• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • FCD Career Class
  • Online Learning
    • Info about Online Seminars
    • 12 Month Calendar
    • Building Your Coaching Business
    • Social Media Strategies for Career Practitioners
    • Understanding Holland Interest Theory and Practical Applications
    • EQ at Work: Emotional Intelligence for Career Practitioners
    • Career Readiness for Justice-Involved Citizens: Factors, methods, and insights
    • Career Advising Using Happenstance
    • Transition Theory in Career Advising
    • LinkedIn: Advancing Your Skills
    • Finding Purpose: Working with Clients To Find Meaningful Work
    • Career & Educational Choices After High School
  • Workshops & Training
Peak Careers

Peak Careers

Professional Development for Career Practitioners

  • About
    • About Peak-Careers
    • About Jim Peacock
    • Meet The Team
    • Peak-Careers Advisory Board
    • Privacy Policy
  • Shop
    • Field Guide BOOK
    • The Adventure of Finding Me in New Zealand
    • Career Poster
    • Webinars
      • WEBINAR: Mindfulness, Positive Psychology & Neuroscience to Help Yourself & Your Students/Clients
      • How To Successfully Build Your LinkedIn Network and Beyond
      • How To Successfully Work With Recruiters
      • WEBINAR: Creating a Value-Added Resume
      • Develop Confidence in Clients
      • Linkedin Train-the-Trainer
      • Develop Value-Added Statements
  • Resources
    • Career blogs
    • Book Reviews
    • Interviews
      • INTERVIEW: Choosing 3 Words to Guide You
      • INTERVIEW: With a Few Book Lovers
      • INTERVIEW: Brand Yourself On LinkedIn
      • INTERVIEW: Staffing & Recruiting Agencies
      • INTERVIEW: Would You Benefit from Hiring a Business Coach?
      • INTERVIEW – Creating the Conversation Using Card Sorts
      • INTERVIEW: TED Talks for Career Practitioners
      • INTERVIEW: What is Mindfulness and Why Should Career Practitioners Care?
      • INTERVIEW: My Three Words to Guide Me in 2019
      • INTERVIEW: Reading Books for Professional Development
  • Contact

Nation on speed. E-mails, Tweets, Skype, FaceTime, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more.

February 5, 2013 by Jim Peacock Leave a Comment

floridamoney

How many of you find yourself attached to this “stinking” computer like an umbilical cord?  Reading e-mails from co-workers, clients, supervisors, friends, families, spammers, bloggers, and who ever else invades our lives like one of the 7 plagues.

We are like a nation on speed.

– Turn on computer

– Read email

– Respond immediately

– Read another email

– Respond immediately

– Bamm, what else you got?

– Bring it on

-Keep sending them, I’ll get through them all!

Really?  Is this what work is supposed to be like?
Whatever happened to the times when you could walk across campus to actually TALK to someone?  Who turned the treadmill onto 8 m.p.h.?  Where is that downtime when you could read an article or simply just sit and think?  Shouldn’t we as professionals in the career advising world be modeling something better than this?

Yes, think.  Just stop and think for awhile.

My brother Mark spends an hour each morning in thoughtful meditation and prayer. He’s a priest so he’s supposed to pray, but what he has actually done is found time to think.  Yes, he gets to prayer time, but the majority of his hour is to slow down and think.  Why is this so important?  Some of his best ideas come from this hour of slowing down, letting the “to do” list go, not worrying about his upcoming meetings for the day, just clearing his mind to slow down.  Finding a bit of peace in his day.

Reflection time.  I wrote my goals for 2013 and sent them to my good friend and mentor, Rees for feedback.  His response was,  “…there is value and renewal when you build in time on a regular basis just to do some thinking, reading, etc. without knowing specifically where it will lead you”.

Hmm…… time with no purpose.  Very powerful.

I visited another friend in Wisconsin while attending a Career Conference recently and he introduced me to the meditation he does daily.  OK God, I hear you.  Three of my closest friends ALL spoke to me about slowing down, taking time, finding peace with myself.

So where to start?  Keep it simple.  When our kids were young we asked them every night before they went to bed, “did you have anything sad happen today?” And then we asked for their final thought of the day, “What was your happy thought today/’  They ended each day thinking about something happy.  Why don’t you start with just slowing down and thinking about what makes you happy?

ACTION REQUESTED:

Make a pledge to yourself to slow down for a bit every day.  Find a time each day that works for you.  Maybe it is the morning like Mark, or midday like me, or at the end of the day, and simply reflect, think, unwind, leave the world of technology and calm yourself.   Take time to reflect.  Find a quiet time for even 10 minutes to think and reflect with no purpose other than to  .  .  .  .  .   S    L    O    W        D    O    W    N.  .  .  .  .  .  .   find some peace…. think positive thoughts… remove the clutter.  Ten minutes.

Who knows, some of your best sermons may come out of this.

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a monthly newsletter for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for CCSP, GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.

Sign up here to receive my  TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON.  You can also receive the career practitioners newsletter which includes a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more. 

Share this post:

Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Email

Filed Under: Career Tagged With: meditation, mindfulness, reflection, stop and think, thinking

About The Author

Read More…

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Footer

Connect With Jim

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Career Practitioners Subscribe Today

Sign up for "the Top 10 Tips When Working With an Undecided Person" and also receive a weekly email on a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more SUBSCRIBE

Copyright © 2023 Peak Careers

Subscribe

Sign up here to receive my  “TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON”. 

You can also receive our weekly career practitioners email which includes a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more. 

Subscribe Today