You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Purpose’ category.
Here’s a simple tool for when you find yourself stuck or frustrated with a goal in your life. Shift your focus temporarily from WHAT you want and HOW to get there to WHY you want it.
As an example, a friend of mine, Lindsay Nichols Estes, is working on growing her coaching practice. She re-energized herself with this question of WHY by coming up with the following:
WHY do I want to coach?
I want to coach because I love to help women and people to remember, learn or zero in on what they are passionate about, what they want to use their gifts and talents towards, and then help them to start going in that direction.
WHY do I want to coach?
I love connecting with people, collaborating, and working together on a common task. In this case I’m supporting the client to come up with what works for them, support, encourage and really dig into bite-size steps to make it happen or move through a transition and actually enjoy the process.
WHY do I want to coach?
I want to have the ability to work virtually and to work anywhere so I can support my value of relationship and connect with friends and family all over the world while still providing an awesome income for my family.
When we focus on the WHY, we remind ourselves of our gifts, mission and purpose, and get to the heart of what motivates us. It’s a more inspiring place to take action from than when we’re only focused on the what or how.
The next time you feel stuck or frustrated with what you’re working toward, I invite you to remind yourself WHY you are pursuing your goal. As a result, the HOW may just flow a bit more easily.
I had the honor of participating in the Women and Happiness weekend conference hosted by the Omega Institute in NYC. For those coming to the LYJ blog looking for insights on joy, meaningful work and happiness, here are some of the highlights from one of the main speakers, Brené Brown.
Brené Brown is a Texas research professor and author of The Gifts of Imperfection (which I cannot wait to read). She spoke at length on her work analyzing the characteristics of the “wholehearted”, a group of people she discovered who seemed to live their lives from a place of joy, more so than others.
From research interviews, Brown discovered the following about the “wholehearted”:
- They cultivate self-compassion, and let go of perfectionism.
- They cultivate play and rest, and let go of exhaustion and productivity as a means of self-worth. (The wholehearted fool and piddle around a lot, she said. They play. She cited Stuart Brown’s definition of play as “to spend time without purpose.”)
- They cultivate calm and stillness, and let go of anxiety as a lifestyle.
- They feel a deep sense of love and belonging, mainly by feeling worthy of love and belonging.
- They practice gratitude. She emphasized that gratitude is a “practice” involving a continual commitment.
- They embrace vulnerability. Brown spoke at length on vulnerability and has a viral TED talk on this theme. I highly recommend viewing this and her talk on shame since both offer rich insights. One of my main takeaways was that creativity and innovation are incredibly vulnerable acts. Shame and fear, as part of a workplace or within oneself, stifle creativity and innovation. Honor yourself for “daring greatly.” Overall, Brown has put the spotlight on vulnerability and made us all more thoughtful about its value.
Interestingly, the most highly compassionate people Brown studied had “boundaries like you would not believe.” They said no with abandon. She theorized that when you care for yourself and when you put yourself first, it’s easier to love and be compassionate with others. “Choose discomfort over resentment” is Brown’s new mantra, meaning, choose the brief social discomfort of saying no over a future resentment.
Listening to Brown’s talk, I began to think more about areas of my life and ways of being that perhaps are not serving my overall happiness and well being.
Where can you begin to cultivate more of the qualities of the “wholehearted” to become more kind and compassionate with yourself and joyful at home, in your work and in your community?
Last weekend, I attended a special yoga workshop focused on the seasonal transition between winter and spring. We reflected on the past couple of months while simultaneously preparing for spring. Interestingly enough, the special focus was on cleansing and activating kidney energy, the body part associated with winter. We set intentions for what we hope to accomplish this spring, planting the metaphorical seeds in our practice.
I often derive career inspiration from yoga in addition to much-needed relaxation and alignment necessary for a work-life balance (see “Career Lessons Learned in Yoga Class: The Concept of ‘No Ambition’”). In setting my intention for spring, I focused on my communication and listening skills. My goals are to listen even more actively, to cut the additional “clutter” that comes with multi-tasking during conversations, and to have more focused and efficient conversations.
What is one intention you might set for spring? How can you start putting it into practice right away?
I had the good fortune of hearing life coach and Finding Your Own North Star author Martha Beck speak recently. Her framework for thinking about where our sense of purpose is derived from stayed with me and rings true so I wanted to share it here. She said you can find your purpose in one of two ways:
1. Where your gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
2. From your own life experiences: Think of the worst thing that has happened to you. Then go help people with that thing.
Beck qualified the latter by saying you can help people if you’ve “been to hell and back.” If you’ve overcome major obstacles in your life, you have something to teach. Every self-help book I’ve ever read is along these lines with the great teachers having experienced suffering they overcame, learned from, and could go on to teach others. My own work is informed by mistakes I’ve made and difficult periods I’ve come out on the other side of. It’s also informed by the joy and gladness Beck refers to above.
If you’re not sure what your larger purpose is, or if it’s vague and unclear, sometimes just asking the question is enough with the understanding and trust that the answer will come perhaps using this framework or another that makes sense for you.
We’re at the point in my LYJ (Love Your Job) Search Class where I ask participants to do the following assignment. I was reminded again how valuable this exercise is so I wanted to post it here:
Ask 3 people who know you well what your biggest strengths are as they see it. Choose a variety of people, especially at least one person who knows some of your professional talents.
It’s one thing to be self-reflective and name your own strengths but it’s another to seek outside feedback. In the best possible scenario, colleagues and close friends who know you well are able to reflect back to you things that you are perhaps not able to see yourself. These may also be parts of yourself that you’re not yet able to own and accept fully.
For myself, it was close friends who pointed out what a wonderful mentor I am to younger women especially on career advice. At first I thought, oh that, it’s nothing. (This is very similar to my post on playing your “free square”.) But later I was able to integrate this strength into how I view myself.
It’s not always easy to ask for this feedback and it can feel uncomfortable to receive it. Women especially, it seems to me, tend to downplay their strengths and avoid standing in the spotlight. At the same time, I’m always amazed and delighted at how positive this experience can be. Students in my college career development class came to class with smiles on their faces reporting back on the information received. One of the jobseekers in my current LYJ class reached out to a former colleague and received such glowing feedback that this person is now working hard to get her a job at her company!
So go ahead and ask what your biggest strengths are. I find my closest friends who know a bit about my professional side work best. If you’re inspired, return the favor by reflecting back what you see in them. I promise it’s one of the best gifts you can give this holiday season.
Adelaide Lancaster is a co-founder, with Amy Abrams, of In Good Company, and she loves her job. She excels at making business ideas a reality and helping businesses grow to their potential. She founded In Good Company to respond to the isolation many women business owners feel. Membership provides women entrepreneurs with professional peers, events, learning opportunities, and a variety of office space solutions. Through programming and content IGC is committed to helping teach women entrepreneurs the business of running a business. It is located in the flatiron district in New York. She can be found on twitter at @ingoodcmpny.
1. What do you love about your job?
What I love about being an entrepreneur, hands down, is the autonomy and creativity. I get to determine how to spend my time and resources and it’s incredibly motivating to chart your own path.
What I love about my specific job is the variety of tasks that I get to do, all the interesting and smart people that I get to meet, and the wide range of information that I am exposed to. I find businesses and the different ways they go about doing their business fascinating –people are so creative. And the best thing about working with entrepreneurs is that they all get to be themselves in their business. I’m not in a position where I am interacting with a lot of square pegs in round holes–it’s refreshing!
2. Did you always know this was the job or career path for you?
No! My graduate training is actually in counseling psychology. I thought I wanted to be a therapist but I was awful! It was a great lesson in the difference between being really interested in learning about a subject and actually doing the work. The truth was that I was a bit too introverted for all-day, everyday patient contact and I was also a bit too impatient! I like helping my current clients move forward by mapping out action steps and learning best practices.
I added a degree in organizational psychology, which was a better fit because the work is really about helping groups and organizations to improve their performance and make good decisions about their business. But it was a book by Bo Burlingham called Small Giants that turned me onto small business and then ultimately made me want to become an entrepreneur. He profiles all these “hidden gem” small businesses who all chose at some point to be “great instead of big”. I am inspired and motivated by the integrity of these businesses.
3. What are the most important lessons you have you learned along the way?
- Learn to be comfortable delegating. Everyone suffers when you try to do everything AND you also cut yourself off from the valuable thoughts, insights, and perspectives of others.
- Surround yourself with others as there is a HUGE cost to isolation–there are lots of ways to create meaningful relationships with others, it doesn’t require being a social butterfly or “networking” in the traditional sense.
- Solicit feedback all the time–contrary to the fears of many, people won’t steal your idea and instead will give you great suggestions. It will get you further faster. You generally end up creating a lot more work for yourself if you hold all your cards close to your chest.
- Only work with lawyers who have the expertise that you need. You probably can’t one-stop shop and while it is a hassle to seek out new people all the time it is more than worth it to work with the right person.
- A great accountant is a critical component of any business.
4. Tell us about a defining moment for you related to your work.
Two things come to mind:
I have had defining moments each time I sign a lease. It cements the long-term plan of the business and reaffirms my commitment to it. Because our business is quite physical, we have had a lot of “wow, this is real” type moments as we have grown and developed. If you have a business that has less overhead and infrastructure I suggest looking for ways to capture your “wow, this is real” type moments–they are important!
It was also a defining moment to get a book deal this year! We are thrilled to be writing a book on women entrepreneurs for Penguin and it affirmed a lot of the work that my partner Amy and I have been doing over the last 7 years that had, until that moment, felt less tangible–platform-building, article-writing, conversations, reading, etc.
5. What advice do you have for people looking to find work they love, in your field, or any field?
It sounds simple, but know what is important to you and what YOUR definition of success is. Sometimes people fall into a path because it provides an answer or temporary clarity without doing the hard work required to find out what is most important to them. I’m a big believer in creating solutions that work for you–and that doesn’t mean that you have to be an entrepreneur but it does mean that you might need to be creative about finding the right options. I also believe that for most people there isn’t just one right answer–there are probably lots of options for each of us that would fulfill our needs well, so don’t waste time beating yourself up if you haven’t found your “passion” or “calling”.
Marcela Landres is the author of the e-book How Editors Think: The Real Reason They Rejected You, and she loves her job. She publishes the Latinidad e-zine, and she helps writers get published by editing their work and educating them on the business side of publishing.
1. What do you love about your job?
I get paid to read—what could be cooler?
2. Did you always know this was the job or career path for you?
No. My parents are immigrants from Ecuador, and when I was a wee lass they decreed I would grow up to be a doctor. To that end, I took advanced science classes in high school and applied to colleges with good pre-med programs.
Then I hit organic chemistry lab.
Organic chemistry lab taught me becoming a doctor was not my dream, but my parents’ dream. For the first time in my life, I asked myself, “What do I want?” I chose to pursue a career related to my greatest passion—reading—because even if I didn’t become rich I would be happy. Today I am, indeed, a happy gal.
3. What are the most important lessons you have you learned along the way?
Be brutally honest with yourself about your strengths and flaws. If you don’t play well with others, don’t choose a career that requires teamwork. If you hate to be alone, don’t become self-employed.
4. Tell us about a defining moment for you related to your work.
Early in my career, agents were reluctant to submit to me because I hadn’t yet acquired anything, but I couldn’t acquire anything because agents wouldn’t submit to me. All up-and-coming editors grapple with this catch-22. One of my passions was, and is, feng shui. At the time, nearly every publisher had a feng shui book on its list—except Simon & Schuster. I pointed out this hole on our list to anyone who would listen. One day, a fellow editorial assistant gave me a proposal for a feng shui book that was submitted to his boss, a woman who was not into New Age stuff. To make a long story short, that proposal resulted in a book I published called Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life by Karen Rauch Carter—it remains to this day one of the bestselling feng shui primers in print.
The moral of the story? When you hit a roadblock, you can complain or constructively communicate what you want. The Universe responds better to communicators than to complainers.
5. What advice do you have for people looking to find work they love, in your field, or any field?
For folks who want to break into book publishing, attend the Columbia Publishing Course. To learn more, read my Q&A with Director Lindy Hess.
For folks in any field, recognize that every job, no matter how cool, involves grunt work. Even Lady Gaga has a part of her job she hates—record executives, constant dieting, having no time for sex, etc. If you have the skill set to be good at the grunt work instead of merely tolerating it, you are more likely to be successful. For example, magazine editors who make advertisers happy are more likely to be promoted than magazine editors who ignore advertisers. When choosing a career, opt for the one where your strengths are of benefit to the boring parts of your job as well as the fun parts.
Jon Ritzdorf is an adjunct instructor of translation technologies and localization concepts at both New York University and the Monterey Institute of International Studies who loves his job. In the classroom, he strives to empower translation newbies as well as veteran professionals through in-depth instruction of language technology, website localization and the business of translation. Just this year, Jon launched the Ritzdorf Academy website to promote both his university sponsored and private courses to a wider audience. You can sign up for email updates about upcoming classes at http://www.ritzdorfacademy.com/courses.php.
1. What do you love about your job?
All depends on which job we’re talking about, my full-time job in the translation industry or my part-time job teaching. That said, in either case I just love to educate. I could honestly say the adjunct work has been the most fulfilling aspect of my life outside of being a father. I started teaching as a result of feeling that what I was taught in the formal academic environment (when I was working toward my M.A. in Chinese translation) did not jibe with the reality I was confronted with in the translation agency world of buying and selling translation. I thought to myself that there had to be a way to bridge the knowledge gaps that newly minted graduates of translation, and even long-time professionals seemed to have when it came to understanding how to succeed as a freelance translator. I get a rush of excitement every time I see students empowered with this knowledge, especially when it takes them far beyond the subject matter and into the deeper level of making them confident, competitive forces in the translation industry.
2. Did you always know this was the job or career path for you?
Education is in my blood I guess. My mom was a college professor who loved to teach and I used to have lengthy discussions with her in high school about how and why certain ways of teaching seemed to be effective. I already had strong opinions on how I wanted to change the entire education system back in high school, and, like a typical cocky teen, kept saying I would come back someday to show those teachers how it should be done. My argument was that effective teachers were also good entertainers. I’ll never forget certain teachers and I try to emulate them to this day, like my wacky physics professor who came to class in his 70′s era, polyester, “E=mc2″ print dress shirt with the butterfly collar out to there. That image and his unique teaching methodologies always stuck with me; the idea that if you can hold a group’s attention through your speech, actions and even having a particular “look,” at least a fraction of what you teach will never be forgotten. I’m still convinced that good educators are inherently great at entertaining large audiences and use their classroom as a stage. I took a lot of acting classes in my younger days, so I guess that, and a passion to change established educational conventions, has indirectly led to where I am now.
3. What are the most important lessons you have you learned along the way?
I definitely learned there’s nothing wrong with humor in the classroom, even self-deprecating comments, or a little teasing of students during class is fine as long as you can do it with a smile so no one takes it too seriously. Also a huge part of being a teacher is learning to admit fault or simply acknowledging if you don’t know something well enough to speak to it. Luckily I get wonderful students every year who constantly challenge me. Nicole, who requested I do this interview, is one of those students who was very outspoken and would keep me on my toes a lot. I’ve learned that it’s OK to let students challenge your thinking even though you are in an artificially “authoritative” position when instructing. My students constantly help me form new opinions and give insight that spawns ideas for new classes, new ways to approach the teaching material and just helping me to be a better educator overall.
4. Tell us about a defining moment for you related to your work.
When teaching my very first class ever, Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) in the summer of 2003, we had two highly technophobic students: one who didn’t even know where to insert her floppy disk to save her work (yes, still using 3½ inch floppies back then), and another student who would break down in tears over the most basic computing tasks, like creating a folder. I spent a lot of time after class with them both, trying to help. By the end of the course not only were they able to master the basics of computing, but also able to use fairly advanced translation software. Both students were extremely grateful for help conquering their fears, and from that point forward I realized that the classes I was teaching had less to do with teaching the software and more about building confidence. Also, around that time I came to understand that teaching technical courses is not about telling students to “click here, do that” but rather about helping them nail down general concepts that will continue to be meaningful over the long-term. Early on, I gained a reputation for being good with the stereotypical, “non-tech” humanities-minded translators, probably because I come from the same background and went through all the same struggles.
5. What advice do you have for people looking to find work they love, in your field, or any field?
It’s all about determination and a willingness to persevere in the beginning. If you really want to teach badly enough, keep pushing. I only got my chance because I stopped at nothing to contact the directors in charge of the various translation programs, scheduled times to meet with them, came into their offices, made my case as to why they should consider opening classes in my area of specialization and followed up with emails and more phone calls. If there’s an opportunity and you show enough passion for the work, it’s difficult for others to deny that and not give you a shot even if you’ve never taught before.
Kamy Wicoff is a co-founder, with Deborah Siegel, of She Writes, the largest online community of women writers in the world, which provides support, resources and actionable advice. She blogs at The Salonniere, and tweets (somewhat infrequently) at @shewritesdotcom and @kwicoff. You can become a fan of She Writes on Facebook on the She Writes fan page.
This is an exciting time for She Writes: it turns one on June 29. To celebrate the one-year anniversary on June 29, local groups will host meet ups in 16 cities—including London, Nashville, St. Louis, Austin, San Francisco and New York. Kamy and Deborah will announce a contest, The Passion Project, open to an emerging author and member of She Writes who has a non-fiction project in the works.
1. What do you love about your job?
What I love about my job is that every single thing I do, all day every day, from buying cookies to serve at our She Writes Knowledge Faire to blogging to doing She Writes Blog Talk Radio interviews to brainstorming webinar subjects, is all meant to help my community, the world I come from, the world of women writers. I really feel like I wake up in the morning with one question on my mind: “How can I help women writers today?” and then answer it all day long. So many sites meant to serve writers are run by software engineers or people who hope to make money off of writers’ hopes without caring a whole lot about what they do. Debbie and I started She Writes because we need this network as much as any of our members needed it — if not more.
2. Did you always know this was the job or career path for you?
God no. I’m a writer! I wanted to write books and get big advances and go to artists’ colonies and live in my head. But that world has disappeared, if it ever really existed. I never dreamed of starting a company, and when I started She Writes I was so social-media-phobic I took my Facebook profile down after twenty-four hours because being on it induced serious panic. (I now use Facebook all the time.) I became an entrepreneur out of necessity, as the publishing world was imploding from an unsustainable business model and its failure to adapt quickly to a disaggregated and rapidly changing marketplace. I realized that if I ever wanted a book of mine to reach its real audience, I was going to have to build the platform that could make that happen myself.
3. What are the most important lessons you have you learned along the way?
That starting a company is a lot like writing a book — perseverance is everything. That and clarity of focus. My mentor, Hope Edelman, once told me that I should write in one sentence, on an index card, what my book was about, and tape that index card to my computer monitor, so that every time I wondered whether a chapter, an idea or even a sentence truly belonged in my book, all I had to do was look at that sentence and ask myself, “does this serve the main idea I’ve stated here?” It’s easy to spin out into a million different directions when starting something new; it’s hard to succeed if you let that happen. I would also say that if you can find a partner, a true kindred spirit, confidant and collaborator who understands your vision, and is in it with you till the bitter end, you are really really blessed. And I have that in Debbie.
4. Tell us about a defining moment for you related to your work.
The defining moment for me, thus far, was when I realized that I was taking She Writes in the wrong direction — spending too much money, and on things that weren’t furthering our mission — and that I would have to admit this to myself, and then go through the painful process of eliminating staff and cutting costs to a bare minimum in order to reassess and produce a new strategy for going forward. it was extremely painful and humiliating, not to mention difficult for those I had brought on board. But I had to put the future viability of She Writes first, and reminding myself of that imperative on a daily basis got me through it.
5. What advice do you have for people looking to find work they love, in your field, or any field?
This is a tough one. For one thing I think it’s really important that I say that I have funded She Writes’ first year myself, as our first angel and seed-investor, and 99% of people are in no position to do something like that, to create their own opportunity in that way. That being said, I think it is absolutely crucial, and so rewarding, to choose work that allows you to serve a community you care about — to really dedicate yourself to solving the problems that community faces, and becoming part of the solution to their challenges. I can’t think of anything more satisfying, and there are so many ways to do it aside from starting your own business. The best way to feel good about your work is to feel good about improving the lives of others. Or at least that’s how it works for me.
When I heard that one of my LYJ students from the fall had been offered her dream job at a renowned institute in Boston, the term “stick-with-it-ness” immediately came to mind.
At any point in the past six months she could have given up on her search, settling for the less than satisfying job she already had. Instead, she kept going with the process, trusting that with focused effort, networking, and savvy job seeking skills, the right opportunity would emerge, and it did.
I always tell the job seekers I work with that getting to the job you love starts with a decision. First, that you’re worth it, and second, not to give up. There will be the inevitable up’s and down’s, but I do believe sticking with yourself and your search is the key to ultimately getting where you want to go.
Jen Bird
Suzanne Grossman
Nicole Lisa
Alyssa Best
