Success

What constitutes success? Is it society’s standards or an individual’s own assessment of his life? Can one be considered successful if he experiences success in one area of his life, but finds the rest of his life a shambles?


Can success be measured externally or is it an internal measurement? Who has lived the more successful life?

Is it the man who has pulled himself out of poverty by the scratching of his own fingers, or just by the dint of hard work and smart decisions, but who has not taken the time to make friends, other than those who could advance his fortune? Or is it the man who has taken time along the way to appreciate the people around him and to build deep relationships with those who have crossed his path or at least dealt with them fairly and honestly while they were in his life?

Is it more successful to reach the end of one’s life surrounded by people , hundreds, even thousands of people, none of whom you know well or for that matter really know anything about you? Or is it better to reach the end of your life surrounded by just a few friends, all of whom know you well, who know something of your dreams and aspirations and who have laughed and cried with you?

Is the man who has achieved all of his life, who at the end is still looking around for more worlds to conquer who is the more successful? Or is the man who looks back on his life and realizes he had a wonderful family and friends and that his life was rich with laughter and tears and is content to say, “I had a good life”?

Who is more successful, the man who was able to control events in his life so that he was never surprised and was always prepared for whatever might happen? Or is it the man who rolled with the punches? Who felt that life was an adventure to be experienced as it came, good or ill?

Who is the more successful, the man who has no humor about himself but laughs at the foibles of others, or the man that realizes life is fun and funny and laughs most often at himself and never at, but with others?

What is success at the end of life? Is it the man who rails against his fate which was always to pass from this earth, or is it the man who can sigh with contentment and say “I did good”?

As you stand in line at the grocery store, who is more successful, the man whose face is plastered over all the magazines and newspapers or the man standing next to you?

Ingenuity and Creativity

I was just reading an article provided by the Wall Street Journal to Yahoo online. It said that fully 20% of the men between the ages of 25 and 54 are not working. It doesn’t address the employment of those over 54 which we might expect to be worse. The article goes on to quote the President’s economic advisor as saying that when the economy has fully recovered about five years from now the improvement will be that one 1 in 6 men will be out of work. Doesn’t feel like it will be that much of an improvement does it?


It does say that many of the jobs that have gone away, will never return. Many of them production line work or construction, but office workers are being affected too.

We can’t expect the government to help us out. They don’t really know how to cope with this state of affairs either. The only solutions they seem to come up with are only digging the hole deeper. The bailouts we are funding may be creating a few jobs, but not in the number we need. Government created jobs for the unemployed doesn’t really make sense either. That’s the government creating jobs that the taxpayer is funding. So those new jobs the government creates are being paid for by the people who are being employed in those jobs, with considerable additional support by the already overburdened taxpayer. We have to stop the madness.

We have gotten use to being taken care of. We have allowed our minds and imaginations to go soft , thinking that we will be taken care of in times of trouble. In times of trouble we are the ones we need to turn to. Government was designed to govern. Too make laws that protect us and keep the country from sinking into anarchy. The government was not meant to be our caretaker, nor should we expect or want it to me.

We need to do what we have been best at, applying our ingenuity and creativity to solving the problem. We the people, not the U.S. government need to do this. We are the most affected. The government pays lip service to the problem but then goes blithely on and exacerbates it by continuing to spend money we don’t have.

Nor is Corporate America the answer. Public companies do not have very much loyalty to their employees, if any. Their loyalties are to their stockholders. The stockholders attention is on short-term result, the bottom line and ROI. So when those quarterly and annual reports come out and ROI is not good, management looks around to see where it can save money. Let’s see, are the top executives going to vote to slash their exorbitant salaries and bonuses? Not likely. Are they going to decrease the size of upper management, possibly, though not likely. Why would they vote themselves out of a job? Guess where they are going to turn to next? Hello! The middle and lower echelons of the work force have come into their sights. Surprise! Oh, don’t worry. The work is not going away. There are just going to be fewer people doing it. A few of those jobs may come back when the bottom line picks up. Maybe, but probably not.

So it now falls upon the ones who have been most affected to ferret out the solution to this problem. The world has changed. It has moved on. We can no longer expect the old ways to work. We cannot expect to be taken care of.

Will we rise to this challenge? There is no choice. We have to. When we started this country we made do with what we had and in doing so forged a better more prosperous life. We invented and developed ways that made our lives easier and more efficient. We developed industries that put people to work, work in which they could take pride. We need to do it again.

Rhetoric aside, if we are to survive and thrive we must do it again.

Change – Begets Change

Once you have made the career change, if you have chosen wisely, you may find that other areas of your life begin to change..


A friend once told me that some people are in your life for a season and some people are in your life for a reason. As you change you may find that certain people, friends, co-workers, acquaintances, disappear from your life. You may no longer have anything in common with them or they with you. Try to retain those relationships on some new level if you can, if for no other reason than that you like them or maybe they could be a help in you new career, if not today, maybe tomorrow. But if it is time to let those relationships go, then honor them and let them go.

Certain interests may go by the wayside to be replaced by other interests. The possibilities here are endless. If they no longer fit into your life, consider letting them slide away. New interests will undoubtedly come along and replace them.

You are evolving, changing who you were into a new person, with new needs and new dreams and new goals. In five years you may look back and not recognize the person you used to be.

As you evolve, stretch. Try something that you have never tried before. The more that you evolve and allow yourself to evolve, the easier it will be to meet the changes that will be coming your way. But evaluate each change you make. Is it for the better? If not, let it go.

You are on a life-long adventure to discover the real you. Your purpose will change as you evolve. It may stay basically the same, but will become clearer, sharper, better defined. And when you achieve your goal you will find that there is a new one waiting beyond it. That new goal will require more changes. It is never ending. And that is good. That is how we learn, how we progress, how we develop. It makes us more interested and interesting.

The old fears may melt away. The excitement of growth of looking beyond our immediate needs, wants and pleasures will absorb more of our attention.

Resistance to change is futile. It will come whether or not we care to recognize the need to adapt. So recognize that you need to change. Control, to the extent that you can, how those changes occur in and affect your life. You will find your life more exciting and interesting and yes, adventurous. You may even learn to like the changes.

Change – Making the Shift

Some have had a relatively easy shift. They liked their careers and those careers are still viable. Their shift may be relatively easy, a matter of finding a similar job within their current geographical area.


For some, the shift may be a little more emotional and disrupting. They can find a job, but will have to relocate to take it. That means leaving friends, relatives, schools, places of worship, doctors, dentists and all the people with whom you do business. It could be exciting! It could be a little scary; new place and no one you know. Are you prepared to make those changes? Does this change answer your purpose, your needs, and in this case, if you have family, how does it fit their needs and purpose? Good questions. They need to be addressed, but if all is aligned, then pursue it. Remember you are courageous! You have heart! You are a hero!

Everyone else is making even bigger shifts. How exciting! How adventurous! How courageous! Maybe your first decision is whether or not to stay in Corporate America or do you go out on your own. If you go out on your own, what would you do and how would you do it? If you stay in Corporate America, you still have decisions to make about what you will do and where and how you want to do it. Hmmm….. Where to start.

Decide what you want to do.

Decide what skills you have that will fit your new career. Decide what new skills you need to get to move into your new career. Decide what information you need to make the career change. Daunting? Taken as a whole, yes. So break it down into small pieces. List all the pieces; discrete actions that need to be taken. Decide what you can do now, today. Do it. Decide what will take longer. Create a timeline for starting and completing each activity. Post this plan where you will see it every day. Mark off actions that are completed as they are completed. Add new actions that you may have missed as they come up.

Here is the important part. Identify the major milestones along the way. When you achieve them celebrate! Be judicious. Not everything is a milestone. On the other hand, recognize that there will be important milestones on the way to your goal.

You are now creating your own changes. Because you are changing there will be changes around you. Some old things may fall away. New things will take their place. You are in new territory. The possibilities are endless!

While you are doing all the work for your career transition, network. Keep in touch, especially with people who can help you achieve your goal. Educate yourself. Read. Listen. Analyze. It’s all part of The Shift.

Change – Moving On

A part of your life is gone. This is an invitation to change. How big or small the change is up to you. You have an opportunity here and it’s up to you what you will make of it. Do not assume. Do not assume it is a no brainer that you will go back to doing what you were doing before. Maybe you will go back. But the possibility exists for you to go in a different direction. The temptation to run back to what is familiar is very great, but does that familiar still serve you? Perhaps. Perhaps not.


Before you begin putting your job search plan together, ask yourself if your last position was serving you. Refer to your worksheets. Overall, were you happy with it? Were you stimulated by the work or did it cause great agitation and frustration? Did you feel a sense of accomplishment each day when you left or just sheer exhaustion and relief that the day was over? If you were happy, then ask yourself if the same type of job is still available in the workplace. If it is, you’re set. It’s time to put a game plan together for your job search. If the answer to these questions has been in the negative, you have some work that you might consider doing first.

If you liked the work but not the environment, good. You are no longer there. If the same type of work exists then put your job search plan together and get started.

But if you were not satisfied with your job, if your work did not feed your need for a sense of accomplishment and purpose, then consider looking at how you might change what you were doing so that it does.

What are you interested in? What are your passions? Look at what has drawn your attention over a great period of your life. How can you use hat to feed your purpose now? How closely is this aligned with the work you have been doing? Is there a market for what is drawing you? Do the skills that you currently own fit in this new calling? What skills do you need to acquire? There is a lot of work to be done here. You can ask questions of other people. Talk to other people. But the real work will be done within. Are you willing to live your life’s purpose? Do you have the courage to live authentically? I think you can.

So now do your due diligence. Use the internet. Use the library. Talk to other people who do work in the area that is calling to you. Then get very quiet. Listen to your heart. Now remember, you are a hero. You have heart. You have courage. You are about to begin a great adventure.

Change – From the Beginning

You’ve lost your job. Maybe you knew it was going to happen. Maybe you didn’t. In any event you have lost something. It was an activity to which you gave a third of your time week after week. It got you out of bed five days a week.


In our culture we expect that if you lose your job you just shake yourself off and go find another. Don’t look back. Just forge ahead.

But that’s not really true is it? It was a significant part of our life, so love it or hate it we have a lot of emotion wrapped up in it. You may get angry. “How could they do this to me after the loyalty I gave them; all the hard work; all the extra hours?” You may not feel like being around people as you “sort things out.” Or you feel friends and colleagues pulling away from you as if you had some kind of contagious disease. You may feel unfocused and unable to concentrate as you wander through the house trying to decide how to proceed. Denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, these are the five stages of grief and you are experiencing them. In order to successfully move on grief must be acknowledged.

How? Journalize your feelings. Take walks and meditate on what the job meant to you. Hold an Irish wake. Acknowledge the loss in some way that has meaning to you. As you mourn your loss, become aware that you have survived it. You are a hero. You have the courage and heart to move on and at the risk of sounding melodramatic you are the Phoenix who will rise from the ashes. Okay. That’s a little over the top. Nevertheless, the thought, as silly as it may seem may be just the catalyst to help you move on.

As you deal with your loss, start to evaluate its qualities. How did you really feel. Were you secretly glad because you really did not like the work, the company’s culture, your colleagues? Maybe you truly loved your job and would love to do the same thing again. Whatever those thoughts and feelings acknowledge them, they will be the premise on which you formulate the plans for the new home you are building. That is part of the process, too.

To begin, make two lists. The first one is a list of all the things that you liked about your job. Beside each one write why you liked it. The second list is what you disliked about your job and why you disliked it.

What are you going to do with this information? Ahhh….more on that next time.

Change

It’s the only constant in life. Evolution, change, is universal and inevitable. Sometimes it’s an improvement, sometimes not. It is all around us. It does no good to bury our heads in the sand and pretend it will go away. It won’t. So we must learn to meet it head on.


Awareness of evolution first arises in us when we try to meet change in traditional ways and those ways no longer work. We may keep on trying for a while, but at last must admit to ourselves that the change must be met in a different way. We may ask ourselves if we can do this? Yes, we can for we are heroes. We have the courage and heart to face what is placed before us. We are warriors who must fight our way through.

Many of us are being challenged to evolve a little more and a little faster than we find comfortable. But we are heroes. We have the courage and heart to battle through. We have the ability to change, to adjust and adapt to new circumstances. Being perceptive, we realize that we must first make changes within. We must identify what those changes must be. We are discovering that we must not only think outside THE BOX, but we may need to think outside ALL the boxes. We may need to redefine our purpose, our life path. Some might be able to do this on their own, by themselves, but many of us need a support group. We need a team that can help us to identify the changes, make them and use them to move forward. We need family, friends, community, mentors, and coaches to surmount the challenges we are facing.

But while we may call upon this support group, the decisions on what to change, and how, will ultimately be ours and the first thing we have to do is to accept that change is inevitable and that we can make it a good thing. Acceptance is the first hurdle and arguably the hardest.

One area where many have been most affected is in our careers. Jobs have gone away, some never to return. We must retrain ourselves for new jobs, new careers or reinvent the work we have done. We need to think about work, employment, in a new way and decide how it can fit in the current reality and how that may evolve in the future. We may decide our current work has no place in our present life and decide what career we may turn to next. These decisions also apply to those who still have their jobs but are dissatisfied with them and feeling restless to move on.

Sometimes, change is needed just because our current circumstances are not fulfilling our inner needs. To retain our authenticity, we must evolve. Good! Having made that decision, it’s time to move on. But how? We will need a plan. But even before the plan, we will need to establish a goal; something more than just “getting a job”. But what? More on that next time.