What’s love got to do with work?

The venerable Tina Turner used to belt out those powerful lyrics, What’s love got to do with it? You’ve probably heard the adage Do what you love and the money will follow…Or that famous one, If you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life. I know both of these to be absolutely true so indeed it turns out that love has a lot to do with WORK! What does loving what we do look like? Think about what love means to you. When I love something or someone I give my full attention. I’m all in. I listen, I look deeply to understand what’s happening. I want to know more. I do what I say I’m going to do and I do it with a willingness and a feeling of generosity and care. I want to know how to be able to love even better… Read More

Love Money?

How are you loving your money? It’s no understatement to say that our relationship with money is one of the most complex relationships we’ll ever have. When I’m working with clients we are, at some point, talking about money – the desire to make more of it, to spend less of it, use it more wisely in a department or on marketing a new business. We research potential salaries, we strategize about negotiations for raises, or consider service pricing, or new capitol costs. Often times, as we go through all of these scenarios the anxiety about and around money is high. We quickly learn what isn’t known about money, what’s hiding in plain sight, and then start to navigate a new relationship with those unknowns. One way or another, the relationship with money shows itself, and its eye opening! If we love money, like we love the people in our… Read More

How to Shift Your Energy to HIGH When You’re Running Low

You know those days when you’ve got a big meeting, or you’re heading to an interview or a networking function and you just don’t really feel like you’ve got the juice?? I know those days and times, and I’m a pretty cheerful person most of the time. No matter if you’re an extrovert or introvert, there are just those times when you’d rather crawl into your shell and lay low rather than step into that bright light and SHINE.   Here are a few tips to help you successfully be your best self even on those low-luster days…   Remember a few of your favorite things…Yes. Just like in Sound of Music. When we bring to mind the people or activities that make us feel good we can actually start to feel better. Thinking of a loved one and imagining giving them a gift that they are happy about, or… Read More

Summer 2018 Newsletter

Helping with Your Career Development for 15 Years!                                                                               Greetings for a hot summer week! I hope you, like me, are enjoying your summer regardless of (or because of) the heat! While I’ve been enjoying summer, I’ve also been hard at work thinking about new programs to offer to help with career clarity and satisfaction. I’ve been listening hard to what my clients are processing, changing and living through. There continue to be patterns that I noticed years ago when I first launched my website in 2003! Hard to believe I’ve had my website up for 15 years now, and have been busily working with people of all ages to maneuver through their career quandaries for almost thirty years!   For years I had featured on my website my perspective about what I called the LifeStages – patterns I noticed my clients were experiencing at various times in their… Read More

How To Pick Your Battles At The Office

Even the best employees have to say no once in a while. We all want to be known as the person who can be counted on to deliver great work on time, every time. Not only does consistency make you a popular coworker, but it hopefully makes those above you take notice and helps you climb the career ladder faster. But while saying yes to every request might make everyone happy (including yourself, in the short term), it isn’t always in your best interest. Sometimes, you need to say no. “I had a client who really liked to be involved in a lot of things so she ended up taking on way more than she needed to,” says career coach Daisy Swan. “But at a certain point, it meant she was waking up at four in the morning to get work done. She was working a full day… Read More

Should You be in a Certificate Program to Retool?

Career Development and Educational Options Abound Certificate programs, and other short terms classes, are now easy to find to help everyone update their technical, data, social media and e-commerce skills no matter where they are in their career trajectory. For example, General Assembly (GA), with local locations in Santa Monica and DTLA (and all across the USA) offers intensives that many of my clients have enrolled in to increase their skills and open new career doors as data scientists, data analysts, coders and product managers. My son actually attended GA in their intensive 12-week Data Science program over the summer before he went into his sophomore year. He’s now graduating from college with a great job doing work he loves, and has a bright future ahead in the Big Data world. Many other programs, often called Boot Camps, are available online and in other cities, that provide rigorous, hands-on training. UCLA… Read More

Do You Know How to Keep Your Next Options Open?

I want to share one of the top issues most of my clients and I discuss early on in their work with me. These scenarios, below, may sound like a familiar. If so, and you’re a former or current client, please don’t think I’m using your personal story here…it could be one of many of my clients! Something happens. Something changes. A client has been working in a particular job or industry for years. Could be 7 years, could be 20. Working diligently, head down, doing a good job, maybe really liking their work…but… something happens. There’s a re-org and they’re suddenly let go, or the client has gotten married and now they need to switch gears and find something that is more lucrative, or flexible for a new baby on the way, or maybe they’ve been traveling so much for work that it’s putting a strain on their marriage… Read More

70% of Workers Feel Disengaged at Work. Are You One of Them?

Are Your Bored at Work? Do you know when you’re bored? Do you make repeated trips to the fridge, find yourself leaving your desk to get coffee more than you really need to, stopping what you’re doing to chat with a co-worker? Maybe you’re spacing out, checking your phone and social media a lot, going through the motions in meetings, or even kicking up a little interpersonal drama with co-workers? Sounds like boredom to me. Boredom can actually be as stressful for us as over working. Either way we can become exhausted, demotivated and resentful. The Perils and Possibilities of Boredom Lately I’ve been hearing more clients talk about their boredom at work so I know it’s a trend. What worries me is that I heard this a lot from folks a year before The Great Recession…and I probably don’t need to tell you that after that clients either didn’t… Read More

An End is Always a Beginning.

As we transition into a New Year we are always encouraged to make New Years’ resolutions. I have never been one for New Years’ resolutions although I do quite a bit of reflection at the end of each calendar year, and also at the start of my personal new year – my birthday – which happens to fall at the middle of the calendar year, and provides me a sense of my path, and to know if there’s one actually in front of me. The end of a year is always the beginning of a new one, just as the end of a job or a relationship marks the beginning of a new something (Perspective? Learning?) or someone (to ourselves?) in one way or another. We go through a process of letting go (or not) and then potentially seeing ahead to what’s new. Introspection isn’t everybody’s thing; it has been… Read More