Now What?® Coaching

from Laura Berman Fortgang

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Lost In Reality

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by Now What?® Coaching Founder, Laura Berman Fortgang

Once upon a time, we had an idealistic notion that led us to a certain career path.  It made so much sense and it made us feel good. Sept 2013 Newsletter

Fast forward five, ten or twenty years and we are not happy doing what we do.  What happened?

It became work.

It’s likely that you lost of sight of WHY you were doing it, got so far away from what you thought it would be about or you just outgrew the whole thing and stayed too long at the fair.  Now What?

There are FOUR courses of action to consider.

1) Cut your losses and run

I know it sounds very tempting to just quit and find yourself but unless there is some serious money in the bank, read on.

2) Keep the why, change the details

Let’s say you were attracted to a law career by the notion of fighting for justice and now all you do is shuffle paper and work with uninspiring cases.  You need to revisit the WHY.  If you still love your original WHY, keep it but get into a new area or firm or organization where you can do what matters to you.

3) RE-engage

Sometimes we just forget the WHY because the daily grind wears us down.  Sometimes it’s enough to wake up everyday and remind yourself that you are in it for more than a paycheck.  Spend two weeks making your WHY the first thing you think about as you start your day.  One of two things will happen:

You’ll get your mojo back and keep going

OR

You’ll realize that it was a ‘that was then, this is now’

situation and start working on a transition

4) Redefine work

Finally, not everyone wants their work to be an all-consuming mission, their purpose or that meaningful for that matter.  Many people redefine work to be the bill-payer around which they build an extraordinary life.

I am currently working with a client who decided to stay with her job to allow it to pay for the things that matter to her more: charity work, world-travel, an active social life and time with her kids.  It was no longer torture once she reconciled that the WHY was everything else in her life.

How will you keep your mornings dread-free and full of ‘get up and go’?

If you can guess which course of action I’d go for, you may win a FREE session with me.  Respond in our comments section.  The first three people to guess correctly win.  You’ll receive a private email.

And if you need any guidance on this topic, let us know.

Don’t Get Used To This

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by Ginny Kravitz, Deputy Editor

Barely Getting By

Remember your first job, first apartment, and living paycheck to paycheck? In the beginning, just being able to make rent and survive in the real world feels like enough — and it is, until you learn that there is something more beyond merely surviving.

Even as a career matures and a certain level of financial success is attained, there are events, crises, and circumstances in life that can put you back in survival mode at any given time. Sometimes it’s necessary to be in that mode temporarily because anything more is just too much to conceive of or work toward until certain things are addressed and stabilized.

The danger over time, however, is to allow getting by to become a way of life.

Years ago, a career counselor had me develop her version of a zero-based budget. The purpose was to identify the amount you need to earn in order to cover expenses and be “at zero” vs. in the red. That’s not the target, though, just your minimalCalculator requirement. It’s the place you start from, to have a handle on what’s necessary. Next, you increase that minimum requirement by at least 10% to arrive at your target salary level. A great rule of thumb, but do most people round up or round down when calculating what’s possible?

Perhaps money isn’t your particular challenge. You might be rounding down and settling for just enough by:

  • Working at a job that kills your spirit;
  • Feeling fatigued too often with low energy as your norm;
  • Accepting dullness or decline in your relationships;
  • Delaying the pursuit of what you want out of life

Settling Isn’t Gratitude

Why would anyone plan to just get by? A few reasons, yet I can think of a rebuttal for each:

Who am I to want more? There are so many people worse off in the world.
Yes, all the more reason to become all you can and contribute all you can.

Fear of failure, avoiding disappointment.
Risk is scary and failure is humbling. Regret over what might have been is worse.

I should just be grateful for what I have.
Yes, you should be! But raising the bar doesn’t cancel gratitude.
In a culture of excess, it’s good to realize what is enough. The bigger house, the bigger job, and the flashier car aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. Making conscious choices and having your priorities straight is a good thing. Settling without even thinking about it is not. Settling by default is a spirit-crushing, self-defeating, potential-robbing bad habit. How’s that for a description?

Plan For More

Get into the habit of aiming for 10% more. You might even find you’re ready to add twenty-five or fifty percent to that minimum requirement. Expect more, ask for more, picture more, and prepare for more. Do more to make it happen. The declaring and the acting go hand in hand.

This Week’s Call To Action: Notice where you’re settling and make the decision to go for more. When you name it for yourself, even before anything changes, it’s a defining moment.

“The biggest human temptation in life is to settle for too little.”

–Thomas Merton