Water's Edge Coaching

Searching for a job can be tremendously disheartening.  You do all the right things.  Send tons of resumes out.  Scan the job sites for new opportunities.  Attend all the networking groups.  Still, your cover letters and follow-up calls seem to fall on deaf ears.  It wears on you.  It’s hard not to start taking this personally.  If you’re not careful, soon you start questioning everything about, well, everything.

So here is a little secret for you.  Accomplish something.  Anything.  Focus on the day-to-day of your job search rather than the ultimate end result.  In this labor market the job search resembles a marathon more than it does a sprint so prepare yourself for the long haul.  Measure your success by the steps you complete and the useful expansion of your network.  Networking isn’t a body count, it is a strategy and so we want to build contacts with people that might have the most value for us in our search. 

Accomplishment can go outside the realm of your job search too.  This is a great time to get started on the exercise program or clean that garage.  These accomplishments will help you to keep your chin up during these challenging times.  Just remember, your job is to search for work first, and these should be supplemental activities.  Cleaning the house from top to bottom while useful, doesn’t really help you to find work.

Well?  What are you waiting for?  Go Do Something!

In the story about the tortoise and the hare, these two competitors take very different approaches to running their race.  The tortoise is slow and methodical, plodding along until he eventually wins.  The hare is fast, can run circles around the turtle, and squanders his opportunity for victory by being overconfident and not seeing things through to victory.

In my coaching I often run into clients whose style reminds me of the tortoise and the hare.  The tortoise is committed to understanding every detail, every nuance and every contingency before they feel comfortable enough to cross the finish line.  Consequently, they run on a course that has no end.  The strength of the tortoise style is their dedicated effort.  If tortoises would just define a clear finish line for themselves they would become so much better at seeing things through to completion.

The hare approach to doing things is fast acting, extremely fluid and at times haphazard.  I love the self-confidence of the “hares” that they will easily cross the finish line.  The challenge I see them facing is either becoming distracted by another great opportunity and never completing the original race or moving so quickly that they don’t think things all the way through resulting in a less than optimal final outcome.  Hares would benefit greatly by finding a way or a partner that will help them to think things through before taking action. 

Tortoises and hares have much to learn from each other’s style.  Both styles will cross the finish line.  Both styles have pros and cons.  Which are you?

Tis St. Patricks Day and so to all who may read this I raise my glass and say, Sláinte!  That is a traditional Irish toast that means “health.”  What are you doing for your health these days, emotionally and physically?  How are those New Year’s Resolutions coming along?  The weather has begun to warm up here in Chicago and soon we weekend warriors will be out and about working in our yards.  Ibuprofen sales will correspondingly spike I’m sure.  It doesn’t have to be that way.  You can make preparations now.  How are you making space in your life for things that are important to you?  Feeling overwhelmed about by life?  That happens to all of us.  What’s your plan to deal with it?  Health takes a lot of different forms, mental, physical, emotional, financial etc….   Struggle though we may to deal with them all (Lord knows I do) looking for a healthy balance in our healthy life is important.  So my friends, at this early hour of St. Patricks Day I raise my coffee mug (non-spiked) to you all and say Sláinte, may it be found in abundance in every aspect of your life.

The gift wrap is off all the packages, the need to take aspirin for whatever ails you on New Year’s Day has passed, and we’re staring down the fear and opportunity that a new year brings.  The New Year’s Resolution is a time honored tradition of identifying things we want to change this year.  Unfortunately, a lack of commitment seems to be the loyal companion of the New Year Resolution.

So this year, resolve to do something different.  This year, resolve to make a plan and stick to it!  Don’t obsess about the big victory, but rather plan for and celebrate the small successes.  Set a goal, make a plan and work the plan.  If your goal is to lose 20 pounds during the year, the manageable steps might be to exercise 4 days a week and to fill your plate half with vegetables for every meal.  When you miss a day of exercise don’t give up.  Pick yourself back up, dust yourself off, and realize that you still got in two days of exercise that week and you’ll get four days in next week.  It is our resolve and commitment to the smaller steps that will have an impact.  We stay committed to those things that are important to us.  It shouldn’t take a landmark event like the changing of the year on the calendar to get us to change.  That is as true in July as it is in January.  I wish you a resolve filled New Year.