by admin | Jul 18, 2010 | Uncategorized
Your career is like a chunk of clay that can be remolded and reshaped as you move through life. Consider yours now. Is it soft and pliable? Is it full of air bubbles? Is it Inflexible and hard as stone?
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Your Annual Career Checkup
Most of us have an annual medical checkup as a regular life event because we have learned that it is a very wise thing to do.
What if we were to do the same thing with our career – check in once a year to see how "healthy" we are doing in each of our work roles?
Howard Figler, Ph.D. has been a recognized leader in career development for more than 30 years. He suggests the following principles for planning an Annual Career Checkup with your favorite career counsellor:
* Everyone has a career.
* One's career is continually in a state of change and thus needs ongoing attention.
* An annual "checkup" will likely lead to better career experiences and better outcomes.
* Many careers can be improved without changing jobs.
* A regular checkup prevents problems from occurring.
Here are some items that could be examined in your Annual Career Checkup:
Career direction – How active are you in managing your career? Are you fully and authentically engaged by your current roles and responsibilities? What might need to change?
Strengths – How easily are you able to describe your natural talents and your significant strengths? How well are you applying your strengths in your work roles? in your relationships?
Motivators and Interests – Every person is motivated by different factors and does not perform well unless they are present. Interests and motivation are related factors. Do you know your unique interests? What motivates you, what moves you to action?
Career prospects – Are there new fields or new opportunities you want to explore? How can you gather the best information about them?
Competencies – What skills or abilities might you need to improve upon, or acquire, in order to leverage career opportunities or to increase satisfaction in each of your career roles?
Managing Priorities -What's most important to you? How do you want to live and work? What strategies are you employing to ensure healthy living, strong relationships and meaningful work?
Job search techniques– Is your current resume a powerful marketing tool or is it a lengthy chronology of your work history and achievements? How up-to-date is your networking list?
Interview skills – It is not uncommon for skilled and competent people to fail miserably when it comes time to present themselves in an interview. Do you need to improve your interview strategies or practice behavioral-based interviewing skills?
Negotiating skills – Could you benefit from learning how to communicate and dialogue more effectively to improve the rewards you receive for your services?
Ideally, individuals do not wait until they are facing a crisis before accessing career help. A yearly examination of all facets of one's career is a prudent strategy for increasing satisfaction and joy in life. Use your birthday to remind yourself to book this important task.
(Source: Adapted from The Career Counselor's Handbook by Howard Figler and Richard Bolles)
Take good care of yourself, .
Kathleen
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Books Available:
Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives: A Woman's Career Legacy
A chance to celebrate women's lives! Part inspirational text, part journal, A Woman's Career Legacy makes a unique and thoughtful gift for a special woman in your life…your mom, a mentor, a good friend, yourself. Learn from the stories of eight exceptional women including Lois Hole, Dr. Helen Hays, Justice Marguerite Trussler, Barbara Marriage and others – ordinary women who made a difference through their work and their lives. Then write your extraordinary story. Create your own legacy for your loved ones.
Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives: A Woman's Career Diary
Strategize your career! This book contains 18 topics relevant to today's career woman, along with ample journal pages for personal reflection. A Woman's Career Diary invites you to record your experiences in all of the career roles you perform. The book provides a chance to reflect, reveal and reminisce about your career. Enhance your success and satisfaction by using the diary topics as a basis for group discussions, sharing your insights and experiences with other women.
Both books are an enduring gift for yourself or someone you love.
Contact Kathleen and place your order!
by admin | May 31, 2010 | Uncategorized
Career satisfaction is enhanced when one is able to hold a vision for what is possible while mindfully staying present to how a job feels right now. This is a matter of being conscious of what is, while delighting in what is still to come.
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Authenticity: A Balance Between Ego and Essence
Authenticity is a term used often these days, though it is frequently presented in a context that suggests it is something easily attainable, perhaps even widespread.
On the contrary, authenticity is a way of being that requires profound self-awareness, considerable effort, and continuous intention.
From a career perspective, being authentic creates a wonderful opportunity to experience greater meaning from one's work, resulting in a deeper sense of joy and satisfaction.
In the career development field, we often hear such phrases as "Follow your bliss," "Find your dream job," "Fall in love with your work," "Do what you love and the money will follow"- each a worthy end and each considered a demonstration of authenticity. The fact is that many people haven't the first idea of how to make that happen.
In a world that measures success mostly by the dollar figure earned or the status achieved, the search for authentic work can appear to be a foolhardy, hopeless venture. Not so! Consider Mark Twain's quote, "the secret of success is making your vocation your vacation."
Vocation may not be something that the average person considers when they think of their job or occupation, but it's the place to begin to contemplate how to go about establishing authentic work.
The concept of an Authentic Vocation was coined by Marcia Bench, an important innovator in today's career development field. The first or preliminary step outlined in her Authentic Vocation Model is to examine your life purpose by exploring the Essence of who you are, and then combining that with understanding how to express that essence through meaningful work.
This can be a difficult process simply because when we think of work, we tend to think first about doing, not being. Marcia Bench suggests it's fascinating that the question often asked of children, "What are you going to be when you grow up?" suggests an integration of the real self, or the essence, expressed through vocation. But this seems to be somehow neglected or forgotten in the doing nature of our fast-paced and competitive world of work. As a result, our focus on doing rather than being may become driven by the needs of the Ego.
The ego is the seat of intelligence and rationality within the psyche of the individual. It is the I, the self of any person, the part that is in contact with the external world. The functions of the ego include recognizing what's taking place outside of ourselves, setting boundaries, differentiating, and developing self-esteem and self-worth. These functions take place through reality testing, impulse-control, judgment, and developing defense mechanisms.
Developing a healthy ego from early childhood on is a prerequisite for producing a psychologically mature, healthy adult. The person whose ego is underdeveloped or weak will find it very difficult to cope with life, not to mention master it.
The person whose ego is inflated or overgrown will also experience difficulty. Both extremes – the ego's weakness and its inflation, may hinder the presentation of the real self, or essence, to the outer world. In an underdeveloped ego, there is a gap between the ideal and the real self. This results in ego's need to defend itself, demonstrated through projected behaviors, including, but not limited to, the following:
* presenting a false image of self to the world
* seeking the approval of others
* enduring worry about how things will turn out
* undermining our own sense of achievement and/or satisfaction
* increasing need for external validation
* over-functioning in an attempt to control outcomes
* continuing comparison of self to others
Healthy ego development can be achieved by taking the time for personal growth and development-a process that nurtures the inner self even as we learn to understand and to love and honour all of our aspects.
The individual with a mature ego has a stong inner sense of identity and purpose. Living from one's essence involves living each day guided by your inner core and by Spirit, however spirit is defined.
Authenticity, including the creation of one's Authentic Vocation, involves examining your Life Purpose and understanding yourself at your core through asking questions like, "What is my fundamental nature?", "What brings meaning to my life?", and "What is it I want to contribute through my work?"
My wish for you is the joy of living authentically by balancing ego and essence.
Take good care of yourself,
Kathleen Johnston
by admin | May 9, 2010 | Uncategorized
Consider the ways in which your career, all of your paid and unpaid roles, may have been influenced by your mother or another important mother figure in your life.
What wisdom and experience did you glean from those relationships? What wisdom will you pass on to the important women in your life?
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Mothers and Mothering
I do not believe a special day to commemorate mothers is necessary, preferring that this be a daily effort. Nevertheless, Mother's Day presents an opportune time to honour the act of mothering through writing.
Each one of us has unconscious powerful forces within that influence what we do and how we feel. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung proposed these as generated by the content of the collective unconscious; inherited, patterned mental images which he termed archetypes. One of the most powerful and pervasive female archetypes is "The Mother," but it is not the only inner pattern meaningful to women. What one type of woman
finds rewarding may be meaningless to the next. Some seek fulfillment through marriage and children and grieve should that goal not be attained; others value different pursuits. Some move from one meaningful relationship to another in search of intense emotional experiences; while yet others attempt to strike a balance comprised of
parts of these and other inner patterns. For the most part, however, cultural stereotypes – the roles to which society expects women to perform – reinforce the "mother" archetypal pattern.
We are often unaware of how powerful these cultural stereotypes are and how much they direct our lives until we face a crisis. I meet many women, personally and professionally, who struggle to understand "the problem that has no name," a phrase Betty Friedan coined in her 1963 work, The Feminine Mystique. Friedan identified the emptiness and dissatisfaction experienced by her own and generations of women who lived for and through others. Despite dramatic societal transformation, the restriction and devaluation of women's roles still too often results in unhappiness and a crisis of identity.
While women's roles have expanded since Friedan's era, the conundrum associated with the Mother role remains. Mothers' societal contributions are grossly undervalued and complicated to measure, yet she is held accountable for the outcome of her work; the raising of children to become functioning, contributing members of society.
The consequential inner pressure to perform begins with the quality of the mother-child attachment believed necessary for the baby to thrive, regardless of the fact that the archetypal mother-child pattern can be fulfilled by someone other than the biological mother. The reality for some women is that they undertake the role not fully realizing the enormous demand nor the complexity of raising a child. The possible outcome may include feelings of fear, failure, loneliness and guilt from the perceived lack of "natural" reflexes that comprise "good" mothering with little respite and few safe places to share the feelings of inadequacy.
Never-the-less with no instructional manual and little or not training, ordinary women continue to perform the extraordinary task of mothering every day. The majority work hard, make sacrifices and carry on doing the very best they can. Most importantly, they remain committed to unconditionally protecting, loving and supporting their
children.
This article is written with gratitude for mother's work everywhere and every day.
Kathleen
*Some of the ideas expressed here originate from Jean Shinoda Bolen's book Goddesses
in Every Women: A New Psychology of Women
.
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Take good care of yourself,
Kathleen Johnston, MA
FEATURES
Your Career
Mothers and Mothering
Resources
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RESOURCES
A Passion for the Possible by Jean Houston. The Author provides the essential tools
to unlock our unique possibilities by claiming the distinct gifts we possess.
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GOOD NEWS
Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives:A Woman's Career Legacy AND
A Woman's Career Diary uses the career journeys of eight Alberta women in a workbook style to invite you to reflect on and record your own unique career legacy.
A Woman's Career Diary has been designed to let you record the day to day events of your career, with "career" including all of your paid and unpaid work . This Diary is designed to assist you in experiencing
personal insight about your career, resulting in a collection of your most cherished memories.
Both books are an enduring gift for yourself or someone you love.
Watch for them August, 2010
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CONTACT
I run a private coaching, counselling, and consulting business. Check out my web
site for Services, or to book a Speaking or Training Event. You can also contact
me directly [mailto:kj@kathleenjohnston.com]with a brief description of your situation
and I'll be happy to follow up.
by admin | Mar 7, 2010 | Uncategorized
Consider the difference between a "job" and "work." A job is what you do to support your physical and financial needs. Work is what provides you with emotional, intellectual and spiritual satisfaction. Meaningful work is the fusion of both concepts.
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The Meaning of Work
Beliefs about the meaning of work have changed over the centuries. The ancient Hebrew scriptures viewed work both as punishment for moral disobedience and as a positive act of redemption. The emergence of the Protestant Work Ethic supported the belief that human labour is the will of God and positioned the industrious worker as God's true servant.
The Protestant Work Ethic also planted the idea that idleness is a breeding ground for sin. We might ask how this idea continues to contribute to the sense of shame some people experience when they are not actively engaged in work.
In recent times and from a more secular viewpoint, the value of work has been more about the pursuit of money and as a means for building up material possessions. It's also important to consider that this experience can be different for people of differing socio-economic classes. People living in poverty are perhaps more likely to be driven by economic necessity or basic survival needs. The middle class may be driven more by achievement and the need to accumulate possessions, and the wealthy may be more inclined to value work as a connection for political and social purposes as well as financial.
Regardless of one's status in society, it's important to understand that psychologically, work is necessary for healthy development. Work influences a person's broader life experience, providing a way to enjoy a sense of belonging and contributing to a general belief that the things we do are important. Work can be further examined psychologically using the following dimensions:
1) the extent to which the person's self-image is connected to their work,
2) the extent to which achievement affects self-esteem,
3) the extent to which accomplishments remain consistent with one's self-concept, and
4) the extent to which work is a vital life interest.
Work is also a social experience for many people. In addition to providing an opportunity to experience satisfaction from task completion and perhaps significant accomplishments, work provides an opportunity for affiliation and meaningful relationships.
The psychological, social and economic value of work can lead to a person's self-worth becoming so inextricably bound up with their employment status that people who lose their jobs may go through several phases – shock or disbelief, anger, depression and hope – similar to the stages of death and dying. When people stop working for whatever reason, they not only lose one of their most important means for connection, but also a significant part of their identity as a person.
The inherent need to work is part of who we are as human beings. The satisfaction of this need increases substantially when we are able to live out our life's purpose through our work.
Living our lives with a sense of purpose is healthy from all perspectives: psychologically, spiritually intellectually and physically. When we are purposefully engaged, we feel fully alive.
Consider how your work has contributed, or continues to contribute, to your life's purpose.
Take good care of yourself,
Kathleen Johnston
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RESOURCES
The Reinvention of Work by Matthew Fox,
The author shares his vision of a world where the personal and professional are
celebrated in harmony and where the self is not sacrificed for a job but is sanctified
by authentic work.
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by admin | Feb 7, 2010 | Uncategorized
The definition of confidence is not complex. Confidence is the reliability of a person or thing and self-confidence is simply having belief in oneself. What is complex, is the way in which confidence is built and maintained and how our self-confidence can be eroded by experiences and relationships in our lives.
Self confidence, or the lack thereof, is affected by;our lived experiences from early childhood and on through all the stages of our lives.
Two things contribute directly to the development of our self-confidence:
1. self-efficacy and 2. self-esteem. We gain self-efficacy by practicing and acquiring skills. As we acquire skills we receive feedback from others in our lives about our ability to perform. This feedback and our response to it, develops into the internal belief system we hold about ourselves and who we believe we are. Self-esteem is the we place on who we believe we are. Our self-esteem is influenced by our experience and our sense of self-efficacy.
Self confidence is important. A self-confident person inspires confidence in others and we know that gaining the confidence of others contributes to both personal and professional success.
Increasing our self-confidence is possible. That can be achieved most directly by living intentionally according to our convictions, by being purposeful about our actions, by making good decisions and by accomplishing what we set out to do.
Eroding our self-confidence is also possible. We undermine our confidence whenever we accept the status quo, when we do not challenge ourselves,when we live incongruently with our principles and when we allow what others think to influence our choices.
Make 2010 the year you intentionally build confidence. Here are some tips:
1.Identify your life purpose, principles and plan. Take some time to reflect on what you want to achieve through living your life. Consider how you want to "show up" in this life? What are the principles that guide how you live and how you work? What is your plan – short term, medium and long term? Write it down. Talk about it with the significant people in your life. You will be pleasantly surprised by the power of this kind of intention.
2.Stifle your inner critic. Begin by taking some time to pay attention to that nasty little voice in your head that feeds your insecurities and your feelings of inferiority. What is the gremlin saying? Write it down. Then trash that inner voice by doing some research with friends and loved ones. Ask them how they perceive you. What do they see as your strengths?
3. Seek new challenges. Learn a new skill. What was your latest challenge to yourself? Consider taking on a project or doing something this year that will push your limits and enhance your competencies. It doesn't have to be big; it just needs to stretch you.For example, plan to enhance your public speaking skills. Sign up for Toastmasters or a Dale Carnegie course.Enhanced communication is a proven method for& building self-confidence.
4.Examine your image. What is the image you intentionally portray to others? How do you walk and carry yourself? What is the impact of your energy on those around you? Any, intelligent? How do you look? How do you dress?onally and authentically provide a solid foundation for confidence. It is my hope that 2010 will truly be a year of confidence for you.
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Both of these bookswill be available by Mother's Day, 2010.
A Woman's Career Journey uses the career journeys of eight Alberta women in a workbook style to invite you to reflect on and record your own unique legacy.
A Woman's Career Diary has been designed to let you record the day to day events of your career, with "career" including all of your paid and unpaid work . This Diary is designed to assist you in deriving personal insight and satisfaction from your career. The result will be a collection of your most cherished memories.
Both books are an enduring gift for yourself or someone you love.
