Now What? Newsletter Articles

No one likes to be unemployed. Anxiety is high as uncertainty becomes your daily bread. Doing the hard work of securing a job is enough to make you want to take very long naps even on the sunniest of temperate days.

You put on your “big boy/big girl undies” and get to the biz of finding the next job. There are nibbles, bites, interviews and close calls.   Then, time drags on and …nothing. Things are adding up to nothing!

How long is too long to be without a job?

It’s not a question about living off your savings or how long you can keep yourself from sliding into a hell of self-doubt. More pointedly, how do you know when it’s time to take another tack?

Here’s my answer: As soon as you start feeling hopeless. Even the slightest bit.

I’m not kidding. If the doors are not opening and you are in your mid-fifties or over, it’s time to reinvent. If you’re younger, and your industry has changed radically, the same goes for you. If you do something that a younger person can do for less money, it’s time to move on.

Here’s the good news: You already knew that. You were likely hoping the easy solution for getting another job would turn up. The best way to get it to turn up (if it will at all), is to start on a new track.

You know how that is. Once you’ve moved on or you don’t want something anymore, it shows up. I’m not suggesting this as a trick, but it is a likelihood I want to make you aware of.

In the meanwhile, gather up your gumption and start moving. I’m not suggesting being irresponsible, but I am suggesting that whatever has been tempting you in the periphery may now be viable. Even if it takes some time to build, move in that direction.

What have you been putting off doing for a long time?

What have you been trying to sell to the job market that might be the foundation of a new business?

What other industry could use the skill set you’ve built (even if the industry is foreign to you)? What is something you’ve always dreamed of doing but fear you could not make a living at?

You likely have the answers to these questions. Here’s what will still keep you from taking action.

FEAR

It sounds like this:

“I can’t.”,

“ won’t make money at it fast enough.”,

“No one will take me seriously.”

“and don’t have the money to invest in starting something or going back to school.”

There are likely a myriad of other messages, but allow me to tell you the part you can’t see yet because you haven’t tried. I’ve seen what happens when people set the wheels in motion, and it’s usually pretty positive.

At first, you’ll get little bites or meet people who are willing to talk to you and explore with you. You’ll research on your own and see new possibilities. You’ll take baby steps and they’ll feel pretty good.

These are signs to keep going. Will this turn into the next job or career? It may or it may not. Either way, I can promise that the time you spend on it will not be a waste. You’ll either hit upon your next success (even if you need to supplement with other work) or you’ll discover something to apply to the original job search that will accelerate things. It will get you out of your slump and seeing things in a new way.

I would put my money on the new tack becoming the permanent change. That’s not just wishful thinking – it’s what I’ve learned from experience.

I recently worked with a man who had a middle management position in IT. He had suddenly been let go due to a merger and was not finding it easy to find a similar position elsewhere. The industry wasn’t shrinking, but he was well paid and not willing to settle for less. Not settling led to being unemployed for longer than he would have liked. Once out too long, it became harder to get a job.

By the time he came to me, his stress was high and the pressure was mounting. That’s never a great mindset for exploring next steps. Nonetheless, in an attempt to knock out the brain fog, I had him focus on something that he’s always wondered about doing versus trying to drum away at the same thing (that wasn’t working anyway). He quickly identified that the photography he did for fun was something he dreamt about doing for a living.

With some resistance, he started to talk to professional photographers in different aspects of the field. He spent more time working on his own photographic stories. In a few short weeks, he was getting positive feedback on his work, and he was getting a clear idea of what it would mean to try to give it a go.

He ultimately decided not to make it his livelihood, but spending time exploring it (while continuing his job search)made him realize he needed more creativity in his job. He felt he could achieve that by getting more creative about how he managed people and started talking about that in his next interviews. That seemed to make him more attractive, because he did land a job, in his industry.

Unemployment quickly turns from being an event in one’s life to a defining mindset.

THAT must be avoided. Treat it like a correction in the stock market. Things will get better, but it’s a time to adjust your portfolio for future gains. Similarly, adjust yourself. Consider things you’ve written off as useless or non-revenue making and see if they could become a new career path or infuse the old one with a new twist.

The trick is to act sooner rather than later.

When do you give up? Never. Just try a new tack.

Let us know how we can help.

What was your criteria for taking on your job or career?

Did you follow a romance or spouse to a new city and take whatever you could find?
Did you set out to fulfill the path you chose when you declared your college major?
Did life lead you to something unexpected?

Knowing what got you where you are has its merits. However, if you are asking yourself, “Now What?” and are ready for something else, it’s important to revisit your motivation.

If you’ve always gone with the flow or even if you’ve been highly ambitious, it’s a worthwhile inquiry to examine why you do what you do.

Why are you in this job? What brought you here?

One of the key factors in figuring out next steps is understanding your motivation. Being satisfied in your work requires that the motivation be tethered to something authentic to you versus something that is an expectation of you.

Even the desire to provide for yourself and your family, although based in a genuine internal drive, may not be enough to sustain satisfaction. In today’s world of work, people want more meaning than that.

The meaning will come from connecting your day to day work activities with a pleasing vision about how you are contributing. If you sell plastics and it pays well, but you are feeling antsy, you’re experiencing a lack of connection to something that matters to you.

How do you find that ‘thing? ’ It’s a process.

First, you have to decide you want it. Do you really want to do something that matters to you more than merely have the convenience it provides? It seems obvious to say yes, but think about this.

It could mean changing your life. It also requires believing that a change would make a difference to your sense of wholeness.

It’s an entire operating system for life. If you only buy into the operating system of making a living and saving as much as you can for retirement, it will be tough to find new motivation.

If you grew up motivated to not repeat a parent’s trajectory or to prove your worth or value, you may find that motivation is no longer enough to fuel you now. It’s like running on fumes that can’t take you very far. It doesn’t suit you anymore and provides no juice.

So, what might take its place? That’s for you to decide. Why do you want to work? Besides the money, what do you want to accomplish?, impact do you want to have? What calls to you or galls you to the point of needing to take action? and do you see in the world that needs your skill and attention?

There is more to this process of discovering what that ‘THING’ is that you could do, but take my word for it: the ‘why’ has to come first. If you don’t know WHY you want to work, it’s harder to name WHAT you’d like to do.

Take this first journey. Pick up Now What?: 90 Days to a New Life Direction to know how or watch my TEDx Talk. on finding a dream job.

Let me know how we can help.

Cilia: Plural noun, singular cilium
[sil-ee-uh m]
1. Biology. minute hair-like organelles, identical in structure to flagella, that line the surfaces of certain cells and beat in rhythmic waves, providing locomotion
2. Anatomy. The eyelashes

The Latin for eyelash is cilium and in biology, cilia provide locomotion for the cell. Moving your career forward is made possible by the eyelash ‘wheels’ that move it forward. In human terms, your cilia are people -the people in your life who will move your goals forward.

Whether you’re just starting out or are well-established, paying attention to and connecting with the people in your sphere is very important. It’s easy to get lazy or complacent but constantly keeping an eye on your network will go a long way toward staying current, hirable and primed for opportunities.

Colette was a VP level executive who proactively came to work with me. She had been in her position for many years, and saw that big changes in her company were likely in the very near future.

She knew she had not done much networking in her industry and that she needed to do so now to be well-positioned to find work if the restructuring she feared came to be. We worked together on a strategy and systematically for the better part of a year as she built relationships.

Coffee, lunch, conference planning and putting herself forth for industry events added up to rich relationships and within three weeks of her job ending, she was hired for a new position. The cilia moved her along to a new opportunity. She planned, she gave as much as she took, and she was curious to learn. The results she created were what she intended all along.

This idea is not just for people working in a corporate context. If you are running your own business or planning to, relationships may be even more important. Cilia will move you from new to established, from unknown to known, from no resources to a bounty of them.

When I started my coaching business twenty plus years ago, I only knew actors. I had no business contacts and was in an unproven field. I joined networking groups, I coached influencers for free so they could talk about my work from firsthand experience, and I spoke anywhere I could convince someone to let me.

As I met audiences, I built a database (pre internet!) and mailed out newsletters. Every contact was batting my big ‘eyelashes’ and moving my career along.

Recently, my Tedx Talk has created enough momentum to start reaching the very town I live in, demonstrating the power of today’s media. All of a sudden, after living here twenty years, people in town are starting to discover that the lady with the three kids who runs the music parents association has a successful career and something to say.

The cilia have now ushered me right into new opportunities where the next phase of my work could very well be brewing.

Social media is a big part of today’s cilia. It moves faster and builds bonds differently than traditional networking. It has some pretty big eyelashes, it’s only part of the equation. You still have to do the work of face-to-face, side-by-side and tête-à-tête. If you don’t know how, read THIS.

There is no replacement for the real work. As Maya Angelou said: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”.

Get out there, bat those eyelashes, and get your cilia activated to propel you forward!

Let me know if we can help.

It happened again.

I went to yoga and was inspired to share a distinction that could be useful. Again, the instruction was about the yoga poses, and it also made so much sense for life.

The teacher was encouraging the students in the room while we were all in a one-legged pose spreading the rest of our bodies into a pose that looked like we were flying.

She said: “Create space between the joints. Create space instead of worrying about how you look. This is not ‘look-at-me’ time. This is time to create space. Mental, physical, emotional, spiritual.”

In that moment, it made so much sense to me as a way to get the most from the pose, and it also resonated as a career concept. What are you in the game for? Are your career goals ‘look-at-me’ goals or are they goals for ‘creating space.’

It would help to clarify what I mean by creating space. Are you pursuing something that allows you to be and do all you are capable of? Does your work style or leadership style give other people room to grow or shine?

Does the product you provide (if applicable) help people expand or improve their world or circumstance? These would be ways that represent creating space and there could be more.

Certain stages of a career might require a healthy dose of ‘look-at-me’ behavior as you build your reputation. However, I would argue that you could easily be noticed or celebrated for being someone who creates space at every stage of the game, too.

For example, Dave was competitive and combative upon getting his second promotion at his company. He had gotten his previous promotion for being a cooperative can-do-er. He was awarded the new promotion on merit, as well, but he started to compete with others in a rush to climb the ladder.

He saw it as protecting his turf. When he didn’t get the next promotion in the time frame he’d hoped for and it went to someone else, he hired me to help him figure out what had gone wrong.

After six months, he was back on track and in good favor with leadership.

He also understood that if he had gotten the promotion in question, he had created enough bad will that he may have had difficulty having buy in, cooperation, and good team dynamics with the people he would have been managing.

He ultimately saw that not giving anyone else space had ironically hurt his chances to move ahead. As his reviews improved, he was ultimately promoted the next time around, and now he understood the kind of leadership that would be rewarded and fulfill him.

Do you ‘create space?’
If you do, how so and how can you do more?
If you don’t yet, where can you start to do so?
How does this apply to your home life? Your friends? Your primary relationship?

To create space, you first have to create space within yourself. How can you possibly expand your spirit of generosity unless you first expand it for yourself? Make room.

Breathe, stretch (try new things), learn, make mistakes, and most importantly, calm your stressed-out, busy mind.

Create space…….and you’ll create more, not less.

We are entering American Thanksgiving week which also heralds the start of the ‘holiday season’.

It’s that time of year again. That time when we re-evaluate and think about what we want the next year to bring.

It’s a time when we reignite charity in our hearts and feel a little more tender, maybe even sentimental.

In light of the recent attacks on Paris and elsewhere in our world, I’d venture to guess we are all just a little more aware of life’s fragility.

When we’re sensitive, more aware and even a little raw, we often benefit from heightened clarity. Our focus narrows and what is truly important becomes painfully clear. The superfluous melts away.

What matters?

That’s what begs to be answered, and I offer you this question as the appetizer to your holiday season.

What matters? What is really worth your time and effort and resources? What will ultimately make a difference?

Recently, I participated in a high-level mastermind group. I came in to the three-day event prepared to ask for coaching on a business idea I’d been brewing for a couple of months.

I was anticipating a flurry of ideas and a show of support for the direction I was considering. I was unprepared for what my colleagues actually helped me discover.

Being great coaches, they focused on what I said that made me light up. I was passionate about making the Now What? approach to career clarity and strategy the new norm, especially with young people

. I was excited about how schools and parents might use it to guide our young people toward a natural and meaningful path for them. Before I could even understand what direction I was spinning towards, they were throwing contacts at me that made me want to curl up on the couch in fetal position.

The names and places they were suggesting would be a big stretch.

After I shook off the shock, I realized that they had helped me to see what really mattered. As is often the case, it was clear to them before it was clear to me. I have no choice but to take the big stretches

. All the other priorities faded to the background. They don’t even seem to matter anymore.

It’s scary. It’s daunting. It’s a game changer. And, it’s really exciting.

What matters to you? What makes you scared and excited all at once? Act on THAT.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you meet the season with peace, strength, and an awareness of and commitment to what really matters. Wouldn’t that be better than all the hype and stress?

Let me know how we can help.