Great Quotes That Will Change the Way You Look At Work

To the extent that your work takes into account the needs of the world, it will be meaningful; to the extent that through it you express your unique talents, it will be joyful.

Laurence G. Boldt

When you begin to design your future career around the way you actually are, you will discover that many of the inborn qualities you considered to be negatives turn out to be some of your biggest strengths.

Nicholas Lore

Where love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.

John Ruskin

Underneath all our worries about careers, jobs and retirements our purpose really comes down to living fully, to bringing our gifts to the light of day, regardless of position, promotion or pension.

Denise Bissonnette

I believe that you will be at your most productive, creative, focused, generous, and resilient when you figure out how to play to your strengths most of the time.

Marcus Buckingham

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.

Maya Angelou

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. Sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Paul and I, we never thought that we would make much money out of the thing. We just loved writing software.

Bill Gates

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.

Buddha

It is never too late to be what you might have been."

George Eliot

“How do I define success? Let me tell you, money’s pretty nice. But having a lot of money does not automatically make you a successful person. What you want is money and meaning. You want your work to be meaningful, because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life.”

Oprah Winfrey

Where your talents and the needs of the world cross; there lies your vocation.

Aristotle

If, in fact, the work you love is calling, the question then becomes: are you listening?

Laurence G. Boldt

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

Steve Jobs

I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.

Joseph Campbell

Why you need a career coach

Some time ago when I lived inland, I became fascinated with whales and yearned to live close to them. Nearly a decade later that dream came to life. Somewhere in those 10 years, the aspiration got buried under a thousand to-dos and daily priorities.

When it comes to your career, what is happening to your desires? 

What I have now come to realize is how easily a dream gets buried and how much time can pass before the dream re-emerges. 

Johnstone Strait

This weekend, two friends and I travelled to Telegraph Cove, a waterfront village at the entrance to Johnstone Strait and home to the one of the most predictable places to see orcas in the wild. I was reminded of a book I read in the late 90s called Among Whales by Roger Payne. The author is a field biologist who studies whale behaviour and why they do what they do. 

He says, “For I believe that the principal gift that whales offer humanity is that they are the only animals that can impress us enough to persuade us to change our minds about the importance of the wild world.”

What we forget is that we are part of the wild world and how important it is for us to keep in touch with our wildness.

Whales remind us of life so much bigger than we know. They have existed on this planet for approximately 50 million years. That is some perspective. A perspective that is too often absent from daily life.

One of the most challenging dilemmas of western culture is how much time is caught up taking care of business. Too frequently a day, a week or a month passes without being in touch with our dreams. 

Like whales, dreams lie below the surface and arise from time to time. It is the immensity that can be both exciting and daunting. 

When it comes to your career ambitions, there is no need to navigate the exploration on your own.

This is where a career coach can be your strongest ally.  Here are 5 reasons why you may need a career coach in your life:

Honing in on your career dreams

My work is all about helping people find their lifework. The definition of lifework is the principal work a person has in their lifetime; this is where we step into the ring – with dedication, creativity, enthusiasm and wholeheartedness. 

What a career coach does is help you get clear about what it is you want to do with this “one wild and precious life,” as Mary Oliver has asked. 

Your work dreams will manifest faster

Work dreams are tricky to realize. Sometimes you may not be clear about the type of work that is a good fit for you. Sometimes you know what it is that you want but you may be experiencing fear.

Finding your dream job is not easy. (For those who always knew what they wanted to do, you are the inspiration!)  If it was easy, you would have done it already.

What a career coach does is put the focus in the right direction. On you! What a career coach understands is to be happy in your work, you need to know what makes you happy.  Another way to think of happy is energized and engaged. 

Figuring what energizes you is the foundation. Build a strong foundation and what comes after is strong.

The focus career coaching brings will get you on your true path in a timeliness that is difficult to do on your own.

The discouragement factor will be decreased immensely

Opinions are rampant about the best direction to take for a career. Suggestions like, “go into healthcare, you will always get a job,” “you will never get a job doing (fill in the blank),” or “you can’t go wrong if you go into the trades.”

What if those ideas don’t work for you? 

I have seen clients so deflated after hearing others’ ideas or embarking in a direction that leaves them cold.

What a career coach does is encourage you to look at many possibilities (there is not only one career for a person) and understand your choices. What they can help with, too, is narrowing the focus in the right way so it isn’t overwhelming. 

Keeping you on track

When I was in between careers, I read books, hired a career coach and attended career exploration courses. The in-person assistance was full of ideas and inspiration far exceeding what I found doing it on my own.  

My own career coach kept me focused with meeting times where I had a deadline for reflection and completing assignments.

Conversations with a career coach keep you focused and moving towards the overall goal. 

Get a personalized approach

What a career coach does is listen to you, asks the right questions to help you better understand yourself and pinpoint what works best for you. They will notice themes and patterns, helping you to see where you can offer your best. They help you answer the question, “what will work best for me?” 

They will also help you:

• Identify your particular strengths
• Gain a vision of what you want at this time in your life
• Know what motivates you

Getting engaged with your life

In a world where your daily activities are directed towards an organization’s goals, it is easy to understand how your dreams and aspirations are abandoned. Is the work that you are doing in alignment with where it is that you want to go?

A career coach helps you get in touch with what engages you in the right way. The work you do with a career coach generates a good picture of your gifts and talents and then where you can put them to the best use. 

The result is you being fully engaged in your life, once described by a client as “in the driver’s seat.”  The bonus is what you emit into the world is confidence and competence, highly attractive attributes to employers.

Confidence is something you create within yourself by believing in who you are.

Author Unknown

When I think of whales and their mighty presence, I think of their compelling songs. What biologists have observed is the complexity and elaborateness of their communication.  There is a whole world known only because of scientists’ recordings.

I am reminded of wildness, the innate part of you that is the signature of who you are and helps you understand where you belong in the world. And how do you get to know that part of yourself? There is an important lesson (at least one!) whales have to teach – by listening carefully to yourself, you tap into your dreams.    

Knowing when to stay and when to walk away

Have you ever been in a situation that wasn’t working for you but didn’t know how to change it?  Perhaps you thought of leaving but anyway you looked felt scary? Perhaps you knew it was important to stay?

When I think of certain times in my life, I can see I was at a crossroad.  Was I going to stay or walk away? 

To be honest, the realization of a choice came after some pondering and plenty of questioning. Up to that point, I was trying my best but nothing I did changed the situation.

In considering when to walk away or when to stay, some situations are clear. If you are feeling unsafe or in an unhealthy relationship, it is time to make a plan to leave. 

Most of my dilemmas were vaguer. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what wasn’t working and for some reason figuring it out is where I focused my energy. Certainly there were good parts in the situation, where the list of pros matched the list of cons. After all, I would tell myself, nothing in life is perfect.

What I noticed over time was what I was telling others. For one thing, I realized I was telling a story and it was sounding pretty repetitive. The story seemed to have a common theme – complaints. 

Hearing myself talk was where I was able to see the situation more clearly.  What registered for me was my integrity being compromised.  One of my favourite definitions of integrity was by author Laurence G. Boldt. “Integrity is being true to yourself.”

How do you know when you are not being true to yourself?  Here are several markers and how they may be affecting your work life:

You are living on autopilot.

Routines are central to our lives because of the fundamental nature of being human.  To be stay alive, we need to eat, sleep and exercise every day.  Often work routines can form the same rhythm day after day. What you may not notice is that your dreams and desires are pushed to the background and what is important to you becomes less important in your day-to-day life. Small wonder when people go on holidays and dream about not going back home.

Vacations are one of the best gifts you can give yourself in getting back to what is true for you.  The idea is to remove yourself from the routine so you can see your life through a different lens. 

There is an incongruence in your life. 

Seeing yourself talk in one way and act in another is a way you don’t show up for yourself. For example, one of the big incongruences is when people say what is most important to them is being happy but they are not happy in their work. Being true to yourself means matching what you want in your life with what you do. 

You are not taking charge of your life.

You are being a passenger. This happens in a multitude of ways:

• You are waiting for retirement (and that is years away).
• You are waiting for an opportunity. You have worked hard and shown that you contribute in helpful ways. Any day now....
• You say that if you were meant to do a certain kind of work, it would happen. This is along the lines of a divine plan pre-set for you.

Being true to yourself means getting into the driver’s seat. The challenge is the focus required to get to know yourself and what it is that you want in your life. The rewards of that exploration are larger than you could ever imagine.

You are looking outside of yourself for answers.

When you are struggling with confusion about what to do, it is natural to ask others for advice. What happens, though, when you follow someone else’s suggestion is it may not work for you. What works well is sharing ideas.

An example of getting input from others without them making decisions on your behalf is making a list of your 5 top strengths, telling them to others and asking the question, “I’m looking at work that is a good fit for me. When you hear my strengths, what ideas do you have?” The response could range from a referral to someone they know to a book or article recommendation. Think of it as brainstorming.

Getting a lot of ideas not only helps you expand your possibilities but it also helps when energy is stuck. What you definitely don’t need is someone telling you what to do. You have what you need to figure it out yourself. Often it means listening to yourself. 

Walk away or stay? How do you determine what is true to you?  You are welcome to share your thoughts in the comments below. 

Are you keeping yourself small?

Not long ago I read a statement that the saddest word is potential. Perhaps this is seen best in others when it is so obvious that who they are in the world could be so much bigger.

The same observation could be made about ourselves. 

After years of working as an employment counsellor, I observed two patterns about people and their dreams: people struggling with dreaming big and others abandoning their dream.

Dreaming big is so connected with keeping ourselves small. Marianne Williamson’s words about our biggest fear of being “powerful beyond measure,” resonates deeply as I think of how people keep themselves small.

What I find intriguing is watching myself in my daily life. Ordinary days are rich with ways I can understand myself. As a solopreneur, there are a lot of ways I can be spending my time; as I scour the Internet, there are guaranteed ways for me to experience success. How do I choose which program to take or coach to hire?

If I am honest with myself, I am not doing the research to explore what might work for me. When I think about it deeply, I am overwhelmed.  I believe there is an illusion that the answer is around the corner.

In the meantime, this is one way to keep myself small.

How do you keep yourself small? When it comes to being unhappy in your work and yet feel perplexed about making the changes that will move you forward, here are some ways you may be keeping yourself small:

1.         You have a dream that has been around for a long time.

You may find the dream appearing on your goals list again and again or popping up in a conversation with a friend. “Oh yes, I had forgot about that.” What you might recognize is a deep longing resurfacing. There is fire in such reactions. You may come to an understanding why this dream is so important to you but in a way it doesn’t matter. Dreams with energy are the stuff of regrets when you are older. I have heard seniors saying it isn’t what they did that they regret, it is what they didn’t do.

What can you do to take your dream seriously?

2.         You find you are spending a good deal of time on what doesn’t really matter to you.

Once upon a time when I was playing Spider Solitaire on a regular basis as a de-stressing activity, I looked at the stats and found I had spent 60 hours playing the game. That was 60 hours of my life. The accumulation of time can be shocking. I was grateful for those game developers in keeping that stat; other activities in my life have no calculator.

Are you spending your precious time engaged in activities that are not enriching your life? 

3.         Another day goes by – you are feeling like you are on a treadmill.

What you come to realize is that a day can be filled easily.  Once I heard that an organization spends 30% of its resources on maintaining its infrastructure.  I suspect this is the same for people. Taking care of business like dishes and errands and laundry can take up all the time in a day. Where is the space for working on your dreams? 

How could you make sure that you have room for dreaming and scheming?

4.         Minimizing the dream.

Following your dreams can be a scary matter. It requires believing in yourself, commitment and a good dose of courage. In a way, it is easier to say that your dream doesn’t really matter. When you dismiss your dreams, you are dealing with a slippery opponent, one that has no business being in your driver’s seat.

How can you make sure that you keep your dream alive?

What I have come to understand is this: My living small does not serve anyone. 

A while ago, I listened to an interview with Pema Chodron and k.d. lang. As they talked about the Buddhist teachings, one of the ideas was around being of service.  Approaching the world from that viewpoint means that we are always aligned with something big.

3 Key Behaviours of People Who Make a Difference

I have been sticking close to home this last week. Last Sunday I had an incident that left me with a severe hamstring injury, enough that I am still struggling to sit as I write this. With the experiences I have had this week, I have been considering what it means to make a difference.

What I have been experiencing since the incident is phenomenal kindness of others.  From the health care practitioners to friends to my amazing family, I have been gifted with deep caring. I have a lot of gratitude. Especially having the privilege of my daughter standing by my bedside for hours. (Where are the chairs in emergency rooms?)

During the week, I met people doing many different kinds of work. Now that my life has slowed down to a shuffle pace, I am seeing how much each of these people are making a difference in not only my life, but in the lives of others.

For some of the occupations, the influence they have seems a bit more obvious than others.

On Sunday I had my first experience with paramedics; they were kind and paid attention to not only what I said but also how I was saying it to them. I know how much they put themselves out there every day to make sure people get what they need in the moment. To experience it was another thing.

As I watched the tree tops out the back window, I had no doubt I was in good hands.

I saw a lot of medical professionals that day – doctor, nurses and technicians – each one tried to make my life easier. The medical field is driven by people who are committed to making a difference.

Affecting others is not just in the healthcare field. I observed some behaviour similarities displayed by all the people who made a difference in my life this week: 

1.         They make an effort.

Whether it is work that they are paid to do or what they do in their “off-time,” people who are committed to making a difference extend themselves to people around them.

2.        They listen.

And they take the time to listen. One of humans’ deepest needs is to be heard and someone who makes a difference understands this. Besides the facts, they also listen to what is happening on an emotional level.

3.      They emanate empathy.

Truly understanding that every one of us is vulnerable allows us to bridge between the helper and the helpee. At the end of the day, compassion goes a long way. 

Shortly after I reported to my work that I would not be coming in, the manager passed on healthcare contacts. Every day, I see my co-workers offer resources and help to clients; at the receiving end, I could see how much the right referral can make such a difference in some else’s life. I see my referral as a magician!

When I talk to people about the kind of work that they would like to pursue, they often say that they want to make a difference. What I got to see first hand this week was the extent to which that happens in an ordinary day.

At one event this week, when I was so uncomfortable trying to find a position where I didn’t experience pain, I stood up and winced from the muscle spasm. A woman across the table looked at me with such compassion. I am not sure she even knew how how her kindness eased that moment.

I had a lot of takeways this week. Related to work, I see that indeed in every occupation, there is an opportunity to truly affect people in a myriad of ways.

The server, barista, car sales person, cashier, produce market owner, and librarian enter your life on a daily basis – you could be one of them and you may have no idea of how you are affecting the life of the person in front of you. By adding more strawberries to the pint. Or genuinely asking someone how they are doing. Or making beautiful coffee art. 

The question then to me isn’t about a listing of occupations that make a difference but how you, in your own unique way, contributes to the world. It may be about easing suffering but it also could be about spreading joy.

Where do you see people making a difference in your life?   

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