The Secret to Getting the Work of Your Dreams

Who’s in charge?

Once upon a time I asked a client what she wanted in her career. She said, “Why are you asking me?”

We laughed. Because wouldn’t it be great if someone else answered for us?

What we want in our career can be dizzying.

Sadly, what takes most of our attention is what we have to do on a daily basis. 

That is why it is easier for me to do the laundry than develop my marketing plan.

What I do know is I want to live a purpose-driven life, one that is in alignment with what is important to me, where I can use my strengths in contributing to others and where I feel like I am firing on all cylinders.

That kind of life/work doesn’t fall on your lap.

It is deliberate.

The secret is to be proactive. 

Mainly because nobody else is going to do it for you.

Proactive behaviour is “anticipatory, change-oriented, and self-initiated behaviour in situations, rather than just reacting.”

It is all about self responsibility. 

I have been thinking about time lately. It is hard not to when you are studying astronomy. Even though the distance to the stars is such massive proportions that is difficult for my head to wrap around, I understand that each one of those stars out there is going to come to an end. A supernovae. A white dwarf.

Our sun has 5 billion years left. Phew!

Like everything thing in our universe, there is a shelf life.

As morbid as this sounds, knowing your own mortality is critical to your career success. If life went on and on, it would be easy to stay on your couch watching Netflix. (It wouldn’t be that difficult - there is an eternity of episodes on popular series.)

Change is our stimulus.

Unlike other products of nature, humans have the amazing ability to create the change that we want. To me it seems a shame to waste that bonus.

When you are not being proactive in your career, here’s how I see it playing out:

1.         You climb the wrong career ladder.

People who do well at their job are promoted to the next rung. Someone who is great at computer sales is promoted to a manager.

Except they may not be particularly good with being in charge of other people. Or they are doing tasks which leave them cold.

The increase in salary is alluring.

But there are some opportunities you should take and some you should not.

2.         You stay in a job where only some of your talent is being used.

Just enough that you don’t hand in your resignation. One day in a quiet moment, this question may cross your mind – “Am I living up to my potential?”

3.         You wait for retirement.

Retirement may not seem that far off. In this scenario, you may be spending daytime dreaming about all the things you are going to do when you are done with your J-O-B.

4.         You lose motivation.

If you are in an environment where there are others who feel trapped in their jobs, this becomes the new normal. Countdown to the weekend. Hump day. The jokes: “If I died and went straight to hell, it would take me a week to realize I wasn’t at work anymore.”

(If you want to see some entertaining jokes on hating your job, search for I hate my job and then look at images.)

The energy required to move yourself out of that stuck place feels too enormous to even know where to begin.

 5.        You start experiencing other issues.

Like health problems. Or unhealthy behaviours.            

Because not all parts of us agree with the idea that it is okay to stay in work that doesn’t fit for us. 

So how do you become proactive at work?

For me, this is a process I could learn more about. A definite work in progress. As a solopreneur, there is so much to learn. Some parts of the business I do well. And some parts where I suck.

What I have noticed is there is a payoff when I am proactive. It always moves me forward.

Wondering about how you can be proactive about your work? Here’s some thoughts:

1.         Being proactive means looking at the big picture.

If you are unhappy with the work you are doing, what exactly is it that isn’t working for you?

Do you have a vision of where you would like to be?

Do you know how you can contribute the most?

Being proactive means getting a handle on what is working and what is not.

2.         Being proactive means making a plan.

Even if you don’t have the answers.

A plan could mean making room in your life on how to be proactive. It could be developing a vision of your work life. If you don’t have a vision, it is hard to know where you are going.

 

3.         Being proactive means taking some action.

Even if it is figuring out the problem. Here is an article on how to solve problems.

Are you being proactive? What are some ideas that you have used to get you moving in the right direction?

Click on the comment button below. Share your thoughts!

What is your greatest accomplishment?

What is your greatest accomplishment?

8 (Flawed) Things You Say When You Are in a Crappy Job

We’ve all been there. My crappy job was working in a factory. By the second day, I had mastered all of my tasks. By the end of the first week, I was categorically bored.

Here’s why I didn’t walk out the door:

• I had rent to pay next month.

• My aunt had pulled strings to get my job; she told me I better not quit.

• I had spent all of my savings while looking for a job.

Each day I looked at my long-term co-workers and wondered how they could stay there for 20 years (or more!).

Now I know my boredom is a pretty good clue that job wasn’t a good fit for me. There are other signs: frustration, annoyance, unhappiness, resentfulness, feeling lost, restlessness, and feeling either depleted or disheartened. 

The feelings are accompanied by thoughts, often conflicting. Wanting to stay. Wanting to leave.

When I talk to people who are unhappy in their work, they have a lot of reasons to stay in their job. Here’s what some of them have to say and my response:

1.         “My work isn’t all bad. I like the people."

I remember once talking to my Spanish teacher about the idea of moving and how I didn’t want to move because I knew so many great people. He told me that great people are everywhere.

            Good point.

Although it is imperative to have a work environment where you feel at ease and enjoy your team members, your motivation and satisfaction level is measured by an internal drive. Intrinsic motivation. Examples of intrinsic motivation are knowledge, growth, accomplishment.

            Staying in a job mainly because of the people will eventually wear thin

If you are in a job where the majority of the time you are involved in activities that do not engage you, you will be counting the hours until the weekend no matter how great the people are.

2.         “I can’t afford to make a change.”

            If your job is sucking your life energy, you can’t afford not to make a change.

There can be a high cost to staying in a crappy job. Always an interesting activity is looking at how you spend money. Especially when unhappiness enters the equation. Coping strategies are about creating ease and happiness in other areas of life. Take out coffee every day? Going out for lunch?

In addition to the financial costs of not making a change, it is intriguing to watch the willingness to trade happiness or meaningfulness for financial gain.

3.         “Something familiar is so much more appealing than something unknown.”      

Yes. Familiar feels better. Because our survival feels like a guarantee if we stay on the couch.

            We are hardwired for survival so there is a strong tendency to stay with the familiar.

Except humans are more complex. There also is a strong pull to learn and grow and that takes us into the unknown.

            When I made a big change in my life, I carried this quote around with me:

“A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.” — John A. Shedd.

4.         “I’m scared.”

This is tied to the previous item in that fear is one of those feelings integral to making sure that you are safe.

If you know that any time you do something new that fear is going to come along for the ride (and it does), you can have a little chat with it.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic, wrote a letter to fear. She talks about it here.   https://www.facebook.com/GilbertLiz/posts/980409515374497:0

5.         “It’s called work for a reason.”

Embedded in our culture is a sense that being miserable at work is the way it’s supposed to be. Indeed the 70% of people are not engaged with their work according to a Gallup poll.

That belief is one of those shrewd traps to keep us in our place. The underlying component is fear.

There is a price you pay when you are miserable at work: physical ailments, emotional and mental conditions, disconnection from ourselves. It also spills over onto your family and relationships. 

What do we model to our children when we are coming home depleted and cranky from crappy jobs?

6.         “Work isn’t that important. My family is.”

Work is a significant part of who you are.

Work is an expression of who you are. When you are introducing yourself, the first question that often arises is what you do.

Work is where you develop your mastery and where you contribute to others. Whether you get paid for it or not.

             So it isn’t a matter of family or work; it’s about both.

7.         “I can’t imagine anything different.”

Once I met with a client and asked him what kind of work that he wanted to do. He said that no one had ever asked him that. And so he found work that he saw around him – what his father or friends did.

Except he was having trouble staying in one job. As we worked together, what he found out about himself was how important it was to work with people. Being a mechanic alone in a shop wasn’t working for him.

Imagining that you can find work that makes you happy can be new and strange. But once you find it.....

Author Barbara Sher offered an analogy for a person finding their fit. She thought of a horse being raised in a basement. Even though it has no idea what a pasture was, when it gets out there, it just knows what to do.

That is true for you. When you find that great work fit, you will move into it with amazing ease (and joy!).

8.         “I can address my crappy job issue later…. (when the kids are out of the house, when the mortgage is paid, etc.).”

Also known as the martyr syndrome. There is an illusion that there is lots of time and that what you want can be put on hold because of other priorities. But is that true? What we know for sure is we have no idea how much time we have on this planet.

When you have a crappy job, a question to reflect on is how going to work every day is a priority yet what you actually do during work time is not.

So how do you get out of your crappy job? You start moving in the direction you want to go. How do you figure out that direction? One step at a time.

 Other blog postings you may like:

Letting Go of Our Fear of Screwing Up

Picture your life a month in the future, beyond what your mind can see, any outcome you want. Step out of fear and into opportunity.

The invitation came from Kyle Cease, transformational speaker. In May 2017, he brought his humour, insights and talent to the Moore Theatre in Seattle for a 2-hour event, inspiring us to challenge our limited thinking.

I was one of the 1,800 person audience who turned towards a stranger and stretched my imagination into a new world that I hadn’t thought of before. The stranger told me her vision of her future. 

The power of dreaming aloud.

With 20 years of experience as a stand-up comedian, Cease began his own career shift by listening to himself. Last year, he began an experiment of meditating 2 hours a day and then videotaping his thoughts.

In paying attention to himself, he was able to distinguish what felt heavy in his life and then he worked at using that as a guide to shift his life. He gave up stand up. Then he was offered opportunities which sent him on a different trajectory.

Evolving Out Loud.  Live and online events. In-the-moment metamorphosis from participants.

His recent book, I Hope I Screw This Up: How Falling in Love with Your Fears Can Change the World, is much like his live event, life-changing ideas speckled with humour. 

He has some cool things to say. Here are a few outtakes from his book:

"What I know to be true is that even though following that expansive feeling in our bodies can feel scary, if we take that leap into the unknown, an unlimited number of possibilities will show up to support us that we can’t see before we’ve taken that leap."

Our mission is starting to change from “How can I create the best career?” or “How can I get the best relationship?” to “How can I connect to myself more and start to move in alignment with what life is truly calling through me?”

"If you work in a job that you hate for your entire life, you’re not going to be fulfilled, you’re not going to be giving your gift, and life won’t be able to express itself through you fully."

We’ve become artists at creating brilliant ways to stop ourselves from stepping into our greatness.

To see Kyle Cease in action, check out this one minute video.

Back at the theatre, the room was abuzz with people saying their life from an imagined future. A book deal. A round the world cruise.

As I spoke visions of my life, I realized the foreignness of the exercise. The vision wasn’t that big. I began thinking bigger. S-t-r-e-t-c-h

5 life-changing tactics to improve your work life

Life is quite the teacher. In April I wrote a blog about my lessons with impatience as I recovered from knee surgery. There is so much to learn when you aren’t where you want to be. 

My knee has changed my life. In so many ways.

Which got me thinking. Of metaphors. Because that is the best way to describe this process of finding work that matters.

You have heard me talking about the importance of building a foundation, just like a house. What we really want to do is decorate the place. But imagine what would happen if you didn’t have a basement or supporting beams. 

Work that fits for us always begins with us. And who we are. That is the foundation.

Don’t worry, I say. We will get to the decorating part. The part where we find that career that makes us want to leap out of bed in the morning. 

Like all good metaphors, there is so much to be learned when we make those connections between seemingly disparate parts of our lives.

Here is how my knee can help you on your path to finding your dream job:

1.         Be selective about who you listen to

After about 6 weeks of rehab, my knee was not doing what it was supposed to do. Bend. Well, technically it bent, just not that much. I began the process of digging for what was happening. A degree in anatomy would have been handy.

I asked a lot of questions. I got a lot of responses, opinions and advice. There was none that were off the mark; all were full of caring.

I went to the Internet. That’s where it got a little wild. “The thing that helped me was all that walking.” The next one said don’t walk. What on earth do you do with that?

I was an eager patient. I did everything the physio told me. And not much changed. I went to a second physio. A chiropractor. An acupuncturist. A massage therapist.

They all offered ideas, some of which wonderfully built off of another. I fine tuned the exercise program. I discarded some ideas and added new ones. Some of what I was told made perfect sense and some did not.

Ultimately, I had to pay attention to what made sense for me.

When it comes to your career, you will find lots of opinions. You may even solicit them. Not all of it will make sense for you. Listen. Check it out.

Most of all – listen to yourself! Here’s a quote I saw this week about listening to yourself:

Don’t forget to remember that the truth comes in whispers….after we have shut out all of the other voices around us. Be still.

Unknown Author

2.         Follow your own pace

As much as I willed my knee to bend, it wasn’t happening. I had an idea that I needed to push harder. I did this for a long time. Not much changed.

I have seen this before. If something isn’t working, I push. I have seen this in others who are in work that doesn’t work for them and what do they do? Try harder. Negate their own misery.

What I was experiencing was the body giving me some strong messages. I wasn’t paying attention.

What I had to find was my own rhythm. What worked for me.

When it comes to creating a happier worklife, there may be a desire to be there already. You may be a square peg fitting itself into a round hole. The idea is that you stop jamming that peg.

Beyond the fear, how can you find your own pace, the one that allows you to find your place?

3.         There’s more going on than meets the eye

Often I hear people saying that they “just” need to find a new job. Then they find another job and after the excitement has died down, they find themselves unsatisfied.

During my healing process, I was told that mechanically my knee could bend. In fact, during the surgery, the surgeon bent the knee to full flexion. So what was going on?  The answer isn’t really clear.

For sure what the trained professionals know is that it has to do with muscles and tendons and tissues and the brain?

The brain? What was explained to me is the brain is anticipating pain, after a long period of time with pain, and it is sending messages not to bend.

A lot more going on than you might think.

The same with your work life. When you are dissatisfied at your job and want to make a change, what is happening is so much more.

I heard this week about a study of people who lost their jobs either by quitting or getting fired, no one wished they could get their old job back.

How I see this is a person is ready for a change. For a change to be in the direction you want to go, you need to think about that direction. The more you are strategic about where you want to go, the more you will experience satisfaction at work. There probably is some mathematical formula in there.

4.         Work hard; rest hard

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Remember the line about music and how it is mostly made up of rests? The space in between is just as important as what it surrounds.

Resting is so underrated. In my world. Pushing hard is the answer. My knee needed to be kept moving. I began physio the day after my surgery. When I came home, I was exercising every 2 hours.

I was also told about the importance of putting the leg up, regularly icing and being mindful of how much I walked.

Work and rest. So it is when you are looking at work that matters to you. Just as important as doing the legwork of exploring who you are and what you want and looking for your place in the work world, it is also vital to take a break.

Make it fun!

What an amazement to me is when I am in the midst of fun and an idea arises to solve my problem!

Taking work and rest both seriously is quite the concept.

5.         Experience the dejection and keep moving

Photo by Hanson Lu on Unsplash

In my recovery, I did a lot of the right things. Still, they was no significant change. I was discouraged. Big time.

In those moments, because I didn’t know what else to do, I kept doing the exercises.

Then the feeling changed because feelings do. And my knee felt better because it was doing what it was supposed to do.

The discouragement factor arises when we are in the middle of an important change. You will find this happens when you don’t know what to do for the work dilemma.

What you may notice is you are frustrated with your work scene but you have no idea what to do.

The answer is: keep moving. Keep moving in a forward motion. Seek out people who can help you. Look for books, websites, ideas and even metaphors for your situation. Ask a lot of questions to others and yourself. 

There will be an answer.

Was there a life-altering event that happened in your life? What did it teach you? I would love to hear from you. Send me an email message here.