Archive for January, 2010

Every month we have a teleconference with our IAM Learning Community (premium) members to discuss how they can stay their course, connecting to what is essential about themselves, as they transform their work and life to be their best ongoing.

Last week we focused on the topic of making money doing what you love. With so much fear about work and jobs around, it felt important to address the practicalities of how “money = love” works.

Here’s a summary of the list we created together on the call. The call included both people who perceive themselves as accomplished at the money = love challenge, and people who are still figuring it out. Here’s what we came up with:

1. Challenge/mistake: Attempting to jump directly from work being struggle to work being joyful.

   Best practice: Establish a daily practice of experiencing joy in your work. Gradually build your experience and faith in work being joyful.

2. Challenge/mistake: Listening to nay-sayers.

   Best practice: Surround yourself with people who support you following your dreams. Limit time with people who detract.

3. Challenge/mistake: Listening to experts.

   Best practice: Remember that you are the best expert on what is right for you. Develop trust in yourself to know, to discern, to choose what is right for you. Then consider expert advice.

4. Challenge/mistake: Thinking success is going to just ‘happen’ or an event will make or break you.

   Best practice: Making money doing what you love is a faith journey. Any one event is merely a stepping stone along the way. Remember this type of success is about walking a path of love and joy – ongoing.

5. Challenge/mistake: Looking for physical evidence to ‘prove’ your success.

   Best practice: Feeling the flow of love and joy is a precursor to physical evidence. Focus on the joy and love first, and the evidence will come.

6. Challenge/mistake: Surrounding yourself with other successful people, but feeling ‘less than’ and riding on their coat tails.

   Best practice: Be the leader of yourself and know that you are the source of the joy and love that will determine your success – now.

7. Challenge/mistake: Thinking of success in limited ways, such as only considering $ indicators.

   Best practice: Think of success as an ‘abundance bucket’ that can show-up in an infinite variety of ways. Let go, be open to being surprised at the variety of ways wealth can show up!

8. Challenge/mistake: Expecting the path forward to be linear and logical.
   
   Best practice: Think of a windy path or 100 different tacks that you might take. Those who are wander are not lost. Nothing is ever wasted. Don’t try to make sense of the path and you’ll be fine.
9. Challenge/mistake: Finding security in a well thought-out plan.

   Best practice: In the path of joy, security comes from knowing that you don’t need to know, and trusting that all you do need to have is clarity about the next step you’ll take. Get good at sorting through the noise related to your next step – use your heart as the filter. When you know your next step, move with confidence.

What do you think? What has been key to you making money doing what you love? What challenges are you facing now?

U.S. Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale

I cleaned out my office today & ran across an index card with the Stockdale Paradox on it. In case you’re not familiar with the Stockdale Paradox, Jim Collins describes it in his book, “Good to Great” as:

“Retain the faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties AND confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be.”

I highly recommend reading about Jim Stockdale in this wiki to learn more about his experience as a Vietnam POW & how he was able to survive when many others didn’t: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stockdale.

Surviving a POW camp is in no way comparable to conducting a job search or developing your career, but there are important lessons we can learn from Jim Stockdale’s experience.

Got Faith?

Stockdale said he never doubted he would prevail and turn this horrific experience into a defining event in his life. He never lost faith.

I think about a time when I was in a job that felt like a prison to me. I felt victimized, like I had no choices. But that wasn’t true. I did have choices. I hired a coach and started working on a plan to not just get me out of there but to really envision a future for myself. I read somewhere that faith is passionate trust. I trusted myself to know what I really wanted, and I trusted God to show me the way.

The Brutal Facts

Stockdale says we must have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of our current reality. There are two important points here – defining reality and discipline.

What is reality? I heard someone say, “If the dream is big enough, the facts don’t count.” Well, just like Stockdale, I believe the facts DO count.

There are certain facts about you that should be a factor in your career development. This is the brutal reality of YOU – the brilliant you, and it’s important that you know what it is and can sufficiently describe it to others.

And then there’s the other side of reality such as the people who show up on American Idol who can’t carry a tune and can’t understand why they aren’t chosen. Or the person who doesn’t want to learn anything new and thinks they can coast to retirement. Or the person who knows their performance has been lagging but thinks people won’t notice. This is our blind spot, and it is essential to make that spot as small as possible.

After you have a good idea of your reality, it’s time for discipline. Discipline might conjure up some images as being grounded or a drill sergeant commanding you to take 100 pushups in the freezing rain, but consider another definition of discipline: “self-control, training for improvement, and a systematic method.”  It seems to me that discipline is at the heart of leadership, so when it comes to determining our careers, it is essential to have a system in place to help us reach our dreams (strategies, intentions, goals). I hired a coach, increased my knowledge, and put a system in place to be more accountable so that I could expand my choices.

So, CAN be anything you want?  Maybe! Use these tips to guide you in deciding what you really, really want:

1. Take a look at the brutal reality of you. Who are you, and what are your strengths (skills, knowledge, abilities)? What is important to you? What would make you want to go work every day full of energy and passion?
2. Have the discipline to do what it takes to get you what you want. Invest in yourself by hiring a coach, going back to school, updating your resume, networking, etc. Stop doing those things that are getting in the way of what you want.
3. Have faith that you will prevail despite difficult circumstances.
4. Allow yourself to be surprised. Don’t wrap up your life so tightly that you miss some amazing detours off your path.

Do you have something else to add to this discussion? If so, I’d love to hear from you!

Happy New Year everyone! I felt sluggish about starting back to work in 2010, and then I talked with Diane about our intentions for IAM and our work together for the new year and got all fired up! (This is how you know when you’re working with a great person!)

Here’s the intention statement that Diane and I drafted together:

We intend to create a healthy, creative, inspiring and evolving instance of conscious capitalism, where success is defined in broad and very personal ways … and we:

• re-energize old truths
• develop new ways and ideas of working and living
• work in harmony with the environment
• create wealth for and with many people
• experience abundance in everything we do

Our goals for 2010 include:

• 1000 paying members (10,000 is our BHAG goal!)
• IAM Career SMART! launched and actively being used
  • Less text and more video
  • More examples
  • More information about context/big picture
• IAM Coach community is well established
  • Support coaches moving into social media/marketing and online delivery
  • Make it simple to do what you love, and do it well
  • Combine our brilliance to create more than we could alone
  • E-course in place to bring on new coaches in place
  • Membership package for coaches in place
• Collaboration process well established
  • Tools, guidance and systems in place
  • Examples of successful collaboration with us (time management and organization, for example)
  • Examples of successful collaboration without us (members fly on their own)
  • E-course in place to bring on new collaborators
  • Membership package for collaborators in place
• 2-3 mutually beneficial partnerships in place
  • Conscious Capitalism Institute, for example
• Joint venture/affiliate program in place

Given what we accomplished in 2009, these goals feel very focused and quite doable. I’m thrilled with moving forward … I can’t wait to play!

Happy 2010! Last year was a year of laying the foundation for our movement of transforming work and life so everyone can be their best. I learned a lot about myself last year and this year promises to stretch me even further. I’m super excited about that!

I have been wondering about you and your intentions for 2010, specifically how you’ll anchor in more deeply to being your best. Last year a client told me she had selected a word of the year to guide her throughout the year. She got the idea from Christine Kane (www.christinekane.com). Today I read a blog by Chris Brogan who chooses 3 words each year. Read his blog here: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/my-3-words-for-2010/#comment-27738450.

Last year my word was recriprocal, and it served me very well. Last week I began thinking about my word for 2010. I decided to let go of trying to figure it out and just trust God for my word. The strangest thing happened. I had a dream and the word, enamor, came to me in my sleep. I can’t remember the details, but when I woke up, the word was firmly in my mind.

Now, mind you, I have vivid, sometimes strange dreams, and I have never had a dream where a word was given to me. Also, as I get older, I find that my memory fails me when I try to remember certain words, but I easily recall this word throughout the day. Also, not surprisingly enamor is not part of my normal conversations.

So, although I don’t know if I will add more words to my word of the year, I am definitely keeping enamor. I look forward to playing with my word of the year, peeling it back like an onion, to help me be my best and help others do the same.

What do you think about choosing a word or words for 2010? Take a look at Christine’s video on her blog and/or read Chris Brogan’s blog post and see if choosing a word(s) is something you might want to participate in this year. And be sure to let me know. I’m planning to write about my word at least monthly if not more often throughout the year. I’d love to support you in your word choice.

Many blessings to you and those you love in 2010! May you feel love in a big way (enamor)…