Now What? Newsletter Articles

SUSPENDED REALITY

By Laura Berman Fortgang on September 28, 2011

by Now What?® Coaching Founder, Laura Berman Fortgang

THERE COMES A TIME, in almost every career transition, when clarity comes and a sense of determination kicks in despite every logical reason for it not to. There comes a suspended reality where you almost can’t believe you are moving forward in this new chosen direction yet there is no turning back. A cocoon of reason disintegrates and transforms into a new being that can take flight. It is in this suspended reality that courage comes and doors begin to open without logical explanation as to why.

In the movie, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, the hero must step out into an infinite abyss to get help to his ailing father. With each step out into the nothingness, a rock floor would appear to catch him and allow forward motion towards his goal. That same suspended reality is what it feels like to follow a new direction for your life and career that you know is right but have no evidence or indication of getting the result you want.

How do you do it?

Up The Faith

When you operate in space without a net, where most people in your life think you’ve lost your marbles, you have to believe in your self and the goodness of life in general to make it work. It’s not the time to be a realist. It’s a time to be naïve and assume that everyone and everything will work in your favor. It often will when you become a self-contained, pressurized bottle full of faith.

Follow The Breadcrumbs

When you are researching a new field, trying to find a job or pursuing a specific goal in your new direction, every lead is a hot one. Being in the gap between now and future busyness in your new career, you have the luxury of time. You cannot afford to ignore any possibility that can take you in your new direction. Talking to one person can lead to the next person and so on. You will be amazed at the path that gets laid out in front of you as you diligently walk through every open door.

Keep a Solid Home Base

All this is not to say you should abandon all reason. What allows you to move forward with blind faith and curious tenacity is having a solid home base to operate from. You’ll need at least one person who believes in you when the rest of your posse thinks you’re nuts. If possible, keeping your day job will help too even though you’ll have less time for fact-finding. And if you are in between things, it’s OK, you can still have a solid base. Decide what you can invest in yourself financially and give yourself the time to make the transition. If that is not in the cards, a solid base is harder, but not impossible. It’ll then be built on the faith we talked about above and involving others so you can move along more quickly. Ask, ask, ask—for help, support—whatever you need. Create a base of emotional support no matter which level of financial cushion you can operate from.

A recent client made a decision to act on a long-time hunch that it was time to move on from his current job. Despite the uncertainty of the economy and the ‘sure thing’ that his position was after 20 years with the company, he knew he had to do it. He got on the phone and explored every hint, tip or lead that was given to him. Despite his family’s fears that he was blowing a good thing, he persevered, went on interviews, visited other folks that had moved on from his company years before and went to industry events to meet new people to talk to. He did find a new job that he was happy with and six months later, learned that his former company was making layoffs in the department he had been a part of!

Acting on a hunch will usually lead you to enter a suspended reality. That’s what we at Now What?® Coaching are here for. Meet our facilitators.

WHAT MAKES LUCK FLOW?

By Laura Berman Fortgang on August 24, 2011

by Now What?® Coaching Founder, Laura Berman Fortgang

It is often debated whether you can make your own luck or not. Personally, I find my luck-making skills to be seasonal but fundamentally in place and ever-improving. However, through 20 years of clients and hundreds of Now What? ® Facilitator anecdotes, there is enough evidence to point to the circumstances that cause great luck to find you.

Skip Your Reasonable Ideas

Time after time, clients come to the career transition process with two versions of what they’d like to accomplish. One is the version they feel they likely have the power to make happen. The other, is the deepest truth about what they want.

“If I were to tell the truth….” is a statement I hear very often. Why wouldn’t you tell the truth? Why is it dismissed as a pipe dream? Those ‘impossible’ dreams hold the springboard to a new direction whether it’s a literal move to the dream or some interpretation of it.

Once the true desire is given air-time, it cannot be taken back, so action becomes inevitable. Small steps start to get promising results and the traction and speed often take off from there. Blocks seem to move away and your luck ‘magically’ changes. The truth WILL ‘set you free’!

Scare Yourself

The bigger the chances you take, the greater the ‘lucky’ things that begin to occur. Taking risks is a very big factor in shaking the trees and causing ripe fruit to fall into your life.

Michael, who had been out of work, had thought of calling an old boss, but talked himself out of it because their final encounter had not been the most stellar. He felt a nagging urge to call him but he was afraid to and did not feel it was appropriate to hope for a job by reaching out. With some encouragement, and a lot of butterflies, he gave his ex-boss a call. The boss was so glad to hear from Michael that he invited him in to see him. They met, found they both had felt bad about how things had been left earlier and Michael left with two strong leads for jobs at companies where his boss had contacts.

As ‘luck’ would have it, after several weeks, Michael’s old boss had an opening that was a better opportunity than the other two leads he had been pursuing.

Get Gracious

Wanting your luck to change is almost the worst way to get your luck to change. What I mean is that when you focus on what’s missing, what’s wrong, what’s hurting, it’s really hard to get results to the opposite effect.

The way to shifting results and changing your luck is getting in synch with what you have. Despite wanting better, being gracious about what you already have, will pave the way to better luck.

Think of it in dating terms: If you’re desperate, insecure and twisting yourself into a pretzel to make a match (any match!) your long term relationship wish will be bumpy. If you are comfortable with how you are and like your life the way it is, you will make a charming, interesting person to meet and your chances of a match go up. It’s the same in making a goal come to be.

Find the good in the ‘bad’ and you will navigate on a smoother road to better days.

Using your endless well of creativity (yes everyone has it), you can find a bridge between your current circumstance and the one you want to create. You can find a way to align the secret goal with the reasonable plan and come up with one luck-changing game for your life.

Let us know how we can help.

IS Your DRIVE Derailing YOU?

By Laura Berman Fortgang on July 27, 2011

by Now What?® Coaching Founder, Laura Berman Fortgang

Finding yourself losing your satisfaction with your work or feeling like you just can’t motivate yourself the way you used to? Maybe you are even losing steam on a job search. Whatever the scenario, knowing why you are doing something and having a compelling reason to do so (besides a pay check) is a huge factor in succeeding at what you want to do.

Many people don’t realize it, but their loss of interest or mojo may have everything to do with what had motivated them in the past to get them to where they are now. What I mean is that we can actually outgrow our motivation! For example, if you were motivated to not be poor like your parents and now you have plenty of money but are losing interest in your work, it may very well be because you are not running on a motivator that means anything to you today. You already reached where the old motivation got you to! It’s time for a new drive!

On the other hand, there are situations where people are sooooo driven, that they ruin their relationships or the quality of their lives in tireless pursuit. Neither way seems to be how we are supposed to be living. The ideal, as years of listening to people tells me, is to have passion and a sensible balance (although not always consistent or perfect).

To find new motivation that is both healthy and up to date think about the following questions:

What vow did you make a long time ago that may now need updating?

(i.e. I’ll never be poor like my parents or I won’t be stuck like my mother/father was or I won’t be a teenage pregnancy statistic)

What needs must be met for you to be happy at work?

What issue calls you or galls you to the point where it motivates you to take action?

What image for the future compels you to want to make it happen?

When you are running on new fuel that matches who you are today and that means something to you, you will find it so much easier to take action even in the face of adversity.

Get into DRIVE and go!!!!

BORROW FROM THE PAST TO CATAPULT YOUR FUTURE

By Laura Berman Fortgang on May 27, 2011

by Now What?® Coaching Founder, Laura Berman Fortgang

For at least two years, I have been seeing a pattern in career transition clients that has confirmed a theory that I have relied on for a long time. It seemed that every time a client was really at a standstill in the progress of their career or even their job search, the key to reclaiming momentum and positive results was to pick up a piece of their past passions and add it to the current mix. Reinventing by including a forgotten piece of a person, seemed to unlock the doors to luck and results.

Recently, I could even add myself to the list of anecdotal evidence.

This year started with a slow drag. A long time employee had to leave suddenly and one of my children had to spend time in the hospital (all is fine). It was not the momentum I had anticipated. Once I finally surrendered to the inevitable pace, I had some time to think and I recognized that I wanted to have a lot more fun with my work. A series of ah-ha’s finally coalesced to one big volcanic flash of understanding. I needed to bring a huge piece of my past that had been put aside happily for seventeen years into the present.

You see, at the top of the year I had also treated myself to performing in my first musical in almost twenty years. It was more fun than should have been legal, and although I never consciously thought I missed performing because speaking fills that need for me, I realized I had left way too much of that part of me behind.

The ah-ha then was that I needed to include this in my plans moving forward. I did that by creating three new keynote speeches that included theatre within them instead of my normal, expert-based talks which always included humor but I did not ‘act’ in them. Within days, I wrote a blog post based on one of them. In less than 24 hours, I was asked to speak the following week on the topic and two more bookings of the other new keynotes followed. In a month’s time, two former speaking clients came to me to book me for events, one of them choosing one of these new topics. The speed and momentum at which this all occurred was monumental.

The doors flying open and the ‘yes’s’ that have ensued are too numerous to list here, but suffice it to say, it has been a welcome infusion of energy, satisfaction and money. Certainly, I also interpret it as a sign to keep moving forward with this new direction.

This is what I know to be true for many of our Now What? clients. Reinvention today is not about pulling a new idea of the sky, but rather, about folding a forgotten piece into a new form that matches who you are today. You must identify what that is and engage it now. Let us know if we can help.

What Language Do You Speak?

By Laura Berman Fortgang on April 14, 2011

by Now What?® Coaching Founder, Laura Berman Fortgang

Spanish? French? Arabic? German? Those are not the languages I am looking for when I ask what language do you speak? I am wondering if you up-language or down-language when you write or speak about yourself. By that, I mean do you undersell, oversell or get it just right?

Whether you are marketing yourself as a business owner or a job candidate, the use of words is critical to your success.

I have had the recent pleasure of working with a director-level job candidate who exemplified the power of our choice of language.

Her resume read like a younger person with less experience than she really was. The language was underselling her accomplishments and despite almost fifteen years in her industry, her resume read like that of a young hopeful.

She reworked the language to be more powerful and to better exemplify her solid experience. Entries like “Established a ____” became “Maintained full responsibility for ____”. And “Implemented _____” became “Pioneered the implementation of ____”.

It was no surprise that interview opportunities started to show up more readily once the changes were made.

Your word choices are colored by how you see yourself. Are you afraid of bragging? Do you lack confidence in your accomplishments? On the other extreme, do you embellish the truth too much? Finding the right balance is key. A strong self-image is important as long as you can wear ‘the suit’ you carry yourself in well.

Try this: Have someone read your website, business brochure or resume out loud to you. Then, answer these questions:

How did it feel to hear the language used in your materials?
If it was hard to listen to, why do you think that is?
Could the documents use some toning down or some ‘up-languaging’?

Before you change anything, have your buddy listen to you reading it. Get their opinion of your answers to the above and make some changes accordingly.

If your language needs upgrading, be aware that you’ll need to practice saying those words in a mirror or mock interviews to get comfortable wearing them. If you over embellished, practice being more truthful and know you are enough as you are. Finally, become very conscious of what you say and please, choose to speak the language of success.