Who are your at your CORE?

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
~ George Eliot

Do your truly know yourself?  Are you living a life that is more in tune with your “authentic” self (who you were created to be) or your “imagined” self (who the world expects you to be)? Decebalus (above) seems to have both known who he was, and what he wanted others to know about him.  If you want to know who you truly are at your core, I am excited to announce that I am now a certified CORE Multidimensional Awareness Profile^® (aka CORE MAP) facilitator.

My excitement stems from the fact that this is a concrete assessment that is truly multidimensional and integrated. This profile is robust enough to uncover conditioned effects, reveal the authentic you and provide specific feedback for rapid, highly efficient development.  CORE gets to the root of what has been holding you back and preventing you from achieving the outcomes you are after both personally and professionally.

The CORE profile doesn’t just deal with the surface answers of where you happen to be today, the way traditional personality assessments do as with the Myers-Briggs test or the DiSC^®assessments do,or say “here’s what you are, so this is what you should do.”  It actually looks at how you would behave in an ideal world!  How cool is that?

I have been searching for such a tool for a long time, especially for my academic and career transition clients, to help them both truly know themselves, and give them a measurable way to see the progress they have made over time.  Most of us know the quote from Shakepeare’s Hamlet: “This above all: to thine own self be true,” but do you remember the next bit? “And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any [hu]man.”

This system recognizes that the issue is not necessarily ability, but how much energy or effort it takes to maintain what we are doing. People who focus upon and develop that which naturally motivates and energizes them quickly become much more effective and satisfied in every area of their life. Working with your nature is like floating downstream. It’s easy, it’s fun and you can enjoy the scenery along the way.

Through my youth and the first half of my life, I struggled a lot to figure out who I was. I defined myself in relationship to others and what I was good at, but not necessarily what I wanted to learn and do. I was a “reliable” friend, “hard” worker, “reasonable” mother, and “good” wife. Trying to figure out who I really was, and what I really wanted to do, was pretty tricky.  Once my two girls left home, I had to knuckle under and figure out a few things about myself.  It took 50 years of my life to find the life I have now, where I feel that what I do every day matches with what I am meant to do in this world.  When it comes to finding the authentic self, that treasure is sometimes buried much deeper than we think. With a tool like the CORE profile, I could have gotten there a lot faster.

The other reason I am excited to offer this assessment is that CORE takes a “whole brain” approach.  Many of you know I have spent a good bit of time researching “coaching with the brain in mind” to understand why this accountability process works so well, especially for academics who often have a naturally skeptical approach to this kind of work.

I want you to succeed and to love your work.  There is passion, excitement, and confidence to be found as well as incredible satisfaction with your calling once you are truly on the path to a vibrant life.  Working with your nature makes a career path seem like play. You truly enjoy what you do, there is a passion connected to your work, and you quickly become very good at it. That’s because nature itself jumps in to help you succeed

If you want your life at work to be as pleasant as your life at play, you owe it to yourself to invest in the CORE Multidimensional Awareness Profile and the Career Guide.  Discover your CORE self and live your authentic life!

Spring has sprung in the Northern hemisphere, even if winter wants to get in one last blast.  Are you still living in the possibility of blooming, or are you actually in bloom yourself?  If you are still waiting for the magical transformation from potential to actuality, I have a new tool that can help you RAMP up the process now.

A week ago I was in Sedona, AZ where it snowed.  Considered a “freak spring snowstorm” by the locals, it was incredibly beautiful though the heavy clouds hanging low in the sky obscured the view of the famous red rocks.  I was confined to a conference room that fortunately had a huge picture window looking out toward the rocks. Walking through town proved treacherous for a community completely unaccustomed to such an event.  It felt like being in the Swiss Alps instead of the Southwestern United States.

Under all that snow and ice remained the beautiful scenery and the spring blooms.   By the time of my departure several days later, the skies were once again blue and clear, and the wildflowers in radiant display along the roadways, including the spectacular desert lilies (pictured above). Looking much like an Easter lily, this 1-4 foot tall plant blooms from early March through May.

Immediate and Permanent Transformation

“What’s all this got to do with RAMPing it up?” you may well be asking yourself.  Simply this:  If you know you have the potential to bloom fully, but have not been able to, the time has come to take just one hour of your time and banish whatever emotional blocks have gotten in your way and get what you want out of life! One of the distinct gifts of being human is our ability to create our own destiny. Isn’t it surprising how many people never accept this gift or just give it away, making someone else responsible for it?

Take your life back into your own hands.

What in your life has become unacceptable?

What do you want with a passion?

What is keeping you stuck?

We tend to change our current conditions only when:

• It is creating a high degree of physical pain that we believe we can alleviate;
• When we are disgusted enough with the current situation to find it completely unacceptable; or
• When we desire something so intensely that we are willing to endure the effort it takes to achieve it.

Lack of knowledge or ability is rarely the real reason people are stuck. That’s because we rarely have a strong desire for something that lies beyond our abilities. Nature is a wise mother. She tends to align our desires with our capacities quite nicely. The real problem is all the irrational fears we get on our way to adulthood.  90% of what holds most people back is fear-based, so the fastest way to get unstuck is to go directly to the source, and eliminate the fears.

What is RAMP?

RAMP is an acronym for Rapidly Accelerated Mind Patterning, a powerful, safe and simple technique for instantly and permanently transforming old ineffective thought patterns (sometimes referred to as “programs”) that keep you stuck in the same old place to new, beneficial ones. It effectively and rapidly removes blocks to your success. The RAMP method uses an individual’s own subconscious processes so it is exceptionally effective.

How Is RAMP Different?

RAMP differs from other subconscious change methods in that it is minimally suggestive. This is NOT Neuro-linguistic Programming, Hypnotherapy, or any other method requiring your physical presence or relying on physical cues to carry out changes (as required by the Emotion Freedom Technique, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or Thought Field Therapy).  This is a tool that can give you more information about yourself and what you really want, with immediate results.

So many times, I hear from clients, “I just don’t know.”  What would it be like if you did know? What is not knowing costing you?  The cost of staying in school or working in academia because you “don’t know what else to do?”  The time of you spend agonizing over the next best step to take in your life? The time you take away from the things you truly do want to do?

RAMP sessions can be done in 60 minutes by telephone, and uses your own subconscious to transform the areas in your life where you may have struggled for years.  Best of all, you do not have to turn off any part of yourself as part of the process, a big plus for those of us with highly skeptical minds that do not want to relinquish our conscious self as part of a process. It’s more like participating in a guided meditation process. As an accredited RAMP practitioner, I am truly excited to offer this amazing service to you.

History and Track Record 

Developed by psychologist Dr. Sherry Buffington, RAMP has a twenty-year track record to validate its efficacy, and many hundreds of testimonials. “I am appalled at the [large] numbers of people that have spent years seeing a therapist without getting the results they went there for in the first place,” says Dr. Buffington. “Unless there is true pathology, which is rarely the case, therapy should never take years!” She calls herself the “briefest of the brief therapists.”  “If can get you to where you want to go in just a few minutes or an hour, I am sure not going to spend days or weeks getting you there, and certainly not months or years.” Longitudinal studies have validated the long-term effectiveness of her work. They consistently show that the changes, once made, are permanent and effortless to maintain.

What are you waiting for?
Contact me here by clicking on this link: RAMP session.  And blossom now, even in the desert!

10 Ways to Lead by Example

Do you think of yourself as a leader? Do you enjoy being out in front, like the drum major above? As you were growing up, did people tell you that you had natural leadership qualities?

I don’t know about you, but it seems every time I join an organization, I end up in a leadership position. I don’t think this is because people see me as the person out front leading the charge. I think its because I am willing to do the work to get things done. I can’t help myself. When I see a task, there is some part of me that just knows what needs to be done and starts figuring out how to tackle it. The downside of this tendency is the need to be aware of over-commitment!

If you don’t see yourself as a leader, you are nonetheless leading by default. Why?

We are all leaders, all of the time, by virtue of our unconscious influence. Whatever you believe, think, value, feel, or say influences your behavior. Notice what you are thinking or feeling right now. If your body is tightening up and you are feeling anxious, you are having an impact on yourself and the people around you. If you are relaxed, and feeling happy, or content, you are having a different kind of impact on yourself and others. What is the impact you want to have?

An American editor and essayist, William George Jordan, in his book, The Majesty of Calmness (1898), said that we cannot circumvent this responsibility by saying it is unconscious, because “every moment of life [we are] changing to a degree…the whole world.” We cannot escape from the influence we have to uplift or dishearten others. By proactively adopting a leadership mindset, we can ensure that we, and those we lead are successful.

Good leaders lead by example. Through their actions, which are aligned with what they say, they become a person others want to follow. When leaders say one thing but do another, they erode trust, a critical element of productive leadership.

Here are 10 of the myriad ways to lead by example:

1. Take responsibility. Blame costs you your credibility, keeps team members on the defensive and ultimately sabotages real growth. Negativity can kill you, literally and figuratively, because just like happiness (see February Newsletter) it is contagious. You can act as an antibody, fighting negativity.

2. Be truthful. Inaccurate representation affects everyone. Show that honesty really is the best policy. It’s really OK to be competitive and dedicated to excellence in order to bring out the best in ourselves and others, but remind yourself that in the scheme of the world, you want to be in integrity with yourself.

3. Be courageous. Walk through fire (when there is a crisis) first. Take calculated risks to demonstrate commitment to a larger purpose. Make your words sweet because you may have to eat them later. Don’t forget to add the leavening of humor here as well, as long as it does not come at someone else’s expense, to lighten the load for everyone concerned.

4. Acknowledge failure. It makes it OK for your team to do the same and defines failure as part of the process of becoming extraordinary. Remember that all science is actually 99% failure and 1% success (and it is supposed to be that way) as you work to disprove a hypothesis. We always learn more from mistakes than successes, provided we seek to understand the point of failure and eliminate that particular issue.

5. Be persistent. Try, try again. It was the mantra of Samuel Beckett, though he phrased it slightly differently as “Fail again; fail better.” Go under or around any hurdles to show that obstacles don’t define you or your colleagues.

6. Create solutions. Don’t dwell on problems; instead be the first to offer solutions and then ask your group for more. After that, take action. The positive person works to build awareness among those who can influence a bad situation so that everyone can take collective action to make it better.

7. Listen. Ask questions. Seek to understand. You’ll receive valuable insights and set a tone that encourages healthy dialogue. When people feel they have been heard and understood, even when you cannot offer a solution that makes them perfectly happy, they are far more likely to support you.

8. Delegate liberally. Encourage an atmosphere in which people can focus on their core strengths. This does not mean delegating a task and taking it back because you can do it better; it means really letting it go to someone else’s care.  They may not do it like you: they may do it better!

9. Take care of yourself. Exercise, don’t overwork, take a break. A balanced group, mentally and physically, will create a successful team, able to handle the ups and downs of any normal work year.  Health and productivity go hand in hand. Working all the time makes for a dull person, as well as an unproductive one.

10. Roll up your sleeves. There is an old joke that says you know the leader by the arrows in his back, but work can be its own reward. Think in terms of mastering your craft, be it carpentry or teaching, and helping others learn the craft as well, and once again, you are leading by example.

Learn the craft as well, and you are leading by example.

Photo by Dominic Alves

True Happiness

It’s February again, and for people up north that can be a time of grey doldrums.  For those of us lucky enough to live in the south, it’s actually the beginning of spring.  In my front garden the daffodils are springing up, bright yellow spots of sun on the still dormant soil.  My mother used to plant daffodils all down the hills of the ravine behind our house, so that come spring she would see them dancing toward the stream.  One of the wonders of daffodils is that they spread underground, so that year after year, more and more daffodils emerge.

What has this got to do with career paths?  For me, it’s about happiness, and the way the bright yellow flowers spread.  I’ve written before about how happiness can make you more productive at work, and this is actually emerging now as a field of study.  Martin Seligman’s work was the beginning of serious scholarly inquiry into what actually makes us happy, and gave birth to the new field of positive psychology.  I’m a big fan of Seligman and some of his followers because the emphasis is on normal people (rather than pathological people) and how we can be happy.

“Why bother being happy?” Seligman asks in one of his most famous books, Authentic Happiness (2002). He answers this question by recognizing the role that positive emotions have to play in our lives.  Negative emotions (sadness, fear, anger) are signals of external threat causing us to constrict both our hearts and our heads and move into survival modes.  But positive emotions are expansive: when we feel happy, delighted, loving, kind, or grateful, our minds are more creative, unrestrained, open to new ideas and new experiences.  Seligman illustrates this with several experiments that show when good feelings are induced prior to asking subjects to complete a difficult task, those people invariably solve the problems more quickly and creatively than those that have been pushed towards negative emotions first.  Amazing.

Seligman also believes in “learned optimism” as an approach to being happier. Simply put, learning to be more optimistic about yourself and your future helps create hope, confidence and resilience.  In terms of work productivity, happier people get more done, get better evaluations from their supervisors, and earn higher pay.  In one experiment, trying to figure out whether happiness or productivity comes first, adults and children who were put in a good mood before attempting laboratory tasks or word problems selected higher goals for themselves and persisted longer in performing the tasks.  Happier people showed greater evidence of self-control and coping abilities when something bad happened. Finally, happy people are more “other-centered” and connected socially than unhappy people given them more resources to draw on in times of trouble.

Some people, notably Sonya Lyubomirsky, have asked, “Is there a natural set point for happiness for any individual human being that does not actually vary much?  Or is there a way to increase a happiness set point?”  In a paper titled “Pursuing Happiness: The Architecture of Sustainable Change” (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, and Schkade, 2005), the authors propose that “a person’s chronic happiness level is governed by three major factors: a genetically determined set point for happiness (50%), happiness-relevant circumstantial factors (10%), and happiness-relevant activities and practices (40%).”  They conclude that the first two cannot be changed much, but that the third category can be used to create “the best opportunities for sustainable increasing happiness.”   In other words, adopting new behaviors can actually increase your level of happiness.

So what exactly does it mean to engage in “happiness-relevant activities and practices?  Boiling a series of academic experiments back down to the essence, these are the simple answers:

1. Set a goal, and make it yours (own it);
2. Make it fun-if it becomes a burdensome habit, stop;
3. Keep a balance between challenge and ease;
4. Always remember the big picture (why this is important to you).

Martin Seligman asserts that happiness lies “at the intersection between pleasure and meaning” so whether at work or at home, the goal overall should be to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable, whether this is writing an article, designing a building, or playing with children.  Except in extreme circumstantial instances (recent car wreck victims for instance) our level of happiness is often determined by what we focus on.

So, back to the daffodils:  in helping yourself become sustainably happier, you will no doubt be contributing to the spread of the happiness in others, just like those bulbs.  You can contribute to the wellbeing of people around whether you are at work, at home, at school or at a place of worship. That is a meaningful life goal to me. As an added perk, you will likely become more productive, too.

People learn through the stories we tell about life, whether we are discussing someone’s success in school, a tragedy in their personal life, the moralizing of fables and sermons, the truth embedded in every myth ever told. You will most likely not remember an academic abstract of an article, but you will understand the point through the examples that are used.  The exact details don’t actually matter as much as the arc of the storyline, and the lessons we take away from it.

Consider my own life:  For years, I defined myself in terms of my ability to put my husband through his PhD.  When he died in an auto accident after teaching only two semesters as an assistant professor, I redefined my life in terms of taking care of my two children who were 8 and 10 at the time of his death.  The problem with this story line was that once they were both fledging the household, I could no longer find my purpose.  I truly suffered through the dark night of the soul, before discovering that my new purpose had to do with symbiotically helping other people achieve their dreams while pursuing my own dream of a private coaching practice.

Change your story and change your life. 

I am old enough now to have known many people that have suffered serious tragedies in their lives: children who died young of cancer; parents that suffer dementia; bankruptcy due to a generally failing economy and not from mismanagement of funds; the inability to find work in a beloved field and choosing underemployment over unemployment.  So many stories of sorrow.

There are also the lovely stories of triumph:  desperation leading to radical changes that work out in unexpectedly delightful ways.  Losing all material possessions and deciding to sign on as a cook on a cruise liner to see the world; a child’s death leading to the foundation of a charity to help those with similar situations; realizing that diet is a lifestyle change, not an on again/off again affair, finally leading to sustainable weight loss; marriages on the brink of dissolution salvaged through better communication as a result of tragedy.  Tragedy may shape your story, but it does not have to define it.

Even small changes in the story matter.

For instance, Dorothy [the names are fictionalized for privacy], a client of mine struggling to finish a PhD, consistently told herself that she wasn’t as smart as her classmates.  That she was studying in a non-native language in a culture foreign to her did not enter into the equation.   This led her to question every sentence that she wrote.

I asked her if there was anyone else in the world that knew her topic like she did, and what did they know about it?  She could come up with one name only, someone who had been studying her topic for over 30 years.  “What does that tell you about your knowledge of the topic?”  The words spilled out of her, fairly tripping over tongue on the way out of her mouth.  She was an expert on the topic.  She acknowledged it.  And, lo and behold, the dissertation went from chaotic and amorphous to polished and solid.

What you tell yourself about you matters.

What is the story you are telling yourself now about the life you are leading? You can use the intention (not resolution!) of redefining yourself, and telling a new story about your path, as the direction you want to take in 2012.   Ask yourself:

• What is the story of my life?
• Are there patterns I repeat over and over again?
• Am I attached to these patterns? If so, how?
• How do I want to define my life?
• How would I be different if I defined myself differently?
• What do I see as the meaning or purpose embodied by life?
• How do I want to be remembered?

Start today. Because the story you tell about your life is your life.

STEAM Ahead into 2012

I was recently privileged to attend a very small conference in my hometown put on by American Conference of Academic Deans and Phi Beta Kappa.  There were only about 150 attendees, making it possible to really speak with a lot of people in depth about their ideas and research.  The conference was titled, “Are the humanities now a luxury?” which most of us attending found ourselves translating to “Are the humanities dead?” I find this a fascinating question as I have some pretty strong opinions about keeping the humanities alive.

Lately, in education circles, STEM—the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—has been gathering steam, from the publication by the AAUW of their recent report on the still lagging participation of women in science that must be addressed at the El-Hi level to improve at the college level, and the $250 million public-private initiative announce by President Obama to recruit and train more STEM teachers.  In addition to that, the US Department of Education also announced that it would provide “bonus points” in the Race to the Top Fund for applications that stress STEM instruction.

While I am not opposed to the roughly $700 million the Federal Government spends on SYEM education through the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and other federal government entities I fundamentally embrace the idea that the arts have a role in science as well.  So for me it was a wonderful revelation to hear that some folks are discussing the replacement of the acronym STEM with, you guessed it, STEAM to incorporate the word Arts into this discussion of the appropriate direction for education to take.

Although I have not been able to discover who coined the new acronym, I heartily applaud its use. “Art may be a necessary condition for constructing the new consciousness from which future science gets its structural realities to match nature, in which case it is more important than we generally admit,” wrote Robert Mueller in The Science of Art all the way back in 1967.  Some of my personal favorite poets incorporate scientific discovery into their work, such as Al Zolynas, The New Physics; Anne Michaels, The Weight of Oranges; and Marge Piercy, The Moon Is Always Female.  Read their interpretations of scientific discovery, and I promise you will be changed.

The there is the recent death from stroke of Lynn Margulis (1938-2011). She was originally considered a cranky woman with a ridiculous idea, that the eukaryotic cell (the more complex cell with a nucleus and other parts, organelles) is not something that evolved on its own, but the result of a simpler (prokaryotic) cell incorporating other such cells. She had 15 rejections before her seminal paper was finally accepted in 1967, scientist being more conservative than one might suppose.  15 years after that, her ideas were validated once it was possible to show through DNA molecular analysis that the DNA of the organelles is virtually the same as the DNA of free-standing prokaryotes. She was one of the original proponents of “the Gaia hypothesis,” that the Earth taken as a whole is a living organism, still a contentious idea. She was lambasted by Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype, and others in the scientific community. Yet the idea has grown in popularity, and there are scientists and well as the general public embracing the idea.

In the discipline of anthropology, there is a new exhibit of  Ethnographic Terminalia, a curatorial collective of six anthropologists who mount one exhibition per year, timed to coincide with the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in Montreal, Canada.     Curators Kate Hennessy, Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts & Technology, says it is all about creating a dialogue:  it seems, is the current running through it all – what makes every piece selected a work of art and of anthropology between what is seen in the gallery and what is done in the field, in typical anthropological self-reflexivity.  One example: an exhibit titled “Making Sense: Lab as Gallery as Field,” where two young men tried to figure out what they should be doing with a computer, petri dishes, some homespun gadgetry and circuitry work, and what turned out to be a spectrometer.

Closer to home is a project by Bill Manaris, professor of computer science at the College of Charleston, with the design of the Monterey Mirror, allowing musicians to interact with computers, akin to Apple’s Garage Band.  The project is specifically designed to merge “Computer Science and the Arts,” and the college launched a new program by the same name this past fall that already has 30 students enrolled.  You can here Bill discussing this project and listen to the music by clicking here or on the special feature link.

All and all, I consider these developments not only beneficial to the humanities as a discipline, but actually favorable to the development of all the academic disciplines.  It’s time we rediscovered the role of imagination and Imagineers (to borrow from Disney) in the road to the production of knowledge.

Sunset by J. Steel Hutchinson

The Dark Side of Dreaming

It’s officially November, and the time for introspection is beginning with the celebration of Halloween, Samhain, the Day of the Dead or All Souls Day, depending on your cultural heritage.  The days get shorter, darker, and colder and I want to curl up in a blanket on the coach reading a good novel rather than thinking about work and what it means.  Meanwhile, my elder daughter wrestles with being employed on a project-to-project basis without benefits, and my younger daughter struggles to figure out if the $100,000 investment she anticipates as the full cost of graduate school is really worth it.

Which brings me to Steve Jobs.  We have heard a lot about him since his death on October 5^th of pancreatic cancer, so much of it a celebration of his life and the impact his products have made on the world.  The now-famous commencement speech delivered at Stanford on June 12, 2005 has been quoted over and over as an exemplar par excellance of why it is important to find what you love to do and do it.

Here are his exact words, after his very public firing from Apple at the age of 30:

“I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

While I do not want to deny the accomplishments, which are indeed extraordinary, from the invention of the iMac to his reinvention of himself through the acquisition of Pixar, then his ultimately heroic return to Apple and the introduction of such extraordinary products as the iPhone and the iPad, I have to say that this philosophy has a serious downside.  I have known far to many people, in and outside of academia, who pursued what they loved believing the money would follow, only to become disillusioned and frustrated.  No one would choose an academic career today based on money: you have to do it for love.  Architects and artists may absolutely love what they do, but that doesn’t mean they have the talent to land in the big leagues.  What do you do when you are faced with school debt of over $100,000, wanting to have a family and own a home, but have an income of only $30,000 (the average entry level salary for a new architect)?

It’s just that not everyone can be a Steve Jobs.  Remember, although he was adopted, his intelligence in a community that was filled with intelligent engineers in Palo Alto, CA where he grew up, was off the charts.  And he himself was a little off the charts:  He exhibited odd and eccentric behavior, at various points in his life refusing to wear shoes, put a license plate on his car, going on strange diets of only fruits—whence the name Apple—or only vegetables, or refusing to bathe.   In fact, before he and Steve Wozniak partnered up, he was put on the night shift while working for Atari, because he smelled so bad that other employees did not want to work with him.

He wasn’t the nicest person either: Jobs had a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), from his relationship with Bay Area painter Chrisann Brennan, long before his second marriage to Laurene Powell in 1991. For two years, Chrisann raised their daughter on welfare while Jobs denied paternity by claiming he was sterile; he didn’t acknowledge or even speak to his first child until she was practically an adult.

At work, he was a perfectionist and prone to yelling at people.  One of his colleagues once said,  “He would have made an excellent king of France,” an allusion to his arrogance and management style.  He had a very public war of words with Michael Dell of Dell Computers. He did not initially believe in philanthropy of any kind, but was eventually persuaded to participate in Product Red to eliminate AIDS in Africa.

So take Steve Jobs’ advice with a grain of salt.  You will need to earn a living. Young people with limited work experience may not actually know what kinds of jobs they would actually like.  Or they may pursue what they like in school, only to find it unsatisfactory as a career.   Or, for many of my clients, they work for years in an academic career they thought they would love, only to find it too stressful or too unrewarding to continue.

Here’s what Will Wilkinson, blogger at Big Think, has to say about it:

“As an undergrad I was an art major. Frankly, few of my fellow art majors were talented enough to make a living at it, even after four (or more!) years of training. Sure they loved art, but in the immortal words of Tina Turner, ‘What’s love got to do with it?’

‘Find what you love and never settle for less’ is an excellent recipe for frustration and poverty. ‘Reconcile yourself to the limits of your talent and temperament and find the most satisfactory compromise between what you love to do and what you need to do feed your children’ is rather less stirring, but it’s much better advice.”

The truth is that most people would rather have a happy, relatively balanced life than one where they obsess 24/7 about their next product to the exclusion of everything else.  I am not suggesting you do not follow your passion, but rather that you match it to the marketplace in a way that fits your own values.  You ma find that providing for your children is your highest calling, and that is perfectly OK. So, while you are dreaming of the wonderful life you will have once you finish that degree, get that first academic job, or discover that you actually want to explore an alternative career path, pay some attention to the dark side of “doing what you love.”

Who wants to fail at anything?  I know I don’t, and I also know I’ve failed at plenty.  But who ever played Für Elise the first time they tackled the piano?  Or balanced perfectly on a bike the first time they set out to ride on two wheels?  Or moving into the grown-up world of science experiments, what is a hypothesis except a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation?  You may not be able to prove it, and would you classify that as a failure?  Thomas Edison would not.  His allegedly answered the question, “After 1000 attempts, why don’t you give up on the incandescent light bulb?” with “I have not failed 1,000 times.  I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb.”

The Education Issue of the New York Times published September 14, 2011 ran a huge article by Paul Tough, “What if the Secret to Success is Failure?” in which he followed two school leaders in New York City.  One is the head of a prestigious private school and the other is the superintendent of a consortium of charter schools serving low-income children. After reading Learned Optimism, a book by Martin Seligman, the psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania who helped establish the Positive Psychology movement, both Dominic Randolph and David Levin met with Seligman for a “freewheeling” discussion of education, psychology, and schooling.  Guess what they figured out?  Failure builds character!

Well, not all the time.  Failure builds character when the person experiencing it sees failure as an opportunity for learning.  In an interview with Parade magazine published September 25, 2011, actor George Clooney is asked by the author, “What have you learned from your failures?” and answers, “It’s hard getting thumped…but the only thing you can do is say, ‘Here’s what I won’t do next time.’ ” Learning through experience is far more valuable than learning through planning, and as George Clooney adds, you have to have both skill and confidence in your ability while at the same time being willing to fail.  What is the takeaway lesson here?  The ability to persist in the face of failure, to bounce back to try again, is what will ultimately lead to success and simultaneously build a person of good character.

It’s a lesson that is taught quite explicitly in George Leonard’s book, Mastery (1992).

Leonard, an aikido master, understood that mastery is not a quick fix: it is a life-long process. It is not a goal to be achieved but as an acceptance, and even enjoyment, of the process of learning and growing in a skill.  His five keys to success are:

1. Instruction — On the road to mastery, the pupil needs an instructor.
2. Practice — Without repetition, the instruction is wasted.
3. Surrender — Be willing to fail to become better.
4. Intentionality — Maintain a clear vision of where you are trying to go.
5. Edge — Continue to challenge and press the limits of your abilities.

Here’s a simple trick that anyone can use to help you move from failure to success: change your self-talk.  Instead of saying, “I’m a failure.  Nothing I do ever turns out right,” say “I am learning a new skill, I am committed to learning how to [fill in the blank]. You stop complaining and take responsibility for your actions, which actually helps you take action and keep you from being stuck in the same place day after day, year after year. The side benefit: you will feel better about yourself.  In the end, there is no substitute for “deep knowledge” about whatever you are trying to master, from athletic to intellectual skills.

It’s that time of year again with students and professors returning to school.  Since many of my clients are in the academic arena, and I have a daughter seriously considering a return to graduate school, I am attuned to this particular season. With the return to school comes a return to writing assignments, and with it the question always arises, “Why bother to write?”

For me, the simplest answer is, “Because it clarifies thinking.”  Whether you are writing in a journal of your own to sort out the emotions of the past 24 hours, or you are writing an analytical paper on the lives of mollusks, the very act of writing something down begins to tell you what is really going on in your brain about the topic. It can be an incredible journey of discovery.

For teachers, there is an interesting piece of research that suggests that even ungraded, brief writing assignment facilitate learning (Drabrick, Weisberg, Paul, and Bubier, 2007): “Just 5 minutes of writing on a particular topic per week (45 minutes per semester) produced significantly higher scores on test items than did the same amount of time spent on thinking.”

For students, the answer may be as boringly pragmatic as “getting a better grade on a test or paper.” To get a degree requires fulfilling certain requirements, and to graduate with a bachelor’s degree does imply having some knowledge of the written word for prospective employers or graduate school admission committees.

So I reiterate, “Why write?” Here are 8, and more, reasons to write:

1.  Writing is a form of activism. You write to persuade other people to change.  This can mean changing their perspective or persuading them to take action. Think of the success of the book and movie, The Help, itself a story about how the act of writing changes the people who both wrote it and read it.

2.  Writing can help generate new ideas and synthesize large amounts of information. Written notes while you are reading can help with this, too.

3.  You learn to organize your ideas in a coherent pattern, finding the flaws in the reasoning or the gaps in expression.  Alternatively, you may discover unexpected relationships that clarify or illuminate original discoveries.

4.  Writing over time on the same topic can help you see how your own thoughts have evolved on a particular topic.  You may discover there was a side to the topic that you had not previously considered that actually makes sense.  Or you may discover that although there is another side, your own reasoning takes you to a particular conclusion.

5.  Sometimes a simple list of pros and cons can help with making decisions of any sort.

6.  The act of writing helps aid memory and the retention of both the information and the sources of that information.

7. Writing allows you to speak asynchronously to an audience that is actually interested in your particular point of view.  It may be that once you have graduated from college you never write anything longer than a one-page memo about business to your boss, but it will still be a useful skill.  If you stay in academia, you will have to get better and better at expressing yourself and your own unique perspective as you pursue higher degrees like a master’s or a doctorate.

8.  Last but not least, write because it’s fun.  It’s exciting to see a creation take form and emerge from intellectual engagement with an idea. It becomes a thing of substance, something concrete. Writer Neil Gaiman says, “The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page…and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience.”

As Seth Godin reminds us, writing “gives ideas substance and allows them to travel” both literally across the world and into the minds and hearts of other people. Now, instead of asking, “Why write?” ask instead, “What do I want to write about?  Why do I want to write about it? Who am I trying to reach and what do I want them to do?”  Challenge yourself, stay engaged in the process, and the reason for writing will make itself clear to you.

Photo by Eorde Williams

Three Techniques for Building Your Confidence

Why is it that so many of us doubt our own abilities?  Believe you me, I have been there myself: it wasn’t until I was nearly finished with graduate school coursework that I started speaking up in class.  Until you own your excellence, you will continue to doubt yourself and perhaps stop yourself from taking on new challenges that you most certainly could accomplish. If you are always afraid of saying something stupid or doing something stupid you may not even be willing to try new things.

Confidence is something that can be learned. Becoming more confident can make you more successful.  Success breeds success, adding to your sense of confidence.  This creates a powerful inextricably linked cycle of success, confidence, success.

Confidence comes from real, solid achievements, which no one can take from you.  This is not the same as self-esteem, which may be built on nothing more solid than nice words said about you.   Solid achievements are built upon a “can do” mindset.  In other words, start saying to yourself each time a new opportunity arises, “I can do this,” and let go of any negative thoughts about failing.  Envision success instead.

One way to get in a positive mindset is to look back on your life and identify past achievements.  It doesn’t have to be job related:  Did you successfully raise children? Volunteer to chair a committee at school or at church? Buy a house on a shoestring? Learn to play an instrument for fun? Come up with a solution to a scheduling problem? Join an adult soccer team? Every one of these things is an accomplishment. Your achievements don’t have to be ‘life-altering.’  Even small achievements are still achievements.

1) So, get yourself a notebook, and create an “Achievement Log.”   You can do this today.  Start your log by identifying at least ten things you have accomplished in your life so far.  Here are some more suggestions: Think about the tests you have passed, the times where you did something that made a difference in someone else’s life, or any tasks or projects you completed.  Once you get started you might find it hard to stop at ten!

Put your Achievements Log somewhere you can look at it often.  Commit to looking at your list of achievements each week, reminding yourself of the success you have already experienced.  Sit up straight while reading and your posture will send your brain success messages, too. The log can be a reminder of what you are capable of and what is yet to come.  You can celebrate what you accomplished in the past week and grow your list of successes by adding new ones.  Tip: if you are feeling down, re-reading the log can be a great way to lift your spirits.

2) As you create your log, think as well about the personal strengths you have exhibited in your accomplishments.   If it’s difficult for you to look at yourself objectively and recognize your strengths, try placing yourself in the shoes of a friend or family member.  What strengths would these people see in you?  What would they consider your talents to be?  As you identify your strengths, make sure you take the time to really acknowledge them. Is it easy for you to be organized while people around you remain scattered?  This is a natural strength.  Enjoy a few minutes of being proud and reflecting on your talents.

3) Next, think about the things that are really important to you, and what you want to achieve in every area your life: Work, personal life, social life, health and fitness, and anything else that is important to you. Make sure you add some deadlines to keep yourself on track. Setting and achieving goals is a key part of building and sustaining confidence.

When you have set your goals, fear, doubt and uncertainty may rear their ugly heads.  At this stage, you need to manage your mind.  Learn to recognize any negative self-talk and replace it with confidence building talk, such as “I have already achieved much, and I can do more.”  “I can use my knowledge to help myself, my colleagues and my family.” Make a clear and unequivocal promise in your mind that you are absolutely committed to achieving your goals, and that it is in your power to do so.

Building your confidence is a process. I am still building my own on a daily basis.  Applying these principles will help your sense of confidence to grow, and therefore your success.