Living Out Loud

Shifting Direction & Embracing Uncertainty

I’ve just been reading a post by Joanna Young - in response to one of my own Thought for the Week quotations actually ;-)  It was written some months ago, but for some reason I only just read it now for the first time.  The particular quote was:

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.” ~ Douglas Adams

Joanna says:

“It reminded me that we often find ourselves places that we didn't mean to go - and that's okay.  It doesn't mean we need to head back again - perhaps we just need to stop and enjoy the view, explore the paths that head off from here, or just accept that this is where we were 'meant' to get to in the first place.”

This is beautifully synchronous for me, as I have recently shifted direction myself.  And the irony is that I’ve hired Joanna to help me with it!

Where I intended to go was to build a coaching business to help people live joyfully in the here and now.  And I engaged in a few different writing projects (including this blog) as a means of marketing that business.  But where I’ve ended up is realizing that what I enjoy most is the writing side of my work.  And so, my new journey is being a writer, first and foremost, and figuring out a way to make a good living out of that. 

It’s a tricky one, because most of the writing I have been doing (my coaching e-programmes being the only exception) is for free.  And I want to continue offering those writing services at no charge.  But I do need to pay the bills as well.

I have several ideas about how I might get there, but the fact of the matter is I don’t really know how it’s all going to work out.  But that’s ok, because in truth none of us ever know how anything is ever going to work out - even if we think we do!!

So, instead of worrying about how it’s all going to turn out, I’m going to throw myself into it with passion and gusto (I’m finally starting to re-emerge from a period of serious stuckness), and trust that even if I end up shifting directions several more times along the way, I’ll eventually end up where I’m meant to be.

This Deepak Chopra quote helps me remember to let go of the need to know how it will be:

"Relinquish your attachment to the known, step into the unknown, and you will step into the field of all possibilities."

Uncertainty about the future is absolutely unavoidable.  What helps you to embrace it?

Quit Should-ing!

I've been reading Marcus Buckingham's Go Put your Strengths to Work as part of the Joyful Jubilant Learning second learning project, and for weeks now I've been feeling I "should" write a post about it.  And of course, I've actively resisted that Should.

This morning I woke early, and as I lay in bed planning my day ahead I again thought about writing that post, and I immediately felt my energy draining.  I paid attention to this and it reminded me of the underlying core message of Buckingham's entire book: focus your energy and attention on your strengths, and manage your weaknesses so that you spend as little time as possible on those activities.  Of course anything at all that feels like a "should" is a weakening activity, even if it is something that you would normally enjoy.

The key element of a strength is your appetite for the task - talent, skill and knowledge are also important elements, but if you don't have an appetite for it the activity will actually weaken, instead of strengthen you.  And the conditions that create the appetite can be very specific, which is why it's incredibly important that you get the detail just write when writing your strength and weakness statements.

For example, here is one of my strength statements:

“I feel strong when writing material that conveys a message that is meaningful to me, and which I believe to be of value to others, and which I feel inspired to write.”

And by contrast, one of my weakness statements:

“I feel weak when forcing myself to write something I don’t feel like writing, just because I feel I should, or because I made a commitment to do so.”

So, the same task can either strengthen or weaken me depending on whether in the moment of doing it I'm forcing myself to do it or I'm feeling inspired to do it.  When I signed up to this learning project I was inspired to do so, but my participation included a commitment to blog about my learnings along the way.  Subsequently, everytime I read up on a step I felt obliged to post about it, and then resisted doing so because of that feeling.  Eventhough it was something I really wanted to do, a sense of duty to do it eliminated that necessary feeling (for me) of being inspired to do it.

In his chapter on weaknesses, Buckingham tells us to "quit should-ing":

"If those activities make you feel drained, frustrated, or burned out, you should not be doing them, or at least not much of them and not for long."

As I lay in bed this morning feeling my energy drain thinking about how I have yet to post on this project, I said to myself "Hilda, quit should-ing!"  And as I heard myself a major shift came about - I recalled the section on Should-ing in the chapter on Weaknesses and suddenly I felt inspired to write the post.  In fact I started writing it in my head, and then just had to jump out of bed and get to it.  And then I was inspired to write a second post, which synopsizes everything up to Step 4 (see below this post). 

My productivity this morning knows no bounds. And it feels easy.  If I had forced myself over the last couple of weeks to sit down and write this post it would have taken me a couple of hours, I would have given in to every distraction going, and I would have struggled to get my message clear in my own head, never mind getting it out of my head and onto my pc screen.  (And I certainly wouldn't have gone on to write another post)

Two things happened here that made all the difference.  I shifted my perspective on writing this post (one of Buckingham's proposed strategies for managing your weaknesses) AND I quit should-ing.  The effect of these small shifts has been quite magical for me.  That is the differrence between working with your strengths and working with your weaknesses. 

Which would rather work with - force or ease?

Manage your weaknesses but focus on your Strengths

In Go Put your Strengths to Work Marcus Buckingham persuades us that it is vitally important to our happiness and success at work to understand clearly what our strengths and weaknesses are.  Nothing new here, you might think.  The crucial difference between Buckingham's (and the rest of the Strength's Movement) approach and the conventional business approach is that once we have that information, we start to focus most of our energy and attention on our strengths, and less on our "development areas".

Traditionally, it is held true in the business world that in order to excel in our work, we need to know what areas we are weak in so that we can plan a necessary training and development programme to overcome those weaknesses, and over time be able to add them to our list of strengths.  Buckingham argues this is a fallacy.

"The point is simply that you will not learn and grow the most in your areas of weakness.  Instead you will learn and grow the least .. and what learning and growth you do achieve will be hard won."

It makes far more sense to concentrate your energy on your areas of strength, because that is where your development will make leaps and bounds, and in applying your strengths you can make the most positive contribution to your company.

"You will be most optimistic, most courageous, and most ambitious when playing to an area of strength.  And when you hit resistance or obtacles to your goals, you will bounce back fastest when those goals centre on one of your strengths."

Buckingham works with another key difference in the traditional approach to strengths, and that lies in how we identify what our strengths and weaknesses are: you are the best judge of your strengths and weaknesses, not your boss, and not some objective third party who applies a series of test measures.  The reason being that your strengths and weaknesses are clarified by your feelings about different activities, and only you can know how you feel. 

Work, Meaning & Happiness

I’ve been reading a lot of articles on the blogosphere this week about the results of a study just released by the University of Chicago on the happiest jobs or professions.  It’s a fairly comprehensive study that involved face-to-face interviews with over 27,000 people between 1988 and 2006, so I think it’s fair to credit some weight to the findings.

And what were they exactly?  That the most satisfying jobs are those involving caring for, teaching or protecting others, and those involving creative pursuits.  Now, if you’ve been wondering for a while what will make you happy in your own work, and your current skill set doesn’t fall into one of the aforementioned categories, please don’t despair.  The real underlying reason for satisfaction in those work categories is simply this: a sense of meaning in the job that one is doing.

And the good news is that any job can be meaningful.  Yes, that’s right!  Really and truly, there is as much meaning to be found in hairdressing (helping others to look their best usually has a positive knock-on effect on how they feel about themselves), as in nursing (people who feel good about themselves have a more robust immune system and will respond better and more quickly to the care they are given).  It all depends on how you look at it, and what is true for you.  The catch then isn’t in finding a career that fits some generic, societaly recognized "meaningful" role, but in finding a role that has meaning for you. 

How do you do that? 

Happy Hour is 9-5

- How to love your job, love your life and kick butt at work, by Alexander Kjerulf

As I’m very focussed on happiness at work at the moment, I’ve been reading an awful lot of material on the subject. And by far and away one of the books I’ve enjoyed the most is Alex’s recent publication.

While writing it in draft format, Alex blogged the content, and received plentiful feedback on it from his readers. The finished version is engaging, light-hearted in its approach and deadly serious in its message: happiness at work is no longer a luxury. It’s essential for the individual who spends a third of their life there, and for the company that wants to flourish in the long term (all research in the area by psychologists, sociologists and even economists, support the concept that a happy worker is a productive worker, and therefore a happy company is a profitable one).

This book is an extremely useful tool for any individual who wishes to be happier in their own work, and equally so for an employer who wishes to run a truly happy workplace. In addition to persuading you that it’s not only important, but also possible, to be happy in your work, the book provides plenty of simple tools to start making that a reality.

It’s available to buy on his site www.positivesharing.com where you can also read the book online – at no charge whatsoever. What are you waiting for?

My first Blogroll link

Woohooooo!  I just got my first link from another blog.  This is soooo exciting.

I'm very new to blogging, having started tentatively in January because I wanted to get into the habit of writing more and making it a bigger part of what I do.  After reading about Business Blog Angel Claire Raike's blogging telecass in Judith Morgan's newsletter I signed up straightaway and found my confidence growing steadily.

What really took me by surprise about blogging is how much I enjoy the medium.  Writing my own blog has opened me up to a whole new world and I'm now gleefully exploring all the wonderful blogs out there.  I could gladly spend my whole day reading blogs if I didn't have other work to do...

Anyway, the fab thing about finding a great blog, is often they provide links to other great blogs, and so the discovery continues.  One of the great blogs I discovered in the last week is Ramblings from a Glass Half Full, written by Starbucker.  And today I've discovered that while I slept Starbucker added me to his Great Links.  (check him out today - his latest post stresses the importance of finding happiness at work - a subject close to my own heart)

Thank you Starbucker!  This is such a great boost to a novice blogger.   

Happy Friday everybody!

Resilience: an essential tool for the 21st century

Resilience: the ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.

Resilience is such an interesting word.  Over the last couple of weeks it’s cropped up quite a bit for me.  It started in a meeting with a corporate client about a programme my HAW partner and I are developing for them.  After that meeting I gave quite a bit of thought to the term “resilience” and why it’s so important, and ever since then the concept has kept popping its head up here and there.  Just another example of “energy flows where attention goes” I suppose 

Anyway, getting back to this meeting that started me off:  the HR manager in this place is wonderful - she truly cares about the welfare of her employees and is completely on board with how essential happiness is in the workplace.  But over the course of our discussions the programme evolved into Resilience at Work rather than the initially proposed Happiness at Work.   

The reason for this is that there'd be greater buy-in from management and participating employees in a programme that offers them "resilience" rather than one that offers them "happiness".  In an increasingly stressful workplace, everyone wants to be able to cope with the demands placed upon them, and with juggling their roles in and out of work.  "Resilience" is something they clearly see the benefit of. 

Happiness at Work

A career coach (www.coletteclail.com) and I teamed up a few months ago to work on a project that I was making slow progress on and that echoed an idea she'd had around play.   We were using the working title Happiness at Work (because that's what it's all about), but had been thinking we might need a snappier, sexier name for it.  Today however, we decided to go with the "does exactly what it says on the tin" title, and Happiness at Work it is.

We plan to coach company management on how to foster a culture that supports a truly happy workplace, and to coach individual employees on how to make themselves happy at work.

Through our coaching work, we have both developped an acute awareness of what almost seems to be an epidemic of misery at work.  Ireland is now one of the most thriving economies in the world, and from a materialistic point of view we've never had it so good.  But this material well being isn't translating into a more personal one (be it physical, mental, emotional or spiritual).  There's a million and one reasons for that, but there's plenty of people out there focussing on those.