The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com Welcome to my career tips newsletter! I encourage you to pass this to anyone who might have an interest in revitalizing their career – instructions for subscribing are at the bottom.

Nurturing optimism

I’d like to be optimistic, but it’s not that easy.  The economy’s terrible, the election’s coming up this year, people are still losing their houses, …

Here’s how I do it.

You may have some friends or colleagues who are “toxic people.”  You know the type: For every positive sign, they can recite five negative ones.  They relish in the opportunity to point out the black cloud behind the silver lining.

And, let’s face it, there’s a certain amount of perverse pleasure in complaining.  It’s easy, and doesn’t carry the risk that you might actually have to DO something.

But the end result, over time, is that you take on the attitude of a slave.  Other people have the opportunity and right to do things, and all you can do is to respond.  You’ve lost all your freedom.

That’s no way to spend your life.

So the first challenge is to limit the amount of time you spend with these toxic “friends.”  If three minutes a day is all you can take, then listen for that time, don’t participate much, and walk away.  Maybe they’ll learn and adjust over time, but it’s not your job to try to “fix” other people.

Do the same with the media you consume.  I had a podcast that I listened to faithfully for several years, and really enjoyed.  But it was all about complaining and pointing out faults, not about coming up with useful solutions.  I started noticing that after listening, I would become cynical for the rest of the day.

Because I don’t want to be that kind of person, I had to give up the podcasts.  Guess what?  I’m more positive now.

The third thing I do is to actively look for – and celebrate – positive signs.  Last week my son had two high-value interviews, after having none for a year.  Let’s consider that as a sign that his industry is turning up, and that he’s shifting his focus to get a little more serious about the job search.  A year’s worth of new experience has helped as well!

I’ve been getting a sense that there’s more optimism here in January 2012 than there was in January 2011.  Measurable?  Not really.  But I’ve been doing my part to tell people that this has helped me to be more upbeat, in the hopes that I can spread it around a little more.  It seems to be working, little by little.

A couple of months ago, on one of my blogs, I mentioned my little experiment with changing the standard hallway exchange:  “How’s it going?” “Fine.”  This actually means nothing in our culture, other than acknowledging the other person’s existence.  It certainly doesn’t mean that I’m “fine”, it’s just the standard response.

I changed my response to things like “wonderful!” or “excellent!” in order to see how people would react.  And they noticed, yes, but more important, it changed my outlook on the day.  I found that by telling someone I was having a wonderful time, that it actually increased the chances that the day would indeed be wonderful.  Because I was working to make it that way.

And don’t we all want wonderful days?

  Carl Dierschow is a Certified Small Fish Business Coach and author of the career management guide, Mondays Stink! 23 Secrets to Rediscover Delight and Fulfillment in Your Work. He is a career coach for those going through interesting transitions, and works with small business owners who need to create breakthroughs in achieving their business goals. Find out more at www.Dierschow.com and www.SmallFish.us.

If you are interested in individual career coaching, group coaching, or other resources which might help you with difficult choices, please contact Carl at carl@dierschow.com.

Connect with Carl on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to get timely updates and connections to a broader range of professionals. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this newsletter, send an e-mail to newsletter@Dierschow.com

© 2011 Possibilities Partnership LLC ]]> http://dierschow.com/wordpress/career/nurturing-optimism/feed 0 http://dierschow.com/wordpress/career/ten-people-you-really-should-know http://dierschow.com/wordpress/career/ten-people-you-really-should-know#comments Sun, 11 Dec 2011 02:08:03 +0000 Carl http://dierschow.com/wordpress/?p=1302 It’s not WHAT you know, it’s WHO you know.  Right?  So who is it that you should know?

The implicit assumption is that if you want to get a new job, you need to know people who have jobs.  But that could be ANYbody with decision-making authority, so it’s not as helpful as you’d like to think.

Read more on my Workbloom blog»

Read more on my Workbloom blog»

Read more on my Workbloom blog»

Realize that being a manager is a real job, and your boss is a real person.  She probably doesn’t WANT to make your life miserable, she just finds it a necessary part of getting the work done.

Read more on my Workbloom blog

Read more on my Workbloom blog»

How did that sound?  Authentic?  No, I didn’t think so.

Read more on my Workbloom blog»

The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com Welcome to my career tips newsletter! I encourage you to pass this to anyone who might have an interest in revitalizing their career – instructions for subscribing are at the bottom.

The balance of giving and taking

I have several blogs, as you may have discovered.  On a regular basis, I get emails from other blog sites which say something like:

I’ve been following your blog for some time, and like what you have to say.  You might want to know that I’ve just published a new article on ________.  If you find it interesting, I’d appreciate if you could mention it on your blog.

<name>

Now, I really like helping out other people, so on occasion I’ve obliged.  But after having received dozens of nearly identical requests, I’ve stopped participating.  I feel a bit of a curmudgeon for doing that, but this is what’s been concerning me:

• Even though the sites have looked a bit legitimate, I have vague suspicions that there’s something underhanded going on.  Especially when there’s no contact details on the website and the description is something vague like “we provide resources for people who ….” – it sounds like maybe they’re just trying to build up their Google rankings with not much value for real people.
• One day, I received essentially identical requests from two different names for two different websites – at about 3am, my time.  This would indicate that there’s probably some Google ranking company pushing their services out in Asia someplace.  I don’t buy services from those kinds of companies, and I don’t want to contribute, even indirectly, to plugging their companies.
• I’ve never once received any kind of thank you for having done this, and I get no sense that the writer knows or cares anything about me as a person.

The first two are logical, the third is an emotional reaction.  But social interactions – people helping people in communities of shared interest – are built primarily on emotional attachments.

What do we learn from all this?  That your work in building networks, increasing your influence, and knowing the right people, is built on both emotional and logical connections.

Don’t downplay the emotional.

When you give freely to others, when you show gratitude, when you put yourself at service, you create emotional bonds that are incredibly resilient and memorable.

You can carry this into manipulation, of course.  In that e-mail above, the person said they appreciated my blog.  That felt great – it stroked my ego – the first couple of times, but I’ve discovered that it’s inauthentic.  What’s different from REAL appreciation is that this person said nothing specific, either about what I’d done or the value they received.

It’s easy to say “I appreciate what you do.”  It’s much harder, and has much more impact, to explain WHY.

The same goes for social media.  Most comments I see aren’t conversations, they’re just throwaways which are generated by people who have too much time and easy access to technology.  This is exactly how Twitter has gotten such a bad image to the non-Twitterverse.

In my case, I don’t spend much time on social media networks.  When I do, I’m looking for substantial conversations where people are helping each other.

Other than that, I’m looking to help people In Real Life.  For real.

  Carl Dierschow is a Certified Small Fish Business Coach and author of the career management guide, Mondays Stink! 23 Secrets to Rediscover Delight and Fulfillment in Your Work. He is a career coach for those going through interesting transitions, and works with small business owners who need to create breakthroughs in achieving their business goals. Find out more at www.Dierschow.com and www.SmallFish.us.

If you are interested in individual career coaching, group coaching, or other resources which might help you with difficult choices, please contact Carl at carl@dierschow.com.

Connect with Carl on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to get timely updates and connections to a broader range of professionals. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this newsletter, send an e-mail to newsletter@Dierschow.com

© 2011 Possibilities Partnership LLC ]]> http://dierschow.com/wordpress/career/the-balance-of-giving-and-taking/feed 0 http://dierschow.com/wordpress/career/the-best-ways-to-become-independent http://dierschow.com/wordpress/career/the-best-ways-to-become-independent#comments Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:37:06 +0000 Carl http://dierschow.com/wordpress/?p=1195 This time of year, we in the US are celebrating our independence. It’s a big deal, and has become a core part of our national psyche.

In our personal lives, a few of us strive to be truly independent. But most of us really just want to be able to CHOOSE when and where to be dependent on others, to develop the give-and-take of trusting relationships that help us to advance toward our goals and dreams.

Read more on my Workbloom blog»

Maybe even said it.

Read more on my Workbloom blog»