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Tag: career direction

The most important choice in your life: Are you big enough to step into your own dreams?

What do you really want to do in life?

Whenever you go near a positive career coach, they are going to ask you what you really want to do in life.

Guess what?

You are going to list excuses. Because if you were off following your dreams, you wouldn’t be talking to a career coach!!

Are you normally a wuss given to excuse making?

Probably not.  If you were, you wouldn’t be spending good money on a career coach.  And we will charge you a lot, just to make sure you are not!

What is holding you up?

So you paid your money, and you know you are up some sort of psychological cul-de-sac and you are making excuses.  What the **** is going on?

For a start, you are behaving normally.

We all have moments when we wake up and are confused about our purpose in life. Typically, this happens when we have been intensely busy.  While we had our heads down attending to detail, we took our eye off the bigger picture.

We are also shy.

It is normal to keep our dreams a little hidden, even from ourselves. We fear success. We are terrified of getting what we want because at that point, we are exposed.  What if it turns out to be a disappointment?  What if we won’t be who we thought we would be?

Making the most important choice in your life

When you go to see a career coach, that is the choice you are making.  You want to know whether you are big enough to step into your own dreams.

Well you won’t know until you try!

Here are five know facts about positive careers that I have rewritten from another blog.  It is a good example of positive career coaching.

#1 You won’t find what you love until you take the time to imagine it and draw it in exacting detail

#2 You won’t move forward until you can name and imagine your fears in excrutiating detail

#3 You’ll become purposefully efficient when you work on actions that move you forward and decisively put aside actions that don’t move you in the direction you value so deeply

#4 You plan will appear not to work until you move toward your destination which puts all other destinations aside

#5 You will get discouraged from time to time and when you do, you have two choices. If you are involved in an activity that does not take you forward, put it in your waste bin with relish and move on to something that does!  If the activity has proved to be an obstacle that you must move through and over to reach your destination, get on with it!

Writing the perfect job description is  #1.

  • Take your job description and rewrite it to match your dream job.  Put in your job title.   Write down who you report to and who reports to you.  Do the whole shooting match.
  • Now review your daily activities and remove what does not take you towards your dream (if you can).  Leave what takes your forward and what you do for love and fun.
  • Get moving!
  • Now do #2.  Imagine your fears in excruciating detail.  Imagine the villain to your hero as sympathetically as you imagine yourself. Let the story of you life unfold!
  • And when you are discouraged, take a walk in the park, get over the immediate emotional shock, then decide.  Where does this setback fit in to your journey?  Is it an obstacle that you will enjoy conquering on the way to your perfect job?  Or is this just trash to be put aside and ignored?

Get writing that job description!

Until you have it in technicolor glory, then you will be stuck at your crossroads wondering whether you are your boss is writing the story of your life?  That is the choice you are making.

Do you have what it takes to conquer your fear of being successful?

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The honeymoon is over? Should I stay in this job?

Reviewing the situation . . .

There are moments in every project when we have to take stock.  Suddenly, we have details evey where, probably in a big mess.  Then, we ask ourselves, where exactly are we going?

It’s so tempting to walk away.  And, if you work for someone else, it’s easy to blame them for blocking you in!  The truth is that if you worked for yourself, you would reach the same point.  But this time you would sort out your crisis of confidence for yourself.

An example of rebuilding your own confidence

Let me give you an example of my blog.  Well, a blog is just a blog, you say.  That is true.  But if you are a knowledge worker, your blog is important.  It shows off your work and it gives you critical Google juice!

As we get better at blogging, we have to fine tune the content and look.  And we have to get a bigger bang for our buck – or better return for the time we put it!

So let’s use this as an example!

Last unsuccessful time

The first time I tried to tidy up my blog, my project was not a success!  I just started with the list of  posts and tried editing and re-classifing posts one by one.  It was bitty and it was horrible.

This successful time

This time, I began differently.

  • I sketched out what I want my blog to look like on a dummy server on my computer.  I selected 5 topics that I think will be important in the next two years. I had something to aim at.
  • Then I used some basic psychology.  I began with old categories that had few entries, reread the posts, tidying them up a little, and sometimes added updates and some better tags.
  • Then I reclassified the post into 1 of my 5 new categories.  Sometimes it was hard to choose but to choose one out of 5 is not too much of a tax on working memory and doesn’t get overwhelming.
  • When the category was empty, I deleted it!  Reward ~ I can see progress as the old list of categories grows shorter quickly!
  • Finally, I Stumbled my old posts, getting some basic traffic and learning a little about Stumbleupon as I went along.

I am enjoying my work!

  • The work is going smoothly ~ I can see what I am doing as I do it!
  • I am seeing progress!
  • I do it whenever I have a break from other projects.

It’s not done though.  I have 500 posts to sort and at a pace of 5 a day, which is a cracking pace, the job will take me three months.  Is that too much to ask to sort myself out?

Maybe the trick is not to wait for your boss to sort out your job.  Couldn’t you begin to sort out your job yourself?

Here are four basic steps

  • Write out your perfect job description (and keep it private of course)
  • Without disturbing your current job, take little pockets of your job (my small categories), and polish up those areas to match your future job description
  • Submit those improvements to your boss for his admiration and gratitude (:-) being realistic of course what is worth someone elses admiration and gratitude.
  • And plug on!  You know where you are going!

The trick though is to write the perfect job description. That’s the hard part.  Upcoming.  Turn over!  That’s next!

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