reflection

Survey Says…Engagement!

February 10, 2020 by Jim Peacock Leave a Comment

On my 8th anniversary of being full-time with Peak-Careers, February 3rd, I sent out a request to complete a short survey seeking insights to where people engage with Peak-Careers.

One of my 3 words to guide me in 2020 is “Strategic”, and I wanted to gather some information to help me be more strategic in my efforts.

Survey says “engagement”

A special “shout out” to the nearly 70 people who took the time to fill it out. Thank you so much.

The survey says I have strong engagement in these top 4 areas…and lessons learned in a few others.

Many people do indeed read my weekly career emails that come out Tuesday mornings
RESULTS: I will continue to send you career content each week. (see below if you want to be added to the list).
55+% of the respondents follow me on LinkedIn and read my posts.
RESULTS: I will make sure that I continue to share quality content to help you do your job and serve your students / clients / customers.
55% have watched at least one of my monthly career interviews! I am thrilled at this outcome.
RESULTS: I love doing these interviews with other career practitioners and will definitely keep identifying experts and topics to interest you.
REQUEST: Do you have topics or people you’d like to hear from in future interviews? Let me know and I’ll work at setting it up.
40% of the respondents have taken an online seminar
RESULTS: I know that not everyone is interested in online learning, so I am actually very happy with this number and will continue to offer and develop more subject areas.

LESSONS LEARNED

Facebook Live has not been as popular. I will do one more FB Live and then reevaluate if I will continue them.

Tuesday March 3rd at 8:00 pm (Eastern)
I will talk about private practice
Tips on what has worked for me
Recommendations I have for anyone who wants to go into private practice.

Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram are also not where many of you are hanging out. I need to put more thought into whether I want to invest more into each of these to grow them or to “let some of them go”.

If you are interested in the graphic / chart results you can see them here.

Regardless, I am grateful for the many people who took time out of their day to give me feedback.

Knowing that so many people support me and find value in following me is wonderful to know.

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a weekly career news 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

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INTERVIEW: What is Mindfulness and Why Should Career Practitioners Care?

March 28, 2019 by Jim Peacock Leave a Comment

My guests today are….well me, Jim Peacock 🙂 and Sabrina Woods, Holistic Career / Life Coach and we will explore mindfulness and career practitioners embracing it in their practice.

My good friend Bob McIntosh interviews me and Sabrina on Using Mindfulness to Impact our Wellbeing & That of Our Clients.

Bob McIntosh, SCPRW is a career trainer and coach and LinkedIn authority and asked if he could interview us as he wanted to learn more about mindfulness.

WHAT WE WILL EXPLORE

What is mindfulness and why is it so important to practice it?
How do you practice mindfulness and share your experience with your clients?
What benefits do you derive from mindfulness, and how do you pass the benefits on to your clients?

Watch video now

My Career Inspiration for 2019

January 7, 2019 by Jim Peacock Leave a Comment

My career inspiration for 2019 starts by choosing three words to guide me throughout the year.

By choosing 3 words to guide and inspire me, rather than creating specific goals, I get career inspiration in a variety of ways, both personally and professionally. When I think about “career” it is in its broadest definition as defined by Donald Super.

A career is defined as the combination and sequence of roles played by a person during the course of a lifetime. It concerns an individual’s progression through a series of jobs over his or her lifetime and includes that person’s education and unpaid work experiences, such as internships and volunteer opportunities. Donald Super.

How I choose my words

I go on ‘tech-free’ retreats about once a month where I turn off my phone, stay off email, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram for the day. It is my day to write and think and read.

On my retreat in December, I spent time reading my daily journal for the entire year looking for themes, words, or ideas that keep appearing.

What I am looking for are words or ideas that can inspire me. Sometimes I find a repetition of negative words. What I then explore is their opposite meaning to offer me career inspiration for the next year. I struggled this year choosing my third word and had to “call a friend”. (Perfectly fine way of doing it, as well as using a thesaurus).

I was trying to articulate a feeling I had but struggled to find a word that captured it. My friend Rees helped me describe my feeling with a word that felt right. I actually had four words this year and he also helped me narrow my list to the below three words.

By choosing a word, rather than one goal, I can utilize the meaning of that word to offer career inspiration throughout the year. Here are my words I used in the past three years.

2016 – Health ★ Mindfulness ★ Focus

2017 – Intentional ★ Authentic ★ Wellness

2018 – Reach ★ Capacity ★ Consistency

REFLECTION

This word came to me as I realized how beneficial it is to take time to slow down and think. Each day I start by doing some QiGong (like Tai Chi) to calm myself and then I journal. By writing with pen and paper it forces me to slow down and think through what is on my mind.

Each afternoon at 2:30, I take a meditation break. These routines give me time to pause the fast pace of life and in return, I find creativity and inspiration for my work and personal life.

PURPOSEFUL

One thing I noticed in my journal and also from my business coach, is that I tend to use words and phrases like, I will try and write this week. Or, I need to or should do something. What I will be saying (notice I didn’t say try to say) is I will be more purposeful with my intentions this year.

i.e. I will finish my book for Career Coaches this winter.

i.e. I will write my blogs at least one month ahead of time to allow my Advisory Board more time to review

GRATITUDE

I wanted a word that made me happy. I struggle with all the crazy news coming at me daily, sometimes hourly, and wanted a word like “laugh” or “joy” or “smile” but it just didn’t feel right. As I talked it out with Rees, I realized that the word ‘gratitude’ is all about the many things in my life that make me happy. It’s not just that I want to laugh or smile, but I want to look at all the positive things going on my life that keep me going.

Are you inspired to choose 3 words for 2019?
If so, please share them here or email me your words and why you choose them.

May 2019 be a rich and fulfilling year.

INTERVIEW: Taking Retreats to Slow Down

November 20, 2018 by Jim Peacock Leave a Comment

How many things are on your “to do” list today?
How many times/day do you check your email and social media accounts?
Get control over your day again by choosing 3 things to do each day that “must get done” and then look at your list of 25 things.
Check your email 3 times/day…bunch them up so you are not chasing emails all the time.

And…consider taking a day, or a half day, retreat to slow down and rediscover your creativity.

Listen to this Peak-Careers Interview with three of us who have been doing retreats for a while now and learn:

What our typical “retreat” looks like
What motivated us to start doing them
What the benefits of doing them can be
and some advice & tips for getting started

Interested in this topic? See my blogs on mindfulness

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.

Tech Free Retreat

November 12, 2018 by Jim Peacock 2 Comments

Tech Free Retreat and The Benefits of Turning Off the Tsunami of Information

What I love about taking my tech free retreat day each month is the ‘cognitive dissonance” it causes me. An out of my comfort zone kind of ‘cognitive dissonance’. I leave the house as close to 8:00 a.m. as possible and drive to a friend’s office who so graciously lets me use it for my tech-free retreat day. And then it hits me – WHAM! It’s different. Feels different. Looks different, smells different. It will be a different day.

The cell phone is turned off.

I do not check emails.

I do not even look at any social media.

Here is an inside look at my most recent retreat. I hope you can see the value of doing this to slow down your life, to reflect, and to take that broader view of your work-life.

NEXT WEEK’S PLAN

My Tech Free day typically lands on a Friday which is when I craft my plan for the following week. My “To Do” list each day is only three (3) tasks. So I take the fifteen minutes to lay out Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Monday looks like this.

Monday

1 ) At least 90 minutes working on my book

2 ) Finish my weekly email that goes out Tuesday

3 ) Draft the email to my connections in New Hampshire and Vermont and send

I find that three big things are about all I can get done in most days. If I do get through them, I can pick one item from the following day to work on. I also schedule three smaller items. These are things that just need a little time and effort and often doesn’t require much thinking. But without scheduling them on a day, they tend to stay on my To Do list way too long.

JOURNAL

The next thing I do is start journaling. Writing whatever comes into my mind. It mostly has to do with work but if something is going on in my personal life, I write it out. You’ll notice I am saying “write it out” which is because I do not do my journal on a computer. I spend enough time on the computer and find that the slower handwriting process is helpful in fleshing out my ideas. Writing forces me to take the time to actually think about what is important to me now, what is realistic, what are my priorities today. I will occasionally look back at the past few weeks and see if there are any trends or themes. My journal is often not very ‘heavy’ stuff. It is a journal that allows me to purge my thoughts out of my brain and to work on them.

SLOW STUFF

In between bursts of work I either go for a walk, meditate, do Qigong, or read, and in the afternoon I take a 25-minute nap. This nap was inspired by Daniel Pink’s newest book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.

Each of these activities is for the sole purpose of slowing myself down. Giving myself permission to be mindful and in the moment. The power of mindfulness continually reminds me to be present in whatever moment I have.

I always have a book or two I am reading but will sometimes feel guilty if I stop work to read most days. Not on my retreat day though. This is my day to slow down and read for a while in a book or a professional journal that has been sitting by my desk for a few weeks. Today is the day to slow down.

BIG PICTURE

I keep a three-month calendar on the wall in my office which shows me what is coming up, projects I have, and my editorial calendar on it. I always spend some time on my editorial calendar on my retreats. Looking ahead to what my blogs will be on. Who do I want to interview? What tips do I want to share each week? Webinars? Facebook Live? The better I am at looking ahead and planning the fewer crisis events I have to face weekly.

Being able to step back and look at the next 90 days helps me to conceptualize what needs to get done in the next 60 days, 30 days, week. I feel so much better when I have my three-month calendar up to date. I know that I don’t have to worry about my upcoming webinar for another 3 weeks. Whew! That feels good. But then I can see that my speech coming up in four weeks will need attention next week. All good stuff.

CREATIVITY

Growth happens with cognitive dissonance. When you are forced to “think” in a different way. When someone says or does something that challenges beliefs, values, and attitudes it forces us to ponder and wonder if there is another way of doing things. My tech free retreat day almost always causes me to challenge some beliefs. This challenge causes creativity. Changing things up by leaving my office/home and going someplace new and doing different things throughout the day helps me find different solutions. Solutions that I would not get when I am “peddle to the metal” all day like I am so many other work days.

I encourage you to consider taking a tech free day, or a half day, sometime soon.

This crazy world we live in and its ‘tsunami of information’ coming at us all the time is not healthy. Put your health and wellbeing ahead of technology and take a retreat.

3 Reasons to Practice Mindfulness at Work

June 12, 2017 by Jim Peacock 2 Comments

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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