Now What?® Coaching
from Laura Berman Fortgang
As many as 90% of startup businesses ultimately fail. This does not have to be your story.
If you are agile and able to switch directions when necessary, your business may continue to succeed or even grow rather than die an untimely and avoidable death. Knowing when to pivot and how to do so successfully is key.
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.
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)
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.
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.
Ponder that with a hot chocolate or hot toddy. I’ll see you on the other side of the holiday season.
It’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.