Now What? Newsletter Articles

Eighteen years—-gone in a flash. On August 28th, my first child will turn eighteen and on August 29th, he’ll be dropped off at college. That’s it. He belongs to the world more than ever. He’ll no longer belong to me.

Some of you may be going through the same thing with your kin or maybe you have to let go of a stage of your life or career right now. I think the transition is similar.

How do we make a transition to a new identity when we’ve held the current one so deeply that it is part of the fabric of our being? We have no choice but to move forward with the parts we can keep.

I won’t be needed as much. I won’t be included as much but what I can move forward with is my love for this young person and my intense hope that life gives
him a fair or extraordinarily great hand.

I can persist in my presence (at a distance) and be available when I’m needed. I can keep using my listening skills and my ability to guide with questions. And, oh yeah, I can keep filling his bank account. (Ha!)

It won’t be the same. It just won’t. And lamenting that won’t change anything or make me feel better.

The same with a job, a career, or even a marriage or partnership. No, life will not be the same. But we can move on with the constants; hard and soft skills, your life or work lessons and the impact you’ve made and can make again somewhere else.

In the Now What?® program we call the process of assessing what moves forward with you ‘separating the yolk from the rest of the egg’. Let’s keep the nucleus, the DNA that is organically you and discard the rest.

Everything that can be taken away is the rest. All that is undeniably you can move forward to your next adventure.

Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is… The only problem in your life is your mind’s resistance to life as it unfolds. ”
Dan Millman

You are not your job description, your nice office, your salary or even the perception others have of you. You are a living, breathing being that can create again.

You can create a new opportunity, a new relationship or a transformed circumstance. Human beings are highly creative and resourceful.

I’ll recreate the relationship with my son. I’ll keep my mouth shut more (at least I’ll try). I’ll work on quieting my need for information on his whereabouts and experiences.

(He was just on an overnight, two-day orientation at the university and it took everything I had not to text twenty times a day asking “What are you doing now????!!”) Since I won’t be able to see the state of his dorm room, I know I’ll nag less,and I’m sure that will go a long way toward building a different relationship.

We never lose what the past formed in us, but we do get the chance to choose how
we evolve through change. We don’t always choose the change, but we can let it grow us eventually even if we are temporarily hurt or bereft by our loss.

And granted, some losses take more time to mourn than others. Mourn if you have to. I know I will. But never stop moving.

In closing, a little spotlight on how mother and son are already moving forward. Being that my son’s chosen college is less than an hour from home he asked: “You won’t be coming to visit me all the time will you?” My retort?
“You won’t be coming home to have laundry done all the time will you?”

Touché!

Let go, and move on!

“What are my next steps?”

Coming from a client’s mouth, these words, although heard often, give me pause. Truly, any question aimed at me rife with expectation that I hold the answer to a riddle that is not mine, gives me pause. I usually respond with a question back.

“What ARE the next steps?” “What do you think?”

Just because I ask it back, doesn’t mean the answer is immediate, but it does surface eventually. It is their answer, not mine. However, more important is what blocks people from seeing what their next steps are. Sometimes, it is a lack of knowledge. Most often, I find, it’s a lack of vision. People can’t see (in their mind’s eye) where they are and what they need to do to achieve their goals. The landscape of time and space is too vast.

What does it mean if you can’t ‘see?’

Generally speaking, we all have vision, but we have it in relative degrees. Those we call ‘visionary’ tend to be able to imagine (see) far beyond the rest of us and conjure products or ideas that can change the landscape of commerce or society for the better and forever.

Others have what I’ll call mid-range vision. They can imagine and ‘see’ what they want to create for themselves, their families, their work, or their company.

Those whose vision is just a few feet in front of them will feel more limited in their ability to decide on next steps or choose a direction, and yet they may be extraordinary at executing tactical strategies that require discipline and attention to detail. Finally, those who claim they have no vision at all are blocked. I’ll get into why that might be shortly, but for now, know that it can be remedied.

In my observation, we are not limited to any one of these levels of vision. We might be able to operate across all of them in different contexts of our life. For example, Einstein could mentally ‘see’ his way to solve huge problems and prove theories, but he needed an assistant to find his keys and run the minutiae in his life. His vision was huge in one area and insufficient in organizing his own life. It can happen to the best of us.

Black-and-white, highly analytical thinkers like lawyers, engineers, scientists or those who use rational and logical thinking to feel safe tend to have a harder time with vision. Their minds are well trained to look for certainty and proof, and they will find it hard to jump over to the right brain to let imagination take over. If it’s unproven, it will be hard to accept.

Those who have experienced more than their fair share of trauma or emotional scarring in their past may struggle to trust the process of envisioning, dreaming or projecting oneself into the future. It was not safe to let down their guard in their younger years so it’s hard to imagine how it could be a good idea now.

How do we enhance our vision, then? What will let us see our next steps?

I can tell you that finding a way to seeing more clearly could mean some hard work ahead of you. Less than stellar emotional, physical, mental, or environmental factors in your life greatly diminish your ability to ‘see’. Everyone wants the big ‘ah-ha,’ but it’s the small victories that bring us into a clear vista with a longer view.

Rising above the pain and strife of daily life brings clarity, whether that’s clearing up unfinished professional or personal communication or delegating tasks that take up time and energy but don’t play to your strengths.

Is there a faster way to get unstuck? Yes, I think so. Get into nature. Be a tiny spec amongst the grandeur of nature and notice the vastness surrounding you. Take that awareness back to your life and you may discover the bigger thinking and action required to move out of a stuck place. The hard work of cleaning up your life will likely persist. However, with this new perspective, you may be able to approach it without getting hooked by what really doesn’t matter. The bigger vision that’s brewing within you will inspire you to move forward.

The key is renegotiating your place in relation to all that goes on around you. You have to be above it to see it. If you are climbing a mountain and you can only see the climb, you’re limited, and you will struggle. However, when you face out, away from the mountain, and take in the view, you’ll draw more energy from the perspective. The view only gets better the higher you get.

You can see and you will see but you must create the circumstances to make it possible. Now go! Climb on!

I’ve been struggling with what to write for a newsletter during the last couple of weeks. I’ve been so completely immersed in living Now What?

for many months as I wrote and prepared for the new book to come out in March that I’ve felt drained.

I took care of myself by taking a much needed week’s break. I slept, I caught up with my children, and I spring purged my home. And now that I’m back at the computer, there’s something bigger on my mind.

The earthquake in Nepal and the Baltimore riots are in the news so they are cramping my brain space. We are in another period of unrest and another crisis brought on by Mother Nature.

They are not really all that different from each other. Upset people who have been holding on to an underground rumble of anger are not unlike the earth seeking relief from underground pressure by reorganizing its platelets, unfortunately, under a very populated city.

Unsaid things are brewing underneath the surface all the time. For each of us individually and collectively, whether in a workplace, community, organization, or gang, the unsaid is at risk of coming to a boiling point.

This is true in career and clarity exploration as well. There is often an unspoken resentment or dissatisfaction that, when not addressed, builds up over time to become a problem we are forced to face. If we could have faced it before, it wouldn’t have been left unsaid.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to coach an executive during the course of 3-1/2 hour training on coaching skills. She presented a communication issue she was having with a new person who had come into her department.

As my questions probed more deeply, it became very clear that the problem was not really about how these two individuals communicated with each other, but rather something unsaid coming into light.

What became clear was that the executive resented this new recruit because she felt she should have the new person’s job. There was no need, in her opinion, to have a younger, less-experienced person as her boss.

How long would it have taken for the ‘unsaid’ to have leaked out through actions, tone, and difficult conversations?

It may not have been appropriate to come completely clean and be honest about the resentment right away, but it was important for the executive to be clear with herself and get to the truth. SHE was creating the problem, not the new hire.

As the coaching went on for all of 5-7 minutes, she also admitted that this resentment lit a fire in her to look at opportunities in her own company. Her research already turned up one. She will be applying for the job that would make her the new hire’s boss!

Rumblings create energy that will inevitably find a way to be released. We may not be able to control Mother Nature, but it’s important for us as reasoning humans to be aware that what’s rumbling, if left unattended, becomes a problem.

It’s unfortunate when the truth explodes through anger or violence like with the Baltimore riots and other unrest around the world.

When these crises feel like something we can’t affect because they’re too big or too far away, we need to remember that we can do something. We can bring peace to ourselves by telling the truth kindly and compassionately. Peace begins at home- the home within you.

What’s a job? A means to make money performing tasks that you are capable of but may not necessarily fulfill you.

What’s a career? A series of jobs that reflect growth, mastery and contribution to one or many fields.

Those are my definitions for the sake of creating context.

Is it okay when your career becomes a job? I suppose that depends on what you want out of work. It’s a welcome relief for some people when their work hits a plateau. They don’t really have to climb anymore or prove anything to anyone. They can coast knowing that they still collect a satisfying paycheck and can give attention and time to other areas in their life.

To me, and the people I talk to daily about work, a career that becomes a job is a career that has stalled. Like the owner of a vehicle, a stalled mode of transport is a ruined day. We naturally want to get the engine working again.

As far as careers go, we don’t have to be in a constant flurry of ambition. Ambitions and motivations change with us as we mature and take on new priorities. However, I can say with confidence that not having career goals or a trajectory of growth within your job, can quickly lead to restlessness and dissatisfaction.

As Dan Pink points out in his book “Drive,” recent research shows that people are motivated at work when three things are present: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Today’s buzzword is engagement. We want to be engaged. Let’s explore how to attain each of these things as a way to keep our careers from becoming ‘just a job.’

Autonomy

Unless you work alone in a vacuum, complete autonomy is not likely, but being free to make your own decisions and reach benchmarks in your own way is critical to feeling good about work. Knowing that you are trusted feeds into feeling capable and provides enough autonomy for you to experience growth and satisfaction in your work.

A certain amount of accountability proves to help performance, while being micromanaged or needing approval for every move grossly reduces one’s creativity and life force. Like being chained to the floor, a lack of autonomy will quickly frustrate you.

Questions to consider:

How can I negotiate more autonomy if I don’t already have it?

Where do I need to build trust to have autonomy for myself or where can I give autonomy to others?

Which relationships need new parameters to work well in the context of autonomy?

Mastery

According to Malcolm Gladwell, mastery at something comes with 10,000 hours of application and practice.

It may not be conventional wisdom to think of work as something where you can harness mastery (unless you’re a craftsman or practitioner of some kind). However, it is feeling competent and seeing a path for growth that keeps work interesting.

Ask yourself:

Am I still learning?

Is there room for me to grow here?

What do I still want to master?,

has been the biggest source of growth for me in the last year or two? and

What do I want to do more of?

Purpose

For some, a paycheck is enough of a purpose behind working. Again, those are not the people I come across. The people I talk to want to feel like what they do matters. They want to know that they impact those around them. They want to know that their part of the greater enterprise makes things better in the world. I’m not necessarily talking about a high-calling type of altruism, but certainly, feeling like what you do makes a difference inside or outside the organization (or preferably both!) does count.

Questions to ponder:

Do my values match the ones my organization holds?,

I stand for what my boss stands for?,

I have to hide part of myself to do this work or can I be me?

and Do my talents get used in this work (or at least somewhere in my life?)

Am I doing what I’m built to do?

I’m biased. I don’t want your career to feel like a job. There are times when it’s appropriate as other parts of your life really need your attention. However, to feel alive and well, we need to keep learning and growing.

Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. They are worth the effort. They can redefine your work and your life. Do you want a job or would you like a career?

Let me know your thoughts. Please comment or send an email.