For many people, a life plan is a plan for what they want to do in their life. And what is a plan? Well, one dictionary definition is: A method for achieving an end or goal. Therefore, it is a method for achieving a goal (or goals) in life.

You may be wondering, why didn’t I just say that? Well the reason has to do with a valuable lesson I learned a long time ago . Namely, often times staying with the question is much more valuable than the quick and easy answer. When you want to know how to drive from Park Street to Elm, the quick and easy answer is exactly the right thing. But when the subject is your life, well, the quick and easy answer is often not very useful. In fact it can be down right harmful to the quality of your life.

There’s a subtle but important difference between talking about “what you want to do in your life” and “goals for your life.” The former invites vague answers. The latter, invites focus and clarity.

Think of all the quick and easy answers you are bombarded with in life every day on TV or radio. Buy this skin lotion and you will look five years younger. Go to Las Vegas and you your wildest fantasies will be fulfilled.

At the same time, that same Las Vegas commercial never even suggests that you stop for a moment to get clear about what your fantasies are. No, it’s just come to Las Vegas and you will be magically fulfilled.

But be honest with yourself. How likely is it that your life planning will result in a satisfying outcome if you’ve never taken more than a few fleeting moments to figure out what would fulfill or satisfy you?

It’s the same thing with planning your life. Sure, you could declare some quick goals and come up with a plan to reach them. Unfortunately, if you don’t set the right goals (for you) you’ll be as dissatisfied as you are now. Even worse, you will have wasted a lot of valuable time.

Please, for your own sake, when you’re doing your life planning, don’t take all the shortcuts. Take some time to reflect on what it is that will truly and deeply satisfy you. And here’s a tip: Probably the first thoughts that comes along won’t be “it.” Probably, the first thoughts that come along will be the ones that you’ve been programmed to think: look younger, make more money, have more fun, be happier, etc. When you work on your life plan it’s best done in a time and place where you are relaxed and can dream about your future.

What I recommend is that you “dig deeper” in each of the domains of your life such as: livelihood and career, health, finance, lifestyle, relationships, and spirituality.

First, identify what will inspire and motivate you now and will continue to do so, perhaps even for the rest of your life. You’ll be in a position to take the next steps. They include defining the (flexible) plans to achieve your “inspiring” dreams and learning how to deal with the challenges and pitfalls life will inevitably put in your way. Approached this way, your life plan efforts will serve you for many years.

Regardless, careerbuilders.com is rich in resources and can be very helpful if you know how to use it. So in this post, I’ll give you some valuable time-saving tips. . . .

Obviously, job search engines can be very useful. But right off the bat, let me caution you: if you’re looking for a job right now, I don’t recommend putting total reliance on search engines. You will want to be more proactive and creative in your strategy.

If nothing else, working with a search engine such as CareerBuilder will help to get you into a proactive frame of mind. However, even if you’re not looking for a job immediately, it’s important to “keep in touch with the market.” The job search engines can help.

As a job searcher, the service is free. CareerBuilder.com makes its money from the fees that employers pay to list their jobs, and advertising.

When you go the CareerBuilder.com web site you’re greeted by the “Find a better job here” area followed by various lists of site links. I suggest that to begin with, you quell your curiosity; instead of clicking on the links, just take a few passes at job searches by filling in combinations of keywords, location, and job category, and clicking “Find Jobs!” button. To refine your search go to this link.

After you’ve gotten a sense of this, you can start to use other features offered by the site. As with most job sites there’s a dizzying array of features and tools. And they’re getting more sophisticated all the time. So let’s look at some of them.

Create an account

To get the most out of CareerBuilder you need to create an account [link]. Again, there’s no charge, so I recommend doing so. This is the first step, then you can begin moving into some of the more useful features, as follows.

Post a resume

Posting a resume seems obvious but it’s surprising how many people overlook it. As a matter of course, even if you’re not in the market for a job, it’s important to keep an up-to-date resume in case your situation suddenly changes. And why not post it because you never know—posting your resume could bring forth an opportunity you just can’t pass up, even though you weren’t actively thinking about changes jobs. To post your resume on Careerbuilder.com, just follow the steps starting at this [link].

Set up Job Alerts

Job Alerts are e-mails that are automatically sent to you by CareerBuilder when a new job is added that matches your search criteria. Again, even if you’re not in the market right now, it’s a good idea to set up some alerts so you can keep track of what’s happening in your job market. To set up job alerts (you can set up more than one), go to this this [link].

Tap the Power

With an account set up, you can use a really useful feature—access your “Job Recommendations” [link].  This innovative feature will find possible job matches based on your resume and jobs that you have applied for. Then if one job looks particularly interesting you can click its “Similar Jobs” button to obtain a list of jobs that are like the first one.

Career Advice

There’s an array of short articles at this [link]. Many of them are practical tips for navigating what can be a challenging job search landscape. But here’s my tip about tips: Don’t confuse tips with action. Tips are good but they can lull you into a false sense of accomplishment. It’s action that will make the difference. That’s true for my tips or anyone else’s tips.

Therefore, pay attention to your “tip appetite.” If you notice yourself just consuming tips instead of moving into action, then you may be a “tip junkie.”  If so, it’s probably time to take a stand on making a difference in your life by committing to action.

 © 2006 Gold Nugget Coaching

Technorati Tags: career, job, career change, work, career coaching, career advice, career path

You’re working hard in your current job and, at the same time, trying to plan your future. Maybe you’re thinking about a potential career change. Or maybe you have “layoff aversion” and would be comforted by having a sense of what the future might bring in your current occupation.

As I noted in the last post, regardless of where you are in your career or what experience and skills you have, there are market forces at work in the job arena that are beyond your control. And whether or not you’ve experienced a layoff yourself, we all know it’s not the most pleasant of experiences.

Your best insurance against the effects of market forces and/or a layoff is to be proactive in designing your future, rather than just waiting for it to show up.

In the last post, I listed some questions that you can start asking yourself now while there’s still time to create a vision and a plan for your future. But to help you answer these questions, it can be useful to have some grounded information about occupational trends.

That’s what I’m going to talk about today: some resources for gathering factual, grounded occupational trend information. These resources are a great starting place for creating a long-term prognosis for your career or occupation. So let’s jump right in . . .

There’s one resource that you absolutely MUST check out when you’re starting your occupation market research: America’s Job Bank (link).

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, this website is a collection of electronic tools managed as a federal-state partnership, and operated through grants to the states of New York and Minnesota, in partnership with the other states and private sector organizations.

This website contains a dizzying collection of web-based resources that you’ll want to explore on your own. Some examples are as follows:

• Midlife career change help

• Job skills list

• Top jobs in US

• Top jobs of the future

• Government grants for career changes

• Occupations with the most openings

• Highest paying occupations

• Job finder

• Jobs for people impacted Hurricane’s Katrina and Rita

• State occupational licensing requirements

• Certifications available in different occupations

. . . and the list goes on and on.

To save you some time, I’ll highlight a few of these tools and how they can help you with your market research.

Identify the 100 top jobs, and more

This link takes you to a page entitled “Fastest Growing Occupations.” And just like the name says, this is a list of over 500 of the occupations predicted to be the fastest growing in the time span between 2002 to 2014.

You may or may not find your exact occupation. But by using creative deduction you can put together your own assessment of industry and occupational trends that are applicable to you and your personal vision for your future.

Research specific top jobs of the future

This link takes you to the “Occupation Profile” search tool. This tool allows you to take a different approach (from the 100 fastest-growing jobs list in the last link) by enabling you to look up a specific occupation. You can either select from a dropdown “Menu Search” list of job familes, or enter your own job title of interest in the “Keyword Search” field.

For example, are you interested in construction management? Just follow these steps:

1. In the Keyword Search field, type in “construction management” and click the Search button. A list of relevant searches is displayed, with each listing preceded by its percent of search relevance. The list is in descending order from 100%.

2. Select one, in this case “100%, Construction Managers” and click the Continue button. A list of states is displayed.

3. Select a state, for example, Alabama, and click the Continue button. The profile for Construction Managers in Alabama is displayed.

You can now see that an 11% increase for Construction Managers is predicted in the state of Alabama during the span between 2004 to 2014, compared to 10% overall for the United States.

Now let’s say you’re curious about all the building activity you’ve been hearing about in Las Vegas. Repeat the steps above but this time select Nevada in Step 3. You’ll see that there’s a 49% increase in jobs predicated over the same ten year period.

But before you start packing your bags, you may want to ask yourself: What is my vision for my life? Maybe a move to Nevada would help you fulfill your vision. Or it may be taking you in exactly the wrong direction.

Identify Declining Occupations

This link takes you to the “Occupations with Declining Employment” page. While you’re looking at the growth side of the job market, it’s also useful to look at the occupations that are predicted to decline. Even if your specific occupation isn’t on the list of over 100, you can gain insight into how your industry may fair. If the news is pessimistic, you can still use what you learn as a springboard to gather more information.

Research Current Trends

A “one-stop” job search website that I’ve talked about before is indeed.com. This is a great resource for online job searches. It gives you access to all of the job listings from the major job-post boards, newspapers, associations, and company career pages—all on one page, in one search.

In addition to current job postings, indeed.com has also gathered over 35 million jobs from thousands of websites for the past year. You can search this archive and plot job trends over a one year time.

However, other than the advantage of providing one-stop shopping and the one-year archive, indeed.com doesn’t offer much else.

Other job posting websites offer a whole buffet of resources. So next time we’ll start to explore these the array of resources offered by sites such as careerbuilders.com and monster.com.

 © 2006 Gold Nugget Coaching

Technorati Tags: career, job, career change, work, career coaching, career advice, career path

Obviously, most people use online job search methods and tools like monster.com, CareerBuilders.com, and others to find a job. These resources (and the others that I’ll talk about in this series) can be incredibly useful if used the right way.

And I have, in fact, seen many people be very successful in finding a job using these tools. But, unfortunately, there are others who, even after much time and effort, are unable to find a good job “match” and end up very disappointed. The disappointment often turns to frustration and then to resignation. And then they stop looking all together.

The process of online job searching can feel like the lottery: sometimes you win, but most times you don’t. Regardless, it practically always feels as though it’s all outside of your control. And, frankly, in large measure it is.

But there are strategies that can help put you in the driver’s seat. So let’s begin exploring what underlies being successful with online job searches. . . .

Of course, there are many factors that contribute to a successful online job search. But there’s one I want to address here that is often overlooked: “the market.” A major factor in any job search is the condition of the employment market in your field and your community. If the market is strong with lots of hiring going on, your chances of landing a job are simply much better than if there are few or no jobs.

Obvious, right? But you’d be amazed at how many people forget this very important underlying factor. In fact, they take it very personally if there’s little or no response to their online resume postings or job applications. I’ve even seen some people go so far as to start thinking that their career is over, past, done with.

But consider this recent example involving market conditions. Take the IT industry in many parts of the country. Prior to 2001, an online search for programmer positions may have yielded tens if not hundreds of results. But by 2004, it was almost impossible to find an IT position as a programmer, project manager, or other specialty. And proactively posting a resume on careerbuilders.com or monster.com usually met with no response at all. Extremely talented and highly skilled people were out of work—through absolutely no fault of their own. And the future looked grim indeed.

By 2006, this had all turned around. Jobs became plentiful again and most people were finding work in their chosen field.

So the lesson here is important: You don’t exist in a vacuum. You live and work in communities and a world in which market forces are at work, in which the job market goes up and down depending on many factors that are totally out of your control.

So, all things being equal (like you really do have the credentials and experience, and you really do have an effective resume), don’t take it personally if you don’t get a lot of responses in an online job search.

However, it’s definitely in your best interest to understand the market that exists for what you have to offer, and then to design your actions strategically, just like a company designs its marketing strategy.

To think and design strategically, you can start by asking yourself these questions:

• Am I called to a Professional’s Path or a Service Path?
  (If you don’t know what I mean by this you can start with the first post in this series by clicking here.)

• What is the current market for what I have to offer?

• What do I have to offer that this market values?
  Here you want to resist stopping at the obvious answer, for example, “I’m a Java programmer.” What other value do you bring? How about helping a team work well together, solving complex problems quickly, or keeping customers happy?

• Looking one to two years, then five years, and even ten years down the road, what are the trends in my market?
  If, for example, you see the market going off-shore, are you willing to go with it? If not, what preparations do you need to make so that “when the day comes” you can say, as Rhett Butler said to Scarlett O’Hara, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

• What skills and talents does (and will) the market value that I don’t currently possess? Then which of these will I commit to becoming competent in?

Many of these questions will require some research on your part. The job search engines can be an excellent starting place—although they certainly shouldn’t be the only resource you use.

So think about the questions above. Do research. Begin to gather this critical information about the job market in your field and in your community.

Next time we’ll examine where else CareerBuilders can get help in answering these and other questions.

 © 2006 Gold Nugget Coaching

Technorati Tags: career, job, work, career coaching, career advice, career path

There are many factors that determine work satisfaction. Overriding all of them is the path you choose to follow, whether it’s the “traditional” career path (which, as described in previous posts, other experts consider to be obsolete), or one of the life style paths I’ve mentioned: a Professional’s Path or a Service Path. (If you’re clinging to the obsolete notion of career, I suggest that you read this series from the start in case you’ve just dropped in to this post.)

Getting clear about this overriding choice of path and how it fits into your life will pay off for you whether you’re doing goal setting for your life and/or career, considering a career change, or perhaps working on a personal mission statement.

So before you start your job skills list, or take that “perfect job quiz,” or peruse the “top jobs in the usa,” my advice is this: get clear about your path.

If you remember from previous postings, I describe the two life style paths as follows:

• Professional’s Path: A self-directed style in which a person is driven by a quest for growth, autonomy, and passionate expression of their creativity.

• Service Path: A community-directed style in which a person is driven by a quest to bring value to others in the communities in which they live (which could include their local community, state, nation, or even the world).

In this posting I’m going to provide some details about the Professional’s Path and the Service Path. Specifically, the kinds of skills you will want to develop for each path.

The Professional’s Path

On the Professional’s Path you will want to develop your skills in the following areas:

• Continuously growing your level of competence as it goes through stages from novice to master.

• Identifying projects that capture your interest and, indeed, excite you.

• Making effective, powerful offers that “sell your work and the value you create” (see more about powerful offers by clicking here). This will ensure that you have an income stream.

• Cultivating your public identity in your profession that emphasizes your passions, skills, and trustworthiness (click here to read more about trust).

• Being able to emotionally and financially withstand the disappointment of not being chosen for a new project.

• Having the competence to effectively decline requests that you either don’t have the capacity or desire to perform, or that you assess are simply distractions.

• Finding and creating meaning in your work so that when you look back it is without regret.

The Service Path

On the Service Path you will want to develop the skills listed above for the Professional’s Path as well as the following:

• Thriving through bringing value to others in the communities that you live in.

• Immersing yourself in community life.

• Being attuned to conflicts in the community and helping to resolve them.

• Committing yourself to the long-term well being of the community.

Can you feel the breeze?

Previously I talked about a “calling” as being like a gentle breeze. Can you “feel a breeze” one way or another about following the Professional’s Path or the Service Path? Is there one that grabs your interest and, more importantly, your heart? If so, that’s great. If not, be still and listen to what your intuition is telling you. If you’re drawn to both, that’s OK too. There are ways to integrate both paths into your life.

Now that you’re starting to think and get clear about your path, we can look at the tools (such as monster.com and careerbuilders.com) that are available and can help you on your path.

So next time we’ll start taking a closer look at these tools and how to leverage them.

 © 2006 Gold Nugget Coaching

Technorati Tags: career, job, work, career coaching, career advice, career path, career calling, life calling

Most people who are dedicated CareerBuilders will benefit by re-framing their roles in the workplace to better deal with its new realities. Thus, for example, instead of pursuing a career path that may no longer exist (the traditional concept of “career”), you may want to get clear about your path in terms of following a Professional’s Path or a Service Path—as I described in the previous posting here. But before we talk more about the details of the paths, let’s take a little detour and talk about a related concept.

It’s not so clear to me that you choose a path, but rather that a path may choose you. Let me explain.

I’ve observed in my life coaching and career change coaching that with many people, a career calling comes into play.  I’ve seen this again and again with people who participate in my life- and career-coaching workshops. The other thing that I’ve observed is that a career calling can be very subtle.

So let’s talk about this concept of “career calling”. . . .

Your picture of a “calling” may be along the lines of how it’s often portrayed in the media and by many writers. For example, in a non-religious context, a calling may be portrayed as being like a big magnet, lit by a giant spotlight, so that when you see it you absolutely can’t miss it and it draws you irrevocably to it. OR, in a religious context, a stream of light “from above” and some amorphous but authoritative voice calling the listener to be a Joan of Arc.

However, in my experience, I observe that a calling can be much more like a gentle breeze for most people—it’s very easy to miss. And even if you can “feel the breeze” (that is, identify your calling) you can be very easily distracted from it by just about anything, including your own self doubt.

The secret is in identifying the subtle sensation of the breeze and being able to assess if and when you’re acting against it or even ignoring it. But because of all the “career” indoctrination you started getting imposed on you as a child and throughout school, it’s very easy to miss the career that you are called to.

Identifying your career calling takes awareness and focus. One important clue may be this: when you’re working in alignment with your career calling it can fell like your heart is singing, soaring; when you’re ignoring it or acting against your calling, it can leave you feeling a bit flat, your life feeling dull.

So with choices like whether to follow the Professional’s Path or the Service Path, many people are called to one or the other. (Although that’s not to say you can’t do either or both—as with the example I talked about in the last posting: Bill Gates, the ideal and highly successful entrepreneur whose vision was actually based on a Service Path direction.

Perhaps the worst possibility is to spend your life out of alignment with your calling and only figuring out where your calling lies when you’re at the end of your work life, or not at all.

Wouldn’t you rather have your heart singing and soaring than feeling like your life is flat and dull?

So I suggest you start being more attentive to any “breezes” that may be blowing your way! Notice when something you hear, see, or do causes that little (or big) uptick in your interest or heartbeat.

Well, now that we’ve taken this little detour, next time I’ll tell you more about the Professional’s Path and the Service Path in my next post so you can begin to clarify which one is right for you, in case it’s not already obvious.

 © 2006 Gold Nugget Coaching

Technorati Tags: career, job, work, career coaching, career advice, career path, career calling, life calling

Even as they declare that career as an institution is dead (as described in the last posting), Fernando Flores, John Gray, and Professor Denning also talk about the good news: a more effective concept of career is emerging that involves life “styles.” It’s important and empowering for all CareerBuilders to be aware of these styles.

Why? Because these styles can help you to clarify your goals and to see new possibilities that are open to you. Then you can put search tools like careerbuilders.com and monster.com to work for you in the best possible ways to achieve your goals.

For example, when you take that “perfect job quiz” or look at the “100 top jobs” or the “top jobs in the US” available on those websites, you’ll be able to interpret the results and resources in ways that are truly valuable for you.

So what are these life styles? . . .

There are two life styles that have been identified and differentiated by their focus: namely, self-directed or community-directed. Specifically, they can be described as follows:

• The self-directed style is one in which a person is driven by a quest to have their work result in personal and professional growth, autonomy, and passionate expression of their creativity. I call this the “Professional’s Path.”

• The community-directed style is one in which a person is driven by a quest to have their work contribute to the communities in which they live (which could include their local community, state, nation, or even the world). It’s up to the person as to “how big a game they want to play.” I call this the “Service Path.”

People following the Professional’s Path tend not to accept the idea of a lifelong commitment or loyalty to a single employer. Rather, they apply their talents through a series of projects that bring out their passion and enable them to enhance their skills. They nurture public identities that emphasize their passions, technical skills, and trustworthiness in such a way as to ensure income from new projects.

Whatever enables them to grow is where they direct themselves, whether that’s as a freelancer or at a company for a relatively long-term stint with a single employer. If that employer downsizes or reengineers them out of job, the disappointment is momentary. They use the situation as an opportunity to continue their quest.

On the other hand, people following the Service Path engage in creating value for the community and, in the process, create value, power, and identity for themselves. Therefore, it’s a balancing of altruism and self-interest. Civil servants, politicians, and cultural activists fit this style. But so do many successful business entrepreneurs who identify something missing and provide it.

An interesting example of the Service Path is Bill Gates. He’s an entrepreneur (extraordinaire!) who had a vision of providing something he saw missing in the computer revolution: affordable software that would harness the power of the PC and be available to anyone and everyone. Regardless of what you may think of Microsoft, Gates was successful beyond what he may have even imagined as possible. And now he’s moving into the next phase of his life as a full-time philanthropist.

By the way, the “self” in self-directed doesn’t indicate “self-ish.” Likewise, the “community” in community-directed doesn’t indicate a totally altruistic path. According to psychologist John Grey, there may be times in life when one or the other path is more appropriate.

For example, a self-directed Professional’s Path may be more appropriate for those in the early decades of their life—a time to grow personally, experientially, and skill-wise. Then, in later decades, to use this knowledge and growth to give back to the community through the Service Path. Likewise, as in the example of Bill Gates, there can be an effective blending of the two, although one or the other (self or community) will probably be the underlying primary drive.

The common denominator

Both the Professional’s Path and the Service Path have one very important aspect in common: you must create value for others in order to attain your goals.

By creating value for others you’ll not only attain your goals, you’ll also create a livelihood, that is, the financial means by which you live.

Next time we’ll take a closer look at the two paths and discuss how to tell if you are called to one or the other.
 

 © 2006 Gold Nugget Coaching

Technorati Tags: career, job, work, career coaching, career advice, career path

“Career is dead? “That can’t be,” you may say. “And I can prove it because with one click of my mouse and some  keystrokes I can go to careerbuilders.com or monster.com. And they’ve invested a fortune in helping CareerBuilders like me. They have career links all over their sites.”

Well, let’s set aside for a moment the possibility that their businesses may be built on a concept that’s first and foremost designed to generate profits (for them). Instead, let’s consider the question, “Is career as an institution dead?”

Whether you’re in middlescence, looking for career change ideas for 40 and over, looking for midlife career change help, or whatever your interest, you’ll benefit from being clear about “career” in the 21st century.

So who says career is dead?

It’s not just me, Dr. Steve. The premise that career is dead was first put forth several years ago by consultants and social scientists Fernando Flores and John Gray, then examined further by Peter J. Denning.

At the heart of their assessment that “career is dead” is the traditional concept of career being a single job at one company, held for most of your working life. That may have been true for previous generations, but it doesn’t take much to see that for most working people today that idea is completely obsolete.

So if you’re thinking and acting like you’re working on your career, can you see that what you’re working on probably doesn’t exist anymore and, worse, will probably never exist in this day and age? Can you see that working on something that can never happen may not be the most effective thing for reaching your goals?

But what would be effective? What, if anything, replaces the old concept of “career”?

I’ll answer these questions  next time.

 © 2006 Gold Nugget Coaching

Technorati Tags: career, job, work, career coaching, career advice, job search

But do you know how best to leverage them? Do you know their strengths and weaknesses?

In a series of posts that starts with this one, you’ll discover what all “CareerBuilders” should know before they put their hopes for a better future in such tools. These and other tools can be powerful when used the right way but, when used blindly, can create frustration or a sense of hopelessness or, worse, can actually be damaging to your future.

But before we get into that discussion, along with tips and hints for using these tools, I’d like to introduce some concepts and get you thinking about some critical questions that will help shape your use of the tools.  Question #1 . . .

Do you really have a career?

Let’s start with this very basic question: Do you really have a career?

To which you may respond, “What kind of a question is that? Of course I have a career. I even have a career strategy.” But do you really?

In my coaching I consistently observe that people confuse the distinction between “job” and “career.” Maybe you even use them interchangeably. But they’re most definitely not the same. Why does it matter? Well, I say it matters because this distinction (or lack thereof) can muddy your goals and, thus, affect your chances of reaching your goals if they are ill defined.

So if your goal is to have a great career that is satisfying in many ways, but you have never thought about “What is a career, anyway?”, then you may be pursuing a goal that’s more like Dorothy in the Land of Oz: it’s very exciting and colorful but, in the end, it’s only a dream.

There’s an even more unsettling possibility that has emerged in recent years: career as an institution may be dead.

Career as an institution may be dead?! I know that’s not a very happy notion for you CareerBuilders. But the good news is that there’s a more effective and empowering concept of career that is emerging, along with some new and very useful distinctions.

I’ll tell you more in the next post.

 © 2006 Gold Nugget Coaching

Technorati Tags: career, job, work, career coaching, career advice, job search

With chicken and eggs there’s no right answer. With taking action and making a commitment, my observation is that, rather than a right answer, there’s an effective answer. What do you think the answer is?

If you said making a commitment, you’re correct. And here’s why . . .

All too often I observe people getting caught up in non-stop action—doing things has become a way of life for many people. Maybe you’re one of them—you just have to be doing something all of the time.

It’s almost like you’re a shark. If a shark stops moving, it dies. For you shark people, constant action feels like living; and, even though it’s not factually true, it feels like if you stop moving, then something horrible will happen.

Now I know life is hectic and we live in a time when there are, in fact, a lot of things that need to be done. A lot of things that need to be taken care of. But the fact is, unless you take a stand somewhere, it’s just going to get worse—you’ll have more things to do, and then even more things.

It may feel like living, but is it really? Ask yourself this question: Is this constant motion that I’m engaged in the kind of life I always yearned for? My guess is that for many, if not most, of you the answer will be a resounding “No.”

So how do you change this “shark syndrome”? Well, I’m glad you asked.

You start by taking a stand—by making a commitment to those things that are most important to you. You can choose several things from any or all domains in your life, including your job, your relationships, your health, your financial well being, etc.

The important point here is that you identify them specifically (rather than having no focus) and that you make a commitment to doing what needs to be done for each of them.

There’s nothing mysterious about commitment. A commitment is a pledge or a promise to fulfill a particular set of “Conditions of Satisfaction” that are either your own or someone else’s conditions that you choose to accept.

With a commitment in place, you’re then predisposed to take the actions to fulfill that commitment. Now your actions have new meaning and purpose. Said simply, you know where you’re headed and why it’s important.

You can start right now to make the shift to living with commitment by asking yourself these questions:

• In the area or domain of family, what am I committed to?

• In the domain of my career, what am I committed to?

• In the domain of community, what am I committed to?

Then all you have to do is align your actions with your commitment to increase your personal effectiveness and well being.

Can it really be this easy? Well, I’ll bet it’s easier than being a shark in constant motion, and getting nowhere. It’s certainly a lot more satisfying!

© 2006 Gold Nugget Coaching