finding meaning

INTERVIEW: Dr. Spencer “Skip” Niles talking about being your authentic self in career development

August 20, 2018 by Jim Peacock Leave a Comment

Dr. Spencer “Skip” Niles, President-Elect for National Career Development Association was at his summer camp here in Maine recently about 25 minutes from me. So I decided to interview him at his camp on Great Pond about his work on being authentic in career development and weaving hope into our work.

I was inspired to interview Skip after attending his series of three webinars called, Reclaim your soul: Making choices that honor your authentic self.

Watch this interview where we explore the importance of being authentic, using intuition in our practice, and the value of mindfulness for career coaches and practitioners.

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.

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Ahhhh…retirement. Hey WAIT A MINUTE!!!

November 7, 2016 by Jim Peacock 2 Comments

“The future ain’t what it used to be.” Yogi Berra

“Retirement ain’t what it used to be.” Jim Peacock

First off, ‘retirement’ is clearly not the correct word. I don’t think we have found the right word yet but they also didn’t know what to call young people in their teens in the early 1900’s until a psychologist studied them and came up with “teenager” sometime in the 1920’s. *(Did you know that it was the automobile and the freedom it gave this age group that helped create “teenagers”? That and the fact that many people moved from rural farm life to a more urban manufacturing life).

What we are calling this retirement time period ranges from 3rd Age, The Third Quarter, Graduation, Commencement, Encore Career, The Bonus Years, and more. I prefer to call it “rebalancing” (Read my blog on rebalancing). Why? Because I don’t see this as a time to end (retire), begin, or change –but more as a transition that requires rebalancing your values, interests, passions, time, and energy. But as the 76,000,000 Boomers wander into this new developmental stage, psychologists and sociologists will be studying the traits that make up this stage in our lives. We just need to wait until they figure us out 🙂 Listen to Jane Fonda talk about this new adult developmental stage. Yes, seriously, it’s Jane Fonda and it’s very good —TEDTalk.

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4 Areas to Explore to Help Your Clients Rebalance Their Life

May 9, 2016 by Jim Peacock Leave a Comment

When I first heard Geoff Pearman (workforce development consultant in New Zealand) use the term ‘rebalancing’ to describe how Boomers could look at the next phase of their lives, I knew I liked it. I have struggled with how to describe this time after leaving full-time employment to clients I work with, and now have embraced ‘rebalancing’ rather than retirement, “3rd age”, or whatever else is out there. This is a great way to look at ALL career changers as well. (Read Geoff’s article).

People don’t just stop living when they turn 62 to retire and watch eight hours a day of I Love Lucy reruns. This time in their lives is an opportunity to really look at their life and rebalance. Most people want to keep active: possibly volunteering, traveling, picking up new (or old) hobbies. Some will want to keep working, albeit maybe something different than what they’ve done for most of their careers…and maybe with more flexibility.

Here are four areas to explore when you are working with a client who is changing career paths, and in particular for Boomers who are leaving full-time employment and facing their ‘second adult lifetime’.

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Technology free retreat – What a great day!

March 26, 2016 by Jim Peacock 2 Comments

On February 19 of this year, I turned off all my technology and took a “Rebalancing Retreat.”

Thanks to the inspiration from my brother Mark who has taken retreats annually for years and to Richard Leider, a ‘purpose’ expert who suggests in his book, Repacking Your Bags, taking a ‘technology-free’ day and to use that day to j u s t t h i n k…

My retreat was at a local liberal arts college in a remote room in the chapel tower. My view included the beautiful campus on top of Mayflower Hill in central Maine, to the east towards the coastal mountain range, and to the north up the Kennebec River Valley towards Quebec. Inspirational and fortuitous says my brother the priest. Below are some of my thoughts from that day.

I find myself reaching for my phone to check emails (I must have 20-30 by now from last night) or to send a text to someone… and I realize…the text can wait, it really is not that important they receive this text at 8:45 a.m.

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No Regrets. Only Lessons to be Learned.

June 1, 2015 by Jim Peacock Leave a Comment

Regrets are wasted energy.

I had a person in one of my online seminars post that she was an oncology nurse early on in her career and was often the last person people spoke to before dying. Many of them shared their regrets with her about:

Not taking risks in their lives
Not doing jobs they wanted to do

Mt. Whitney — Perspective often helps how you view things

Not doing the education they wanted

Long-held grudges

She had to leave nursing because this was such a depressing part of the job. But what she learned was to live a life of no regrets.

Don’t look at your career development ever as a regret. You can’t change the past… only the future. And it’s how you deal and react to past events that are important. Most of us make the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time. Remember that when you look back on your career development. Don’t ponder or wonder “what if…” Let it go and move forward.

The key to regretting something is to look at it and ask yourself, “What did I learn from it?” I really have no regrets about past decisions and mistakes because I learned something from all of them. I learned that a bachelors degree in Forestry still helps me appreciate the outdoors and to understand ecology in a different way. It was not a waste of five years…and I love the outdoors…as a hobby. So there are no regrets. What I learned by being involved on campus during that time in a variety of student activities was that my true passion was working with people and creativity. That was a good lesson.

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Less is Best

February 24, 2015 by Jim Peacock 6 Comments

Less is best in most cases. We live with a tsunami of information and all we often need is a beach and an umbrella. Malcolm Gladwell in Blink says, “We live in a world saturated with information….The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding.”

So how do we take this enormous amount of information and turn this into understanding? One way to do this is to embrace the “less is best” motto and it will leave you with the clues to understanding. Malcolm Gladwell speaks to this in his book and I talk about “trusting your instincts”. (See 3rd bullet point in this blog).

When working with college students on their resume, I say that every word on this needs to count. To have a purpose. You do not need to tell me that 207-555-5555 is a “cell phone” or JimPeacock @Peak-Careers.com is an “email”, I know what it is. Use bullet phrases, not sentences in your experience area because I am skimming this document, not reading it. Make this resume shorter, meaningful, and cleaner, so I can understand you.

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