Crises Reveal The Essence of Things

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It is said that the true state of a marriage is laid bare in the face of a crisis. If it was strong, the relationship will grow stronger with the crisis. If it was already breaking, the crisis will deepen the fissures to breaking. It is the same for each of us as individuals. We are being shown what we are made of.

Crises Reveal The Essence of Things by Laura Berman FortgangThe current state of affairs among the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic is laying bare our own essence. The novelty of our new “normal” is wearing off and reality is setting in. We are seeing the virus hit closer to home as beloved celebrities and people you know are being affected or passing away. Generally, we are scared, and what is revealed is the state of our ability to deal with the unknown and our ability to be alone with that state.

There are so many questions and things that don’t have a clear solution right now. However, I offer you a few things to think about, journal about or discuss.

1) How are you?
I’m not asking about your physical health, but rather about your state of mind. How ARE you? Are you freaking out? Are you mildly worried? Are you relatively at peace knowing that you are controlling what you can right now?

Be with that for a few minutes. What is being revealed about your essence – your baseline of how you deal with things?

2) Who are you?
How do you show up during this time? Are you a helper? A researcher? An organizer of others? A nurturer? A hunter/gatherer? (our family’s joke about the search for toilet paper and essential items). Are you an alarmist? The rebel? The activist? The one fueled by outrage? (all are just fine)

What is the crisis showing you about how you show up? For me, it’s not much different than “regular life.” I’m the driver; I make sure young people get out of bed and don’t teen-sleep the day away, make sure there’s a meal every night, and herd the screen worshipers to connect as a family every night. (How much do I love them not being able to run off to friends, jobs and activities? Sorry. Not sorry). Professionally, the driver is making you think, absorb and evolve. It’s who I am. It’s what I do.

3) Who do you want to be?
If these questions are not revealing characteristics that you’re happy with or proud of, consider who you want to be. Where can you refocus your energy to practice the qualities you want to embody as you ground yourself for whatever is awaiting us?

A dear friend and colleague of mine often speaks about her aspiration to live with grace. Whenever she’s faced with a challenge, she puts her attention on handling all of it with grace, her highest value.

We are on hold. In the absence of action, there is suspension. Like the moment when the orchestra stops playing as the conductor raises both his arms in the air indicating a pause. All goes still, but there is anticipation and preparation lingering and holding, until the sudden indication that all can move forward again in a burst of sound.

For all of us, the outcome is unknown. Will there be a depression? Will the loss of life deeply impact how we can lead our lives? Will we see or want different things when we get to resume?

We don’t know. We are still in the surrender. We will be transformed by this.

Watch how and who you are being. It’s the best preparation for what is to come.

This Will Be the Year I Enjoy the Holidays

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Every year, I set out in mid-November to “enjoy the holiday season.” To me, that means not rushing, stressing, and feeling pulled to complete so many obligations. Instead, I imagine watching as many corny Christmas movies as I want, wrapping gifts with time to spare, being done with shopping before the stores swell with holiday shoppers, and really relishing the time with friends and family. Well, hahahaha (or should I say Ho Ho Ho?) It never happens.

BUT…

This year, I’m on track to really do this.

Running for office left me with a very open calendar in November and December because I didn’t know if I’d be training for taking office, finding staff for a January inauguration, and setting up my life for this new honored position. With the results not being what I’d hoped, I had November and December available to me like never before.

It seems so obvious, but what was wrong all those other times, (and even what was wrong with my coaching advice for years) was that being concrete about where one could say “no” is just not enough. It’s enough to help enjoy the holi-DAY, a special event here or there, but not enough to create a season that is really fun and joyful.

This Will Be The Year I Enjoy the Holidays by Laura Berman FortgangShopping early enough to avoid crowds, taking my time with all the things that used to be last minute, really indulging in connecting with people who want to get together before the year is out, and having the time to plan and strategize the new year has been like pressing “pause” on the usual holiday chaos. It’s truly a pleasure.

This year’s schedule was an unintended bonus, and I now know what it feels like to have the holiday season I’ve always intended. Once we feel it, we have sense memory. Our body remembers, and so will our cognitive memory. We can’t unknow what we now know!

So, if I were to make this repeatable and shareable so you can do it too, I’d say:

  • Move a lot of your business planning to early fall.
  • Keep your days light in November and December (allows for spontaneity).
  • Take advantage of stores being open very early (before work or right after school drop off!)
  • Bake your goodies early and freeze them.
  • On any night that you cook, make double so you’ve saved yourself time another night.
  • Decorate early too. It feels like holiday longer!
  • Chill. Just ratchet down the holiday hysteria and give up perfection … it ain’t happening!

I hope there’s still time to put this in place for the last two weeks of the year, but if not, start planning for the next. It takes that much intentionality. I promise it’s worth it.

And while you’re at it, planning your new year should include our Now What? Home Study Kit if you are up for a career shift.

Strip Away Your Past – Reinvent Your Future

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Pun intended!

Here’s how one woman changed everything to follow a new career path that better suited her.

How to Reinvent Yourself at Any Age

Allow Your Intuition to Lead

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When contemplating a career change, sometimes the mind is only part of the decision-making team.

Allow Your Intuition to LeadHere are some ways to tap your intuition about when it’s time to leave your current situation, and what might be next.

Allow your intuition to connect you to the “who” you are becoming.

How To Build Your Career On Intuition

I Need to Make a Change, But I Don’t Have Time

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par·a·dox
/ˈperəˌdäks/
noun
noun: paradox; plural noun: paradoxes
1. a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.

Change can’t happen without attention. Unless you just want to be on the receiving end of change . . . the stuff you can’t do anything to control. If you want to be navigating your own career, you’ll have to give time to the development of strategy and the execution.

I Need to Make a Change, But I Don't Have Time

Life is overwhelming. Careers demand more and more of our being. And still, if you don’t like how it’s going, you have to MAKE the time to go back to the drawing board.

How to make time:

  • Wake up thirty minutes early
  • Take one night a week that is sacred and cannot be scheduled
  • Drop one obligation that you’ve been meaning to give up anyway
  • Say no to one unnecessary meeting a week
  • Cook enough food for two meals every time so you can save nights of cooking
  • Outsource or delegate one household chore

What to do with that time:

  • Research options you’ve been considering
  • Make phone calls to network/meet up with people you’ve been meaning to sit with
  • Increase your exposure in your industry
  • Read a book that will guide you to decide what’s next (hint, hint: Now What? 90 Days to a New Life Direction)
  • Redraft your resume
  • Send out said resume
  • Start the business you’ve been dreaming about as a side hustle
  • Test the viability of an idea you’ve had

Please don’t tell me you need a change, but you don’t have time. You’ve got time for what you want to have time for. Now, you just have to want a change more.

Let us know how we can help.

When Life Offers You a Hard Right

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When I was five years old, my father was offered the opportunity to establish an office for his large American employer in Caracas, Venezuela. (It was a much healthier and wealthier place then that it is now.) I wasn’t privy to how the negotiation with my mother went down, but they decided to take the one-year assignment. It turned out to become a six year stay, and one I am forever grateful for as I’m still a Spanish speaker and a lover of exploring different cultures.

At least once in each of our adult lives, we’re likely to have to make a decision that pulls us towards an unproven opportunity and away from the comfort of established routine and relative certainty. I’ve listened to many a client weigh the fear and lack of a guaranteed outcome with the excitement and “rightness” of what’s calling.

In the last couple of years, I’ve worked with two established medical professionals who were presented with the opportunity to go in a related but new direction. One, felt deeply called to provide more holistic and integrated medical care but feared being ridiculed by the ‘establishment’ and never being able to return to traditional medicine if her leap did not work out. The other, was a very well-reputed surgeon who felt compelled to bring her talents to the world of artificial intelligence in the medical field (robotic surgery to be specific). She had no guarantee that it would be a wise career move although it sounded very plausible. Both women ultimately left the comfort of certainty to reap very positive results.

When Life Offers You a Hard RightThis brings me to my own hard right. Earlier this month, I declared a run for New Jersey State Assembly which is a part-time designation. It would be a tremendous honor to represent constituents in the everyday decisions and votes that affect their lives. Some of you may recall that I did run briefly in 2017. We’ll call that the apprenticeship. This one is fully professional and staffed by people who know how to win elections.

Although I had run before, it was not in my plans to run this time around. There were very big responsibilities keeping me in the land of certainty. However, let’s just say the Universe conspired to open the door so I would step through it. An abundance of professional support came to me without effort. As is so often the case, the “coincidences” were too great to ignore.

I intend to bring my skill set of solving intractable problems with small business owners, individuals who are career seekers, and executives to NJ state government.

What is pulling you off the known path? How can we support you to decipher what it is or to make it happen?

Join me at Kripalu at the dawn of spring for a Now What?® Retreat. Let’s get you started.

Prepare to join our next discounted round of Now What?® On Demand. Registration begins in March. This is perfect for you if you want to work on your own from the comfort of your own space.

And if you can lend your support to my hard right, it’s permissible from US residents and every dollar counts. Thank you in advance!

To Be Or Not To Be? That Is The Question

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To Be Or Not To Be? That Is The QuestionIn Shakespeare’s famous soliloquy, Hamlet was questioning whether or not to keep living. That is not today’s question. Let’s look at it a different way. Using the same words, consider the meaning of the famous phrase this way: “to be or not to be… myself?” That is today’s question.

“It’s not what you do for a living that will make you happy. It’s who that job allows you to be.” That is a key line from my TEDx Talk and from Now What? 90 Days to a New Life Direction which is the backbone of today’s question. If your job allows you to be yourself — the best parts of yourself — it will bring you satisfaction and likely a modicum of happiness.

Do you like who your job makes you be? Does it bring out your best or your worst? Do you simply tolerate your own behavior? Does it honor all you have to offer? Is it fulfilling?

IF the answer is no, don’t fret. Read on to find out how to get your mojo back.

You thought it was the job you hated. Nah. What you hate is how unaligned you are with yourself: your values, what you care about, what you want to contribute, and your best self.

What’s required is a turn-around of your focus. Stop performing your job and start protecting your soul.

To BE you again you have to:

  • Get rid of the vampires that suck your time, your energy, your goodness
  • Either find a motivating reason to be there or get out
  • Revisit your job description and explore if there’s a way to renegotiate it to better suit you
  • Make time for hobbies or outside-of-work pursuits that feed your soul (it may even be your family!)
  • Restore a sense of purpose by focusing a vision for what’s possible that is bigger than your need for a paycheck (on this job, a new job or outside of work) —a change in policy, culture, direction, branding, focus, product or a significant problem to be solved.

These are all pretty tall orders, I understand. However, just acting upon one of these bullet points would change how you feel about your work significantly. Choose one, keep it at the forefront, rinse and repeat.

Helping you make this shift is what we love to do at Now What?® Coaching. Let us know how we can support you to reach new levels of career and life satisfaction.