Peak Careers

Professional Development for Career Practitioners

Search Results for: mindfulness

Slow Down to Be Better

by Leave a Comment

My biggest mistakes have come when I am in a hurry. As an ENFP (Myers-My biggest mistakes have come when I am in a hurry. As an ENFP (Myers-Briggs definition is a golden retriever  in a room with 5 tennis balls) I have had a lifetime of “open mouth, insert foot” episodes. What I have learned is that I need to slow down.  It seems to me that the holidays are a great time for us all to remember to slow down and here are my tips to help you get started.

Image by Katrin B. from Pixabay

There is a part of me that always feels like I can do more. When I was a high school counselor I felt that seeing more students was the way to do my job. But eventually I figured out that I had to block out an hour of my calendar for no students. By slowing down the flow of students, I was able to take better control of my day. 

Slow Down Tip #1

Look at your day and make sure you are taking time to slow down and take care of yourself so that you can serve others more effectively.

Slowing down is more than just time management, it is about self-care. I’ve written about and interviewed people on mindfulness many times, so I won’t spend a lot of time on it today. Just know that 10-15 minute breaks can refuel your mind and body allowing you to  provide better service to everyone you meet.

Slow Down Tip #2

Set a timer if you have to, or block out some time in your day to stop and take 4 deep breaths, or listen to a guided mindfulness app like Calm or Insight Timer. Need some wonderful calming music? Check out this YouTube channel.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfYjEkaN-1s

(Image by John Hain from Pixabay)

I try to take a daylong tech-free retreat once a month. I know this is not for everyone, but I challenge you to embrace the idea that turning off your social media feed and phone for even a few hours can be quite freeing. Especially when you realize you didn’t really miss anything too important.

Slow Down Tip #3

Look at your calendar and start by blocking off 2-4 hours of time to turn off social media and your phone, or better yet all your technology. Use this time to read, reflect, plan, meditate, or whatever you want. 

With the holiday season upon us, this is a great time to remember to slow down and be calm with yourself. Trust me, you deserve it and will be a better person for it.

Need more proof about slowing down?

Check out these two TedTalks.

What else can you do to slow down?

Note: Featured Image of Giant tortoise by Alexas_Fotos / 21623 images

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a weekly email 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.

He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move and The Adventure of Finding Me in New Zealand. He is also the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth C. Hoyt Award from the National Career Development Association and the Mid-Atlantic Career Counseling Association’s Professional Contribution’s Award in 2020.

Sign up here to receive my  TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON.  You will also receive the career practitioner’s weekly email on a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more. 

3 Words to Guide Me in 2021

by 4 Comments

Since 2016, I have chosen 3 words to guide me through the year, rather than doing a New Year’s resolution. I find the words somehow lead me to new ideas and actions. Often they are reinforcing thoughts important to me, but there is real power in “sending the message out to the universe.”  I distinctly remember in 2017 my word “authentic” continued to come back to me when other people would say to me things like, “what I really like about your work is it feels so authentic.” Yeah, that happened at least twice that year.

Once again, I spent time on my December day-long retreat to think about 2021 and the 3 words I want to guide me this year. As I reflected on 2020, I felt that my two words “rebalance” and “strategic” guided me well. 

“Philanthropy” did not live up to what I had hoped. I did provide more pro bono career coaching and I had begun to do some career development workshops for the local Boy’s and Girl’s Club and then Covid hit and put an end to that. I did volunteer at the local food pantry once, but was uncomfortable with the close quarters it required…I am just not ready yet. 

I reviewed my journal for the year looking for themes and words that repeated themselves. No surprise, COVID was repeated many times but there was quite a bit of writing about anxiety as well. With the pandemic, social injustice, and the divisive elections, my life seemed to have an undercurrent of anxiety all the time.  2020 is best viewed in the rear view mirror, I believe.

After much thought about the past year and where I want to be in the next year, I have landed on these three words to guide me in 2021.

Understanding ★ Kindness ★ Be

3 words to guide me

UNDERSTANDING

Understanding ★ As I think about our divided nation, I struggle with understanding the many friends and family who are so different from me politically. I try hard to see their perspective on so many issues, from Trump vs Democrats, mask vs no-mask, and more. I hope that this word will begin to guide me toward learning how they think, what they think, and what motivates them, in order to find some common ground.

The blatant social injustice that is going on in our country hurts me deeply. I have tried to better understand how I have been a part of that injustice in the past and currently, and what I can do to help change it in the future. I have made it a practice to read on this topic, watch TedTalks that enlighten me, and follow people who are speaking about this, like Baratunde Thurston and others, as a way to help me understand the issues. Understanding the issues is the first step in being able to make change.

KINDNESS

Kindness ★  “Be kind to one another” is how Ellen DeGeneres ended her talk show for years. It is a simple statement and simple to follow her advice. Along with understanding people, I feel like the word kindness will guide me forward even when I don’t understand. Maybe it will help me understand people better, maybe it won’t, but if I lead with kindness first and always keep it at the forefront of what I do, it will help me be a better person. 

There were times this year that I didn’t feel kind towards everyone. There were people saying and doing things that offended me and my first reaction was negative. I want my first reactions to be kindness first. 2020 was a very difficult year for so many people, financially, socially, mentally, and more. I want to do whatever small things I can to be kind to others and hopefully make their day a little bit better if I can.

BE

Be ★   This word spoke to me. I rejected it initially thinking it was too small and did not carry the meaning of my three words over the years. But then I realized the power of this word in guiding me daily through 2021. I want to be present more. I want to be in the moment at all times. I want to be authentic in how I approach life…in all things I do. 

For me the opposite of this word is the “shoulds,” the “want to do’s,” and the “maybe’s. ” As I thought about all the times I say to myself I “should” do something or I “want” to do something, I hope to take those future oriented words and convert my thinking to the present…to be here, wherever that is and with whoever I am with. I want to be me at all times.

Those are my three words for 2021 and below are my three words for the past five years. I have printed them off and tape them to my bathroom mirror, the fridge, my photocopier in my office, and I will begin each journal entry by writing them down before I start journaling. This way I start each day thinking about these words to guide me.

Here are my words from past years. I don’t think they truly ever go away. They were important to me then and still are now, as a clue to who I am and who I want to be.

2016 – Health ★ Mindfulness ★ Focus

2017 – Intentional ★ Authentic ★ Wellness

2018 – Reach ★ Capacity ★ Consistency

2019 – Reflection ★ Purposeful ★ Gratitude

2020 – Philanthropy ★ Rebalance ★ Strategic

Do you choose three words each year?
Would you like to try it this year?
If you do, please share them with me.

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a weekly email 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.

He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move and the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth C. Hoyt Award from the National Career Development Association.

Sign up here to receive my  TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON.  You will also receive the career practitioner’s weekly email on a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more. 

Peak-Careers logo

Improve Your Deeper Thinking

by Leave a Comment

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. Cal Newport.

How do you improve your deeper thinking? Cal Newport wrote about the importance of deeper thinking in his book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. We live in a world filled with YouTube videos, Facebook, emails, Instagram, Pinterest, and more…which are ALL trying to keep you and your mind on them and only them.

One way to improve your deeper thinking is to read. Read books that will help you in your job, books that will inspire you, books that will take you on fantasy trips, and books that are pure entertainment. For those of you who are prolific readers, there is no need to continue reading this blog. Just go to the comments and share your thoughts 🙂

Improve your deeper thinking

For the occasional book readers or people who are not reading books these days, hear me out. TV, movies, YouTube videos, and social media can be very entertaining and serve a purpose. But recognize that it is “passive” thinking for your brain. You are taking in information that someone else is sending to you. There is not much ‘deep thinking’ here…which is fine. We all need entertainment. But if you want to stretch that brain a bit, let me suggest one simple way to do that: reading.

Here are some of the benefits, in my opinion, that come from reading books to help me with deeper thinking.

Increases concentration and focus. When I am reading a book, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, I have to focus on the words, the characters, the plot, or the meaning behind whatever the book is about. It is forcing my brain to leave the distractions of my everyday life behind and really focus on that book, at that time.

Memorization. In Cal Newport’s book, he talks about Daniel Kilov who can memorize a shuffled deck of cards, a string of one hundred random digits, or 115 abstract shapes. He has won silver medals in the Australian memory championships. There are tricks to doing this, but his point is that you can train your brain to memorize things that require the removal of all distraction…and gets us closer to deeper thinking. I am reading a John LeCarre novel now that requires me to memorize a variety of characters and it is a challenge, but I accept the challenge!

Connecting disparate thoughts. In James Lang’s book, Small Teaching, he talks about the difference between memorizing things and real knowledge of a topic. Experts, in all fields, have the ability to learn new information and to store it in their brains in ways that are “connected” to other things we already know. This improves your deeper thinking as well.

Stretching your brain. Your brain is like a muscle. It actually does not stop growing as we grow older; it improves on making connections between other things we have learned in our lives. This is why as people get older, they often get wiser. This is why as a career coach for over 25 years, I can come to different, often creative solutions to problems my clients present. By reading, you are stretching your brain and keeping it working, just like a muscle.

Slowing down. Even professional books that may be challenging to read can help us slow down. In mindfulness and meditation practices, people talk about the “monkey brain” that never stops thinking. We all have it. If you are just jumping from emails to Facebook, to YouTube, back to emails, from your phone to your computer to the TV, you are “feeding” your monkey brain. By taking even 15 minutes to read a book, you are calming your mind and teaching it to slow down.

I encourage you to pick up a book today. If not today, this week. Find a quiet place and a time each day at the same time and read. Turn off your phone or leave it in a different room. Even if it is for 10-15 minutes, you will begin to slow that distractible brain down and improve your deeper thinking.

In the mornings, I like to start my day with 10-15 minutes of reading a professional book, one that will help me in some way. What I like is, I start my day NOT chasing emails, and reading helps me to be slow…to read…to think…to be in the moment. In the evenings, I like to end my day with a historical book or a fiction book that helps me stop thinking about work. I tend to read for 15-45 minutes in the evenings and this is MUCH better than ending my day on the computer or the TV.

Think about it. If you read 15 minutes per day at an average of 250 words per minute, that’s nearly 4000 words in a setting, and 26,000+ words each week. That would get you through about a third to half of the average adult book.

Want to improve your deeper thinking?

Grab a book each day and make a routine out of it and let me know how you feel in a few weeks. 

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a weekly email 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.

He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move and the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth C. Hoyt Award from the National Career Development Association.

Sign up here to receive my  TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON.  You will also receive the career practitioner’s weekly email on a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more. 

Peak-Careers logo

How to get better at deeper thinking.

by Leave a Comment

What are some ways you can train yourself to do deeper thinking? Why is this so important? I believe we are all a bit like a golden retriever in a room with four tennis balls bouncing around. We chase emails. We click on five different social media platforms. We send and receive text messages. We are too busy most days to simply slow down and think.

I read Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work to help me understand this topic better. He talks about the many benefits of Deep Work that requires longer periods of uninterrupted time that is much more productive. Cal’s definition of Deep Work is professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improves your skill, and are hard to replicate.

woman journaling
Pixabay/ kaboompics

One way that I try to do deeper thinking is to take monthly day-long retreats where I turn off my phone, leave the computer behind, stop all social media, and I journal, think, meditate, walk, read, and simply slow down. (Read more about my retreats).

I also try to start each day with walking meditation and take a 20-25 minute meditation break mid-day most days. You can learn more about this topic here.

I want to talk about how spending some time writing
can improve your deeper thinking.

I believe there is something powerful in taking a pen in hand and writing on paper…the kinesthetic connection between your hand and your brain is powerful. I can’t give you the scientific information to support this, I know it is true. It is why I love using card sorts with clients and call that particular workshop, The Magic of Card Sorts. Something deeper happens when you use your hands with your brain.

Writing forces you to take those thoughts out of your head to organize them on paper which helps with deeper thinking.

That simple process requires you to consider an order of importance, and then to describe your thoughts clearly. When you “leave it in your head” it seldom gets worked out enough. By writing it down, it helps you process the information and gets you to identify key themes or key points.

I like to mind-map my blogs. Here is a picture of my mind-map for this blog. My original was much sloppier writing so I re-wrote it so you could read my handwriting 🙂

It helps me organize my thinking and I can always add to it as I am going.

If you would like to practice deeper thinking for yourself, start journaling. I strongly encourage you to not type in a computer and to get yourself a journal book to write in. I try to write each morning and often I will flip back through my journal book to see if there are themes emerging and also so I can develop my thinking and add to some of my earlier thoughts.

You may want to nudge yourself to write for your colleagues or people you work with as a way to clarify some thinking. Again, most of us would do that on the computer. I challenge you to consider starting with pen and paper.

As you work on your deeper thinking and begin to write, I encourage you to share your writing with your network. You can do this on a blog or in a LinkedIn post or even write a LinkedIn article. When you push out your thoughts publicly, people can add to your thinking or be challenged to think themselves in a different way.

Finally, many of you are doing great things in your work. Why not consider writing an article for one of your professional associations?

I know that the Maine Career Development Association produces a monthly newsletter and they would consider articles from their members. Your chamber of commerce likes to share information, your place of work may have a newsletter, and national associations are always looking for good content.

For example, National Career Development Association has a monthly web-magazine called Career Convergence. They encourage members to write and are only looking for about 950 words. They provide editors to review your article before submitting and give great advice. I’ve written a few articles there. Here is one I wrote about “Stay Interviews” that I wrote a few years ago.

Here is one I wrote for the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) in their Academic Advising Today, quarterly e-zine on how Academic Advisors are the like the Wizard of Oz 🙂

My point that I want you to take away is that writing can help you do deeper thinking. And we all need to find ways to do deeper thinking to slow down our fast-paced lives and to really T H I N K about what is happening and how we can improve our lives.

What are your thoughts on deeper thinking?

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a weekly email 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.

He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move and the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth C. Hoyt Award from the National Career Development Association.

Sign up here to receive my  TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON.  You will also receive the career practitioner’s weekly email on a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more. 

Peak-Careers logo

INTERVIEW: How to Write Your LinkedIn About Section

by Leave a Comment

The LinkedIn About section is one of the most important sections of the profile in my opinion. Would you like some expert advice on how to write your LinkedIn About section? Or how to improve it?

Check out this lively and informative interview I had with three LinkedIn experts asking them how they help their clients develop their LInkedIn About section. It was truly wonderful fo hear these folks thoughts and techniques, and yes, laugh together while we were doing it!

Listen to this Peak-Careers Interview with Hannah Morgan, Bob McIntosh, and Sabrina Woods share their ideas on the About section and also how to engage on LinkedIn as a way to send a consistent message on LInkedIn.

This is a follow up to my blog What is Your LinkedIn Message?

How to write a linkedIn about section interview
Hannah Morgan, Jim Peacock, Sabrina Woods, and Bob McIntosh discuss how to write your LinkedIn About section and more.

Today I ask our LinkedIn experts

What is your approach to helping clients develop their About Section?
and
What are two tips on how to engage others and “send your message” on LI?

BIOS

Bob McIntosh, CPRW is a career trainer and coach who leads more than 15 job-search webinars at MassHire Lowell Career Center, as well as coaches job seekers on every aspect of the job search. His colleagues rely on Bob to critique their clients’ LinkedIn profiles and conduct mock interviews. In addition, Bob has gained a reputation as a LinkedIn authority in the community where he leads webinars for non-profit and for-profit organizations. Job seekers from across the state attend his LinkedIn webinars. Bob is also an instructor for Peak Careers, where he teaches a LinkedIn online semimar. His greatest pleasure is helping people find rewarding careers in a competitive job market. For enjoyment, he blogs at Things Career Related. Follow Bob on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Hannah Morgan is one of this year’s LinkedIn Top Voice in Job Search and Careers and a nationally recognized author and speaker on job search strategies. She founded CareerSherpa.net to combine her career expertise with her love of writing, speaking and social media. Her mission is to educate professionals on how to maneuver through today’s job search process. See her website: careersherpa.net, or follow her on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Sabrina Woods is a Holistic Career / Life Coach & Linkedin Trainer with 20 years in the career services field at universities including Harvard, Northeastern and the University of London. Her joy comes from tapping holistic and mindfulness-based practices while helping people with career transitions. Sabrina also facilitates workshops and train-the-trainer sessions ranging from the Myers Briggs to Mindfulness to Networking. Her workshops combine her insights, enthusiasm and infectious energy. Sessions have been taught in the US, UK and Middle East. Find her on LinkedIn. For more info: www.sabrina-woods.com.

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a weekly email 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.

He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move and the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth C. Hoyt Award from the National Career Development Association.

Sign up here to receive my  TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON.  You will also receive the career practitioner’s weekly email on a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more. 

Peak Careers - Professional Development for Careers

Six reasons why I do a tech-free retreat

by 1 Comment

My goal is to do a day-long tech-free retreat each month, inspired by Richard Leider’s book, Repacking Your Bags, and by my brother Mark who has been doing retreats for over thirty years. Each month I look ahead in my calendar to see what day works best. My brother takes any month that has a 5th Friday because there can’t be any “repeat meetings” scheduled on that day. I.e. “We meet on the 2nd Friday”… or the “3rd Friday of each month”.

This is a day I turn off my phone, computer, and ignore social media, so I am not “chasing the rabbit down the proverbial hole” every time something dings, rings, or shakes. I get up at my normal time, read the paper, eat breakfast, make lunch, fill a thermos of coffee, and then pack up my things and retreat to a friend’s office in downtown Waterville along the Kennebec River. (Thank you Jeri). I have done past retreats at a local college and also on the 3rd floor of our city library, but having a place that is truly private is important. There is something magical about being at her office space, away from my home, not at my desk, not in front of my computer, that creates space for me to do my retreat.

Mindfulness

Here are my six reasons I do a tech-free retreat.

SIMPLIFYING

Probably the number one reason I do a tech-free retreat is to simplify my day. When I work from home there are so many distractions and things to do that constantly catch my attention, chores that need doing, sounds of kids playing, the mail truck arriving, etc… At her office, nothing is familiar.

The noises are different, the chair is different, it smells different. Perfect, time to simplify. My “monkey-brain” seems to slow down here.

THREE MONTH PLAN

I use this time to create a three-month editorial calendar. As many of you know, I write a weekly career email that goes out every Tuesday morning. One week I typically write a blog, another week I interview people on a variety of career topics, another week I might do a Facebook Live. Today is my day to take that 5000-foot view. It always feels good to have a plan laid out for the next three months and all I have to do is execute it. When I come home, I update the three month, dry-erase wall calendar I have. Now I can see what I will be writing about or sharing for the next twelve weeks.

10,000-FOOT VIEW 

This is also the time I like to reflect on the bigger picture. The 10,000-foot view. Where do I want to be in three-five years? What areas do I want to revise, recommit to, or remove from my plan? One of my three-words for 2020 is “rebalance” and I am thinking about how to rebalance my work and leisure time. 

Top of Mt Whitney

It is hard to do sometimes working from home and owning my own business. This is the day that gives me the “space” to stop and think, which is nearly impossible to do at home with all the distractions. This is one of the most “freeing” feelings I get on the retreat…time to do what I want and when, and to look to the future.
[Me on top of Mt. Whitney, 14,505 foot view in 2012]

WRITING

Whether you like to write or not, the kinesthetic process of handwriting your thoughts is powerful. I happen to like writing. Most regular workdays, I begin by writing in a journal. Today, I will write more.  For me, the handwriting forces my brain to organize my thoughts and to choose what is important to me now. 

Sometimes I only write a few paragraphs because nothing is really jumping out at me, other days, I write more. On my retreat, I tend to write lots more. Because I have done my editorial calendar, I often have a couple of blogs kicking around in my head. I started this blog you are reading on my retreat. I started another one that will be coming out in September.

OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE

I remember the first time I did a retreat. Yikes! The first couple of hours all I could think about was the text messages, emails, posts on LinkedIn, that I was missing. It took awhile on the first retreat to turn that “monkey mind” off.   Now I look forward to my retreat day.

The key is getting out of my comfort zone and getting into the “stretch zone”. When we work with clients, we need to remember that there are actually three zones people can be in. 

  • One is the “comfort zone” where not much learning or growth happens
  • Another is the “panic zone” where people are overwhelmed. There is zero learning happening here either.
  • The one in between I call the “stretch zone.” This is where learning and growth happens. We are out of our comfort zone and not in the panic zone, and this is where we can think, observe, and learn.

READING

tech-free retreat reading

Charles T. Munger said, “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero...”

Image by Dariusz Sankowski from Pixabay 

I always have a book, magazine, blogs, or journals to read and it feels like there is never enough time to read them all…and there isn’t. But today at my tech-free retreat, I will take at least an hour or two to read. This retreat I read my current pleasure reading book, as well as three business magazines. 

My challenge to you… try a tech-free retreat

Think about a day, or start with a half-day, to unplug and do the work we all must do to slow down. I call it the ‘tsunami of information’ and it comes at us all daily. We need to find ways to think and to “just be” in the moment. Do not be fooled by the fact that just because you are busy, it must mean you are productive. My tech-free retreat day is probably THE most productive day I have each month.

As the old Life cereal commercial said, “Try it, you might like it.” (Watch Mikey eat)

Want to learn more about taking a retreat? Watch this interview with three of us who take retreats and we talk about how and why we do them. INTERVIEW

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a weekly email 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.

He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move and the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth C. Hoyt Award from National Career Development Association.

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

Peak Careers - Professional Development for Careers