselves about why we keep putting things in the "Someday" category so that we can start to deal with what is blocking us from doing more with something we really want.  Today, take a look at those goals you find yourself talking about doing "someday." Do they stay on that list because they really don't fit into your life right now--or because your own fears are holding you back from moving them into action?  

  One thing we don't talk about much when people lose their jobs is the pain of that loss. We are quick to point people toward action--Network! Brand yourself!--but we shy away from helping people grieve what amounts to a death in their immediate family.  I thought about this today after a call with someone who was suddenly let go from her job. Although she'd been thinking for awhile about getting away from her employer, it was still a shock to be told that her services were no longer needed. It's a blow to the ego and to our professional identities to learn that our employers feel like they could somehow do better without us, even if we were thinking of breaking up with them ourselves. Plus, being laid off removes leaving a job from our control--never a good place to be.  Finding ways to let go of our previous job is critical, though. Failure to grieve has powerful mental and emotional consequences that impact both our personal well-being as well as our ability to seek out new opportunities. One thing I hear from employers all the time is that job seekers are "depressed" and "angry" when they come in for interviews. Guess what?  Depressed, angry people don't get hired. Nor do they start up their own businesses or pursue the kinds of relationships and experiences that will help them recover and thrive.  So how do we grieve when we lose our jobs? What can help us with that loss?  How to Grieve Your Job Loss There are several things I think we can do to engage in some healthy grieving. . .  1. Recognize what you're experiencing.  It starts with the recognition that you ARE going through a grieving process. This is a "death" of sorts and that means you have to give yourself some time and space to go through the experience of letting go and saying goodbye. Trying to pretend like it's "business as usual" or putting a totally bright face on things is to deny the emotional reality of what is happening.  2. Experience your feelings, without judgement.  As with any death, you are going to experience a range of emotional responses. Sometimes you will be depressed. Sometimes you will be afraid. Sometimes you will be angry. You may also feel relief (especially if you hated the job) and a sense of hope, possibility and opportunity. You may find yourself crying, snapping at people or laughing for no reason at odd moments, all of which may make you feel a little out of control.  All of these feelings are normal and natural. They will come and go, depending on the day and what else is going on in your life. Let yourself just have these feelings. Recognize that they are a part of the grieving process. Don't rush yourself to stop having them and don't judge yourself for feeling a little crazy right now. It goes with the territory.   3. Do the Pennebaker Expressive Writing Exercise Dr. James Pennebaker has found that writing for 3-4 days about a traumatic topic can be a powerful way to work through the emotions we're experiencing. For our purposes, you would commit to writing for 15-20 minutes, 3-4 days in a row about your job loss. This is just for you (unless you choose to share with someone) and can be a powerful way to release some of your emotions.  There are more complete instructions on the method here.  I highly recommend it, especially if you're the sort of person who tends to resist these kinds of things. In my experience, you need it the most.  4. Have a funeral for your job.  One of the main reasons we have funerals is to help the living deal with death, helping them find closure and meaning. You can give yourself some of those same benefits by creating your own funeral for your job.  How you structure this ritual is up to you, but some things to consider: If you did the Pennebaker exercise I described above, burn the pages you wrote as a symbolic release of those emotions and a willingness to move on.  Try writing an obituary for the job, recognizing both the great parts of the experience, as well as some of those things that were less than wonderful. This can help you get perspective and also help you identify what you are sad to leave behind and where you may feel some relief.  If you weren't the only one caught in a layoff, have a gathering with the other people who were let go. Part of what makes funerals comforting is the opportunity to gather with people we care about and to feel that solidarity and support in our grieving. Don't isolate yourself. Reach out to the other people who are hurting too so you can support and care for each other.  5. Find ways to be kind to yourself and to support your own thriving. When we have a death in the family, we recognize that this is a time for compassion for ourselves and for taking care of our hearts. In some ways, supporting your own thriving becomes even more important when you are mourning the death of a job in part because as a society, we simply don't provide the structure and opportunities to make this happen. People will bring casseroles to your house if a loved one passes on, but if you lose your job, we don't tend to get this same kind of support.  Here's a list of 79 ways to nurture yourself and here's a list of 50 lists you can make that will lift your spirits. Find ways to be kind and to love yourself. Also, find ways to laugh every day. Laughter is hugely healing.   6. Go public. Many people I know hide the fact that they have been laid off. They feel ashamed of their job loss and go into isolation mode. This is one of the worst things you can do for yourself, both emotionally and practically. It only increases your sense of shame and sadness and it deprives people of the opportunity to help you.  Don't be afraid to tell people what you're going through. You wouldn't hide your grieving for someone who died, so don't feel like you have to hide the fact that you're grieving for your job.  7. Get support. A huge part of grieving is knowing that you aren't alone. We tend to do better in releasing and saying goodbye if we feel connected to supportive, loving community. We thrive on connection, not on isolation, and the caring of people around us can help us get perspective and feel better about what we are experiencing.  I think it helps to connect with people who are having the same experiences we are. This is why support groups for people who have lost loved ones can be so powerful.  It's also good to connect with people who just make you feel good--people who remind you that you are more than your job and who can inspire you to find your inner strength and resilience.  8. Re-Frame the experience. Many people I know have lost jobs they hated. If this is you, then find ways to focus on the opportunities that lie ahead now that you've been relieved of the burden of this job. It's easy for your ego to hold on to the anger you may feel ("How DARE they lay ME off!") or the blow to your self-esteem ("Why me?!"). But the reality is, if you hated the job, then the universe has just given you the kick in the pants you needed to find something new and better. Seize that opportunity and don't let your ego hold on to what you didn't want anyway. It's like when we wanted to get out of a relationship, but then the other person breaks up with or divorces us first. We wanted to leave ourselves, so why get hung up on them doing the leaving before we could? Just be grateful that now you can move on in good conscience.  9. Respect the process.  Many of us are quick to want to move through grieving. We'll give ourselves a day or two, but then we want to get moving again. Let's FIX things. That's fine and I certainly support taking action sooner rather than later, but we also need to respect the fact that grief isn't always going to be on our timetable. And emotions have a pesky way of rearing their ugly heads at the most inconvenient times, especially when we don't give them their due.  10. Move on.  On the other side of the coin, some of us can have a tendency to dwell. It's months later and we are still sad or angry. This is often the case if we weren't able to find a new opportunity or our next job isn't as good as the one we had previously.  I get this. I do. But at some point we really do need to let go and move on. If you've been in a funk or have been angry and irritable for months, this is when it may be a good time to seek professional help. Grieving may have sunk into depression and you may need some guidance to find your way back out.  Final Thoughts The tips I've shared above have largely focused on what individuals can do for themselves to mourn a job loss.  But as a society, I think we also have a responsibility to help each other. How are we supporting the people in our lives who are laid off in moving through the grieving process?  We are quick to tell people what they should do to move on, but we are less able to work with them on feeling and processing their sadness, anger and fear at their sudden unemployment.  How can we more effectively be with people who are hurting in this way, helping them to acknowledge and deal with their grief? How can we help create rituals and communities that honor this process and that recognize not only the practical need for people to move forward and find new work, but also the real emotional and spiritual need they have to grieve their loss and make sense of what's happened to them?  There's much that we as individuals can do for ourselves, but we also need the help and support of our communities. How do we all help each other in this process?  UPDATE--I've published a follow-up post on interrupted grieving with a link to a great No-Nonsense Guide to Grieving that you can find here. 

A few days ago I posted on the need for us to allow ourselves time and space to grieve when we lose our jobs. Reader Tony Cannata left a fantastic comment on that post about how grieving for a lost job can be interrupted. He said: I was fired last October, but because a former employer snatched me back up 2 weeks later I didn't have a chance to grieve. I was in a safe & familiar place. It ended up distracting me from a grieving process that I should have started. Here I am now, a year later in another new job (which happens to be with a FANTASTIC tech educator) feeling unsure and stuck.I know I will be a rockstar at this new post, however I had better mourn for my past. Otherwise appear to be just another dud salesman who happens to interview well.  I think this can happen to a lot of people. We feel fortunate for having found something quickly and move into our new roles without properly mourning what has happened to us. But what we don't recognize is that we may have some residual anger or sadness to deal with about the loss of our previous jobs or about how things were handled in that loss. Our failure to acknowledge and grieve can come back later to haunt us, as Tony mentions in his comment above.  What I've found is that our emotions won't be denied. They come back to us in ways that can be disruptive to the new life we are trying to build. As Avigail Abarbinal points out in this fantastic no-nonsense approach to grief: The implications of un-grieved or blocked grief can be serious. I see a lot of that in my practice. People who do not grieve properly after one or several life changes, are blocking a vital process of adjustment and therefore do not acclimatise properly to their new reality. In other words, their mental ‘landscape’ does not keep up with their real life circumstances and their mind is out of step with the actual reality they live in. Such individuals can end up suffering from ongoing crippling anxiety, and they can subsequently develop real depression. The quality of their life can be greatly diminished and quite often they will suffer from physical symptoms, disturbances in their close relationships and in other areas of their life. Grieving, as Avigail points out, is an important "bridge that our brain builds to help us move from the world as we knew it before the change to the world as it is now." These are physical changes--new neural connections and pathways that our brains must build to move us from Reality A to Reality B as in the image above. We must honor this work that needs to take place in ourselves if we hope to reach a healthier place on the other side.  To complicate the grieving process, I've found that most people carry within them a sense that losing their jobs was somehow their fault. Even if they were laid off for economic reasons, they question "Why ME?" There's shame, loss of self-esteem and loss of identity as a professional that goes with that. Intellectually we may understand that losing our jobs is not a reflection of our competence or worth, but emotionally, most people I know still carry within them the sense that losing their job means that they are on some level "not good enough."  So the grieving isn't just about loss. It's also about a blow to the ego and to our identity that can leave us feeling uncertain in our next role. We may find ourselves questioning our abilities and second-guessing the quality of our work.  It's important that we take some time to acknowledge these issues within ourselves, to heal the wound that comes with job loss. For most of us, what we do for a living is a major part of our identity and losing our jobs is a blow to that sense of self. Again, intellectually we may recognize that being laid off has nothing to do with our qualifications or competence, but emotionally there is usually work to do.  As I advised Tony, at a minimum, I would suggest going through the Pennebaker writing exercise I mentioned in my earlier post, as well as some of the other activities. Also, be sure to read Avigail's guide to grieving as it provides a much more comprehensive picture of symptoms to look out for and ideas for grieving in a healthy way. I suspect that much of the dysfunction we feel at work and in our lives is a result of unresolved grief over not only the loss of our individual jobs, but also the loss of an economic world as we once knew it. What would happen if we recognized the need for us to grieve and began to move through that in healthier ways? 

  This morning I ran across this post from Jen Louden who is on a 19-day roadtrip to stay, as she puts it, "life-limber." She says: I’ve noticed that aging + the cosseted hush of business travel + marrying a very competent traveler named Bob has edged me into a zone of fear around heading out on my own. Unless every element is planned and unless I have a purpose, my mind comes up with a thousand reasons to stay put. Now this might make me sound silly and if so, fine. It’s certainly a first world problem. And yet here is what I observe: the older I get, the more I need to be on the lookout for all the ways wanting to be comfortable imprisons me.  Being an introvert who gets overwhelmed easily, needing gluten-free healthy food to feel good, getting easily tired are all true but they can also be excuses to hide behind. Of course, it’s not just around travel. It’s around reading challenging books or having a difficult conversation or making a new friend - it all gets to be "too much effort" and into the comfort zone I go.    I think this is what happens to many of us in our careers. We reach a place where we are "comfortable"--in our habits, our skills, our relationships, and the work we do on a daily basis--and rocking that boat becomes too much effort.  Comfort can be good. We don't want to live our lives in a constant state of anxiety or chronic hardship. But comfort can also be the enemy.  Comfort breeds complacency. It makes us believe that change will not come to us. It encourages habits of preservation and constriction that can, in turn, lead to lives that are small and in many ways, less alive. Comfort also makes us less resilient, less adaptable to change. We lose our capacity to care for ourselves in different circumstances and find that our skills and relationships are more brittle than we'd realized. Stress and challenge can be good things for the human animal. They test our mettle and keep us sharp.  Reading Jen's post made me think about my own comfort-seeking habits and how they end up confining me on narrow paths. Too often I choose the known and the easy because everything else feels like too much effort. And then I'm surprised when I'm bored or irritated by the restrictive nature of this life I've built.  Comfortable work also means I'm not stretching myself, not growing and learning and making the kinds of connections that bring energy and vitality to what I do. As much as I seek comfort, it can also be a force that deadens my sense of purpose and delight in the world.  How have you become too comfortable in your life and work? How might your comfort-seeking be holding you back and keeping you from achieving your dreams? What comfortable habits do you need to release in order to keep growing? What adventures do you need to seek to shake things up for yourself? 

A career coaching client shared this fantastic video with me on moving out of your comfort zone. It very nicely highlights the key issues we face as we deal with taking risks. On October 30, I'll be doing a presentation for the Women on the Edge (of Greatness) virtual conference on how to use career experiments to move out of your comfort zone and into your dreams. We'll be exploring some of the themes discussed in this video, particularly how to be in the learning zone to move into the magic zone.  I'm also personally experimenting with this idea, as I prepare to hang my first tiny art show in November. Believe me, I get how scary it can be to move into an uncertain future where you can so easily convince yourself that disaster awaits you. But I'm also learning that the more you take the leap, the better things will be. As Whitney Johnson points out in this Harvard Business Review blog post, you must always, always show up: We all dream about winning, but it’s the showing up that counts. Even though we can’t necessarily control the outcome.  Sarah Ban Breathnach said, "When you use expectations to measure a dream’s success, you tie stones around your soul.  Dreams may call for a leap of faith, but they set the soul soaring." There are no regrets when we invest ourselves fully and show up to ourselves. Happily, we get lots of chances. . .  Dreaming is at the heart of disruption.  Whether we want to disrupt an industry or our personal status quo, in order to make that terrifying leap from one learning curve to the next, we must dream.  The good news is that the causal mechanism for achieving our dreams is always, always, always showing up:  and as we show up, our future will too. So how are you taking risks and showing up for your life? 

  Long-time readers of this blog know that I've been focusing on how we can develop our career resilience skills in order to deal with a very uncertain world. In trying to practice what I preach, these are skills and habits I've been working to develop for myself, in addition to facilitating them with clients.  Lately, I'm grappling with the Clarity part of career resilience, looking at the intersection between my gifts and passions and what the world needs from me. As part of this,  I've been doing a lot of reading and reflection and having conversations with my Mastermind group and others in my life about the various possibilities to explore. I'm also planning some experiments, some ways of trying out different possibilities that I think will help me reach greater understanding of where I need to go next.  Why am I doing this now? A few reasons.  First, I find that certain seasons tend to encourage me in this direction--fall and winter tend to be "soul-searching" times for me in general where I'm more likely to be journaling and thinking about my goals and next steps. Spring and summer tend to be times for execution. I also know that turning 50 in September was a milestone birthday and that I'm thinking much more about legacy and how I want to spend my time in this next phase of my working life. It's become even more important to me to feel like I'm making a difference, having impact. I have much less patience for work that seems to go nowhere once I'm gone. Not sure if this means changing what I do, who I do it with or what, but I know that there are places in my work life that will need to be transformed.  I'm also acutely aware of how certain income streams are drying up for me. On a very practical level, some of my organizational clients don't have the money to contract with me for services that they once did. But there's also a "drying up" that's happening in terms of the work I've been doing. It's less juicy and engaging than it once was, which for me is a recipe for becoming stale and stagnant. Not where I do my best work.  As a self-employed solopreneur, I find that this issue of clarity is something that is thrust upon me, whether I want to explore it or not. When I'm clear, work comes to me. When I'm not, it doesn't. So built into my work life is the need to always be getting clear about what I'm selling, who is buying and how all that fits together.  For people who have a job, though, I think it's much easier to avoid the need to get clear. You begin to believe that if you just keep your head down and do what you're told at work, then this clarity thing is taken care of.  Big mistake. Clarity is for all of us. It's what helps us grow and develop and keep work engaging. It also is the way that we are able to anticipate changes coming our way so we can adapt our own career plans to meet upcoming challenges. It's tempting to keep our heads down and just keep plowing ahead, but in the end, we may be sorry.  Although I find this process of reconfiguring and realigning my work and identity to be frustrating and frightening at times, I also know that it's a necessary part of growth. I'm working to give myself the space and time to make these shifts and to explore new possibilities, trusting that in this process I will ultimately emerge into a clearing where the way ahead is revealed to me.  Conversations help. Planning experiments helps. Giving myself permission to be uncertain and to be in the soup REALLY helps.  It's a process and a journey and you have to trust that eventually the messiness will give way to order. It always does. 

Each day in December, I'm asking a juicy question to help you plan for a healthy, resilient 2014. The questions are in no particular order--just meant to provoke some thinking and get you moving in fresh directions. You can see previous questions here.    Many of us have lives that are filled to overflowing--with people, with tasks and responsibilities, with STUFF!  We only have so much physical, mental, emotional and spiritual capacity though. Our ability to manage things reaches a tipping point and we must ask what needs to go.  This question prompts us to consider where and how we need to empty our cups. How can we clean out our physical space and give stuff away to people who may need it more than we do?  What emotional and spiritual clutter can we clear away? Are there relationships or situations we need to let go of? What tasks can we permanently cross off of our never-ending "To Do" lists by simply saying they are no longer important to us?  This question is somewhat related to our earlier question on what good things need to fall apart to make room for even better, but it's more about the daily types of things that keep our cups too full, rather than larger situations that need to fall apart.  How do we create more space in our daily lives by clearing away the clutter?  Please share your answers in comments or over on The Bamboo Project Facebook page. I'd love to hear from you! And if you want to try out the VisualsSpeak Image Center to explore one of these Juicy Questions, check out my free holiday gift to you!  

Each day in December, I'm asking a juicy question to help you plan for a healthy, resilient 2014. The questions are in no particular order--just meant to provoke some thinking and get you moving in fresh directions. You can see previous questions here.    I'm a big believer in experiments. I think that being experimental in your approach to life keeps curiosity and growth alive and gives you a different way of engaging with change.  This question asks you to think about the ways you could experiment with your life. How can you approach change as something you are "trying out" rather than something more permanent.  Experimenting can allow you to tinker with things, giving you space to see what does and and doesn't work for you.  For more on the experimental approach, check out some of the resources I've compiled here. They might give you some big ideas about how to construct an experimental life for yourself.  As always, feel free to share your answers in comments or over on The Bamboo Project Facebook page. I'd love to hear from you! And if you want to try out the VisualsSpeak Image Center to explore one of these Juicy Questions, check out my free holiday gift to you!

Each day in December, I'm asking a juicy question to help you plan for a healthy, resilient 2014. The questions are in no particular order--just meant to provoke some thinking and get you moving in fresh directions. You can see previous questions here.    One thing that can hold us back from change in our lives is thinking that we just aren't ready for it. We have to get more education or training. We need someone else to change first. We need for the situation to be JUST RIGHT. This question asks you to think about the things you feel you aren't ready for in your life. Write them down using this structure: "I am not ready for. . ." Then sit with that for a minute, with that list of all the things you aren't ready for.  Now it's time to flip it. Get rid of "not" and for each of the things you've listed, try saying "I am ready for. . . "  The results might surprise you. . .  Feel free to share your answers in comments or over on The Bamboo Project Facebook page. I'd love to hear from you! And if you want to try out the VisualsSpeak Image Center to explore one of these Juicy Questions, check out my free holiday gift to you!

Each day in December, I'm asking a juicy question to help you plan for a healthy, resilient 2014. The questions are in no particular order--just meant to provoke some thinking and get you moving in fresh directions. You can see previous questions here.    This question asks you to go out on a limb and to accept that big rewards in your life only come when you're willing to risk failure.  We are often kept small because we want to stay in the comfort zone of perfectionism. We see failure as something to avoid, rather than as something embrace as part of the journey.  As you think about your life in 2014, how can you invite in more opportunities to fail? And how can you change your relationship with "failure," so that it becomes a necessary by-product of risk-taking, rather than something to avoid at all costs?  Of course, to fail more, you must also be willing to learn from your failures. This is part of the experimental approach to life where we try things out and learn from what happens as a result. Failure that we don't learn from isn't helpful.  So, where in your life do you need to fail more? How can you make friends with failure and enjoy its rewards?  As always, feel free to share your answers in comments or over on The Bamboo Project Facebook page. I'd love to hear from you! And if you want to try out the VisualsSpeak Image Center to explore one of these Juicy Questions, check out my free holiday gift to you!

Throughout December, I asked a juicy question each day to help you plan for a healthy, resilient 2014. You can see all the questions for the month here. We've reached the last day, so it seems appropriate to ask this one: After 30 days of questions meant to help you reflect on so many things, at this point you're ready to be thinking about next steps. What do you want to DO in 2014? One thing that is important about this questions is the issue of readiness--what are you ready to do?  In coaching, I will ask people "What next steps could you take?"  This is a brainstorming question. What are the possibilities before you?  I follow it up with "What next steps will you take?" This is the readiness question. Of all the choices, what will you actually commit to doing?  What is also important is to think of "next steps." Steps are one foot in front of the other. They are not leaping or plunging ahead. They are small and manageable.  So . . . what next steps are you ready to take into 2014?  Happy New Year! And thank you for playing along this month!