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 … [Read more...]
Journaling: Taking ‘Fuzzy Thinking’ to Concrete Ideas in Career Development
As a career coach/counselor, do you ask your clients to journal? I do occasionally because I believe the process of taking ideas out of their heads and putting them on paper can be a very powerful activity. “A goal not written is only a wish.” I believe this is true in the career development process...write it down and think it through. Personally I try to journal every day, first thing in the morning. I choose to free-style it and just write about what is important to me that day. It … [Read more...]
Finding Our Purpose begins with Being Authentic
Working with clients I typically begin with helping them identify their skills, but as I finish teaching my 5 week online seminar, Finding Purpose, I think it is more about being “authentic” and finding our true selves, which includes identifying our skills, but much more than that. Being authentic is finding the core of who we are and doesn’t change as we get older; it should only get clearer. Fairly recently, within the past 5 years, my dad told me that he knew I’d be great at … [Read more...]
Stand Out. By Dorie Clark
Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around it. I had a hard time with the beginning of this book because I was constantly thinking how I could use this for clients and I thought it had limited use for most of my clients. She talks about finding your own breakthrough idea to create something new, how to go about making it happen, etc... Then I shifted my thinking in the second half on how I could use this information to grow my own business, develop my own … [Read more...]
Less is Best
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 … [Read more...]