Laura Berman Fortgang
Is FEAR on YOUR Menu?
Big career changes are traditionally served with a side of FEAR. A big, whopping, overflowing dish of terror might be accurate too. Can you do your best thinking and make clear choices while feasting on fear? NO!
In a flight or fight state, pumped up on adrenaline, our actions can be super powered in bursts, but a long inhabiting of the adrenalized state will interfere with memory and learning powers.1
One condition I have for working with a client who is figuring out next career steps is that they cannot be in a rush or panicked about their situation. Years of experience have taught me that although fear is an appropriate response when life hands you a curveball or you’re going through a difficult time, the exploration that will yield the most satisfying choice of work, does not come from extreme emotional conditions.
Effective career and self-exploration just isn’t possible in a flight or fight state.
Sidney worked in the food and beverage industry and was growing increasingly stressed and unhappy with her work. She liked her industry but not the demands of her particular job. She was being proactive by beginning to explore a career change, but her stress was so high that she had no bandwidth to make much progress. As panic grew, the process stopped being effective. It was like asking a person who can’t swim to calm down while she’s drowning.
What do you do if this sounds like you?
Change your order — If instant answers are the only thing that will satisfy your hunger for results, know that they are not likely to be long-lasting or fulfilling. Choose to make a healthy decision instead of jumping into instant satiation.
Dine instead of feast — With the intention of enjoying every course and savoring the experience, you’ll have a very different experience than a feast where the emphasis is on quantity and variety. Take your time. Chew carefully and slowly. If circumstances make it hard to do this, then create two plans: one that will hold you over and one that offers a longer term solution.
Keep temptation at bay — It’s so easy to weaken and let fear tempt you into letting yourself down. Keep fighting to uncover the truest answers that lie deep within you. If logic brings up fear and ceases all action, beware. Pause and decide again if what’s coming from this fearful place is the best choice.
This is a tall order, but it’s do-able. If you need support keeping fear off the menu, let us know. We can help get you ready to make a big change that will be healthy and fulfilling long-term.
1 Matthew Joseph Sharps, Processing Under Pressure: Stress, Memory, and Decision-making in Law
Making a Happy Change
If it’s time for a career change, here are some simple tips to help you slow down and take that next step intentionally. Rather than rushing or running away, take the time to get to know yourself, know what matters, and be mindful in your steps.
As this author expresses, this is ultimately about you, and when you tend to your true needs and desires, everyone benefits – family, friends, and coworkers.
“Schooled” – How A Recovering Perfectionist Found That Discomfort Really Does Equal Growth
There is so much I often write about ‘back to school’ season, but this year, I have a new take on it.
Over the last few weeks, I was ‘schooled.’ For only the second time in two decades, I went out for a local theatre opportunity to play a dream role. This past Sunday I ended a short three-show run as Adelaide in the musical Guys and Dolls, and it tested me… big time!
Snagging the role was a wonderful feeling and I enjoyed every moment of the whole process. Well, almost every moment… I wished we didn’t have to put on the show and we could have stayed in ‘play’ and discovery mode indefinitely. Getting ready to perform challenged my comfort zone. Anyone who has seen me speak or do theatre knows that I’m not afraid of being on stage. However, wanting to be the best I could be was an exercise in humility and perseverance. It was a tug between breakthroughs and disappointments.
I got schooled. Here’s how it went.
Language Arts– Luckily, this production was a ‘concert’ version. We were fully staged and choreographed but to keep costs down on sets (read none), to have script in hand. However, all songs were memorized. Damn! My mind which used to learn shows in ten days ‘back in the day’ struggled with that. Humble pie with a tough pill to swallow on the side. It was hard to accept that my dependable ability to memorize material was not so dependable anymore.
Math—When my oldest son was five and taking piano lessons, he would say “music is math, mom!” For community theatre, this show represented a high talent, highly professional group, many with degrees in pedagogy and vocal performance from prestigious schools. They came to the first rehearsal with their music learned! Ahhhh. I had to catch up on my ‘math’ and finding the time to study while keeping the rest of my life afloat was tough.
Social Studies—A small group of people gather with a common purpose. We are putting on a show. We go from strangers to friends over seven weeks to achieve a common goal. This one I could do!—easy class for me.
Gym-LEARNING DANCE STEPS. Developing MUSCLE MEMORY, practice practice practice. Just when I had one perfect execution, the next time would suck. Again, the inability to count on what was once a sure thing was upsetting.
Home Ec and Art—Almost as fun as learning and performing the role, was crafting costume pieces and personal props. I LOVE doing this. I can distract myself from other responsibilities for hours doing this. Pure joy.
Psychology—The horror of not being perfect. Despite studying with my voice teacher and having HUGE breakthroughs vocally on obstacles that have plagued me for thirty years, my goals for a perfect show every night were not reached. It became a lesson in hanging in there and giving it your all, despite setbacks and disappointments. I couldn’t give up midway because I didn’t hit that elusive perfection in one song. I found peace in thinking of Olympians who trained for years and could still have something go wrong in the critical moment when they were so close to the gold.
What happens when you get back to life after being schooled? You ask yourself: Was it worth it? Was there a gain? Were the lessons, mistakes and bumps worth the adventure?
Totally!
I set out to the get the role. I never thought about what I wanted out of it other than the joy of doing it. Once I started pressuring myself, I felt disappointed that I wasn’t flawless. I had a visceral experience of shifting in the understanding that you can still excel with imperfection and that it can be joyful.
What about you?
Happy Back to School!
Playtime Leads to New Career
Sometimes creativity takes you to places you never would have dreamed of! Places that even pay a living wage. Here, a former lawyer turned LEGO artist, says, “There are many ways to get to where you want to go, even if you don’t know where that is right now.”
What hidden talents may be waiting to be expressed in you?
Inspirational Career Story of the Day:
I Left My Law Career to Become a LEGO Artist (Video)
The Holiday Secret Sauce
I’ve written before about being Jewish and why I love Christmas. This past Saturday, when I went to yoga for the first time in awhile, I heard something from the teacher’s dharma talk that gave me new insight into the ‘Secret Sauce’ that makes the holiday season so special.
This may seem obvious, but stay with me. The Secret Sauce is wonder. Yes, wonder! 
Obvious in some ways: Kids remind us of the bright-eyed innocence we once possessed, the lights and sights (New York City at Christmastime, a snow covered field) and the glitter and majesty of gifts, parties, and religious rites.
But it’s more than that. Wonder is a state of full presence. It’s a state of connection to our greatest capacity for love and compassion.
As Jesse Prinz, a professor of philosophy at the City University of New York, said, we might feel a physical sensation like the swelling of our heart when we are in a state of wonder. Cognitively, we cannot connect what we are experiencing to something we already know or it wouldn’t be wonder.
Even if we’ve seen something before, if we feel wonder, we are seeing it in a new way or as if we were seeing it for the first time. We might even gasp and utter the word “Wow!” as we process what we see and feel.
The heightened expectation, even in the face of an event we anticipate annually, puts us in a state of wonder. For there to be wonder, there must be a lack of certainty. We can’t be ‘in’ wonder if we know what is going to happen.
It’s like my yoga class itself. I go to class with a reasonable expectation of what will transpire. We’ll sit on our mats, wait for the teacher to begin, spend some time centering and reflecting, warm up our bodies, then move in to increasingly difficult movements until we hit a high point and start slowing down.
Finally, we get to stretch and then lie down in savasana (dead man’s pose—my favorite —who doesn’t love lying down to nap while exercising!?) I know what’s going to happen. But I don’t really .
I have to be fully in the present to be in the poses. The endorphins kick in as the work gets harder. Fully present to breath and movement, and soon, I’m in wonder.
Wonder at the simplicity that is also difficult and the collective breath that moves the whole room to a place of greeting the divine within us and each other (although late comers to class asking me to move my mat so they can find a place pisses me the hell off—divine evolution is clearly a work in progress!)
Consider this, if you will. We do this thing called the holidays every year. We basically know what to expect and yet it induces wonder. We must surrender a lot of ‘reality’ to feel the magic.
This can also be a sad time of year for so many. If the ‘secret sauce’ is wonder and not dependent on family (which most people complain about anyway!), can we create that magic for ourselves? How do we take a melancholy time and turn it into wonder?
As I said, it requires surrendering reality and getting in touch with the love, the discovery, the newness of right now whether it’s fully desirable or not. It’s not easy but it is in our sphere of influence.
As we enter the final days of this year, consider how you could launch in to 2016 with wonder and do things differently than you’ve ever done before? How might you change things up to allow a state of wonder to guide you?
Ponder that with a hot chocolate or hot toddy. I’ll see you on the other side of the holiday season.
