I have a saying I made up some years ago I think is appropriate for this post.
"Go for the cake and eat it in in your life. Go for the cupakes too; they're made of the same stuff as the cake. But don't ever settle for the crumbs. Life is far too short!" Therefore, FOLLOW YOUR CALLING!
And, with cake or cupcakes, many people enjoy a cup of coffee! A dear friend from my Hawaii days, Michael Murakoshi, sent me this wonderful video link that offers a meaningful message ..."the richest person is not the one who has the most but the one who needs the least" LIFE IS LIKE COFFEE-- Author Unknown
This post will give you a new way of looking at yourself, your life, the various choices that you are facing, and also provide you with a powerful tool, a new paradigm, that will be useful for the rest of your life. If you work with children or have young children, this paradigm will help to expand their world of possibilities.
A free PowerPoint Tutorial that describes this paradigm, with colorful visual images, is available for your review.
** I will be posting a free six-part video series about all these topics in 2014, for adults and youth dealing with transitions.
At the end of this post I include MY CAREER-LIFE CHANGE 12-STEP CHECKLIST ©. I suggest you read this post first, and then answer the checklist and visit the PowerPoint.
DEDICATION
This post is dedicated to the 14-15 women who were the inaugural participants in the "Women In Transtion (WIT)" program and who were in my "career planning" class in Hawaii at Windward Community College 1976-77. You were the first participants in the WIT program that eventually expanded throughout Hawaii's community colleges and influenced many women and across all their life roles, thus touchuing the lives of countless others. Early on during our first few classes, you inspired me with powerful stories about your many life challenges, as you embarked on your journey into higher education for the first time ever as participants in a new program initiated by the federal government for "displaced homemakers"~ women who experienced a divorce or whose husbands had passed on, and needed eduction to faciliate a fresh and competitive start in life. Through your stories I realized that the traditional view of "career" as "paid work", that is still prevalent, was far too limited, and even dangerous. It does not fully encompass the reality that ALL roles ALL people play, especially women, including paid work, are valuable means of self expression and living one's calling(s), in ways that promote wellness, and contribute an abundance of gifts to the rest of our world. It was at that time I created the Career-Life Paradigm and devoted my entire professional focus on this paradigm, including my workbook, Creating Careers with Confidence. Also to my dear colleagues who were part of Hawaii's first team dealing with Women in Transition, Kathy Damon and Helen McArdle. Mahalo nui loa! EdC
This post deals with concepts that are all contained in my self-paced workbook, Creating Careers with Confidence.
IN THE BEGINNING
Whether you believe in God, angels, guides, the Buddha within, Atman, universal love and energy that unites all life, the beauty and life-force of nature, none of this, all of this, part of this—or if you have no idea at all and feel clueless—welcome to the Life Journey. The truth is that you are here right now on this planet. I believe you are here for a reason. You might agree or disagree, or you might be unsure.
Read the following fable, “The Choice,” and do not attach any judgment to the outcome. Just relax for a few minutes and allow your inner voice to respond to the story. Consider the idea that, like the characters in this story, you are on this planet for a reason—to fulfill some unique role or life mission. Note how self-awareness, self-confidence, and willingness to take on calculated risk enter into the decision-making process used by the main angel character in the fable.
This is how I begin my self-paced workbook, Creating Careers with Confidence. I am a Christian, and believe in God, and in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have clients who practice many different faith traditions and some who do not practice any faith tradition. I respect people's diverse views and need to be responsible for how I believe God/Higher Power is informing my own life journey.
CALLINGS
I have offered thousands of workshops and classes dealing with this topic, making career-life choices and “discovering your calling”. I have learned that people with different or no faith tradition still yearn for what the research now recognizes as spirituality, a desire for more meaning and purpose and a sense that they are somehow connected to something or someone or some aspect of life that binds us all in our humanity with all that is in the universe.
Close to eighty per cent of the people I have worked with in my private practice indicated that spirituality is an expressed need and is important to them in their career-life decision-making process. Spirituality—not religion. People want their life and their work to provide a sense of meaning and purpose. In this context, many clients have a desire to discover their “calling(s)”, and are ready to move forward with their lives and commit to having meaning and purpose.
My other clients who do not share a need to deal with meaning and purpose, still find this career-life paradigm very useful and practical in their quest to focus on their paid work role and their desire to also have balance among all their life roles.
HOW DO YOU DEFINE CAREER? I SUGGEST A SHIFT TO CARE-ER
Consider there are only two ways to view the term career.
One is career=work, what you do for income. This is how most people have in the past, and still believe, what a career is. They consider it their “work”, what they do to earn income.
The other is career=life roles, the various roles into which you constantly put time and energy throughout your life, including your work role where you earn income.
I call this latter concept “career-life” and coined this term in 1976-77 in Hawaii where I first created this new paradigm as I was teaching a career-planning course for women in transition at Windward Community College. I brought this paradigm to Leeward Community College in 1978, and then began teaching it to K-12 and college counselors/teachers, students in graduate school counselor education courses, and agency staff throughout Hawaii and the Pacific Basin Rim area, then at national and global conferences. It has been one of my major life callings to the present.
The POWER of this new paradigm, CAREER-LIFE, is that it recognizes ALL LIFE ROLES (including paid work), ALL PEOPLE (women, men, girls, boys, young children, teens, young adults, adults, seniors, even homeless folks), and the ENTIRE LIFE SPAN of each person--from birth to life's completion!
The career-life paradigm VALUES each person and all the life roles they are playing, have played, and want to play someday. Because playing a role means putting time and energy into various roles, every person is always playing at least four to five roles as they are on their life journey. The main nine career-life roles are described further on.
CAREER-LIFE CHOICES and WELLNESS
While living in Boston, MA in 2011, I further re-framed 'career-life' at the Society of Vocational Psychology Internantional Conference at Boston University to "how one gives and/or receives CARE, i.e., one's special talents, interests, and values via 'caring experiences' across life roles".
Imagine that "career" is really IS the way each person gives or receives "care" using ANY of the major life roles. Also imagine that each time a person gives or receives CARE, this "caring experience" can either ALLOW or BLOCK one's personality type from being expressed in the interactions that take place within the various career-life roles. If the roles provide a good "fit" for one's personality type, we call this a congruent fit vs an incongruent fit when the roles block the individual's personality type from being expressed.
The various life roles provide potential environments into which one's personality can be released, thus resulting in an Energy Release (ER) between that person and whatever other person(s) or situation(s) are involved in these life roles. Thus, putting CARE together with the ER (energy release that can either occur or be blocked whenever we interact within these life roles), we have CARE ER or "CAREER".
The energy release (ER) involves trillions of cells that constantly interact to keep us alive and alert, regulate our circulatory system, our digestion, our ability to cope with dangerous situations, and our ability to experience pleasure, joy and fulfillment. The ensuing physiological dynamics directly affect stress levels. Depending on the congruence or incongruence of oneself with any of the nine major career-life role environments, there will occur a release of either positive or negative hormones that alter gene activity. This means that the choices we make, even our beliefs about ourselves, our relationships with others across life roles, and our ensuing behavior, can alter what researches call gene-expression. It seems remarkable that behavior can alter gene expression, and research by Dr. Herbert Benson indicates such dynamics influence our health and wellness and constantly produce changes inside our bodies. All this seems to indicate we each have opportunities to change our beliefs, make wise choices, and then behave in ways that promote wellness vs illness.
So you see, career is NOT merely what one does for pay part-time or full-time, or a long-term job, even if one truly enjoys their work. This is really called one's "work" role, and is only one of nine major life roles. Career consists of the MULTIPLE LIFE ROLES and many transitions all people experience, expressed beautifully in this link, throughout their life journey, including their CALLING(S) in ANY of these nine life roles. Career-Life is a powerful paradigm for discovering opportunities for the sharing of "caring experiences", even the HUGS given and received in this inspiring music video from Italy.
AND, career-life can be further simplified to this paradigm of Re-Framing Career to CARE so K12, college, post-grad students, all workers, the unemployed, even the homeless and incarcerated people, and special needs populations, can easily understand and apply this concept to their life journey, wherever and whenever.
PURPOSE and MEANING
The following discussion can change your life and bring more meaning into all that you do with all your career-life roles, including opening up creative ways you can earn income in your work role. Finding purpose in all that you do is an important step to having some sense of happiness, satisfaction, fulfllment and joy, even when life doesn't seem to move in the direction you wanted or expected. Life does happen! And, every person DOES MATTER and COUNT, including YOU! When you tap into this, you tap into an amazing power with YOU, The Power of ONE, which somehow contributes to everyone and everything else, ALWAYS and In All Ways.
Living life with a sense of purpose and meaning means you can experience passion in life, real, authentic, deep-seeded passion for living and being! This is good---actually this is GREAT! Why don't you deserve this!!
Ideally, discover this in your work. This IS possible. And, there are several life roles in which to experience purpose, meaning, and passion, when work is not able to provide you an appropriate outlet for your desire to make a difference, your way! Your work still provides income, and that's important.
Meanwhile, if you DO desire work that provides both income AND purpose, develop a Plan B that helps you actively seek work with more purpose, as you continue to earn income from your "bridge job", an important and useful bridge to someting better.
Let’s look more closely at both the old and new definitions of career to help you truly appreciate their differences, and become excited about the power of this new paradigm to change your life forever, and put YOU more in control of expressing who you are, and what you have to offer to the rest of us on this planet.
CAREER=WORK: THE OLD WAY
Let's face it. Most of the over 7 billion people living on Planet Earth view "career" as "what I do nine to five, pays me bucks, and hopefully, I like it!" That's an accurate definition of "work", and we do earn income through the time and energy spent working at our jobs.
A number of us decided that the traditional definition of career was too narrow, limiting, and I think, even dangerous. This was back in the 1970's.
I know, some of you are saying, heck, that's OLD already!
NOT SO FAST!! It often takes about 25-30 years for a substantive idea to take hold in a society, even with the Internet.
The traditional view of career did not sufficiently recognize other important life roles billions of people, youth and adults, have been putting time and energy into throughout their life journeys, and for thousands of years!
Consider ALL the ancient civilizations... reflect on the days of dinosaurs and cave people. Well, maybe they didn't go to work for pay like Fred and Barney did in the Flintstones, but they did have relationships, hunted for food, were parents to their children, and we know they had some leisure time hobbies. Think about all those cave drawings we love to look at when we visit museums, watch on TV, or observe in actual caves!
Career-life defines career NOT simply as work, but in a far more effective and engaging way, and also includes what you do for income, called the work role!
CAREER = LIFE ROLES: THE NEW WAY!
Consider how the following three visual tools can represent career-life and the multiple roles all people play throughout their life journeys, many of which are being played at the same time. Your challenge is to try to make wise choices about where you put your time and energy, such as selecting the right school, college major, or training for your future work, selecting the right job, the right friends, the most enjoyable leisure activities, the best spouse, and even the best way to volunteer your time and energy to others or in various community projects.
TIP—You might enjoy drawing each of these visual tools as I describe them to better appreciate the power of these tools and more fully grasp the career-life paradigm. Easy instructions for drawing these visual tools are presented after each brief description. You will only need a pencil or pen and a sheet of paper.
Earlier in this post I reference a free PowerPoint currently available, and in 2014, a free six-part video series about these topics, will be posted here and on other Internet sites, including YouTube.
#1) Career-Life As Rainbow Bands
Imagine a multi-colored rainbow in the sky, each of the colorful bands representing a different role you play throughout your life ranging from birth on the left and moving to the right as you go through early childhood, attend and finish school, go to work, change jobs, perhaps return to school, marry and have children, continue working, retire, and at some point, come to the end of your life.
Each role you play affects the other roles you’re playing in positive or negative ways. There are nine major career-life roles, as defined further on by Donald Super (1980), whose use of a rainbow to depict what he calls “life-career”, is known to many career counselors.
TIP -- Draw a rainbow with three bands, each over-lapping the other, and label each band inside with the following three words: Learner, Friendship/Spouse, and Leisure. This is a mini career-life rainbow! (there are actually nine bands, but just draw three at the present time.)
#2) Career-Life As Overlapping Pyramids
Another visual way to view career-life that I used (1978), is to imagine a small pyramid on the desert. Now imagine that this small pyramid is actually a "living" pyramid representing who you are as an individual with your unique personality qualities, talents, interests, and values.
Let’s call this your “self-knowledge pyramid”. It is filled with great potential and an abundance of amazing energy, and requires the best possible environments (other over-lapping pyramids) to nourish its growth and the direction of its growth over time. Now imagine this small pyramid is slowly growing, expanding, and even get taller over the years and maturing, just as you do!
Then imagine you attend school (K-12) and then a college or some institution where you obtain further training after high school, represented by a larger pyramid that can be placed on top of your smaller self-knowledge pyramid, covering it perfectly.
That would mean the school environment (represented by this second overlapping “learner pyramid”), or perhaps your college major, is a great fit for your self-knowledge pyramid of interests and values. A great fit means the school environment or college major supports your smaller developing self-knowledge pyramid, and you can easily grow into the comfort zone of your school or college environment. You like the courses and are doing well with your studies!
Now imagine an additional larger pyramid, the “spouse or friendship pyramid”, that is also placed on top of your self-knowledge pyramid, thus representing the most appropriate friends for you and/or the best spouse for you, who will allow you to be who you are, as they support your individual growth over time.
And now imagine another pyramid we will call the “leisure pyramid”, representing the different hobbies and interests you decide to take on as you enjoy various fun activities throughout your life.
And finally imagine several other pyramids, each representing different environments that can either support or not support you, all piled up on top of that first one, your self-knowledge pyramid. As your self-knowledge pyramid continues to grow, hopefully you have discovered the best over-lapping pyramids that are nourishing environments for your developing self-knowledge pyramid.
Thus, in this context, one important key to happiness in life, is taking time to discover those other larger pyramids that can best support the direction of your own developing self-knowledge pyramid throughout your life. When you discover the right outer pyramids that allow you to be YOU, they absorb YOU (your skills, interests, and values), YOUR ENERGY, and this represents a congruent fit.
If you find yourself being covered up by larger pyramids that don’t match you, such as the wrong college major, wrong friends, wrong leisure time activities, this means that these environments do not absorb YOU (your skills, interests, and values), YOUR ENERGY, and this represents an incongruent fit. You should consider eliminating them from your life, and making new choices, so they don’t stunt your growth and the continuing development of your very own self-knowledge pyramid. Blocked energy results in a lack of focus, confusion, stress, depression, and even burnout and compromised immunocompetence, and that's not healthy for you or others close to you about whom you deeply care!
TIP-- Draw a small self-knowledge pyramid (a triangle with three sides) with the word “me” inside the center. Label each side with the words “skills” on the outside left, “interests” on the outside right, and “values” under the base of your self-knowledge pyramid.
Then draw three larger pyramids that overlap the smaller self-knowledge pyramid, with each one over-lapping the other. Label each of them, inside near their top section, as follows: Learner, Friendship/Spouse, and Leisure, each representing a different career-life role or environment.
This is another ways to imagine how your various life roles, or environments, can support the direction of your growing self-knowledge pyramid. And as I shared earlier, if one of those larger pyramids does NOT support the direction and evolution of your own self-knowledge pyramid, eliminate it! Select another substitute environment, (e.g., college major, friend, etc) that WILL nourish you and be a better match.
#3) Career-Life As An Integration of #1 and #2 -- A Self-Knowledge Pyramid At the Center-Base of Your Career-Life Rainbow
When Don Super and I first met in the early 1980’s, I loved his rainbow image and explained to Don that my self-knowledge pyramid was the source of the color that filled each career-life rainbow band. The following is how I presently choose to represent career-life in its most complete and integrated visual image.
Imagine a beautiful rainbow with multiple bands, each representing various career-life roles and the many options that you must consider as you move from birth on the far left at the beginning of your career-life rainbow, to your life’s ending, on the far right at the end of your career-life rainbow. Imagine that the best way to make wise and informed choices is to rely on the understanding you have about your self-knowledge pyramid, located at the center-base beneath your career-life rainbow.
Imagine that amazing energy lies within your self-knowledge pyramid representing your special talents/skills, interests and values, all waiting to be expressed in the appropriate career-life roles of your rainbow that are arching over your self-knowledge pyramid. It's so important for youth and adults to acknowledge their magnificence and Learn to Love themselves.
As you learn more about yourself and better understand your unique personality, interests, values and talents, you can then choose wisely those environments in the various career-life rainbow bands that best match YOU, who you are, thus having a more fulfilling life over time and through your inevitable career-life transitions.
TIP -- Draw a rainbow with three bands, each over-lapping the other, and label them as follows: Learner, Friendship/Spouse, and Leisure. This is your mini-career-life rainbow! (remember, there are actually nine bands, but just draw three at the present time.)
Next, at the center-base beneath your career-life rainbow, draw a small self-knowledge pyramid (a triangle with three sides) with the word “me” inside the center. Label each side with the words “skills” on the outside left, “interests” on the outside right, and “values” under the base of your self-knowledge pyramid.
Now you have a drawing of not only your career-life rainbow, but the actual source of the color or energy (your self-knowledge pyramid) that needs to be expressed in each of your career-life rainbow bands.
Your job, over time, is to discover who you are and the unique aspects of your self-knowledge pyramid, and also discover those career-life rainbow roles that BEST allow your true self-knowledge personality to rise up and be fully expressed, throughout your life journey, from birth to your life’s completion.
Now here’s the BEST NEWS!
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH SUPPORTS "RIGHT PERSON/JOB FITS"
Excellent research by John Holland has helped us understand that each of us is dominant in two or three of six major personality types. This means your self-knowledge pyramid can be represented by a two or three letter Holland Code.
Also, the work role band in your career-life rainbow can also be represented by a large pie-chart, a circle representing the world-of-work that contains all jobs (about 22 thousand different occupations). This pie-chart can be classified into six similar work environments that actually match the six personality types. So, once you know more about your self-knowledge pyramid by discovering your main two or three personality types (your Holland Code), you will more easily be able to locate those occupations that are a better match in the world-of-work.
(I will discuss this personality-job matching in another post, my PowerPoint, and free 2014 six-part video series)
It is critical to discover balance among the several career-life roles most people are playing simultaneously, manage and reduce stress, and feel valued in the various roles one plays, including receiving equal pay for equal work. This is especially important for women!
CAREER-LIFE BALANCE AND EQUAL PAY FOR WORK SUPPORT A STRONG NATIONAL ECONOMY AND PROMOTE WELLNESS
While work is important to most of us because we need income to help us with our needs and some of our wants, we all put time and energy into other roles, many of which are played at the same time. For example, one can be a parent, a spouse, a home manager, and a paid worker at a full time or part time job—all at the same time. This of course requires balance! Lack of balance results in anxiety, overwhelm, stress, lower functioning immunue systems, and a state of non-wellness we call "illness". This stress can lead to chronic stress which easily affects children. Creating balance is vital to wellness, and self care is something ALL people, especialy women, must make as a number one priority.
This is very challenging, especially for most women who are often devoting more hours than their spouses raising children and performing home managing activities, and also working in paid jobs. As I discuss in my workbook, unfortunately, most women earn only about 77 cents for every one dollar earned by men who work the same number of hours, are the same age, have the same education and union status, and live in the same region of the country.
Research indicates that if working women earned the same pay as men, their annual family incomes would rise and reduce poverty rates of working women by half - a noble goal for our nation AND other countries where women are paid much less than men. Trying to earn sufficient income while scheduling appropriate time and energy for other life roles is usually challenging for most people and significantly challenging for working women who often assume a majority of home manager and parenting responsibilities, especially for younger children.
As you go through life, only one of the nine career-life rainbow roles represents your work role and how you earn income. The learner role, time spent in education or training, is directly related to the work role. Most people have some formal education and/or training in preparation for their career-life journey. Many also people stop attending school and then decide to return for further education and/or training later on in their lives.
The amount of education and training you obtain is directly related to earning more income over your lifetime. This is true for men and women, yet the wage gap still prevents women from earning equal pay for equal work.
This situation is especially challenging for the 42 million women, and the 28 million children who depend on these women, who "are living one single incident - a doctor's bill, a late paycheck, or a broken-down car - away from economic ruin", as described in The Shriver Report. This comprehensive report provides an excellent overview of many of the most pressing concerns facing women in America, including useful links for solutions, education, marriage and the family, teaching girls how to succeed, single parents, the chronic stress of poverty, and lots of graphs, facts, and figures.
The old idea of career=work does not appreciate what the fullness of career is about. This new idea that career=life roles (career-life, life-career, or even life-work that some use), is a much more accurate and useful paradigm because it RECOGNIZES AND HONORS the multiple life roles most people play thought their lives, including work for pay.
This means that time and energy as a spouse, partner, or friend counts; so do all those home managing chores count such as shopping for food, preparing and cooking food, and cleaning up your home or apartment every day.
And yes, making time for hobbies, volunteering your time for even a couple of hours a month if it's possible, and going to school and learning new skills and knowledge to become a more informed citizen and more competitive worker, are all activities that make up your career-life situation.
This means ALL people, not just those with jobs, have careers because even people without paid work... still have a life! That’s why I call this paradigm career-life, meaning career IS playing multiple life roles throughot one's life journey. Career is NOT merely one's paid work; it's one's life experiences across nine roles.
USING AN "ATTITUDE OF ADAPTABILITY" THROUGH ONE'S JOURNEY
Imagine how events might occur in any of the career-life roles, such as the downsizing of your company, a car accident, someone quits their job and you are the next in line for that position, an illness, etc., all situations that affect our life journey. Some might be situations that simply existed, such as where we were born and raised. Super described these as "situational determinants" (society, family, school, peer groups, the economy) that can influence career-life decisions. He also described "personal determinants", especially one's personality (needs, values, interests, intelligence, and special aptitudes, etc.), what I call one's self-knowledge pyramid, as see as the most important and active agent in the process of career-life decision-making.
What if we had a secret tool to effectively deal with those situational determinants and uncertainties that always surrounds our life journey? Many times, life just happens, and we can't control the events of life-but we CAN control how we respond to those situations with our attitude.
I recently coined and started using the term "attitude of adaptability" that is rooted in the work of Super and a friend and colleague, Mark Savickas, who writes about career adaptability. Career adaptability is defined as the readiness to cope with both predictable and unpredictable tasks and changes in work and working conditions.
My term, "attitude of adaptability", is intended for youth and adults as they deal with ANY of their career-life roles, including work. Teaching this attitude to anyone will facilitate their ability and willingness to have an "openness to the unknown" as they encounter many career-life transitions throughout their lives.
This attitude (and matching skill-sets) can be learned and fostered inside our hearts and minds, and used whenever we need it. The more a person has this attitude, the more they are able to deal with all those situational determinants that might randomly occur during their journey, across their career-life roles.
THE NINE CAREER-LIFE RAINBOW ROLES
** There are nine major career-life roles defined below by Donald Super, whose use of a rainbow to depict what he calls life-career, is known to professional career counselors.
** I introduced a NEW career-life role (Life-In-Transition, the near-death and dying process) at the 2011 Society for Vocational Psychology International Conference at Boston University. It is presented in a chapter on values called, DOVE (Depth-Oriented Values Extraction): Helping Clients Create Career-Life Choices, for a book, The Role of Values In Careers, published by the Society for Vocational Psychology via Information Age Publishing, Inc., available in 2014.
A brief discussion here on DOVE (Depth-Oriented Values Extraction) offers a useful overview of this powerful values clarification process.
1) Child Role-Time and energy spent with your parents/guardians.
2) Student Role-Time and energy spent in school/training.
3) Worker Role-Time and energy spent in work for pay.
4) Spouse/Friendship-Time and energy spent with your spouse/partner or someone very close to you.
5) Home Manager Role-Time and energy spent taking care of home maintenance/management.
6) Parent Role-Time and energy spent with your children.
7) Leisure Role-Time and energy spent in spare-time activities/hobbies.
8) Citizen Role-Time and energy spent in volunteering in civic, religious, political, or any community activities.
9) Annuitant Role-The time and energy spent after the work role ends and you are retired and receive some sort of pension/social security, or other retirement income. (I suggest eliminating this role because one does not usually put time and energy into this role; others do who are paid to manage social security, IRA's and various investments. I have replaced this role with Life-In-Transition)
Even young children about 7 or 8 are playing several of these career-life roles. Think about it. Children spend time and energy playing (leisure role), often with a friend or two (friendship role), and sometimes help clean their room or assist with a few household chores (home manager role), are sons and daughters to their parents (child role), and are in their early school years (student role).
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
The following checklist is one I use in many of my workshops, and hopefully it will stimulate some ideas within your mind and heart. I believe it is within your heart where most of the major changes you make in your life find their deep-seeded support and resources for the strength, perseverance, and clarity required for authentic life changes and re-direction for the better.
MY CAREER-LIFE CHANGE 12-STEP CHECKLIST ©
Below is a series of questions relevant to making a career-life change. Read each question carefully and give yourself a little reflection time before responding to each question. Reflect on the major career-life roles discussed earlier prior to your responses, and the time and energy you put into each of these roles.
1) What career-life change(s) do you want to make in your life? (Be as specific as you can)
2) Why do you want to make this change?
3) Why now?
4) What do you have to do in order to make a successful change?
5 Describe what evidence of commitment you have regarding making this change?
6) What skills, interests, and values do you need in your new career-life roles? What evidence indicates you already have some of these?
7) What additional education, specific training, or preparation is required to make this change?
8) What internal barriers do you need to deal with in order to be successful? (e.g., low self-confidence, fear, negative scripting tapes in your mind, etc.)
9) What external barriers do you need to deal with in order to be successful? (e.g., funds for education/re-training, travel concerns, etc.)
10) Do you have a support group or a good friend who knows you well and can provide the support you may need to deal with your transition or do you need some career-life counseling to facilitate your transition?
11) What evidence do you have of successfully dealing with similar transitions in your life, and how can your past experiences help you with your current transition?
12) How are you using your spiritual realm to guide you, and how do you know when this spiritual realm is speaking to you?
** Please feel free to ask a question of make any comment. If you do not want to leave your name, you may simply make your comment as “anonymous”. Also please share this website or this post with friends or colleagues who may be interested. My next post with discuss transitions.
Thank you. Regards, EdC
Connecting with Ed
Please feel free to ask a question or make a comment. If you do not want to leave your name, you may simply make your comment as "anonymous". Also please share this website or post with friends or colleagues who might be interested.
* In March 2014, a worldwide launch was initiated,
Re-Framing Career to CARE to continue this discussion and encourage people to collaborate in their various work or community settings and across cultures. Why? Because the reality is, most people worldwide are playing five to seven life roles simultaneously, and most fourth graders and homeless people are playing four to five of these same life roles. EACH of these roles are opportunities to give and/or receive CARE via "caring experiences". Please join this discussion about Re-Framing Career to CARE. Your participation is SO important!
* If you are interested in a special post and award-winning video that had been available on the Deepak Chopra Well World site, I am arranging a link on my site for FREE access to this unique video inspired by the USA 911 experience. It can be used by anyone in any country as a resource for promoting greater understanding for youth and adults about multicultural differences and conflicts, including faith traditions.
* In 2017 I will be posting a six-part video series called
Creating Careers with Confidence, that provides an enjoyable and informative research-based discussion and PowerPoint covering The ABC's of Making Career-Life Choices, including a special video for parents and educators.
** Please visit this link for some year-round
Gift-Tips under the Christmas Tree and enjoyable videos for adults and youth needing ideas and resources related to the job search including networking, resumes, job interviews, accepting and declining job offers, etc.
*** I am available for in-person or distance support and/or motivational presentations with adults and youth regarding topics in my posts, and offer a complimentary phone "mini-assessment" for those who might be interested in career-life counseling/coaching.
Please e-mail me and leave your best phone and time to call, and I will be happy to call you back if you are in the USA. Skype is also an option for anyone in the USA or abroad.
Contact me directly at (781) 721-1200 or
careercoachcolozzi@verizon.net
Day, evening or weekend appointments are available.
Follow Ed on
Twitter @EdwardColozzi ,
my LinkedIn site or the
schools2life LinkedIn site
