A Problem Far Too Common

(Re-post of one of our Articles found HERE!)


A Problem Far Too Common
by Joseph Twelves

In middle school, you’re asked what do you want “to be when you grow up”. In high school, you meet with guidance counselors and take aptitude tests to try to figure out the “right fit” for you. In college, you are switching majors left and right trying to figure out what to get your degree in. And too often, you will find yourself stuck in a job that you hate just to pay the bills… purely a means to an end.

These are the scenarios that are far too common when, believe it or not, it IS possible to decide on a career and have it be the right match. The odds of ever working in your dream job are truly slim if you simply drift into whatever comes along. On the other hand, the odds of winding up doing exactly what you want approaches 100% if you combine a proven career decision method with the simple steps needed to find your passion.

Here are the three key tools found in Conversations: Find Your Niche! that can help:
1) A demonstrated research and decision-making procedure called the Find Your Niche Roadmap
2) Focused, in-depth interviews with 150 working professionals from the full spectrum of career fields about the nature of their jobs all in a fun, conversational format
3) Six special appendices offering you an invaluable collection of critical career information and hard to find resources that will save you months of research
This is the key information you need to understand the career landscape and make an informed decision. The vicious cycle of being unhappy in your job, not knowing what to do, but having to provide for yourself and your family is not a pleasant one. The key is to either prevent this from happening, or if you are already in this position, stop it now!

Join the conversation, find even more resources to help you on your journey, and make this problem far less common.

What steps have you taken to decide on a career?

Know the Truth of Who You Are

By Guest Author Georgia Feiste

Sue met me for coffee the other day to talk about how she was feeling about her career, and the “niggle” inside that told her she needed to do something different. She just wasn’t happy at her current job. But, she wasn’t sure what it was she wanted.

Because I don’t believe in poking around at an aching tooth, I asked her what about her current job excited and energized her. We spent quite a bit of time talking about the aspects of her job that fulfilled her inner passions and took advantage of her skills, strengths and gifts. Over time, she easily slipped into why she was unhappy at her current position – and began to identify how the values of the corporation did not mesh with her own personal values, and the extent to which it was beginning to drain her of the energy she needed to perform well in her vice-presidential position.

I told Sue what I tell all my clients as we begin to work together: it is possible to love your work and make the money you need. You can do anything you want – your opportunities and choices are limitless. But first, you must know the truth of who you are.

Most people will tell me that they already know themselves. They just want to move into creating a dynamite resume and begin networking with the right people. My experience has been that few people, even top executives, really know the truth of who they are. Most people are so very busy they haven’t taken the time to identify what they feel, much less what their vision of their future is.

Getting in touch with your feelings is one of the most important things you can do for yourself, and something most of us resist. It can be overwhelming, but it creates fertile ground for insight and discernment. Coupling your feelings with focused thinking about what it is you would like to do for work, will help you find the right field and the right job.

You will discover what it is you value, and what your priorities in life are, as you begin to pay attention to your feelings. You will discover how you are unique by looking at your strengths and your weaknesses. You begin to notice what aggravates you and what motivates you, what you have always been good at, and where you have seen the most successes throughout your life. In her book, Work With Passion, Nancy Anderson says “You will know you are in the right job if you sense you are becoming a better, wiser person.”

You will find you may need to improve your technical skills, but you will not find that you need to drastically transform who you are, quit or get fired to create the results you desire. I coach my clients to first take a serious look at their current environment, and work out any problems they might have exactly where they are, before they decide to leap to another career. If you don’t take the time to look closely to determine the truth of the situation, you may create a repetition of your dissatisfaction.

You can do the work you love, living with purpose and passion in all areas of your life. When that happens your self-esteem is strong, and you are able to acknowledge the importance of the people in your life. []



To find out more about how you can find your purpose and passion in your professional and personal life, contact Georgia Feiste to set up an appointment. Visit her website at http://CollaborativeTransitions.com. You may also contact her via eMail or by telephone at (402) 484-8098.


© 2010 Collaborative Transitions Coaching - All Rights Reserved

Confidence in Finding Your Dream Job

Fundamentally, there are two types of people in the world: those that have confidence and those that do not.

Is this an oversimplification? Most definitely. I make no claim to the contrary. Human beings are too complex to describe as being simply this or that. Science can play all they want at trying to quantify emotional and psychological responses, but let's be honest: people do not fit into nice little categories.

But for the sake of argument today, let's say that they do. While this is a little more behind the scenes principles rather than processes that we go through, it's important that we all understand the reasoning behind the success of some people and the failure (or lack of success, if you don't like the term) of others.

Simply put, principles will always trump processes. No contest. There's nothing on Earth that can make a person that doesn't believe in himself into a success. Certainly, you can hand them money through winning the lottery. Or get a nice inheritance. Or happen to cash out of a company at just the right time. But where does that get him? Every study done has shown that people that have money (re: success, though I would argue this) simply handed to them do not tend to hang on to it very long. There are plenty of horror stories of people who have won millions, only to lose it within a few short years and wind up back at their previous standard of living or lower.

As the saying goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Success or happiness cannot just be handed to you. Doesn't work that way. Anything worth doing has always required time, sacrifice, and dedication.

So what does all this have to do with choosing a career? Everything.

If you're going to find that dream job of yours, you're going to need to have confidence in the choice that you have made. Second guessing yourself is a surefire way to erode confidence and cause doubt. Thomas J Stanley, author of the enormously successful The Millionaire Next Door series that studies the wealthy, made a very interesting observation. He noted that millionaires were in the habit of making decisions and, having made that decision, stuck with it. They didn't let self doubt creep in and dissuade them from the path that they were on. Once they had make their choice, they never looked back.

Now, granted, many of us may never become millionaires. You may not want to. The drive for wealth is simply one of many paths that people can take in this life. It's not for everyone. You may find fulfillment in writing novels or expressing life through art or helping others overcome mental or emotional problems or designing bridges or working to make the community a better place. All of those are good and noble goals that have nothing to do with becoming millionaires, and each of them are capable of helping you have a fulfilling life, if that's what does it for you.

But you have to decide first for yourself if it does. And only you can make that choice.

In my experience, the only way to make a choice or decision in confidence is through knowledge. As corny as it sounds, the old catch phrase from the GI Joe cartoon series of "Knowing is half the battle" is pretty applicable here. Until you know what you want to do, it's impossible to decide exactly what to do with your life.

That's really the aim behind Conversations: Find Your Niche!: to provide you with inside knowledge of work force professionals and gain a greater understanding of what it really means to work in a particular field. Without that knowledge, you won't make it anywhere fast.

What Stands in Your Way of Finding Your Dream Job?

Everybody wants to do something that they love. Who wouldn't?

Problem is, most people aren't living the dream. Surveys have shown that 84% of Americans wished they were in another job. You ask me, that's a pretty horrifying stat. That means that the odds of you, me, and most everyone we knew is likely to not find their dream job.

This, of course, begs the question just why so many people don't end up doing what they want to do. Ever hear that great line about preparation? "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

Simply put, people that seem to be the luckiest are the ones that have prepared themselves to take advantage of the opportunities that come their way. I'm a firm believer that whatever we prepare ourselves for will come (within reason, of course; I doubt I'll be sprouting wings any time soon). This applies to everything in life from education to job opportunities to our personal lives. If you want something bad enough, you'll do whatever it takes to get there.

So everybody wants to get into their dream job, right? On one level, yes, yes they do. They're more than happy to say it. To this I say, "actions speak louder than words."

If you really want to sit down and decide how you're going to find the job that fits your values, your talents, your personality, there's going to be some work involved. Believe it or not, it's that fear of work that's actually keeping so many from finding that dream job that makes them feel like they're doing something worthwhile.

To a great degree, finding that dream job means doing some self-discovery. After all, you can't know what job will fulfill you the best until you know what fulfills you personally.

So how do you do this? You start by sitting down and writing out a few things about yourself. Take a few minutes by yourself, free of distractions, and be completely honest. What do you like to do? What are you good at? What kind of personal goals do you have for yourself? What are your values? What do you wish you could do? What aren't you good at or dislike doing? (Identifying things that you don't want to do also helps in narrowing down possible job fields)

After you've made this list, get in touch with your parents or siblings or close friends (somebody who knows you really well) and ask them what your strengths are, what you're good at. By the same token, ask them what you're not good at. Again, knowing what you don't excel in is an essential part of narrowing things down.

Now compare this list with what you worked up. You may be surprised what they see in you that you didn't see in yourself. I know I certainly was.

For those of you still in high school or college, talk to your favorite teachers, the ones you connected with best. They've seen at least hundreds, if not thousands of students go through their classroom and know how to identify aptitudes in people.

Talk to a guidance counselor while you're at it. If you've gotten an idea of what you may be interested by this point, they have access to internships, job shadowing, or other chances to look into specific fields.

Even aptitude tests are useful as far as they go. Remember, these are not designed to tell you what job will work best for you; all they do is tell you what you're good at. You'll have to do the homework yourself to find how those skills or talents best line up with a career.

There are a lot of tools out there to help you find your dream job; it's your job to pick up those tools and put them to work for you.

Why We Work - Laying the Foundation for Your Career

Let's talk for a minute hear about why we work. Not something that we stop and think about very often, is it? Oh, sure, there's the usual answers: pay the bills, pay the mortgage, pay tuition, pay for the car, pay for gas, pay for X/Y/Z. But that's all superficial when you really dig into it.

Truth is, there's something deeper to why we work. Everybody has the innate desire to do something more with their lives, to make a difference somehow. Nobody wakes up and decides that they want to be a below average human being. That's not in the nature of being alive. Given the opportunity, we all want to make our mark.

That is why we work. Nothing meaningful has ever been accomplished by sitting around doing nothing. Why would it be otherwise? It goes against the very laws of nature.

Sir Wilfred Grenfell once put it: "Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile."

For an Englishman that passed away nearly 70 years ago, he was definitely on to something there. Not to go all philosophical or anything like that, but any serious student of happiness understands that being happy requires that we do something. What that something is up to you--that's not something that a book or your parents or your spouse or your best friend/boyfriend/girlfriend/guidance counselor can tell you.

Beyond the obvious of getting off the couch and doing something, I think that Sir Grenfell had a great point at the end: when we do something, it should be worthwhile. Worth something. Something besides watching the latest episode of Lost or playing Halo or gossiping about the neighbors.

Now don't get me wrong--I'm not suggesting that we all become Mother Teresa copycats and do nothing but charity work. That's just not realistic, and nobody was Mother Teresa except Mother Teresa.

Each of us is unique in our talents and skills. What makes me happy may drive you crazy. And that's okay. There's no set definition of what is the perfect person. The fact that we're all different is what makes the world go round. Those differences mean that we all have a place where we belong and excel.

So what makes us waste our time doing something that we don't love or at the very least enjoy? I really want to hear what you think about this.

De-spelling Myths About Choosing Your Career

Choosing a career is not an easy task. Unfortunately, not many people put much time or thought into what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Some just think that getting into a field for the money is more than enough. Granted, money is certainly one part of it, but that's hardly going to make you happy down the road.

Dawn Rosenberg McKay of About.com wrote an excellent article detailing the myths of choosing a career that is a great read. Basically, it all boils down to doing something that you love (or at least like).