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From Chaos to Creativity and Careers. William H. Stone

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From Chaos

Chaos. Serendipity. Happenstance. Luck. This IS how people find work throughout their career development. I am a huge fan of the Happenstance Learning Theory and my personal philosophy is what I call “intentional serendipity”. You need to be “intentional” and take action and the open t opportunities that you create. Chaos theory has many crossovers.

I love that this book not only explains how chaos is normal in our lives and how you can use it to create your opportunities, but also weaves in specific activities throughout to help formulate your thinking and take action in your career development.

If you have been wondering why you have not been able to find a new job, or feel that your life is out of control and you can’t figure out how to rein it in, or you would just like a practical, up-to-date overview of how to find work that fits you, start reading this book.

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 

A Higher Call. By Adam Makos with Larry Alexander

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A Higher Call. By Adam Makos.

This is the best book I’ve read in awhile. It captured me from the beginning and stuck with me to the end. A true story primarily from  a German Air Force ace point of view. What I did not realize was that the Nazi Party was not liked by all soldiers. The Nazi Party was just that, a political party headed by a mad-man and many German soldiers did not agree with them.

There was a respect between the pilots that was interesting too. For many pilots they would not shoot at their enemy if he ejected from his plane and was parachuting down, as they hoped they would get the same respect someday if they needed it. This story starts with an American pilot who insists the author needed to talk to the German pilot first in order to get the real story.

The essence of the story is around December 20, 1943 when one of our B-17 bombers was so destroyed it could barely fly and a German pilot helped the pilot fly out of Germany, not knowing for 40 years if he ever made it across the sea to England.

It is well written and really gave me insight to another slice of the war I had not thought much about before…the war in the air with perspective from both sides of the war.

The Career Development Puzzle

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Career decision making is like a 1000 piece puzzle with a number of pieces missing and only a vague picture on the box to work from. Each person thinks they have a complete puzzle to put together, but our job as a career counselor / coach / advisor is to help our clients find as many of the outside pieces as possible to give them the framework and some direction.

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Too many people think career decision making is a linear process, but each person takes the puzzle pieces he / she can find and fits them together to begin to make a picture of themselves. As career practitioners we may use assessments to help fit pieces together, we may use open ended questions, we may use work or family history, but ultimately what we are doing is helping the clients / students find pieces that fit together.

[Read more…] about The Career Development Puzzle

2016 My Three Words

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I have been inspired by Chris Brogan’s blog that he has been doing for ten years where he chooses 3 words to guide him through his year. I have also spoken with my good friend Sabrina Woods about this in the past and decided that this year was my year to do this.

New Year’s resolutions and goals are great but I really like Chris Brogan’s idea of choosing three words that you can remember and that guide you in your decisions and thoughts throughout the year. As I approach my 4th anniversary of full-time with Peak-Careers Consulting, this exercise “feels” right to me. I’ve learned so much about owning my own business since 2012 and each year gets clearer to me. Each year I’ve grown and I can only hope that 2016 continues to that trend.

Here are my three words and what they mean to me.

  • HEALTH
  • FOCUS
  • MINDFULNESS
[Read more…] about 2016 My Three Words

The Demographic Cliff: How to survive and prosper during the great deflation ahead. By Harry S. Dent, Jr

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The Demographic Cliff was recommended to me during one of my online seminars from a person who “likes that 30,000 ‘ view of things”. Harry Dent, Jr is an economist with that global view.

demographic-cliff

For me this was a bit too much filled with graphs, charts, data, but I did pick up a number of good take-aways from it.

  1. How bad Japan’s economy is because of their aging society and the lack of younger Japanese coming up. They don’t tend to integrate lots of new people into their country thru immigration so they are really struggling.
  2. Germany is another country that has a lot of Boomers driving their economy and how they deal with it in the next few years will be very interesting as they are the strongest European economy right now.
  3. Real estate will NOT be a good investment in the US like it was for my parents in the 50’s and 60’s. Millennial’s are renting more and he calls it the “dyers exceed buyers” model. More and more Boomers will be trying to sell their homes and there are less and less younger people to buy.
  4. Dent has lots of facts regarding cycles such as the average real estate cycle of 26 / 27 year olds rent, 31 /32 y.o. buy starter homes, 41-43 y.o. ‘trade-up houses’, 65 y.o.’s buy vacation / retirement homes.
  5. He has MANY other cycles such as the commodity cycle and financial cycles. Many.
  6. Most bizarre theory had to do with tying sun spot cycles to the economy. I skimmed this section 🙂

Dent has much to offer and I have to agree on a number of his points. One being that, if Boomers would accept the truth that they should retire in their early 70’s (our current concept if retirement was set at a time when most people died in their 60’s) we would solve the massive entitlement crisis that we have with fewer and fewer workers.

He also suggests that small businesses (like me) need to develop a clear definition of my customers and realize that it is NOT what I think I do for them, but what customers get from me that has meaning.

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 

Clive Cussler books

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Once in awhile I need a break from professional reading and historical novels. My good friend Bob Knowlton turned me on to the Clive Cussler books and he keeps me adequately supplied.

I find all his books high on adventure (sort of like the Indiana Jones movies that get crazy with high suspense and then bring you back down…than back up again…), intriguing (you never know what will happen), good guy always wins…no matter what (like a James Bond movie when the villains have 5 machine guns and Bond has a pistol and he shoots each machine gunner while 1000’s of bullets zip past him), and some good sarcastic humor sprinkle throughout.

So far I’ve read:

  • Valhalla Rising
  • Arctic Drift.  (Dirk Pitt)
  • Shock Wave
  • Inca Gold
  • The Golden Buddha
  • Atlantis Found
  • Piranha (Oregon Files)
  • Havana Storm
  • The Bootlegger (This one was pretty cool because part of the story wove around Detroit and Ecorse Michigan where my mom grew up)
  • Trojan Odyssey (Dirk Pitt)
  • The Eye of Heaven (Fargo)
  • Lost City (NUMA files and Kurt Austin)
  • White Death (NUMA files and Kurt Austin)
  • Polar Shift (NUMA files and Kurt Austin)
  • Black Wind (Dirk Pitt)
  • Flood Tide (Dirk Pitt)
  • The Plague Ship (Oregon Files)
  • Zero Hour (NUMA files and Kurt Austin)