new career | - Part 2

Are you ready for the new world of work?

It’s easy to manage your career when the world of work is stable and follows a set of rules that both employers and employees agree upon. This was the ‘cradle-to-grave’ job security that formed an unwritten social contract for decades since WWII. It allowed our society to move forward with political stability and economic affluence.

Hey! rub-a-dub-dub, three fools in a tub, 
And who do you think were there? 
The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker, 
And all of them gone to the fair.

This nursery rhyme captures the spirit of that social contract, the notion that a rising tide of GDP floated all boats and carried everyone along on a light-hearted trip to a future of fun.

That social contract has been torn to shreds in North America by changing social and economic conditions, such as the hollowing out of the manufacturing sector and the millions of high-paying unionized jobs that went with it; the outsourcing of other jobs to Asia; the shift to lower-paying service jobs; the pervasive 24/7 reach of cellphones and other technologies that make it harder to establish boundaries between work and home; and other social trends and issues.

Did you know that the top 10 in-demand occupations of 2015 had not been invented in 2000? Or, that more information will be created next year than was created in the last 5,000 years. Or, that the average person will make 7 to 14 occupational changes by age 38?

Yes, it is much more difficult to manage your career in this millennium than the last. Did you wake up this morning dreaming of a future as a:

• Gamification Specialist
• Social networking affiliate manager
• Nano-mechanic
• Old age wellness manager
• Memory augmentation surgeon
• Weather modification police
• Waste data handler
• Personal brander/communications advisor
• Parallel programmer?

Probably not. If you thought about the changing world of work at all, you probably asked yourself: “Where do I fit in this world? What is available to me? How do I achieve a balance between my needs and all of the forces and influences around me?”

Big business, big government, and big unions have shown quite clearly since 2000 that they cannot provide guaranteed careers for a lifetime of work because they cannot control external variables, such as financial markets, climate change, technological revolutions, terrorism, and other influences on the economy.

These questions are best answered, I suggest, by shifting our career management strategy from an objective perspective, one that uses linear thinking–such as go to a good school, get good grades, get a good job, and climb a ladder of promotions and income—because that job-for-life will not be there.

Instead, we need to prepare our selves and our children to think about work in terms of fluidity and flexibility to meet the challenge of much change in a short period of time.

In order to meet these challenges in the external world, we may need to better master our internal world, to get a better understanding of our talents, beliefs, motivations, and values in order to shift efficiently and effectively with the twists and turns of a global economy and social upheaval. We need to know what hard skills we are suited to acquire and sell in the marketplace, and we need to know what soft skills we are suited to developing to sell those skills. In short, we need to think more subjectively.

Prepare yourself and your children to adapt to this rapidly changing world. Moving from an objective way of thinking about career to a subjective way of thinking is not easy but it starts with understanding your “life story” and how it relates to the kind of work we are best suited for as individuals and where that connects to the social world.

In the coming months, I will write more about how you can build and sustain the energy, enthusiasm and skills to be continuous adapting to this changing world of work, and especially how to find the fun in doing so!

Is job search a problem to be solved or part of your creative process? – Part 2

In my previous blog on this topic, I asked ‘Are your career goals organized around solving problems or creating what you want?” Whether you are pursuing a short term goal, like getting a new job in the next 90 days, or going after a longer term goal, such as changing your career completely—an important lesson to remember is this: you don’t get there all at once!

You build. You plan certain steps, and then you take certain actions. You start with something workable, and then you begin to develop it.

However, many people will simply react to their current circumstances. If they think their employer is downsizing, merging with another company, or going bankrupt, they will start looking for another job because losing a job is a problem to be solved. They do what they think they should do, i.e. go to job boards, look for postings, and apply online for their resume. They don’t usually think much about how the process works, why it functions they way it does, and so on.

Then, when they don’t get any callbacks for interviews, they start to panic and think something is wrong with them: “my resume is no good, I don’t have enough experience for that job, I’m getting too old, I don’t have enough education, I live in the wrong part of the country.” They start to blame themselves instead of understanding the dynamics of supply & demand at work in the job market and how job boards relate to those dynamics.

Problem solving is about reacting to circumstances.

Creating is about resolving the tension between where you want to be and where you are now. For example, if you want a new job, you can start by picking a job target. What is the job title that you are going to package/position yourself for? Is it the same one you have now, or slightly different, or very different? Where do you want to work? Do you have a list of 10-20 preferred employers? Getting clarity about where you want to be is a crucial step in creating your next job.

Next, make a list of where you’re at now. What personal strengths and professional assets do you have that will help you create your next opportunity. Do you have an up-to-date resume? Do you know how to use LinkedIn for job search? What about offline—do you know how to approach recruiters and agencies? Or prospect for opportunities through professional associations? Or network for referrals through your personal & professional contacts?

Are you introspective and like to plan, strategize and think? How can you leverage these strengths into your job search? Or, are you extroverted and like to meet with people and take actions? Do you know how to curb your impulsiveness and optimize your time & energy to get the biggest impact for your job search?

Creating your next job opportunity takes a little practice.

Start by using your strengths, your assets, and your preferences for how you like to do things. Taking actions that are based on your natural inclinations will build your confidence, something you need a lot of in a job search!

Not all of your actions will be efficient or effective but some will move you closer to your goal of a new job. You begin to get a clearer picture of what that job might look like. You begin to see where you are in current reality. Then, your mind begins to invent new ways to create that outcome.

This is the key to true job search, resolving the structural tension in favor of the desired outcome. Steadily and surely, you move from where you are now to a new job, building up your job search skills, and taking one action after another, learning as you go to take more effective actions until your goal is achieved!

Don’t get caught up or bummed out by a problem you can’t solve. Getting a new job is not a problem. It is part of a process with an outcome that you can create.

It’s a New Year: Are your career goals organized around solving problems or creating what you want? – part 1

You have a job now, right? And maybe you don’t like it. Or you’ve been thinking about a midlife career change but you don’t know what else you could do and still make money.

So, now your life is taken up with reacting to the circumstances of your situation. How can I work less and make more? I hate the office, how can I work 3 days at home, 2 days at the office? My colleagues annoy me, how can I transfer to another unit? I’m stressed out, how can I get leave with pay?

In short, these problems start to dominate your everyday life. You are trapped into reacting against the prevailing problems of your life–they suck up your time, energy, and money as you seek a way out.

Problem solving is one of the worst ways to try to build the life you want. Here is a simple truth: you can solve all of your problems and still not have what you want. For example, you get leave without pay only to find that the same position is not waiting for you when you return to work; instead, the new job is worse! Or, you transfer to another unit, only to find the work is boring or the workplace toxic. Or, you find no motivation for working by yourself at home, you can’t get the work done, and you get laid off.

When you are trapped into reacting against the prevailing problems of your life, you are led away from thinking in terms of desired outcomes. When you are in this problem orientation, you get ‘stuck’ in your career. You can’t create from that orientation.

Creating the career you want is certainly possible when you approach it as an orientation and a skill. A creative orientation is a process that involves proven steps that move you from where you are now to a state of being that doesn’t yet exist. If you were to create a painting, a sculpture, or a poem, you are creating a product that doesn’t yet exist. You can do the same thing with career change—you can create an outcome that doesn’t yet exist.

If your career is the subject matter of the creative process, then you need to have some idea of the outcome, what it might look like, feel like, knowing what you want. That might sound simple but it is where most people get stuck. Instead of working on what it is they want, they work on answering other questions: What will make me happy? How should I live my life? What is my purpose? What is meaningful to me? Important questions, to be sure, but the answers are not necessary for creating what you want in a career.

Most people get stuck in their career because they can’t “see” another option. They don’t think about what they want, but rather, what they think they should want from a limited menu of available items. The subtext is: find the proper response. For example, at this age, you should be in this kind of position earning this amount of money in your career. We are supposed to think there is a proper response. If your circumstances don’t match that “proper response” then your life becomes a problem, rather than what you truly want based on your natural inclinations. This is how problem-solving rather than creating becomes the organizing principle in your life.

This is an important part of the work I do as a job change expert—to create a ‘new’ picture, an accurate and reliable picture, of what that work or career might look like, based on a creative orientation, by focusing on your natural strengths, motivations, values and preferences.

Then, on the skill level, you create that new picture. Creating the career you want is not rocket science but it is a skill and like any skill needs to be learned and applied in an efficient and effective manner to get the outcome you want.

That will be the subject of my next post.

Hope Springs Eternal for Career Change

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blessed:
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
– Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

What do you hope for in 2014?

Empirical studies indicate that most episodes of hope involve achievement-related goals, e.g. success in some academic, artistic, athletic, career, relationship, and so on. “Hope is the passion for the possible.”

When it is allied with our highest aspirations and deepest values, it can give us a general orientation to life that motivates us to take actions…and propel us towards our desires.

Hope is grounded in desire

In the quote above, Pope refers to the desire to be blessed. Do you know someone with the first name, Hope? Ask them why their parents gave them that name.

One friend told me she was born prematurely at 1.5 lbs in a place and time where there were no medical facilities to treat her. Her mother and father put her in an incubator—where she stayed for 4 months—and prayed, then hoped for the best. They were elderly parents and Hope turned out to be their only child—a true blessing in their lives! She felt truly loved by her parents, deeply cared for, and relishes the time she had with them. She feels blessed as their child.

Caring about our future

Hope belongs to a constellation of feelings and attitudes related to caring about our future. On the positive side it is related to optimism, confidence, courage, faith, gratitude, and contrasts with fear, pessimism, resignation, despair. Usually, it is felt less intensely than fear, more like a sentiment that has a positive moral value.

One function of hope is to give goals far away from us their due importance. For example, making a career change usually takes time. Hope rouses feelings necessary to influence our conduct, to motivate us to take actions towards future goals. It helps us to overcome everyday difficulties by looking beyond them to a better future.

Hope motivates us to plan

Having made several career transitions myself, and helped hundreds of individuals make significant career changes during the past 20 years, I have learned that hope—as a general orientation towards achieving future goals—increases the effectiveness of career change tools and techniques, such as visioning, goal setting, planning, implementing, adapting actions, prospecting opportunities.

In the quote above, Pope uses the word expatiates, which means to speak or write at length or in detail. I guide my clients through a process of speaking and writing to uncover their hopes and desires.

I strive to help my clients develop clarity about their strengths, particularly their talents and motivations, in order to foster realistic hope. Clarity feeds confidence and increases self-understanding, both necessary for taking effective actions to realize goals. But hope provides the framework for action.

Hope is the well spring of desire and we deserve to be in a state of desire!

After all, if we have no hope for a better future, why take any actions?

I will leave you with some words of hope from the wise…may they nurture and sustain and help you persevere through the difficult times of the year ahead.

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. (Dale Carnegie)

Hope is the companion of power, and mother of success; for who so hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles. (Samuel Smiles)

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.” (Pope John XXIII)

3 Tips For Overcoming Job Loss

In recent weeks, I’ve spoken with several people who lost their jobs after 20+ years with the same employer. One person is angry and bitter and takes every opportunity to vent about the unfairness of it all; another turned to drinking through the day; another is fighting the desire to hunker down in their “cave” and nurse their wound.

Some of these coping mechanisms might even be necessary in the short term as temporary relief. After all, this kind of job loss is often experienced like the death of a loved one. It’s serious stuff. In a previous post, I gave some examples of job losses and what your thoughts might be about it.

But life moves on. Learning to adapt to changing circumstances in life is a necessary skill. Lots of advice has been written about how to cope with job loss, and how to move on. Based on my 20 years experience, here’s what I’ve learned that works for most people most of the time:

1. Take care of yourself. Grieve your loss. Too many people don’t take enough time to let go of this major experience in their life. Think of all the time and energy invested in a job for 20+ years. It takes much longer than most people realize…to dis-engage from their work.

You have every right to be upset, so accept your feelings—anger, hurt, rejection, panic, relief, whatever you feel, go easy on yourself. When you get up in the morning, take a pad of paper and write down everything you feel—for 10-20 minutes, all the things you wished you’d said (or hadn’t said) to your former manager. Do this for as many mornings as it takes to dump your feelings. This is especially cathartic if your termination was handled in an insensitive way.

Then, if possible, take a vacation, get out of town, put some distance between you and the experience. It’s easier to process the emotions, the memories, when sitting on a beach, or in some other safe haven. Eat well, make time for regular exercise, practice stress relief exercises, stay positive.

If basic habits, such as eating or sleeping, are disturbed by the job loss, get professional help from a doctor, a psychologist, a counselor. Ask for the support you need. Don’t try to shoulder the stress of job loss and unemployment alone. Your natural reaction may be to withdraw, to resist asking for help out of pride, shame or embarrassment. Don’t isolate yourself and brood. You will only feel worse. Whatever it takes to accept the situation, get there. The sooner you do, the sooner you can get on with the next phase in your life.

2. Reaching out to others. Over the years, you’ve built up a goodwill network of family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances in your personal and professional life—now is the time to draw on that goodwill! Share what you’re going through with the people you trust, not necessarily the people closest to you, such as your immediate family, who also may be hurting from your termination.

Join a job club or form one with former colleagues who may have been laid off at the same time. Commiserating, talking through your feelings, focusing on shared issues can be energizing and motivating. Personal and professional support will help keep you on track during your job search.

Networking is not rocket science but it is a skill and, like any skill, it can be learned and applied in the real world. It is a simple fact that most job openings are not posted as job vacancies but exist as job opportunities off the radar screen, and filled by word of mouth. That’s why networking is the best way to find a job. Basically, networking isn’t about using other people or aggressively promoting yourself—it’s about building relationships, and getting yourself in the right place so that when opportunities arise…you are in the pipeline ready, willing and able to take on a task! Learn to network—if you persist, it will pay off!

3. Rethink your career goals, or rediscover what truly makes you happy. Not everybody needs to create a job search plan, or keep a regular routine, or list their positives. We all have talents and motivations that will kick in…but now is the time to leverage your natural strengths into understanding how they correlate with specific jobs in specific work settings. This is the central message of JobJoy, so visit our site to find resources that can launch you into a new career or help you build on your existing one.

If you know anyone who has suffered a recent job loss, please pass this post along to them…and remind them that you have an encouraging work, a listening ear, a helping hand, a shoulder to lean on whenever they need it!

“Oh, what a feeling…what a career change rush!”

Everyone’s heard a story about some successful businessperson who dumped a 20-year career to pursue something completely different and is happier for it.

The famous Impressionist painter, Paul Gauguin, for example, ditched a lucrative banking career and bourgeois life in Paris to paint full-time in the Polynesian islands.

Most people who want to make a midlife career change never take such drastic action because they fear change and don’t want to make sacrifices—at least that’s the common job change advice. I suggest this is incorrect.

I’m sure Gauguin feared change and didn’t want to make sacrifices but did so anyway. What motivated him to do so, and why do so many people who feel stuck in a career, unable to take action to get unstuck?

Like most people, Gauguin got an education that led to a particular career path. His vocation was fixed but some years later he decided he wasn’t a banker anymore. Like others, he probably said to himself, “If I don’t make a move now, I never will, and I’ll live to regret it.” But the truth is Gauguin didn’t know how to make a career change.

A successful transition requires effective actions

Gauguin’s first action was not to jump on a boat and sail to the South Pacific. He didn’t start with an “aha!” experience then go out and try to find it. No, he spent years painting.

He learned to paint, hung out with other artists, and explored the art world, learning not only his craft but the business of art. Transition is a process based on actions. As a job change expert, I know that the motivation underlaying those actions is the key to a successful transition.

Gauguin knew what he wanted to do—paint. But that’s not enough for change. Many people figure out what they want to do but nothing comes of it. Why?

Gauguin remolded his deepest values and highest aspirations. Instead of producing wealth, he decided it was more important for him to produce beauty, his deepest value. In order to produce beauty, he decided to paint full-time, his deepest aspiration.

Changing careers means redefining our working identity—who and what we are in terms of our right work, what we communicate about ourselves to others and, ultimately, how we live our working lives.

Who we are and what we do—our BEING and our DOING–are closely connected, the result of years of certain actions. And to change that connection, we must first resort to other actions that align with our deepest values and highest aspirations. This is the source of motivation for a midlife change.

As a painter, Gauguin didn’t make much money but loved his new life. The feeling—the intrinsic reward, the emotional value–that he gained from painting aligned with his deepest values and highest aspirations, a feeling he couldn’t get from banking.

A picture of a future that feels better

In other words, change occurs when we have a picture of a better alternative to our current identity, one that feels better. My clients who have made successful changes know this feeling well.

That is the purpose of my JobJoy Report — to give you a picture of a new working identity, one that aligns with your BEING. It will help you visualize a specific outcome, something different than the one you are now stuck in.

My JobJoy Report will start you moving in a new direction because you will be motivated to make a change, by DOING new things that feel better.

Once you experience those positive feelings, by taking different actions, you will make a successful career change and live a better story. Oh, what a feeling…what a rush!

Making a big career change late in life as a single mom

Vera Adamovich was very motivated to make a career change when she showed up at my office. She had that day signed a contract with another career consulting firm, heard of me, and then signed up with my organization too.

At the time she was running a home-based desktop publishing business, the main product of which was a weekly advertising publication.

She wasn’t unhappy with the business because, as a single mom, it had allowed her to be home with her daughters for nine years.

However, when I met Vera, the kids were 11 and 16 respectively and there wasn’t the need for her to be home as much, which caused her situation to be less than satisfying.

Although not miserable, she was always struggling financially because the business didn’t provide sufficient income. Vera hated the responsibility for advertising sales that were necessary to increase the volume of business, but it was difficult to secure good sales people. She’d hire them and they’d last a month.

Though she knew she’d “had it” with desktop publishing, Vera had no idea of what she wanted to do.

Assessment

After reviewing several of her more pleasant assignment experiences, I realized Vera had one very valuable talent. She was able to translate complicated concepts like accounting procedures, computer reports and financial statements in such a way that people could understand and apply them.

In the past she had had jobs where she taught people how to use software, how to interpret management reports and how to process and track orders on an automated system.

Vera’s education wasn’t in high tech but in art, which she used in her desktop publishing business. She loved the creativity involved with designing graphics and derived much satisfaction from a well turned-out final product. What was missing was people contact.

In fact, her work life was structured exactly the opposite way than it should have been. She was spending 80% of her time at home alone working on the computer and 20% of her time interacting with people.

It wasn’t a good job fit and she needed to reverse that equation so that the people portion was 80% of her time and the remainder was spent working at her computer.

She needed to be independent, and not confined to a 9-5 desk job. In other words, she needed a variety of activities and the flexibility to manage her own schedule.

It was actually a question of whether she was going to build a career around her artistic talents or her communication talents. The creative route gave her a real feeling of accomplishment, but she wasn’t able to make enough money from that alone.

Job Choice

Armed with the knowledge of what she needed and what she needed to avoid, Vera was able to find the perfect job in a very short time. She got a position with Laurentian Financial Services as a Certified Financial Planner. However, even though she works with a big company, she has a sense of being self-employed under a structure that is similar to a real estate agent.

“It’s absolutely a people business,” she said. “When it comes to financial planning people have problems that need solving. Dealing with what are often huge problems to my clients, I am able to offer solutions with ease.” Vera enjoys the level of comfort she is able to bring to her clients. She’s happy as the captain of her own ship and totally in charge. She can choose whether to work in her home office or her downtown office.

Most of her time is spent talking to people. When she does have to work on the computer, she says, “It’s a joy! It comes naturally to me, and that’s a creative outlet as well.”

She added that her income is now “great.” It can be whatever she wants it to be. She has everything she needs to get true satisfaction from her career.

Values + Talents = Good Jobfit

Vera made a career decision based on values – that it was important to be home with her daughters. A value-based decision one hears more often is something like, “I’m going to be a millionaire by the time I’m 30.”

It’s not a bad thing to make a decision based on values, but don’t make a decision that excludes your talents. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive. People who make a career decision based only on values may be setting themselves up for a job misfit and years of frustration. Vera’s values were noble. She was trying to do the best for the kids, but her choice didn’t match her natural interests and talents.

She could have done both. Many people get trapped in job situations because they don’t recognize their natural inclinations – what they do naturally and effortlessly – in terms of the right work.

Once Vera had that knowledge, she was able to spot an opportunity that fit her to a “T”. Today, Vera’s business continues to grow through the Independent Planning Group Inc.

How you learn naturally can lead to working effortlessly

The way we learn most naturally can help us find and fit into a new job, sometimes a better job! For example, I can think of several clients who worked for many years in construction, then sustained physical injuries that prevented them from doing physical labor or operating equipment. But, they wanted to stay in the construction field because they enjoyed working with and around structures, tools, machinery and everything that goes with building, maintaining or repairing our physical world.

They needed to retrain in order to work again. However, they lacked confidence
about educational upgrading due to poor performances in high school or
college. In assessing their learning styles, I discovered that they learned
well—but not through conventional book learning. Sure, they could force
themselves to go back to a classroom setting and suffer through it. We
‘can do’ many things through sheer will and determination but there is
always the risk that we will fail or not learn what we need to know in order to
be competent on the job, thereby jeopardizing our chances for getting and
keeping a new career.

Learning new skills is always easier when we are motivated to learn, not driven
to learn by the need for a new job, but motivated by tapping into our
natural learning styles. For example, many of these clients learned more
naturally through trying & doing, or by observing & examining, or by tinkering
& experimenting. Sitting in a classroom studying & reading books, then
memorizing and repeating what they read did not motivate them.

Retraining or upgrading skills then meant finding programs that matched their
natural way of learning (such as construction-estimating) that emphasized a
“hands-on” orientation versus a theoretical or academic one. In several cases,
an assessment of their stories also revealed a natural aptitude for working
with numbers and a knack for customer service, which matched up with jobs
related to Construction Estimator, Quote Coordinator, Proposal Writer,
Purchasing Manager, Builder Services Manager, Field Coordinator, and so on.

What is your innate pattern for learning?

When listening to your stories, I listen for clues to your natural talent for
learning: what are you doing when you’re motivated to learn? To what depth and
detail are you motivated to learn? What are the mechanisms through which you
learn? What circumstances or conditions motivate you to learn?

Natural talents for learning correlate with different kinds of career
situations. For example, someone who learns best by observing and
examining—that is, someone who is motivated to learn by taking a careful
first-hand look at the actual detail of an action—is probably better suited to
an apprenticeship-type environment than someone who is motivated to learn by
studying and reading (going over printed material, note-taking and underlining
key phrases).

Perhaps you did better in college programs organized around listening and
discussing activities than you did in high school, if the emphasis there was on
memorizing and repeating of information. You are motivated to learn only when
you are in a situation where you can hear the thoughts and ideas of others and
express their own. Perhaps you never realized before that your favorite job
was organized around frequent opportunities to brainstorm with others by
hearing their ideas and bouncing your own off them.

Did your parents complain that you always asked too many questions? If they
found it annoying, perhaps others noticed your knack for finding out things by
asking people questions. You are more than just curious, you have a knack for
probing and questioning others. You might thrive in jobs where that skill is a
recognized and rewarded as a core duty, such as investigations, or assessing
needs, or diagnosing problems.

Some talented and successful individuals get lousy grades in a classroom
setting but turn out to be specialists or experts when they are left to their
own devices to compile and collect information in their own way, at their own
speed, in order to get a comprehensive picture of a situation to understand,
explain, and predict certain principles, logic, philosophies, skills or
techniques.

I’ve had some hi-tech clients that thrived in lab environments where they could
experiment and tinker. They never read a book, and even failed certain college
courses. Luckily, many of these individuals were able to find jobs in school
helping a professor with certain research in order to pass. They could spend
hours conducting trials or tests to find out about a subject phenomenon and see
what happens. They easily fit into R&D work settings.

The real payoff is understanding why you learn and what is the outcome of your
learning. Once we understand your innate pattern for learning, I can link it
to specific jobs and careers that will reward you for what comes naturally and
effortlessly to you.

S…t…r…e…t…c…h your ambition to succeed

Another year has started. Did you promise yourself that this is the year, now is the time to change careers? You feel ready to make a real change in your life.

Changing careers requires some internal and external stretching to get you where you want to go. In the same way that stretching physically helps prepare your bones and muscles for more vigorous activity, we need to stretch our ideas and actions in order to transform our career into a better jobfit, one that will recognize, reward, and motivate us for what we do naturally and effortlessly.

1. Stretch your ideas. One of the biggest obstacles we face when thinking about a new career is a shortlist of options. Most people can only think of 30 jobs off the top of their head—teacher, lawyer, doctor, dentist, postman, policeman, professonal athlete, singer, secretary, baker, banker, and the jobs we see or encounter on a daily basis. But there are 60,000+ jobs operating in our economy and the truth is there is not one perfect job for you (perfection is an illusion) but up to several dozen jobs that you are suited for…if you only knew what they were. Getting a proper assessment of your natural talents and motivations, combined with your existing education, experience, values, priorities—can open the door to many exciting career options, not to mention several excellent jobs that you can transition into quickly and easily.

2. Expand your talents into a track record. You may have a knack for public speaking but you can’t be a competent and accomplished public speaker unless you seek opportunities to speak with your authentic voice. It’s hard to convince others of your knack for marketing unless you can design and deliver some impressive marketing collaterals. To succeed with a career change, your talents must be developed into skills through genuine effort to meet some real goals.

3. Take the time necessary for expansion. You’ve probably heard the old cliche that every overnight success took 20 years. Transformation does not occur overnight. Too many people kill their dreams by quitting too early. They want the rewards now. But taking responsibility for what you truly want from life requires time to plant and harvest. If you’re not willing to invest some time and energy then I suggest you don’t really want a new career; instead, you probably want to replace your current income with something that is not as stressful, or as toxic, or as boring, or as [you fill in the blank]. Avoiding something you don’t want is not the same thing as creating something you do want.

4. Embrace the creative process. Creating is a process that follows a proven format : come up with a clear vision of a new career; look at where you are now clearly and objectively; then take effective actions to move you closer from where you are now to where you want to be in the future. That’s it. The creative process is not rocket science, anybody can do it. But the key is to do it. Take effective actions that move you closer to what you want. Don’t waste time, energy or money by taking no action, or only a little action, or ineffective action. Life is too short. Commit to your transformation. Perhaps you can move forward more quickly by getting help.

Are you still feeling resistance to stretching your ambition, to grabbing the internal or external bull by the horns, and wrestling it to the ground once and for all? Perhaps this is the year when you take deliberate, intentional and proven actions that move you forward.

Help is available to help you seize the day and stretch beyond what you thought possible.

Find my Dream Job? I don’t even know what it looks like!

When it comes to career change, we often focus on the blind spots.

This is especially true if we have been recognized and rewarded for a particular skill, even though the skill might leave us cold
or indifferent when using it to earn our living.

In other words, we confuse the means with the ends, or in JobJoy terms, we confuse a ‘can do’ skill with a motivation. Let me
explain by illustrating a specific case.

Writing is a skill that is highly valued in our education system. In school, we all learn how to present ideas, information, narrative or descriptive images using the written word. Some learn better than others.

These good learners develop strong ‘can do’ skills as a writer and go on to
careers in education (e.g. professor) or the public service (e.g. policy
advisor) or the private sector (e.g. resume writer) that involve a lot of
writing as a core job duty.

Year after year they write reports, papers, letters, and other products. They
start to think of themselves as a writer because others relate to them that
way, and pay them to write in a job.

Sometimes, this identity that we create for ourselves as a writer actually
makes sense. For example, I have had many clients who write business or
academic papers very well. But what really turns them on is creative writing,
involving poetry, plays, or short stories.

Here’s how one client described the benefits of writing a play: “I fully
escaped into my writing. Writing made me feel emotions more vividly and
discover feelings long dormant. With play writing, I came alive. I felt like I
was some kind of vehicle through which material completely outside my awareness
traveled onto the page. I discovered that the more I let the characters loose
on the page, the more they led my writing. This kind of writing was a full-body
experience. I loved feeling so alive and physically sparked. I loved the energy
I got from the activity.”

However, after a cathartic release of emotion, she never went on to write more
plays, or other creative writing. It wasn’t the craft of writing—the innate
desire to effectively impress what you have to say onto the minds of
readers—that motivated her; instead, it was breaking through emotional
barriers, breaking through the existing limits of experience at that point in
her life.

Writing was the vehicle not the destination. She went on to an academic career
and had to confront the reality of publish or perish. She was not motivated to
write academic papers for a living, even though she had been doing it for years
in order to obtain a Master’s and PhD.

As she got older, doing what didn’t come naturally or easily became more
difficult. She needed to find a different career path. But how could she find
her dream job, when the only option she could think of involved writing?

Doing so meant she had to stop thinking of herself as a writer. She needed to
create a new identity for herself, one that harmonized with her natural talents
and motivations.

Getting clarity about what we do naturally and effortlessly is the first step
to a successful career change. Then it becomes possible to create a different
picture of yourself at work. Now you can see possibilities that are stimulating and financially viable!

A career assessment should give you an accurate and reliable picture of what that dream job looks like.

The next step is to find people in that new picture of work, and communicate to them with confidence your value proposition.

The key is to have others pay you for what comes naturally and effortlessly. That is job joy!