It’s easy to get down and depressed when it seems like so many things aren’t happening the way you want them to. I meet with men and women who are working hard to find the next right thing for them and they come in stooped and frustrated. But they do perk up and become inspired once we scratch the surface and find the quiet possibilities that lie, often, just below the surface.
unemployment
A Lesson from The Suns
Steve Nash has been an inspiration to me since the first time I saw him play, live, at the Staples Center years ago. I recently read a great article about him in Sports Illustrated. What struck me was Stoudemire’s statement here about how success on the court manifests — through creative vision and seeing. “When you have creative minds, you get involved in different sports, in different cultures, and it allows you to open up on the basketball court and just be yourself. Steve’s a heck of a soccer player. He’s one of those skateboard guys. For the most part, you want to be yourself. Being yourself allows you to play better, to have more fun. It opens up your spirit.” Take a moment to assess how open you are to what’s going on around you. What energy are you leaving on the table? How engaged are you in a… Read More
What's Fun Got to Do With It?
This past weekend I had the good fortune to attend an independently organized TED (Technology Entertainment Design) event in Manhattan Beach. TED is all about Ideas Worth Spreading; you can find more about this at TED.com. While I learned so much during this one day event, I’ve found myself talking about a particular presentation about play and fun and see how this ‘plays’ out in work – mine, my clients’, and my 13 year old son’s.
Michael Shore, VP of Worldwide Consumer Insights at Mattel Inc. presented valuable research about what fun means to a wide cross section of kids, summarizing this with 10 Expressions of Fun. I’ve been measuring my sense of fun against these. And, after presenting this list to my video playing obsessed son, understand more about what he gets from these games, and appreciate more what we’re all really after. In fact, fun is absolutely key to a satisfying career. Check yourself against these 10 Expressions of Fun. How much are these a part of your work and life?
Choosing Life
I’m currently reading Awakening Joy by James Baraz & Shoshana Alexander. They include this poem in their inspiring book and it seemed fitting to add this to my blog on Valentine’s Day.
Choosing Life by Danna Faulds
The downward spiral starts.
Self-doubt and darkness
vie for center stage, while
I, the passive, drowning
one, waiting for my demise.
Just as I sink beneath the
waves of my despair a
thought arises. Why go
there? I’ve made this
trip a thousand times,
and it leads nowhere.
Tell Us about Your New Job
Are you discouraged by the headlines about unemployment? I’m ready for some new ones. To that end I’m asking for your stories about how you found your new job or career — whether you worked with me or not. I know plenty of people who have created or found new positions and I want more people to hear the story that this does happen and how. Please ~ if you or someone you know has a story to share, please have them send it to me. We’ll post it. We need to give the other side of the story of unemployment to give others hope and inspiration. With heartfelt thanks, Daisy… Read More
Your Stimulus Plan
Wow. This has been some ride lately. If you’re reading this you may be looking for ways to cope with having been laid off, downsized, right sized, wrong sized, fired, or worried about all of the above happening to you. You may also be thinking ahead and trying to come up with proactive ways to approach your next moves in your career — Your Stimulus Plan. I’m with our President — we will recover from this chaos and more and new opportunities will appear. What does that statement do to you when you read that? Take a moment to notice. Are you skeptical? Too anxious and impatient to take a breath? Or do you brighten just a tiny bit? Any of these reactions will inform you of how your beliefs are affecting your actions, and therefore your outcomes. My previous post was about not engaging in job search… Read More
What Happy People Don't Do
This article is from The New York Times By: Rony Caryn Rabin Published: November 19, 2008 Happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching television, a new study finds. That’s what unhappy people do. Although people who describe themselves as happy enjoy watching television, it turns out to be the single activity they engage in less often than unhappy people, said John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and the author of the study, which appeared in the journal Social Indicators Research. While most large studies on happiness have focused on the demographic characteristics of happy people — factors like age and marital status — Dr. Robinson and his colleagues tried to identify what activities happy people engage in. The study relied primarily on the responses of 45,000… Read More
