Now What?® Coaching

from Laura Berman Fortgang

Laura Berman Fortgang

It’s Garbage Day

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garbage-can1It’s time to take out the trash, folks, even if the trash is YOU.  I know that sounds rude, but it’s a new year and I’m turning 51 this week and as my patience for nonsense wanes at an astounding daily rate, I am passing my sass on to you. 

 

This is not a “misery loves company” scenario. No.  It’s an I-don’t-care-what-you-think-of-me, but I do know what works slap down.  I want my sass to slap your _____(rhymes with sass) into action.  Maybe some ego mixed in there, but no harm is intended.

 

Do you want to gain clarity in your life? Do you want to figure out your next career steps? Do you want to feel commitment to a bigger vision of what’s possible for yourself?  Then, call it a trash day every day for the rest of this month and get on with it.

 

People underestimate the importance of a clear slate to strategizing new horizons.  We mistakenly think we can compensate for and overlook the physical clutter, emotional baggage, poor health, soured relationships and dysfunctional work or home scenarios.  We think we can carve out an escape route and all of that will fall away behind us and it’s just not true.  Problems will follow you even into a shinier new situation. Wading through the garbage is what gets us to a clear, new, unfettered path. 

 

I am not advocating for perfection and tidiness in all areas, but what I am asking for is a higher level of awareness.  Garbage drains you of energy, mental bandwidth, creativity, awareness of your intuition and peace.  Without those, you are just existing and not growing and probably feeling down and discouraged.

 

Michael is a high-level, well-paid executive who has lost his edge.  He doesn’t feel any passion for his work anymore although he did five or six years ago.  Relationships are strained at his job, he’s wearing out his friends with the same repetitive complaints and he doesn’t feel motivated to keep up with his exercise routine.  He hired me because he wants to make a decision about where to focus to find a new job opportunity.  Where we started was with the clutter.  Sustainable, good decisions aren’t made in the midst of chaos.  As he addressed the chaos, I could hear his confidence building.  Week by week, his conviction and vision of what he wanted for himself grew.  The ah-ha’s are already breaking through like the sun does after a rainy afternoon, and I know that definitive decisions and actions on the career move are immediately imminent.

 

Shouldn’t that be you?  It’s garbage day.  You know what to do.

Protect Yourself from Yack, Yack, Yack

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WaitingRoomHave you ever been sitting in the waiting room for an interview or other important meeting where people start yacking? Some are bragging, some are just answering questions from the braggart, and some are trying to stay out of it but suffering through the noise unable to block it out.

Sound familiar?

Which one are you? Does it matter?

Let’s explore why it does matter. It’s all about energy. When you are nervous about an interview or meeting new people, you need all the energy you have for you. The braggart is sucking energy out of the room by talking loudly, the person answering the questions is getting their energy sucked out of them and even the person who is gritting their teeth through it is losing energy to the scene going on.

Now the braggart thinks they are “all that” but the truth is they are not in the best standing either. They may go into the interview a bit too adrenalized and full of the energy they sucked from everyone else. That’s not always the best impression either.

So what to do?

Conserve Your Energy

No matter which one of the three holding room types you are, managing your energy is an important skill.

Imagine you are a big tank like those that hold water or gas. Every time you get nervous, stressed or someone steals your energy by being negative or taking up all the air in a room, your tank springs a leak. Your job is to keep your tank from leaking.

Take Slow Deep Breaths

You don’t have to close your eyes and go all zen, but take deep, slow breaths that you can really physically feel as your lungs fill up and expand. Let it out slowly. Deep controlled breathing soothes the nerves and brings oxygen to where it’s needed.

Focus on Something

If you don’t want to focus solely on your breath for the duration of your wait, read your notes or even pretend you are reading something. Keep your focus on your internal self not out into the room where you could get sucked into a conversation.

Dissuade Space Hogs

If someone does try to break into your space, you can politely say:
“I hope you’ll excuse me, I’m determined to read this now.”

OR

“I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m better off keeping quiet right now.”

(Try these on planes when you don’t want to engage a chatty seat mate, too!)

Envision Your Results

With eyes closed if you can, take a couple of minutes to envision in your mind’s eye how you want the meeting to go. Imagine the job being offered to you or your proposal being accepted. Imagine friendly faces inside that room you are waiting to enter. If you’re not feeling confident, imagine yourself very confident in stance and attitude.

Consider this your mental preparation.

Yacks are hacks. Hold your tongue as tempting as it is and fill up your tank with the good energy you’ll need to shine.

Eight Ways to Beat Hibernation

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by Now What?® Coaching Founder, Laura Berman Fortgang

In the United States, we have a ridiculous ritual on February 2nd where we wait for a groundhog, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to see (or not) its shadow as an indication to how soon spring will come.  This year, he did not see his shadow and the prediction that spring will come early was announced.  Now, granted this is a large country, but in my part of it, the Northeast, we’ve had a blizzard, grey days and significant cold ever since the pronouncement was made.

It’s dark, gloomy and great fuel for a good case of SAD  (seasonal affective disorder). What does that have to do with career transition?  It could be used as an excuse to not take any action during the last doldrums of winter.  That would be a dreadful waste of time.  So despite any tendency to hibernate, here are eight things you can do to be productive.

Organize—Straighten up, create systems, create a productive working environment, get things in working order. If you’ve been staring at a mess for months, it may be time to call in some help — professional or not.

Upgrade—Eliminate problems by upgrading equipment if possible.  Upgrade your own behavior, if need be.  Pick one thing or behavior to upgrade and do it.

Resume Work—This is a perfect time to work on your resume or your bio if you are a business owner or biz owner to be.  Take quiet time, champion yourself and check in with someone who can advise or give you help.

Network—Work against the sluggish winter mood by connecting with people.  Make coffee and lunch dates for business purposes and a little socializing wouldn’t hurt either.  Take advantage of inexpensive networking events, too, if you have some in your area.

Take class—Wake up your brain by learning something new.  Whether it’s related to your current or future career track isn’t a must.  Just take anything that interests you and engages you.

Prune—Let go of things and people! Let go of clothes you’ll never wear again.  Take people off your email list who you truly have no intention of connecting with. Throw out broken or useless things you keep around. 

Focus—Take one aspect of your job search, research, business building or career exploration and focus on it.  Try for a short period to not be concerned about multiple strategies.  Just one angle to focus on will help stop any overwhelm and give you some momentum to launch into spring with.

Plan—Pull out a calendar and plot a plan for your success.  Put it on your calendar when you’ll land that job. Yes, the exact date. Or put down the day you get your first paycheck in your new home based business.  And then, from that date, work backwards and plan what has to happen in order to get the desired result.

So if you are feeling the snail-like effect of the winter hump, know that you can do less and honor your body’s pace but multiply your productivity moving forward with these few simple strategies.

Let me know when spring hits where you are.  I’m ready!!

Milestones

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by Now What?® Coaching Founder, Laura Berman Fortgang

I’m coming off of a Mexican spa  vacation and celebrating my 50th birthday by performing my one-woman show  in New  York City.  This year also includes my husband’s fiftieth birthday and our 20th wedding anniversary.  The teenager will get his permit this summer, the tweens are in their last moments of kid-hood, one of my parents passed the 80th birthday mark and my mother beat a major medical challenge last year.  So much to take in, so many tectonic plates shifting.

What does all that personal stuff have to do with you, the career explorer?  Lots, I think.  No matter what age you are at, I’m sure you have expectations about certain milestones in your life.  You might have solid ideas about what should be happening in your life based on a certain age or career marker.  My suspicion is those hopes could become sources of mild suffering. OK, maybe more-than-mild stress.

One of the toughest times in my life (whole story in The Little Book On Meaning)  was due to what I thought should happen by the time I was thirty and I speak to people every week, young and old, who lament that their expectations about not having certain age-milestones met.

Who made these milestones up anyway?!  Likely, they are based on old models of life expectancy. Clearly, there are some biological markers that we can’t avoid but science is doing a pretty good job of extending those.  Nonetheless, milestones are just another human device designed to make us screwy.

The passage of time is inevitable. What you do with that time is what matters and to feel fully alive, you have to use all you have at any given time.

Bodies age, minds go soft, knowledge becomes obsolete and technology will blur it all.  THAT MEANS that to stay on top of your game in the career world and in life, you have to become more and more adept at letting go of what is no longer serving you.  That doesn’t mean that new is always better, but it does mean that as the rate of change accelerates, you need to stay closer to the core of who you really are.  The faster things move, the harder it is to keep up if you are trying to stay on the path that someone else cut out for you but has nothing to do with who you really are.

Yes, you have to pay the rent or mortgage, but you also need to know that what makes people sick is working at something the majority of their waking hours that is essentially killing their spirit.  If not their body, too.

What to do:

Take a break

Take a vaca or stay-cation.  Get a break from what might be taxing you.

Evaluate what to keep

Use part of the time to do some introspection about what is worth keeping from your current work scenario (whether you can realistically put what stays and goes into concrete reality is not the point here).

Decide what you miss

Is there something you love to do or used to do that you wish you could put back in your life now?

Plan a crossover

As simplistic as it may sound, start writing a plan (yes fictitious) of how you could keep what you want and bring in more of the missing pieces into your job or life.  It could mean switching careers but at this point, being realistic and worried is not pertinent.

Do one thing a day towards it

Even if you are convinced that you are beholden to your current scenario and can’t make a change, act as if you could.  Take small actions daily that research possibilities, make connections and tease the fates.

You will be released. 

This is one of those things that you are just going to have to take my word for.  If you do a small thing a day towards making a change, even if you are not fully convinced you can or will ultimately make that change, something will give.  You will find yourself with new opportunities and new relationships that may just surprise you.

There is no right time or milestone.

Ignore convention—There is no written code of what can happen by when.  Yes, you want your retirement secured and you have other goals, but be honest with yourself.  You have one life as far as we know so live it NOW.  You may not be around to do so later!

Happy Milestone Birthday to me and let’s get living people!

Halloween: Addressing the DARK Side

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By Laura Berman Fortgang

For years, we coaches have insisted that coaching is distinct from therapy.  It is,  but we are trained to recognize the dark  side of life and personalities and we are not afraid of it.  It comes up. It happens.

In the spirit of Halloween, and the sometimes-scarier aspect of ourselves, there is much to learn from the dark side that can help in the discovery of next steps in life and career.  In the Now What?® process, we have found a turnkey to shifting the dark  side to breakthrough-worthy information. 

We all have our story.  And we all have adversity we’ve had to overcome.  It’s not fair to say that one person’s plight is greater to bear than another’s.  Only we can go through it and only we can judge its severity and lasting effect.  

The difficulty is in that as much as we think our personal life is separate from our career choices, the truth is that it is not.  What runs our minds motivates our actions and our choices.  For many people, it becomes so habitual that it does not even register that it’s a choice; one that can be changed.

The dark side for a lot of people comes to how they see themselves, how they see the world and also, what motivates them to persevere.  For many, their core motivation can be fueled by a reaction to negative circumstances. 

“I’ll show them!”
“I’ll never be like them!”

or

“I don’t measure up, I’ll never make it.” (some people work harder under this assumption)

These motivators have worked for people. Nothing wrong with that, but where the potential is for a greater success and greater satisfaction is to shift your motivation and self-concept to something you DO want to be versus something you are running away from or reacting negatively to. 

This changes your energy right away from a fight and adversity to a sense of purpose.  Subtle?  Maybe, but very powerful.

A recent client came to the Now What?® Process full of negative self-concept and negative motivation.  All energy was directed at getting out of a job he hated.  Nothing wrong with that, you might think.

Our early conversations were full of frustration and dead ends.  Every idea of a potential positive step or direction, especially his own, was stuck in STOP with hardly a peek at GO.

The breakthrough came when the dark side was “outed”.  Once he saw his adversity was mostly caused by his own mindset, he was able to choose differently as unnatural as it might feel.  Beyond his attitude adjustment, was the underlying motivation for his actions until this point.  Every choice he made career-wise was rooted in a quest for independence.  That doesn’t sound negative in itself, but instead of pursuing work that he would thrive at and be fulfilled by, he chose paths he did not like but could secure a certain amount of independence from others in his family.

Once someone becomes conscious of these negative and darker sources of their choices, the awareness allows for change.  For some, it’s a constant effort to not be reclaimed by the habitual dark patterns but daily effort and daily conscious choice can point you to brighter horizons.

This particular client broke through and saw positive opportunities start to appear. “Chance” meetings on the bus to work that could help the new direction he hopes to pursue.  “Sudden” opportunities to try out his new area of interest came along as well.  Truly, there is no magic or coincidence to it.  It was his mindset and choices showing him where opportunity always was.  Now, he could see it. Before he was blinded by his outlook. 

Take off the scary masks, folks.  The façade is not serving you and you can’t see well through them.  Take a peek at the dark side only to shift gears and recognize where to find light.  The answer to your “Now What?” will come along more quickly.

 

Now What Q&A-Unemployed and Interviewing

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Today’s question comes from a member of our community who participated in a recent Community Call, and is answered by Laura Berman Fortgang.  

Question:

My position as a Benefits Manager and HR generalist was eliminated last year.  When I’m on an interview, I need a   better way to answer the question:  What have you done in the last year? The caller then described some of the positions for which she had interviewed, yet did not convey enthusiasm for them.

Answer:

My immediate gut reaction is it sounds as if you don’t want a job in this field.  I get that you need money and it’s the path of least resistance.  In a new field there might be an initial salary reduction but with growth potential.  You might like to take a look at the life story exercise in Chapter 4 of Now What?®.  Interpreting your life story will help you pick up on themes and generate ideas about future roles to explore.                                                   

In terms of how to respond to interviewers who ask what you’ve done since becoming unemployed, the most important thing is to show that you’ve been using the time prudently, whether that includes researching certain fields or learning something new.  Focus on the positive and on how you’ve been productive with the time.