life@work

How to Choose the Best Career Assistance for You

If you feel stuck in a career rut or unsure of how to take the next step in your career path, there are a number of resources you can use to help you move forward.

There are friends, books, study programs, mentors, tele-courses, group coaching, career counseling and career coaching. Choosing from among the options can be a dizzying process in itself.

I am a career coach, and part of my job is connecting people with the resources that are right for them. Career coaching can be a wonderful catalyst, yet is not the best solution for everyone in a career slump.

This article from Lower Hudson Online does a good job describing what to look for and expect from a career coach.

If it's time for you to turn to some kind of outside assistance regarding your career (usually when your spouse and/or friends are just sick and tired of hearing about your career woes!) take a few minutes to think about what exactly you're needing.

• Tactical job search advice?
• Assistance figuring out how your skills could translate to a different industry or career?
• A long term career plan?
• A new resume?
• Contacts in the field of your choice?
• Time in your day to do thinking and planning on your own?
• Someone to be a sounding board and support you?

Also think about how much time you have to dedicate to this exploration, whether talking to another person or group is important to you, and what kind of financial investment you're willing to make.

For instance career books are a great low-cost investment, if you know you have the self discipline to complete the exercises and process on your own.

Career coaching is a significant investment that can yield powerful results in a short period of time, if you enjoy partnerships and can commit the time and energy it requires.

Thankfully, we don't have to figure out everything about careers by ourselves. Knowing what you need will make it easy to find the career assistance that's best for you.

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

Happiness is Giving Your Full Attention - to Just About Anything

There's a book I turn to again and again that I feel I must say something about here. It's called The One Who is Not Busy: Connecting with Work in a Deeply Satisfying Way, by Darlene Cohen.

I'm convinced that finding happiness at work happens more reliably when we're paying attention to how we're thinking and what we're choosing to focus our attention on.

In other words, it's not just about finding that dream set of circumstances to plug yourself into - you have a lot of power and control on your own to make it great or suffer mightily.

Let's face it - a lot of us are stressed out. There's too much to do, the demands are overwhelming, and at the heart of much of our distress is our extreme level of busyness.

We can find some relief through taking breaks. But what Darlene Cohen's small, wise book discusses is a way to take the Zen approach to consciousness, known as simultaneous inclusion, and use it to create an entirely different relationship with busyness and our work.

I don't want to lecture about Zen concepts and summarize koans here, though. Suffice to say, if you're curious about how you can learn to focus your full attention on what you are doing, whether it is presenting a new ad campaign to a client or washing dishes, and consequently experience a feeling of flow and increased well-being, read the book!

I will give you a sneak peek at the two key skills the book offers, and how I think acquiring them would help me.

Skill #1: The Ability to Narrow or Widen the Mind's Focus at Will

If I can get the hang of this, I can focus deeply on a task at hand as if it's the only thing in my world and then come "to the surface" whenever I want and place that task in relation to the general scheme of things.

I do the small steps well and with full focus without losing the big picture.

Skill #2: The Mental Flexibility to Shift the Mind's Focus at Will from One Thing to Another

If I figure this one out, I can move from narrow task to narrow task to narrow task quickly, letting one go completely before dipping into the other. I leave work at work. I don't get stuck in compulsive thinking or fretting.

When there's too much to do I simply do the work, mindfully absorbed in it.

It's understandable to cling to our busyness - it can make us feel alive and it protects us from emptiness - but if life feels particularly mechanical to you right now, try some of the practices in this book (many of them are meditative).

You may find that simply changing your focus changes your entire experience.

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com