Relationship and Career: Find What you Love

Photo: Erin MC Hammer

Every now and then I think I am being too idealistic, too pie in the sky, too pollyanna to think people can really work in a job they love.  I mean there are practical things to consider, money, family, responsibilities.  Not everyone can afford to do the work they love and live a life that is full and rich. Fortunately these thoughts don't last long (hello fear monger!) --because I do believe that we all have natural gifts, and talents that need to be given to the world.  We all have the gift of a life that is meant to be savored and enjoyed.  Life is suppose to be full and exciting and we can experience that excitement in our careers and work.

When I am having these pollyanna doubts I inevitably will hear something or talk to someone who reminds me I am not crazy or too optimistic...With the announcement of Steve Jobs stepping down from Apple his graduation speech from 2005 has been circulating on Facebook and various other places, and I was able to watch it again.  If you haven't seen it, it is short and powerful and you can watch it below.  But my favorite part that gives me good bumps is this one paragraph:

....."Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.  Don't lose faith.  I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going what that I loved what I did.  You've got to find what you love.  And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.  Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.  If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.  As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.  And, like any great relationship, if just gets bette and better as the years roll on.  So keep looking until you find it.  Don't settle."--Steve Jobs

Can I get a 'hell ya!".  Every time I read it or hear it I get chills.  We spend so much time reading, hearing, obsessing about finding our 'soul mate' our 'true love' and yes that is SO important but so it finding the work that makes your heart sing!  Yes we need to make money, yes we need to be responsible AND we need to do work that is inspiring to ourselves and to others.  To be the best us possible we need people around us that we love as well as work that we love.

Check out the full speech below:

Advice from my Dad: Why Pay Twice?

My dad is full of different pieces of advice, short sentences packed with wisdom.  One of these wisdom phrases that we say a lot in my house is "why pay twice?"  So say you go to the movies, and you pay $25 for tickets and snacks and and half way through the movie you are miserable, the movie is terrible, loud, poor plot, no characters just bad.  Most people say "I paid, for this I am going to sit here and get my money's worth", but my dad would say "why pay twice, why pay the $25 and then pay the fee of your time and energy to watch a bad movie, get up and leave".

The spirit of this advice can apply to many aspects of our lives.  So often we think we have to stick with something merely because we have 'paid' whether financially or with our time and energy.  Let's say you are in a job you hate and you go every day thinking how much you hate it and you justify that by saying "well I have already put in 5, 10, 15 years I can't leave quit now!!" Again, why pay twice, yes you have paid your dues and it hasn't worked out yet so why keep paying?

An example I see a lot in my practice is people who have paid to go to school and for whatever reason they picked a degree that didn't fit them.  So here they are 2-4 years later and they can't find a job they want or they have found a job and they are miserable.  Many of them know what they want to do next and unfortunately it requires some more schooling.  And they will say to me "I can't do that I already paid for one degree so I have to use the degree I paid for".  True, they did pay for one degree but like the bad movie analogy above...it wasn't the right degree it isn't going to be satisfying or get them what they want in the end so why pay twice?  Why pay for the first degree and then pay for your misery the rest of your life because you made a human mistake and selected the wrong degree?

Frequently in life we make mistakes, we chose incorrectly, we chose something that we thought should fit or something someone told us would fit and we end up unhappy, miserable and 'paying' for the mistake.  The point is mistakes happen, we chose wrong, why keeping suffering because we picked wrong?!?!  Why pay twice?  Figure out a way to make a change, do it differently.  Just because you chose wrong to begin with doesn't mean you have to keep suffering as a punishment.  Life is meant to be enjoyed, let's get creative and figure out way to make a different plan.  As my dad would say, there is no need to pay twice.

Where in your life are you paying twice?

Basic Resume Tips

The dreaded resume.  One of the necessary evils to the job search.  It is your whole professional life on one (or sometimes two) pieces of paper.   Below are some of my basic resume writing tips.

Layout matters: You would be surprised how often I see a resume to review that has been thrown together on Word, or that has used some type of template to create.  If you don't' know how to layout your resume, find someone who can a friend, a co-worker or pay someone who specializes in resume writing.

10 second skim:  10 seconds might be generous, but bottom line you don't have very long to showcase your talents.  You need to be able to skim your resume (and I mean SKIM) to see what appears most prominent.  Make sure what you want to stand out does.  This skim concept is also why layout is so important.

It fits the description:  Many of my clients are changing careers, shifting jobs completely. So it is extremely important that your resume changes to fit the new career you are wanting.  Even if you have 10 years of teaching and you are trying to get into corporate training...change up your resume so it showcases your transferable skills.  Get creative in your layout, design.  But don't get too creative, make sure all the skills are real and authentic. Flowery, vague terms are easily caught.  I will recommend to clients that they take the job description they are interested in and compare it with their resume. If they were a recruiter could they match up the job description with the resume and see a fit?

Be specific:  Whatever you can quantify. do it.  Show a number or percent.  Give real details not fluff.  Instead of saying "computer skills" list the specific computer programs you are proficient in.  List the number of people you have trained, size of the budget, percentage of sales etc.

Write a Cover Letter:  Especially for people who are trying to switch careers it is important to write a quality, concise cover letter to showcase who you are and what you can do for the company.  You cover letter should highlight your resume and give more detail about your experience...not just reiterate your resume.

The challenge with resumes is everyone has an opinion on writing one.  You can line up 10 experts and they will give you 10 different opinions.  So my advice?  Stick with the basics:  Use a clean, attractive layout, avoid misspellings and showcase your talents.

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Want some help with your resume?  Click here to schedule your free 20 minute Get to Know you Session where we can talk on the phone get to know each other better!!    Not in Columbus--no worries I also work via phone and Skype!!

Fighting Dream Distortion

Dreams.  They are amazing, wonderful gifts.  We encourage our children to have dreams, to use their imagination and make up fairy tales and dream worlds.  But once we hit a certain age, dreams stop and practicality takes over.  We can't dream because that is silly, we have to many other practical, adult tasks to complete.  We need to be responsible and diligent in order to be good, honorable, citizens...(whew sounds a little stuffy and boring to me.) I would argue that dreams are what give color and hope to our lives.  Yes, we need to be practical and task oriented or we won't be able to survive in this world, but we also need to let our hair down, use a little imagination and look at our lives with a little inspiration.  

Inevitably there is a time when I am working with a client, sometime in the first session..sometimes in the tenth when they open up and say what it is they have really been thinking about doing...maybe it is being a teacher or a mom or a musician, it doesn't matter what it is because it is their dream.  It is their passion, hope, joy, wish all wrapped up into one big package.  In this moment when they build the confidence to say the dream they are waiting for my judgment, for me to running screaming from my chair "are you kidding me?!!" "there is no way that is going to happen?!?!" "You can't possibly do that?!?!".  Of course I don't think or say any of those things..this is a sacred moment a moment when the dreams, when who they are as a person is seeing the light of day, this is a gift.  But what I love about his moment, is my clients are always shocked, surprised and I would even say flabbergasted that I greet their idea with such love and support.  

Now I would love to say they are shocked because I am so loving and supportive, but in reality I believe it is because they are so hard on themselves that the idea in their head has been so beaten down, distorted and made to seem down right crazy that when they say it out loud rather then hearing "I want to be a teacher", they are hearing "I want to fly to the moon, using only my arms".  No wonder they are terrified!!  That is why here on my blog and in my office I frequently encourage people to speak their dreams out loud to loving supportive people, because our internal conversations have a way of distorting our dreams.  The less distortion we have the better.

Today give yourself a minute, or two or even 30 and let your mind wander...what do you dream about?  What do you want for your life?  And then ask yourself how outlandish is it, really?  Then think of 1-3 people you know who are safe, loving and supportive and just share your thoughts OR post them below, or  email them to me.  Regardless, air out your dreams, let them free.  

Complete Acceptance

"The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely"
--Carl Jung.

I am a quote girl, I love inspirational quotes and frequently draw strength or insight from them. My mom and I will spend hours at gift shop stores pointing out inspiring quotes that we enjoy.  But this quote from Carl Jung I had never heard before, yep never heard..and it is such a good one.  Last night my nearest and dearest and I were watching TV and this quote popped up on the murder victims' refrigerator and I immediately grabbed for a piece of paper to write it down.

This quote is the crux of much of my work both professionally and personally, the point where I am helping my clients to move towards, and the consistent struggle as humans....to accept ourselves completely.  To look at who we are the dreams, desires, hopes, wishes and not discard them because they aren't what everyone else wants.  To embrace the doubts, fears, insecurities and 'monkey mind' that haunt all of us.   To celebrate the uniqueness that is you and all that comes with it--terrifying?!?  You bet.

The true challenge is that accepting ourselves completely is hard enough, but then you add in another level..that order to accept ourselves we have to to look at ourselves and have that foundation shaking thought...is this it?!?  I know there are moments when I question, is this as good as it gets?  Is this why I am here?  These moments, earthshakingly terrifying.  Common questions are am I doing my best?  Am I striving hard enough?  What can I be doing more of?

But Jung is asking us:  Can I love myself completely, now, in this moment, without striving, working harder, becoming something, just as is...my joyous, laughter loving, sometimes lazy, uninspired, obsessive, analyzing clean freak, gardener, reader, writer, me.  That is the crux of life.  Those moments that we have when we say, yep I am pretty freaking cool, are priceless. Those moments of complete peace, a certain groundedness creeps in and we can take a big belly breathe and be at one with the universe.  Those moments aren't terrifying, fleeting yes, but not terrifying.

The trick is building on those moments, little by little, remembering that feeling of 'yes, I am enough, as is, right now'.  Striving for a goal is amazing but when the need to strive out weighs the ability to love ourselves as is we have lost balance.

Accepting ourselves completely can be terrifying but it can also be exhilarating!  It is the point of being here, to learn who we are and how we relate to the world while learning how to be the best us possible!!  That, my friends, is working and living happier.

Finding My Blog Again

Stuck.  That is how I have been feeling with my blog.  Down right stuck.  I love to write, I love sharing my ideas, I love finding stories that relate to life lessons, I love expressing myself (yes, a bit narcissistic) via my blog.  But lately I don't love writing my blog.  As witnessed by the rarity of posts over the past few months.  Yes, I was planning a wedding, and going on a honeymoon and settling in to married life (which is what I keep telling myself) but in reality those reasons wouldn't have kept me away in the past.

So in the way I approach everything when I have a stumbling block.... I started building awareness and curiosity around my blog avoidance. First thing I noticed was the amount of pressure I was putting on myself to write a warm, witty, valuable, applicable and intelligent blog.  To the point that if I felt uninspired to write my blog I basically spent the rest of the day beating myself up for being a terrible career counselor, and uninspired writer, which eventually spun out to giant loser, lazy person who is going nowhere.  So I immediately put the breaks on that chain of thoughts (Whoa!)  First step in stopping the hammer is to notice that it is actually beating you down!!

So I gave myself an intentional break from my blog, allowing me to work on other writing projects and other areas of my business.  In the past couple of weeks I have been uber-productive, developing programs, packages, assignments and a future e-course.  While I haven't been writing my blog, I have been occasionally been adding some curiosity around my blog asking myself questions like: why is it hard to write there?  what is missing? how can I bring the spark back?  what do I want to write about?

So what did I found out during my blog-break?
1.  Anytime we have to FORCE ourselves to do something or think we SHOULD do it we need to look at what's really going on.

2.  This is suppose to be fun!!  My little tiny blog that use to take 15 minutes to write in the morning and brought me excitement and joy had become a giant black elephant that hung out in my home office, followed me to work and hung out with me on the couch.  I had built it up to be SO HUGE, no wonder I didn't want to work on it.

3. I love sharing stories, I love illustrating ideas, thoughts, life lessons through stories.  Somewhere in my day to day life I lost seeing the world through stories,

4. Because of #1 and #2 I was putting WAY to much pressure on myself to write an awesome, insightful, intelligent blog.  And I lost me, I lost my voice, my struggles, my challenges and my lessons. I thought I needed to be the expert the one who had it all together in order to share about living and working happier.  I lost my ability to be vulnerable.

So there you have it my blog experiment has come to a close and I here are the changes you will see on my blog.

1. A commitment to writing 3 times a week--I noticed, one of the reasons I struggled was the less I wrote the less I wanted to write. 

2. A commitment to allowing myself to be more vulnerable, more open sharing more about my life lessons and what I learn as I move through life and as I work through clients trying to live and work happier.

So please bare with me in the upcoming weeks as I find my stride again with blog writing and sharing!  I am excited to see what happens!!

Whew!  I have to admit I feel better, even writing this blog about my blog writing struggles was daunting and scary.  

But I am hoping you can relate, what activity(s) are you avoiding, how do you deal with getting stuck, or in a rut?  I would love to hear!!

Why Positivity Can Get in the Way of Living Happier

You have heard me say it before, but lately it has been creeping back into my world, creeping back into my client's thoughts and words, creeping back into my friends' wisdom.  The idea that we just need to think positive and all will be better.  Ugh! This thought drives me crazy.  Sometimes I feel like it is one of my life's missions to rid the world of the notion that if you just put on a smile, and think positive life will be just peachy.  Yes there are times when we are just crabby for no reason; just 'off' and for those times putting on a smile can be helpful.  But I am talking about those times when we are hurting when we have pain, grief, sadness when we are going through a break-up, a death, a sense of confusion or a major life transition!  All of these are HARD they require struggle, tears, pain and grief.  These aren't 'buck up', put on a smile times, these are "yep I know it sucks and it might feel like you are going to die but I promise you will get through this time"

We have all seen the people, people who we ask, "how is everything going?" (and legitimately care) and the immediate response is "fine, fine, everything is fine!" with a big fake smile on their face Clearly we know everything isn't fine, but most likely they have heard somewhere to be positive and everything will be ok.

I am all about joy and laughter and smiling, hell my tag line is work happier live happier--so clearly I am all about being happ-ier.  But when we think that these 'happy' emotions are the ONLY emotions and that we are weak, pathetic and/or negative because we don't feel happy all the time we get into trouble.  As a mentor of mine use to say, life is about experiencing a wide range of emotions fully.  So experiencing joy AND sadness. Laughter AND tears.  When we are trapped in 'living positively' to the detriment of experiencing any anger, sadness or struggle we aren't living happier, we are slowly surely becoming a ticking time bomb of resentment and pain.

As with everything life is a balance--it is a mixture of joy and pain; when we experience too much of one type of emotion we are definitely not living happier.  Any transition in life will require some sadness, relief, laughter, anxiety, fear and joy.  Whenever we are making changes there will be struggle but that is truly living and experiencing life which to me IS living happier!!