February 01, 2009
Helping Career Changers Around The World
February 2009
Hello!
Welcome to the February edition of The 5 Minute Career Coach!
Well, that little trick of mine – announcing my ebook to you all in the mid month update - certainly worked wonders. I have been beavering away over the last 10 days, finishing the book off and then setting up all the relevant pages on my website. So I am delighted to announce that, as promised, my new ebook, Know Your Personality, Know Your Career is now available.
You will find more information about it in the Recommended Resources section of this newsletter. I think I can allow myself to recommend my own product on this occasion!
It has been an excellent lesson in the power of making yourself accountable as a means of getting over procrastination and perfectionism. It was because I knew you would all be expecting this announcement in the February edition of The 5 Minute Career Coach that I have got it done.
So thank you all for your support just by being there, waiting expectantly! And I can thoroughly recommend that you try the same tactics with anything that you keep putting off in your life. It certainly worked for me!
I hope you enjoy this newsletter and that you take advantage of the special offer on my ebook.
I look forward to hearing what ideas, insights and inspirations you have gained from it.
With very best wishes.
Cherry
Cherry Douglas, Your Career Change Guide
Please don’t keep me a secret! Feel free to share this newsletter and my website with your friends. I wouldn’t mind betting that there will be a few of them who are unhappy with their own careers. Remember that they can get their free copy of 11¾ Ways To Kick Start Your Career Change when they visit the How To Change Careers website.
What’s in this issue
- Quote of the day
- Are you ready to embrace uncertainty?
- The Career Change Question - Your Action Challenge
- Recommended Resources
- What help do you need?
- Useful Links
Quote of the Day
I love some of the quotes and aphorisms that you find in careers and self help books. So often they seem to encapsulate something I have struggled with in my own life or seen others struggle with. I hope the quotes I offer can inspire you too.
Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily.
Zig Ziglar
Are you struggling with motivation? Are your New Year’s Resolutions already slipping?
Actually, that’s OK. It just means you are human!
Motivation is not something that in some people is switched on and in others is switched off. It is a quality that will vary enormously from day to day.
Your job is to just keep giving it a little nudge, and as Zig Ziglar suggests, little and often is the best bet. So don’t set yourself impossible targets and then beat yourself up for not achieving them.
Keep your motivation up by giving yourself credit for even the smallest steps you take towards making the changes you want in your career and life. You will probably achieve more with little and often than you will with an occasional big splurge of effort.
You can read more about career change motivation on the How To Change Careers website.
Are You Ready To Embrace Uncertainty?
One of the things that coaches seem very fond of is encouraging you to build up a bold and vivid picture of your goal. The brighter and the clearer the picture, the argument goes, the stronger will be your motivation and you will be almost ‘pulled’ towards the new life you have envisioned for yourself.
Now I don’t disagree with this point of view because there are without doubt people out there who have a Big Vision, who know exactly where they want to go in life. And they seem to steer
towards this with a single-minded purpose that overcomes all obstacles.
But for many career changers, one of the biggest challenges is that they just don’t have that clarity of purpose. They are unhappy where they are but can’t see through the fog to make out
any kind of Big Vision on the horizon. And then because the vision is not there as a magnet, they end up staying put. They argue to themselves ‘better the devil you know than the devil you don’t’.
But what if you were to take a few steps forward anyway, even if you don’t know where you are going? You just might find that from that new place, you begin to see things differently.
Remember how when you are driving in fog, you can emerge into the sunlight quite suddenly and unexpectedly. Think of walking in the country when you turn a bend in the path and suddenly a
whole new vista appears. If you stay still, these new perspectives would never emerge.
Sometimes, when you are trying to make changes in your life and in your career, you need to commit to making a move, however uncertain you feel because it is in moving and exploring that your new career ideas will emerge from the fog.
This is a tough one because society conditions us so strongly to believe that we have to stay safe, we have to know exactly what’s coming next, we must not take risks.
Now I am not suggesting that you just resign from your job without any thought at all, but rather I am recommending that you do not wait till you have got your new career all completely mapped out in your mind before you make your move. By all means gradually develop a sense of the direction you want to go in, allow yourself to explore a range of possibilities, build a network of people who can inspire and support you. But then the important step is to be willing to take the plunge while you are still feeling uncertain about exactly how it will work out.
One of the biggest career change challenges is learning to trust that the way forward will unfold as you travel; finding a willingness to embrace the uncertainty of what lies ahead. But
it can really pay dividends because it is when you have the courage to start taking those steps forward that new insights and possibilities begin to emerge.
Your general approach to change will impact on how easy or difficult you find it to embrace uncertainty. Why not take a look at the page on the How To Change Careers website on attitudes to change and use the tips if you need help with managing your approach to change?
The Career Change Question
Career change is not easy. It often requires a lot of hard and deep thinking about how you have been living your life up to now and how you would like it to be in the future.
Because I am a coach, I strongly believe in the power of asking challenging questions. Questions can help you explore where you are and where you are going.
These questions should not be given a quick and glib response, but instead you can just let them wander round your mind for a few days, or even weeks and see what answers unfold for you. They are designed to get you thinking in new ways and hopefully gain insights that may open your mind to new possibilities.
Here's my question for this month.
Just stop and take stock of how you got to where you are right now in your career. What made you choose your current job? Did you actually choose it or has it just sort of happened as a result of promotions you felt you couldn’t/shouldn’t turn down? How did you end up on this particular career path? Was it something you felt drawn to or were you just following the path
that was expected of you? Is the really your career?
Make a note in your Career Change Project File of the thoughts that come up for you as a result of thinking about this question. Then decide what you are going to do about it – and take action.
Recommended Resources
This month I am taking the opportunity to promote my own ebook, Know Your Personality, Know Your Career.
As I promised in the January Update, I am making this available at a SPECIAL OFFER price of just £6.99, just to the members of my How To Change Careers Community. This offer will only be open for the month of February. After the end of the month you will still be able to buy the book, but at the full price of £10.99
go to this page of my website
So what do you get when you buy this ebook?
When you have read Know Your Personality, Know Your Career you will:
- Know more about MBTI®, where it originates and how it was developed
- Understand what is meant by preferences
- Be able to make an initial assessment of your own type
- Read information about each of the 16 MBTI® types
- See what your individual preferences mean in relation to your work
- Know how you can use MBTI® to help you with your career choice
- Realise where MBTI® can help and where it cannot provide all the answers
In addition, for each of the 16 MBTI® types you get:
- a snapshot summary of your defining qualities
- a quick overview of what your preferences mean for you at work
- a checklist of themes related to your type to help you assess career ideas you are considering
- a list of specific career ideas that may be worth investigating
You will also get the opportunity to take the full MBTI® assessment if you wish to explore further.
An additional benefit you get with this ebook is that I also link you back to different sections of my website where you will find more exercises to help you take a really all round view of your career.
So if you use this ebook in conjunction with the How To Change Careers website, you will have a much clearer idea of who you are, what you want in your career and how you can make it happen.
And as an extra bonus
When you buy Know Your Personality, Know Your Career, I also introduce you to a free e-course from Nick Williams which will inspire you to go out and find the work you were born to do.
Here’s how Nick introduces it...
- Tired of trading your life away in a career that’s devoid of joy & fulfilment?
- Dreaming of quitting your job and taking control of your destiny?
- Craving new opportunities to express your gifts and talents?
- Yearning for more passion, fulfilment and adventure in your life?
- Eager to boost your income and start living life on your own terms?
- Searching for ways to make a meaningful contribution in the world?
I personally found this e-course really inspirational and I would love to share that with you.
When you sign up you will get a 9 part multi-media course full of ideas and encouragement to help you to get up, get out and change your career and your life!
go to this page of my website
What Help Do You Need?
The 5 Minute Career Coach is my way of keeping in touch with aspiring career changers all over the world. I know there are many of you out there who are trying to find the courage and/or the inspiration to take a big step forward in your working lives so I hope you find this newsletter a useful source of ideas and encouragement to help you get on with your career change plans.
However, I want to be sure that it meets your needs, so please let me know how I can improve both the newsletter and the How To Change Careers website.
Let me start by prompting you with a few questions.
- What is your biggest question or concern about changing career?
- What are the biggest challenges you face in changing your career?
- What one thing would help you most with your career change?
- What other information and support would you like to see on the How To Change Careers website or as an ebook, ecourse or teleclass?
Do let me know what you think and tell me how you think this newsletter or the website might be improved.
You can post your feedback here.
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