Success begins with creating a vision and a plan. Our new, innovative and structured approach to individual, team and organizational success creates measurable benefits. Our programs are designed to assist you in answering questions key to success. As you answer these questions, you achieve greater focus toward the future. This focus creates the roadmap to increased career success, decreased stress and increased balance. We offer programs that meet your needs.
Connecting The Pieces Of Success!
Upcoming Events:
Tue, Feb. 9th
- Dr. Cheryl Leitschuh
- AICPA - Work Life Balance and Women's Initiative Committee
- nashville, tennessee
Success begins with creating a vision and a plan. Our new, innovative and structured approach to individual, team and organizational success creates measurable benefits. Our programs are designed to assist you in answering questions key to success. As you answer these questions, you achieve greater focus toward the future. This focus creates the roadmap to increased career success, decreased stress and increased balance.
Countdown to 55
As of today I have 86 days until I turn 55 years old. It will put me in a new demographic category. A milestone to be sure!!
I have been pondering what wisdom I have gained in the last 54 years and here are 4 key items I see as important in my focus moving forward:
1. Care about what others think but don't worry about it or personalize it. There opinion is just their opinion and not the truth.
2. Don't judge. We each have our own journey and are trying our best to make life the life we want it to be. It is not my duty to judge others or let others judge me. No one can know what is like to be in the others shoes.
3. Beauty products are delightful!! I realize how my daily beauty regime is the opportunity for me to take care of me. I have spent a great deal of my life taking care of others and not always taking care of me. My morning and evening routine is my time to appreciate and nurture ME.
4. You can never have too many shoes! My shoes are another delight. They not only enhance my outfit but they are what keep my feet firmly on the ground. I am constantly reminded "one step at a time" and you might as well look good while you are stepping!!
That's it. Nothing earth shattering - just opportunities to move into the next demographic category with wisdom and joy!
-"Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes." Benjamin Franklin -"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers" Erich Fromm -"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." Voltaire -"What men really want is not knowledge but certainty." Bertrand Russell -"Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear." William Congreve
Would I rather "block my search for meaning" or be "impervious to fear"? Me being me, I want both the opportunity to search for meaning and be impervious to fear!! Am I so unrealistic? I think not.
I was working with a client today who was clearly anxious about the future of her business. Her lack of certainty was causing her to become stuck in the anxiety. I asked her to break down all the factors that effected her business. Included in the list were: the economy, cash flow, building business, her energy, belief in her products, etc. We then took each item and ranked them on a "certainty" scale. 1 being completely uncertain and 7 being completely certain. As we took each item, she began to see which items faced the greatest fear and uncertainty and which items she felt greater certainty. She also recognized that the patterns of the scores were similar to when business was good, but the scores were lower across all categories.
Without any input from me, she was able to prioritize actions she could take to move forward. Some areas there was nothing she could impact, like the economy. Some areas she had huge control, like her energy.
As we continued to talk the list of action items were huge! Now the problem wasn't getting her "unstuck" from the anxiety. The problem became that she would overwhelm herself with too many items. So my last question to her was "what is the next step?" She identified 3 items that needed to occur next. We left with a clarity of focus on next steps that she could complete and feel success.
As I reflect on this meeting, I see that all of us are certain and uncertain at the same time. The secret is knowing where we stand and determining the next steps rather than working about conquering the uncertainty. We can only climb a mountain one step at a time.
Living with uncertainty OR being a victim?
I finished a coaching call this morning with a very strong, competent, successful woman who was "stuck" in thinking about how uncertain her world has become. She was focused on the disrespect she feels at work, the unfairness in the economic circumstances and the conversations she believes are targeted to make her look like "the bad guy". Knowing her circumstance, everything she talked about was absolutely true. Reality is sometimes not a pleasant thing!
As we spoke, she was focused on the question of how to change the uncertainty. She had so many examples and was talking so quickly that I finally had to interrupt her to ask "so, how will you not live as a victim?" It was so silent on the other end of the call that I thought she had hung up. After a long silence, she finally spoke and said, "I am not a victim and I don't chose to live like one."
Our conversation shifted and while she didn't have all the answers, she was able to slow down and ask a new question to get a better answer. My hope is this will assist her in living with uncertainty versus being a victim.
What are you doing to keep yourself a victim instead of choosing new ways to reflect and take charge? What are the signs for you that you are moving into a victim position? What will you do when you see it happening?
What uncertainty does to us?
I was walking along the ice rink called a parking lot yesterday and thinking about uncertainty. In order to create certainty, we need to recognize uncertainty. Ice does create uncertainty!!
So I noticed how I walked differently, how my attention was down and focused on the immediate situation at hand, my stress level was increased, I was holding my breathe and my fear factor was definitely higher.
What happens to you when you are feeling "uncertain"? By recognizing uncertainty you can begin to refocus on behaviors that will lead to certainty. For example, what would happen if I decided to breathe rather than hold my breathe? My hunch is I would have relaxed a bit and my stress and fear level would decrease. Not that I wouldn't be attentive, just that I wouldn't be paralyzed!! Changing one symptom can lead to changes in the others.
Small shift in how we react when we are uncertain can help us move more easily to certainty.
What are your symptoms when you are uncertain? List them. Of this list, what could you change? Pick an easy one. Let me know what happens.
I?ve been listening!!The themes in my conversations and the social networking sites have been ?good riddance to 2009, looking forward to 2010!?
Launching 2010 ? Creating Certainty!Based on what you?ve said, I am ready to bring you resources to build, maintain and enhance your certainty in 2010!Whether it is career, relationships, your business, financial, personal, professional ? the resources I will bring will assist you in your journey.
So what will this look like?In my 25 years of coaching, training and consulting I know there are three things you must do to create certainty:
1.Embrace uncertainty
2.Soften your life
3.Renew hope
The resources I will bring you in 2010 will address each of these areas with clear tools you can implement immediately.
Where can you find these resources?I will focus on delivering these resources through several venues:
·A new Creating Certainty ezine:My e-career ezine will be replaced with Creating Certainty.If you receive my current ezine, do nothing.You will automatically receive the new ezine.If you need to register visit www.career-future.com and register on the right side of the page.
·Daily Motivations:My daily motivations will continue to provide daily focus.If you receive my daily motivations, do nothing.If you need to register visit www.career-future.com and register on the right side of the page.
·My blog:http://career-future.blogspot.com/I will provide weekly expansion of thoughts, stories, coaching tips, etc to assist you on your journey.
·Events:I will be providing or highlighting events, workshops, webinars, etc. that will enhance your Creating Certainty in 2010.Two such events are:
oCreating Certainty in 2010:A unique workshop for women who want to lead their career, relationships and life.Visit www.CreatingCertaintyIn2010.com for additional information.
o Leading in a New Reality: Challenging times create unique opportunities and require new skills: leaders who act decisively amidst ambiguity, collaborate across boundaries, and develop talent despite uncertain futures are successful now. Gifted leaders recognize and seize these opportunities.Visit http://www.goshareon.com/forum/index.html for additional information.
Wishing you the best in 2010!Know that I am listening!!
LOOK BEHIND BEFORE YOU LOOK AHEAD TO THE NEW YEAR!
Now is a great time to look back on the past year and gain some perspective on where you've come over the last twelve months and what you've accomplished. It is also the time to create a realistic personal vision for 2010. A personal vision is more predictive of success and satisfaction than socio-economic background, intelligence or educational level.
Conducting a personal year-end review is a wonderful exercise if you make it significant and meaningful. If you just make it a recap of earnings and what you bought or didn't, it won't be worth the effort. To be worth your time, your review and the creation of a plan for next year have to touch on issues close to you and how you really want to live your life.
Use this year-end review to help you get started.
Ten Questions To Ask Yourself At Year-End
1. How happy have I been overall with my job?
2. How happy have I been with my family life?
3. How happy have I been with what I do for myself personally?
4. Did I do something regularly that expresses my most strongly held values?
5. If there were one thing that I could change about my job, what would it be?
6. If there were one thing about my job that I could expand, so I could do more of it, what would it be?
7. What would I want to add to my job that would make it more interesting to me?
8. What would I want to add to my job that would make it more meaningful to me?
9. Where has my life lost balance?
10. What did I leave out of my life that I wish were there?
When you look back over your life and career for the last 12 months, you're not just trying to put a bunch of checks and minuses beside categories. By paying attention to enough of your experience, you can use your review to discover direction for the New Year you are just entering. If you base your new year planning on your most significant experiences of the old year, you have a chance to create some significant direction and momentum for yourself.
So now what? You reviewed your year, now how do you move forward. It's important to make realistic new year's goals for 2010 that take into account all of the '8 Critical Success Factors': your abilities, skills, interests, personality, family, values, experience and stage of adult development.
What should your '10 game plan look like?
1. A good goal has a positive end. It should be something you want, not something you hate, but think you should do. "I am going to exercise more" is one of those goals that sounds nice, but will undoubtedly end up on the back shelf. "I'm going to find some kind of exercise that I enjoy." Now that's more like it!
2. A good strategy should move you toward something that you find enjoyable, fulfilling, productive, or rewarding. What do you find especially fulfilling and meaningful in your life? That is the place to start looking for a good goal. Increasing what you find meaningful in your life can have a significant positive benefit for you, and for people around you.
3. A good strategy should move you away from things you find unproductive, unfulfilling, meaningless, obnoxious, or unrewarding. What do you hate doing? What feels like a waste of time? What feels almost totally unproductive? Here is fertile ground for goals. Decreasing what you find meaningless and unrewarding in your life can start giving you a sense of internal control over what happens to you.
4. A good strategy cuts across several main areas of your life. Try to find the overarching themes of your goals. If you can find a goal that clearly states what you want to change in your work, your family, and your personal life, you know you're on to something significant. If your goals seem isolated to one particular area of your life, keep pushing a little more to figure out how your goals are connected.
5. A good strategy ends up being fairly simple and straightforward. If you do enough work on your 2010 strategy, you will be able to write the main points of it on a few 3X5 cards. Your strategy should be a set of ideas that you can carry with you even without any cards. Your strategy is just a template, a structure, that you can use fifty times a day to make decisions about where you want to put your time, energy, and focus. Using your strategy can help you start to feel that you are making the major decisions about your life-instead of having them made for you by events and circumstance.
1. TIME: Determining your career vision and plan is not a "fast food" endeavor. In this era of speed, this is one area that requires your time and attention. I have had some people work intensively for several days and reach their vision and plan.
I have had some spread the process out over several weeks and spend several hours each week in pursuit of this vision and plan. Either way, it takes time. The first step is to give yourself permission and patience to take the time you need to create a vision and plan based on wisdom, not speed.
2. AWARENESS: The amount of time you need is directly related to how aware you are of your wisdom. If you have not taken much time to listen to yourself. OR, if you are like most of us and have not had a clue what to listen to, you will need more time. In the process of awareness comes the need to be open to ourselves about what we need, want, know and desire.
3. ARTICULATION: From the awareness comes the next step which is to articulate our awareness. About what, you say? We need to understand and articulate what we know in the following areas:
-Career Development: What we know from our past experience that leads us to better choices now.
-Abilities: What comes natural and easy to us. The hardwiring of how we operate.
-Skills: What we have learned. The software we have added to our knowledge base.
-Interests: The things that bring us passion and enjoyment
-Personal Style: Our style, personality, temperament and what our environment needs to honor this style.
-Beliefs: What beliefs we hold about success, career, achieving life fulfillment, etc. Often these come from our family of origin.
-Values: Those guiding forces that are key to our life decisions.
-Goals: What do we want to achieve?
It is much like building a stir-fry. We need to take the time to chop the ingredients before we can begin to create the final product.
4. INTEGRATION: Pulling together the ingredients from above into a vision and a plan to move forward. This "product" comes from YOU. There is not one expert in the world who can tell you what this needs to be. That is why we need the time and patience to listen to ourselves. The result is a powerful, energizing and unique creation that will move you forward to further career satisfaction and life fulfillment.
5. EXPERIENCE: No matter how wise we are, evaluated experience is a great teacher. Life continues to move and we continue to integrate new experience and knowledge into our wisdom. Unless we EVALUATE this new data and allow it to move our decisions and choices, the creation we developed in step 4 soon becomes stagnate. Taking the time to evaluate, make new choices and transform our future focus, keeps the vision and plan powerful, energizing and unique.
