Now What? Newsletter Articles

Three Things You MUST Do Before the Year is Out

By Laura Berman Fortgang on December 15, 2017

I have no tax advice for you. Nothing you should do to your lawn before the next season hits. Nor do I have anything to say about your frequent flier miles or doctor visits and insurance deductibles.

Three Things You MUST Do Before the Year is Out I DO however, have three must-do’s that will help you walk into a new year with more energy, peace, and hope.

REPAIR a Relationship

Nobody is perfect. Maybe there is someone you are on the outs with or someone who is holding a grudge against you. There is no better time than the present to address it. Think of the possibilities of a new year without the stress or aggravation of this energy drain.

Perhaps there is such a relationship, but a heart to heart is just not possible. In that case, forgiveness is the only option. Whether you can speak to the person about it or not, work on forgiving what they did to you. If they are mad about something you did, forgive them for withholding their friendship, love, or approval of you.

People behave within the limits of their own growth and experience. Forgive and move on.

Do it for yourself, not for them.

PURGE Unnecessary Things

It would be nice if we had the time to stop everything and de-clutter our homes and offices. But, assuming you don’t have that kind of time, the mandate here is to shed a few BIG physical items that have been in your way for longer than they should be.

Are you walking by a lean-to of unused golf clubs at the garage door? Do you have a closet full of clothes you don’t wear? Is your desk a mess?

Choose one big mess and clear it out.

Why bother? It’s one less thing to trip you up. It’s one more opportunity to see clearly.

PLAN Something Important Way In Advance

Have you ever dreamed of taking a month off? Taking a particular trip? Seeing a particular relative or friend or enjoying a holiday in a particular way but you’ve never gotten around to making it happen?

Well, that stops right now.

I once managed to take the entire month of August off. It took me a year and a half of advanced planning to make it happen. I blocked it out in the calendar, told people who relied on me for work that I’d be unavailable and made the plans to be in Vermont for a month with my family. One of the best things we’ve ever done without a doubt.

What can you do? Stop making excuses. Don’t worry about not having the money or time for whatever it is you’d like to do. Put it in the calendar way in advance and MAKE IT HAPPEN.

These three steps will help you to make the present more pleasant, usher in a new year with some clarity, and have something great to look forward to.

Enjoy the holiday season!

When Doing What You Love Won’t Pay the Bills

By Laura Berman Fortgang on November 8, 2017

“I know what I want to do, but it won’t pay the bills!”

My answer to that is “It may not pay them all right away, but don’t let that be a reason to stay stuck.”

When Doing What You Love Won’t Pay the Bills One of the biggest obstacles to people making a change (when they DO know what they want to do) is math. The math doesn’t add up to making the monthly/annual nut from day one.

“Yes, that’s true. AND… .?”

AND

It could add up after the first year
It could make you enough money on the side to create some savings for when you attempt full time
It could put you in the position to create an alliance with someone else where you can get paid right away
It could take longer than you’d like to make the change, but you can use that time to pave the path in the new direction
It could leverage you for new opportunities that you can’t even imagine yet
It could work right away!

This is not Pollyanna speaking. This is 25 years of evidence doing the talking.

I’ve seen artists leave teaching jobs to make it creating their art full time.
I’ve seen doctors move on to related fields and be successful after much angst
over possibly losing their credibility
I’ve seen musicians leave their day jobs and develop their own unique opportunities.
I’ve seen executives change fields successfully, having no experience in the new one
I’ve seen lawyers use their training in a way that was a benefit in non-law jobs

They all made the math work … eventually.

How do you DO that?

Prepare: If you know you are ready to do something else and you know what it is despite HUGE reasons to stay put, you must start preparing.

If you don’t have what Stephen Covey called a “possibilities account,” aka savings to invest in yourself, start cutting back on expenses in order to create a cushion.
If your new direction offers an opportunity to start making money right away, start! And bank all that money to support a future leap.
Involve family and friends in setting the stage for a new direction. Support makes a difference and holds you accountable.
Complete any training or studying you need for your new direction BEFORE dropping your income.

I’m working with a woman on the operational side of show business who wants to move into another aspect of the field. She has started delegating to more junior people in her office to free up her time. She has begun asking for introductions and meeting with relevant contacts. She takes an extra hour before work studying up on people and projects she wants to be knowledgeable about. Over the course of a few short weeks, she has made solid progress toward making a change. Preparation is making a huge difference, and she is moving very quickly towards solidifying her first opportunity to make money in the new area.

Execute: Start making inroads

If you need to become known in a new field, start asking for introductions and contacting strangers to gain information and to let them know what you are interested in.
Volunteer in your desired field to get experience and meet as many people as you can while doing so
Do what you want to do. Just do it. Start blogging, creating your art, volunteering your expertise or even charging for it. Just get going!
Get your resume ready, design the website, order the new business card. Just take steps in the new direction, no matter how big or small.
Explore the many possible ways your desired direction could provide income. For example, my son who started in music playing only one instrument, has no intention of being a poor musician. He’s learned how to program synthesizers, taught himself how to operate sound equipment and musical computer programs, jumped into musically directing musicals, volunteered as musical coordinator, contacted people who play on Broadway who have let him sit in on their show, and taught himself other instruments. He has been making money at most of these things since before his junior year of college. I’ve seen adults successfully take similarly fruitful steps in non-artistic contexts. Diversifying makes it likely you’ll work in the field of your dreams.

Leap: When the day job is getting in the way of the new thing … LEAP.

If you’ve prepared and executed, there may come an obvious moment where the math still isn’t quite right, but jumping in with full attention is now the only way it has any hope of ever adding up.

In closing, I’m reminded about a very likely obstacle that might be making you resistant to everything I’m suggesting here. TIME. You might be thinking: “I haven’t got time to do all this.” Yes. And? That’s for a whole other post.

I’ll leave you with this:
“We make time for what we want to make time for.”

Now go run those numbers again … let me know how we can help.

When Doing What’s Right Makes Everything Go Wrong

By Laura Berman Fortgang on August 4, 2017

A whistleblower losing their job and being black balled in their field. A politically active executive seeing no choice other than to resign after being harassed for their beliefs. A kid in school getting in trouble for trying to help the victim of a bully.

One of the most confounding dynamics of being human is acting on good faith, pure intentions, and thinking you are doing the right thing only to ‘ruin’ your life in the aftermath.

Having had both a front line and bird’s eye view to some of these scenarios, I can tell you that they are excruciating. That is, until we can step out of ourselves and see that the abrupt turn is actually a new direction being put right in our path.

In the short term there is pain, regret, loss, anger, second guessing and running the scenario over and over in one’s mind until it becomes an unhealthy obsession.

Losing a job or the ability to work in your field or attend your school have real and upsetting consequences. Short term remedies might need to be found.

However, the only way out is through.

I ask my clients to shift their perspective from seeing this turn of events as happening TO them to something that is happening FOR them.

To somehow, despite the pain and loss allow the turn to become an invitation to something good and dare I say, even better. (oooh that’s easy to say, but I know, harder to do)

When all you hit are roadblocks, you have to take a detour or find another way.

Take Stock
What are you left with? If a vase fell to the floor and broke into pieces, you still have something left—the water that spilled, the glass pieces, and the flowers that were in it. You can still make something new.

Allow Things To Change Form
This is where people get stuck. They can’t or won’t let their hard skills and soft skills change form and be put to use somewhere new. It’s hard to see another possibility.

It becomes an identity crisis. Who am I, if I don’t have what I just lost? This question has a positive answer. You have to set out to find it.

Determine the CORE
What matters now? What mattered to you about the ‘old’ thing you were doing or about the place that you were doing it in? What was central to your satisfaction or happiness with it? Where was the meaning for you?

Whatever your answer to these questions is, is the core of what’s left. THAT becomes the pursuit. Where and how can you exercise that CORE?

Whatever obstacles have been put in your way that keep you from doing what you want to do the way you want to do it are an invitation to change.

Change is a tall order, and it’s not easy. But if you want OUT of the pain caused by the block, you have to do a bypass.

Trust me – YOU WILL LAND—you will be found.

Let us know how we can help.

Let Darkness Give Way to Light

By Laura Berman Fortgang on August 2, 2016

There is so much darkness in our world right now: repeated loss of life to the ravages of terrorists or racial tensions, and the polarity of approaches to the political climate in the United States.

It’s not unusual for the events of the world to shuffle the balance of darkness and light within us.

Big disruptions cause big questions to arise.

Are you finding yourself questioning your own life as you move through the effects of consuming the news and social media?

Is the time focused on the mishaps, tragedies and angering differences ripping away at your sense of safety and order? I would expect that to be the case.

Times of uncertainty and chaos force us to get a grip on ourselves to stay sane. We need to get more specific about what works for us or not.

The negative is trying to find a release. And clearly, there is a lot of negative that’s been bottled up for a long time. It’s now making itself known, and the call is for us to counter it with all the goodness we can muster.

darkness vs light If your questioning is about your work and where you could find a better fit, take note of what it is, specifically, you can no longer contend with.

You’ve probably known for a while, but the darkness will find a crack to leak out of and then color everything you do.

Allow the dark to push you into the light. Let it force you to wrestle with what you would rather not contend with because it will get you to the other side (light).

It’s like hitting turbulence in a plane. It’ll rattle and bounce you around, but the pilot will find equilibrium and keep you going.

You’re the pilot, so be patient with yourself, moving away from what (or who) no longer serves you and pointing your face to any bit of positive news and hope you can find.

As humans, we need hope, and it has to start with each of us doing our part to emanate good stuff.

Does it stop the atrocities in the world? Does it fix any problem we face individually or collectively? Not immediately, but it puts us in a better state to make decisions and to brainstorm action.

If you are questioning your life or having a time where things are not as clear or easy as you would like, balance the darkness. Don’t let it eat you up.

Focus on what DOES work and create circumstances that allow them to multiply. Make bold, new steps from a balanced place.

Let the darkness give way to the light . . .

Were You Set Up for Success but Feel Like a Failure?

By Laura Berman Fortgang on July 1, 2016

Doing everything right is no guarantee that you’ll be happy or satisfied.

My Tedx Talk has been bringing me all kinds of interesting inquiries about coaching and people sharing their stories with me.

Sometimes, a theme emerges from a rush of interest and lately, I’ve been talking to young men in their late twenties and early thirties who had great promise tacked on them early on, and who are now lost and unsure of what would help them feel good about work.

These are people who did extremely well academically and got swept up in what the school and their parents assumed that meant they were to do. There was a path set out.

You showed success, you got put on the success track of more rigorous classes and more opportunities that led to impressive accomplishments for a college application.

They all got into prestigious schools and most did really well after having chosen majors that guaranteed them a job. They’ve worked at those jobs, and now hit a wall of loss and disappointment.

NO, nobody died, but the wave that swept them up crested. Now they find themselves out in the real world with good jobs, but no sense of who they are or what they want.

“How did I get here?” is what they are asking.

What about you? Are you asking the same question, even if for a different reason?

It’s so easy to get on a track, respond to what’s in front of you and succeed by jumping through the hoops held before you. It’s not unusual, then, at some point to begin questioning the whole thing.

What needs to happen next is something that I hope we can start asking our young people sooner. And we adults could stand to ask it of ourselves too.

Will the conventional path to success make you happy? A distinction needs to be drawn early on between success and happiness.

It’s not that they are mutually exclusive, but we get so focused on success in the hopes that it equals happiness (or at least money) that we don’t put happiness into the mix from the start.

Can we really answer that when we are in high school or college? That depends. Read on.

Here’s the problem: Nobody asked you why you wanted what you wanted.
You went along with what you were supposed to do and you did WELL. But doing well is no guarantee that you’ll like what you’re doing.

What do you want your life to look like?, kind of people do you want to be surrounded by? and What kind of location would you hope to live in?

What are the non-negotiables about working for you? For example, do you need to know you make a difference? Do you need to do something that is meaningful to you in some way other than a paycheck?

Can you know the answers to these things before getting out of school and experiencing life? I think you can. But it’s going to come from those that come before us modeling it for us.

Whether you are at this questioning stage yourself or you are guiding a younger person, the key is to dig deep and find who was in there before there were rules and fears and naysayers. That’s your Life Blueprint ®. Let us help you find it.

Coda: The High School Senior’s Decision That Became A College Freshman’s Evolution

By Laura Berman Fortgang on May 31, 2016

Employable, profitable, steady. Isn’t that what most people would want their kid’s course of study and career trajectory to be? For my eldest son, that path lasted less than the first semester of his freshman year and I couldn’t be happier.

In honor of the graduation season and new endings and beginnings, I’m revisiting the big decision my high school senior made last year and how it progressed through freshman year of college. How might it apply to you?

Oldest male child was good about doing his pre-requisite computer science schoolwork and taking his graduation requirement courses.

He played in his Big 10 College’s marching band and was noticed as an asset early on.

He auditioned to play percussion for the theatre club and was selected to work on two musicals. Other kids started to wonder out loud why the heck he wasn’t a music major. I guess it got under his skin.

By early November, there were conversations with professors in the arts school and before winter break, the ONE spot being vacated in the music program was a percussionist’s.

Eldest male child auditioned and GOT IT!!

I’m not writing this to brag. I want you to read and recognize what happens when you stop denying your DNA.

What transpired next shouldn’t be a surprise.

He was sleeping in practice rooms, he was at rehearsals, he was in eight performance groups and had class, he was traveling to NYC to see his professors perform or to get to sit in the orchestra pit on Broadway or to follow someone he respected to a gig.

He was back to eating, breathing and living MUSIC! We could barely get our son to answer texts! I was never happier to not see him or hear from him. (OK, maybe that’s a lie, but you get what I mean)

So what?

I share this as an appeal. Whether you are guiding a young person during graduation season, graduating yourself, or looking at the next horizon for yourself, please don’t give up on what you are wired for.

Are we all going to make a living at this very thing? Maybe not. However, I can tell you that you’ll need the essence of your wiring to be somehow satisfied, so don’t blow it off. Include it. Somehow!

And, in case you think my kid is impractical, I’ll let you in on something. He chose music education over being a performance major so he has something to fall back on, if needed.