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Vital Signs: Discovering and Sustaining Your Passion for Life. Gregg Levoy

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Maine Career Development Association brought Gregg in for our conference May 2017 and he was our best speaker in years, maybe of all ~12 years we have been chartered. I was fortunate to pick him up at the airport and a few of us went out to dinner with him.

Vital Signs is a reflection of much of his current thinking. This is deep. Very thoughtful. Even historical. And at times a reflection of Gregg’s own pursuit of passion in life. The biggest difference in this book from Callings is that Callings was about work and this one is more about life. (Again, Gregg is a Boomer and going thru this thinking himself right now).

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Gerry Boyle books

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I’ve read a number of Gerry Boyle books over the years and have written one review but I wanted to list all the books I’ve read of his. The McMorrow series are all based on a very witty, smart aleck journalist who works at a local paper or freelances in some of his books. And someone dies… Gerry was a local reporter for the Morning Sentinal for years and brings his experience to the books…and his wit.

All his books are set in Maine and I recognize many of the places that he writes about. If you like Maine and if you haven’t read a Gerry Boyle book you need to start. Pick any one of his Jack McMorrow series books, they are all great fun. He also has started a Brandon Blake series with different characters.

My only problem with Gerry’s books are that I tend to sit down and read them in a couple days and then have to wait a year or two for the next one to come out. I guess that’s a good problem to have.

Learn more about Gerry at http://gerryboyle.com/

BOOK I’VE READ so far

Potshot – see my review

Cover Story

Pot Shot

Home Body

Pretty Dead

Borderline

Deadline

Bloodline

Straw Man

LifeLine

Once Burned

Random Act (2019)

Damaged Goods

Robbed Blind (2024)  Gerry is ending his series on Jack McMorrow with these final two books. What I didn’t know was that he decided that Robbed Blind was not a “stand alone” book! When I finished this book, I realized he was finishing the twists and turns in the next book, his last. I was dumbfounded when a key person was shot at the end of Robbed Blind. I was so mad at Gerry I nearly called him 🙂  Then I had to wait until Hard Line came out 3 weeks later. Whew!

Hard Line (2024)  It was sad to see my favorite characters go away, Jack McMorrow and Claire will only be memories for me now. All good memories for sure. Thanks Gerry for so many great years of reading this series.

Brandon Blake series

Port City. Black and White

Port City Shakedown

Port City Crossfire

What’s the most important thing to remember when interviewing?

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The one thing you must do when you interview is be authentic. If you are looking for a good fit and hope to work there for awhile, you need to make a brutally honest assessment about the company and how you will fit in.  Being authentic in the interview allows them to also determine if you are a good fit for them.

Articulate your strengths.
To prepare for the interview, the first thing you should focus on is being able to describe what strengths you bring to the company and how those strengths make you unique. Really sit down and analyze past experience and what you did and how you did it. Describe your strengths in either a bullet format or paragraphs. Then take this to three friends and three co-workers (past or current) and ask them to comment on them. You’ll probably be surprised as to what they can add to this value-added statement you have developed.

This value-added statement describing your strengths is what makes you real and unique. Stay true to this at all times in your interview and have examples of things you did or accomplished that support each strength.

Be clear about what is important to you.
Know your values. What you are looking for in work and how that fits you as a person. If working as a part of a team is important…say it. If you like to work on projects independently but like to get regular feedback from your supervisor, ask for it. If you want to be doing work that positively affects the lives of others, be clear.

Understand your work values and what are “must haves” in the job and share that in the interview where it makes sense. It could be at the end when you ask questions of them, i.e. Can you tell me about my supervisor’s style of giving regular feedback, or it may come out in your answers. Regardless, be true to yourself.

Show your passion.
Employers want to know what makes you tick. When you have a passion for an area that can help your employer solve problems…they are going to like that. Curiosity is an integral component of passion. If you are curious about something, it shows your interests. Approach your interviews from a curiosity angle. What does this company do that matches my passions? How can my interests fit into this job?

Be able to state, the things I love to do are _________. I get lost in my work when I ________.

When you can demonstrate your curiosity and passion about your work, you will be showing your authentic self.

Being authentic in the interview takes lots of self-reflection and if you can focus on these three areas, strengths, values, and passions, you will find the job and company that fits you best. Remember the interview is a mutual selection process.  Just as the employer is looking for the right person, you want to ensure the fit is right for you too. And when that happens, both sides of the interview are happier.

Read more articles on interviewing here. https://peak-careers.com/tag/interviewing/

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. 

Mindfulness at Work Essentials for Dummies. Shamash Alidina & Juliet Adams

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I have been doing lots of exploration on this topic of mindfulness and was recently at a conference that had a portable bookstore. As I wandered through the books I stumbled on this one, Mindfulness at Work Essentials for Dummies, and thought it spoke to me 🙂

Picked up a bunch of good ideas and confirmation for much of what I am already doing, which is great. There were a few chapters on how to be a better leaders / boss, work pressures, dealing with other difficult employees…but as a solo-preneur they did not apply as much to me.

The importance of slowing down in our busy days is so important and any tips you get are good tips. Find something that works for you.

Here is my blog that was partially inspired by this book. 3 Reasons to Practice Mindfulness at Work.

3 Reasons to Practice Mindfulness at Work

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Sunrise over Honolulu

In our ever-busy world that we live in, it is important that we find ways to slow ourselves down as a way to better serve ourselves and clients. Our ability to manage the tsunami of information coming into us daily and hourly is inversely linked to the quality of services we provide. If we are constantly chasing emails, tweets, and other social media messages, we are not taking the time to slow down and “think”.  Yes, just “think” instead of reacting.

“Mindfulness is deliberately paying full attention to what is happening around you and within you – in your body, heart, and mind. Mindfulness is awareness without criticism or judgement.”                        

From Jan Chozen Bays, Author of  How To Train a Wild Elephant: And Other Adventures in Mindfulness

Here are three reasons why you should practice mindfulness as a career practitioner.

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Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. By Angela Duckworth

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“To be gritty is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. To be gritty is to hold fast to an interesting and purposeful goal. To be gritty is to invest, day after week after year, in challenging practice. To be gritty is to fall down seven times, and rise eight.”

Grit looks at what makes successful people, raw talent or passion and perseverance. Angela has tons of research that looks at this question and has created a Grit Scale to determine how much “grit” a person has. It appears that perseverance is the key factor in determining success. She found that people who graduated with a 2 year college degree scored slightly higher than people with a 4 year degree. What? Turns out that the drop out rate at 2 year colleges is much higher so that people who actually DO graduate must have more grit.

It is a book filled with quotes like “Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.” and “years of hard work are often mistaken for innate talent, and that passion is as necessary as perseverance to work-class excellence.”

Other key factors are that each person must have a parent, teacher, or other adult who believes in their potential and tells them and supports them.

I love her story about Warren Buffet’s 3 step process of focusing on a smaller number of important goals in order to be successful. First, you write down 25 career goals. Second, you circle the top five highest-priority goals. Third, you look at all the rest of the goals and avoid them at all costs because they distract you and eat away at your time / energy. Wow… focusing your efforts is a key piece to this ‘grit’ thing I guess.

The ‘paragons of grit’ all have 4 things in common. An interest in the topic, long periods of practice, with a purpose that what you do matters. I feel like this is why I love the career field so much. It clearly has all four of these to keep me going and learning. The fourth one is hope. Hope is defined in all of the three above. It is what keeps you going even when things are difficult.

Another of the key ingredients is that action is required. If you know me, you’ll know that I speak to this all the time in my “intentional serendipity” philosophy. You must take action in order to learn. Turns out you need to take action in order to develop your interests as well.

This book has been a thoughtful journey as I work with clients who are looking for passion in a job. I don’t think passion comes first as much as it comes from hard work.

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 GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.

Sign up for our monthly newsletter at www.Peak-Careers.com