Helping Career Changers Around The World

December 2010

Hello!

Welcome to the December 2010 edition of The 5 Minute Career Coach.

What's in this Issue

• Quote of the Day
• Article of the Month - What's YOUR Career Story?
• Your 5 Minute Coaching Session
• What Is Your Biggest Career Change Question?
• Recommended Resources – Affirm Your Life
• Comments and Feedback
• Useful Links

Everyone loves a story – and when you are thinking of a career change, you are naturally interested in how other people's careers have unfolded.

So why not share your story – and win a prize!

I have created a new section on the How To Change Careers website specifically designed to allow you to share the ups and downs of your working life. You'll find it here.

Please don't think you can only share if your career has been a total success story from beginning to end. Hearing how people have struggled, made mistakes and still persevered is inspirational and will encourage others to keep aiming for their dreams.

And the prize?

I have got a copy of one of my all time favourite career change books, Nick Williams', The Work We Were Born To Do, signed by Nick himself. I will send it to the person who submits the career story that offers the most inspiration and encouragement to other career changers. The deadline for entry to this competition is the end of December 2010.

So click this link to jump over to the How To Change Careers website and tell your story.

When you are done, there is more about story telling in this month's article.

If you think this newsletter and my website deliver good value, just click the button below and buy my next cup!

Or click through to the How To Change Careers website!

With best wishes

Cherry

Cherry Douglas
Your Career Change Guide

How To Change Careers

Click here to access Nick Williams' FREE ecourse on Discovering the Work You Were Born To Do

• Would you like to get greater clarity over what kind of work could be right for you?


• Are you intrigued by the idea that your personality can guide you towards the right career choice?


• Would a list of career ideas that match your personality be useful?

Then take a look at Know Your Personality, Know Your Career and find out more.

Just click here to read more about The CV & Resume Workbook

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.

So if you write your career story and in doing so you learn that you have been going in the wrong direction for the last 20 years, yes you may feel that to let go is to lose quite a lot of who you think you are. But you will only discover your true identity if you are willing to let go of that part you have been playing and let the real you emerge.

Are you willing to lose in order to win?

If the story of your career were written as a book, what would the title be?

• Same Old, Same Old
• Onwards and Upwards
• Follow My Lead
• The Daily Grind
• Just Keep Your Head Down...?

It is quite an interesting thought experiment to imagine your career story this way because it forces you to take a step back and see if there is a theme, an underlying message that has shaped the way your working life has gone.

What are your messages?

That underlying theme is there for most of us if we just take the time to stop and look for it. Often it comes from messages we picked up from our early lives. Messages which told us what was expected of us. For example:

'All our family go into the law'
'We Johnsons are not the kind of people to go to University'
'Mike is the practical one in the family'
'Sonja is going to take over the family business when she grows up'
'Work is hard, so you just have to get on with it and mustn't complain'
'You don't expect work to be fun, do you?'

There are many more – and I am sure reading the examples above will have prompted you to come up with a few from your own career and life story.

So are you stuck with these messages? Are they woven into the very fabric of your being?

No!

That doesn't mean that it will always be easy to undo the conditioning that has come from those messages, but it is not impossible.

So how do you do it?

1. Recognise the messages that have shaped your career story
2. Ask yourself whether they are serving you well. Have they helped you to reach a place in your working life where you feel happy and fulfilled?
3. If you have any doubts about 2 above, then what will you do to change the direction of your career story from now on?

Write the next chapter

Take some time to decide how you would like the next chapter of your working life to look. What will be the new, helpful messages that will underpin it? What will be the title of the next chapter?

• Breaking Free


• Becoming Myself


• Finding The Answer

Over to you. You are the author of your own story, so from today onwards, you can choose to take it in a new direction, if you so desire.

Share your future plans

If you are committing to taking your career in a new direction, why not tell your story up to now on the How To Change Careers website. (Don't forget the prize I am offering for the best submission!) Use the space to ask for ideas and advice from other visitors – they may have travelled a similar journey to you. Let us know what your plans are and then come back to the site in a few months time to tell us how you are getting on and to celebrate your progress!

Challenging questions are one of the key tools coaches use in helping clients to create change.

Each month I offer you a mini coaching session by asking you a challenging question to think about. The questions I ask are designed to get you thinking in new ways and hopefully gain insights that may open your mind to new possibilities for you career and for your life.

Well, I already asked 'what's your story?', so you have a pretty big question for this month already. But how about this variation...

You might be surprised at how differently they see things. If their view is very different, don't just reject it. Ask yourself what it is that has led them to see your story so differently? What do they perceive in you that you don't? What can you learn about you from asking this question?

This section in the 5 Minute Career Coach, gives you the opportunity to ask a specific question you may have about changing career. I will do my best to answer the questions that come up either here in the 5 Minute Career Coach or on the How To Change Careers website.

If you'd like to ask a question about changing careers, just click this link and fill in the form to submit your question via the How To Change Careers website.

And you can also read some of the questions I have already answered here.

Affirm Your Life

I first came across Che Garman on Twitter(@AffirmYourLife) and loved the encouraging thoughts she shares. This is how she describes what she aims to do:

"My passion is creating empowering affirmations - my mission is to inspire you to achieve your goals. Affirm Your Life has 1,000s of free affirmations to help make it happen!"

Che writes an associated blog, which includes 1000s of affirmations as well as tips on how to use them.

And in addition to the affirmations, she is giving away over 50 free ebooks on topics such as Self Improvement, Success, Wealth and Time Management.

It is a blog well worth visiting and I recommend you follow her on Twitter too so you get a daily dose of positive thinking to help you keep going with your career change.

More recommendations
If you would like to see more recommendations for books and similar resources, follow the link to the Career Change Books page of the How To Change Careers website. Do keep popping back to it as I am adding to it all the time.

And if there are books, websites and other resources that have inspired you and that you would like to recommend, there is a place for you to do so on that page.

I want to be sure that both this newsletter and the How To Change Careers website are focused on YOU.

The best way I can do this is by asking for your comments and feedback:

• What do you enjoy and find most helpful about the 5 Minute Career Coach?


• What suggestions do you have for improvements to the 5 Minute Career Coach?

Read more articles about career change on the How To Change Careers website

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