THE IMPORTANCE OF STRUCTURE & ROUTINE IN MASTERING YOUR 'JOB':

A 'STRUCTURE' METAPHOR USING SWIMMING:

You may or may not know that I swim...A LOT. About 2 or 3 kilometres a day, sometimes more. I call myself a "Wild Swimmer" because I love swimming in the outdoors. I'm getting older now, but there was a time when I swam competitively. In 2007 six of us swam The Channel as a relay team to raise funds for poorly children. That was a test of my technique, resilience and preparation!

To prepare, you have to acclimatise to cold water and swim lots and lots of laps in the pool and hours in the cold sea to acclimatise. Swimming lots of laps can be boring unless you've trained your brain to go into a trance, to focus on your goal or simply mull-over ideas and put the world to rights. It helps pass the time.

You might wonder what on earth I am telling you this for on a career blog. Simple. Whilst swimming this morning, an idea came to my mind in the confines of my lane in the 25 metre pool I spend most mornings in. The key word here is 'confines'. It struck me in this large 5-sided tank of water that I was confined and, rather than feeling caged-in, the boundaries of the lane were very helpful to practicing my technique. Then it struck me that anyone succeeding in any particular job, career, sport or game, is similarly confined and benefits in the same way.

You see, nearly every business great, celebrity or sports star that we love have mastered their skills, strengths, talents and gifts within their specific arena. They have become outstanding by making themselves uniquely talented whilst performing ‘in the zone’. Every exceptional person you can think of has excelled within the confines of their chosen discipline. They have mastered the structures, rules and regulations of their chosen field and learned how to use these ‘guidelines’ (like a swimming lane) to their advantage.

In just the same way 'a field' can be a large strip of land surrounded by a wall to grow crops, the word 'field' can be used to describe an occupation, profession, trade or vocation. The more clear the demarcation lines around 'the field' the more recognisable it is. Some people get hung-up on the semantics that differentiate one field from another, e.g. Osteopath / Chiropractic, Farrier / Blacksmith, Sociologist / Psychotherapist. (Sometimes radical ways of interpreting the rules come along and we see the birth of new fields; but that’s another story for another blog entry).

Professional footballers make their living quite literally on a field of play. But their sport is differentiated by rules and regulations as is each position in the team from forward to defender, goalkeeper to winger. Otherwise their sport would be chaos and each game would be a free-for-all with no way of managing it. 

Skills mastery is a key ingredient in career success in whatever field, occupation or sport. For example, when I am swimming well, I know that I will take exactly 18 strokes of frontcrawl to swim a 25 metre length in the pool. If my stroke is inefficient, it will take more. If less, I will tire more easily. Knowing this fact about my performance disciplines my mind and helps me swim more efficiently because it gives me a reason to focus on form and technique. It also stops me from getting tired. 

HOW DOES THIS TRANSLATE:

Going back to football, world-renowned David Beckham has mastered his footballing skill to the extent that he is famous for his precise passes of the ball and great goals scored from free-kicks. He is outstandingly talented yet he plays within the confines of strict rules, keeps the ball within the boundaries of the pitch and focuses his energies, ultimately, on precision goal-scoring. 

He can tell when he is performing well or not by the number of goals scored or whether his passes to other players land at their feet or go off the pitch (field of play). His experience gained through many hours of practice inform him when he has made an error or when he is playing well. He can adapt his technique according to the results because he sees where his passes or shots on goal finish-up.

We know it takes the world's most successful people about 10,000 hours to get to the top of their field and Beckham’s level of expertise. Be that in sport or in business. This means that people like Bill Gates, David Beckham or sports stars like Maria Sharipova will have invested in the region of 10 years hard work, focus and sacrifice to win-through to achieve recognisable success.

Mastering technique requires much dedication. Yet, perhaps equally importantly, we need to understand the rules of the landscape we operate in. Choosing to specialise and become masters of our career attributes, talents and gifts means we must understand, visualise and respect the confines of our professional discipline. This is why we use the word ‘discipline’ to describe an occupation or skill in a sport.

Far from cramping our style and reducing our choices, limiting our peripheral vision helps us to concentrate our attention, effort and time into becoming proficient at what we do best. There will always be people who would rather taste a wide variety in their career choices before they settle down to focus on one thing.

However, after experiencing the peaks and troughs of my own career journey – once I discovered my own career passion - coupled with 15 years of coaching others along their career journeys, I can safely say that it is the people who knuckle-down sooner into their own rhythm in the confines of their preferred field who tend to reap the greatest rewards and look happiest. Limiting our choice, focussing our attention and pouring our energies in a specific field make our decisions far easier and career so much more resilient to the inevitability of change in the 21^st Century labour market.

SO WHAT’S THE POINT:

Following the global financial crisis of 2008 earning a sustainable livelihood has become much more about finding a wage than building a sense of career. We see the phrase ‘career resilience’ used to describe how important it is for personal survival to be able to evolve from one skill-set to another in order that we find work that puts food on the table. Yet deep-down, I see the workers who master their talents as being the most resilient, the most happy and the better equipped to face the ever-changing work landscape. They are also the most employable.

5 GUIDING WORDS:

My advice, therefore?  If you wish to excel, ‘learn to swim’ in the confines of your own field. Invest many hours in mastering your skills and polishing your talent. This is one reason why the artisan craftsmen and women I see are so in demand and always have a sparkle in their eye. That way, you stand more chance of being master of your own destiny and eating whilst many others go hungry.

Here are 5 words that will help you along the way:

1. ‘Discipline’ – it takes a lot to focus your mind on a particular goal worth striving for. Unless your goals are worth devoting yourself to, the discipline will never come.
2. ‘Control’ – Sometimes, alongside ‘Discipline’, we have to control our thoughts, actions, emotions and thirsts for the temptations that might thwart our progress.
3. ‘Denial’ – often great plans are undone by refusing to acknowledge the reality, even when we can see why we’re failing as clear as day.
4. ‘Sacrifice’ – Along with the many temptations that risk distracting us, we have to give-up some of our favourite indulgences like TV, crappy food, unhelpful friendships and delusions if we are going to fulfil our potential.
5. ‘Opportunity’ – Having honed all of our talents and skills and polished our gifts to a bright sparkle, none of the investment of time, effort and dedication is worth a bean unless we are able to recognise the opportunities to excel that come our way.

DO YOURSELF A GREAT FAVOUR:

Step-back for a moment and look at your work/life plans. Can you see your metaphorical ‘swimming pool’? Can you visualise the shape and form of the guiding constraints of the particular field you wish to specialise in? Have you disciplined your technique through many hours of practice so that you know exactly when your technique is great and you’re performing well? Give your potential a chance, zero-in your focus, choose your goals well and polish your devotion.

Strange as it may seem, the truly outstanding talents who walk alongside us in this multi-faceted, diverse, complex and decision-laden world, know better than anyone does the confines of their own fields. And that is exactly the reason they came to shine so brilliantly.

Happy swimming!!

WOULD YOU HELP ME WITH SOME CAREER-RELATED RESEARCH, PLEASE?

WOULD YOU HELP ME WITH SOME CAREER-RELATED RESEARCH, PLEASE?

My life was transformed in 1994 when I sat down and had my first-ever 'proper' career guidance interview with Mike Bond at Pathways Adult Career Development Centre in Sunderland.

Prior to that time I was pretty-much kicking about achieving not very much. At the time of meeting Mike, I was rock-bottom. The irony is I ended-up getting Mike's job at Pathways and, by way of a 2-year process, fulfilling my dream. I will be grateful to him for the rest of my life for the help he gave me in sparking my 'calling'. (What some people call the 'Aha Moment'.)

I designed my 'Career Dovetail Formula' in 1997 when, working with students in schools and colleges, I began relaying the visual metaphor for what can be a very hard-to-grasp, esoteric and intangible commodity - the 'perfect fit' of finding great work. Subsequently, it has been my brand, philosophy and methodology, see below. I've been evangelising about the power of quality-assured career guidance ever since and my own quest has led me along a magical mystery tour helping others tune-in to the power of meaning-filled and meaningful work.

Most often people are pretty downbeat about the notion of discovering joy at work; at least when we start out. But watching them transform is the joy I derive from what I do. One of the toughest lessons for me has been that you can only help someone when they are ready to help themselves. The process usually involves devotion, sacrifice, control, denial (?), faith, self-encouragement and discipline. So it can be a tough journey. [And that's why I believe only 10% of the population discover their perfect work.]

Therefore, to improve that worrying statistic and with so many young people struggling to build traction in their careers, I am currently researching the 'Anatomy of the Aha Moment' for a new book/ short film we're making. I'm dissecting the 'before and after' of the changes people go through when they take time to 'career dovetail' themselves into great work.

So - after all that - here's the question:
(You can be as critical, quizzical, doubting, orthodox or enthusiastic as you like. This has to be a sliding-scale of opinion to be credible). 

***What faith do you have in there being a perfect 'career dovetail' out their for you? Have you found yours? If so what does it mean to you? Is it purely qualitative or could you quantify it too? And is there a price to pay - time, money, relationships, attrition, anxiety...***

It would be great to get a dialogue going on this BIG QUESTION here below. But if you would feel more comfortable, you can email me at duncan@careeradvise.me

I'd be ever-so grateful if you would contribute your thoughts, feelings and aspirations. If we can crack the recipe, who knows where it might lead.

THANKS

NB - if you could share this post with your friends, we could grow a really big conversation about what I hope will become an inspirational solution.

WHAT DOES YOUR LIFE HAVE IN STORE FOR YOU?

Believe me, you can find the answer. The idea that it is possible to discover a perfect career choice which weaves every one of a person's attributes in a single strand, has to be one of the toughest challenges for even the most inspirational Career Coach to translate.

People don't know what they don't know. Similarly, how can we know how wonderful it is to be in love without having ever fallen in love. How can we appreciate the rush of adrenaline of freefall without actually leaping from a plane. That wistful gleam of intoxicating joy can only be held by the bearer of the actual experience. So it is with being docked into our perfect work. It took me 32 years to find mine. I now know I couldn't have survived without it.

Truly living the experience of beaming all of our gifts, talents, skills, capabilities and life experiences in the mastery of a distinct vocation is transformational, confidence-giving and supremely energizing because it helps us invest in our own purpose in life. As always, no two people are alike. The career conundrum facing all of us is as taxing as the hardest equation we ever saw in a Maths exam. But that mystery is so much a part of the joy created by self-discovery!

The driving motivation for solving your career conundrum and unleashing your unique blend of traits on the world is that you, and only you, own it. Your career identity is yours to invest in and, once you've uncovered it, not only will put food in your belly, it will feed your life with purpose that will sustain you for always by fuelling your day-to-day living.

More than anything you will possess that deep self-assuredness and innate smile that you see on the face of any hard-working, skill-mastering, and devoted artisan craftsman or woman, radiating from the joy invested in them by their discovery of what it is that truly makes them tick. The 'Master-at-the-Helm' knowing their true bearing in life with a beacon on the horizon to aim for every day.

Life is a journey, we pass this way but once. We owe it to ourselves and our loved-ones around us to uncover our true destiny in life. This quest is made all the more joyful when we know what it is we are here to do with our lives.

Remember the guiding maxim: "Find a job that you love and never work another day for the rest of your life!".

BE ENTHUSIASTIC OR RISK NOT BEING ANYTHING AT ALL. Be hungry to solve your career conundrum. Be hungrier for the prize.

For help in your quest why not attend one of our career discovery workshops or call for a one-to-one coaching programme:

www.careeradvise.me 

So you can’t get no (job) satisfaction…wotcha gonna do?!

As with most days, I am preoccupied with how to short-circuit the career conundrum and help more people discover great work for themselves; the kind of work that dovetails every single career attribute, experience, value, ambition, skill, talent, gift and dream, neatly into The World of Work.

Today I woke-up with a 'key word' in the forefront of my mind; the kind of word that opens up rich corridors of creative thinking. As a part of my own 'career portfolio' is that of a writer, I know I am working well when I wake and my subconscious feeds me a word on which to build my day and sustain myself. 

I am always thankful for those days because it’s a form of purpose to chase-down such a word and turn it into something thought-provoking, real and relevant. To decode the meaning of the word and give it to the world in a meaningful way. Yes, words enrich my days and I am thankful for them.

On Wednesday 24^th July 2013 – today – the word provided happens to be ‘inventory’. What a great word for a Career Coach to be reminded of every now and again. In our quest for job satisfaction and happiness, inventories are every bit as important as a map and compass on any expedition because, along with giving us our direction, they can fuel our self-esteem, turn progress in reality and help measure our success.

But how?

Extrapolation is the act of taking historic data, trends and events and projecting them to some point in the future. That’s why an inventory is such a good start-point on our journeys to the future. A couple of days ago whilst researching a previous blog topic I was looking into 'positive visualisation'. It turns out that the wholly remarkable W. Clement Stone, who created positive thinking as a tool to train super-determined insurance salesmen in his company, also happened to, through his mentorship, spawn a remarkable protégé, Og Mandino.

Og is a great one for making an inventory of personal ingredients we should be thankful for. I don’t want to spoil his story but I’d recommend spending some time watching his teachings on YouTube. Og survived hitting absolute rock-bottom and turned his life around.

In his teachings, he states that, no matter how low we might believe we have fallen, we have special gifts we ought to remind ourselves to be thankful for, such items are the eyes that we see with, the ear we hear with and the feet we walk with. And that's just for starters. I'll leave the rest to his video. It is quite a powerful legacy and by valuing it, we recognise his life's accomplishments.

So what of our own inventories. Due to my own difficulties in gaining traction in the first few chapters of my life, and then, more by happenstance than good judgement, I found a talented Career Adviser and formed a sustainable vocation, which led to my designing the Career Dovetail Formula. 

The problem I was seeking to solve was to make career decision-making a tangible, repeatable and reliable process. I believe too many people, me included, have historically found careers work esoteric, intangible and perhaps even a bit flaky. Perhaps not worthy of investment.

So if you do nothing else today why not sit down and create an inventory of your career attributes to be thankful for. Along with your skills, consider your experience, talents, gifts, strengths, personality traits, resilience, friends, family, work colleagues, wider networks, interests, passions, your overcoming-of-adversity anecdotes, achievements and success stories. 

You never know, apart from ending-up feeling thankful, you will probably do your self-esteem a whole lot of good and maybe be well on the way to building a sustainable career plan! 

Ultimately, you will piece-together a credible 'Tell Me About Yourself'; which, apart from impressing yourself, will demonstrate to others how good you are at what you do, build your CV/resumé and feed into a powerful interview script.

Believe me, there's a lot of point to building an inventory. Not all lists are pointless!

Duncan Bolam © 2013

www.careeradvise.me

Purpose makes Practice (more likely to be) Perfect

The old maxim"Practice makes perfect", doesn't amount to a flea's breakfast without a sense of purpose fuelling it. Perhaps it should be compulsorily married to another time-served phrase, "What's the point?" Because 'What's the point?' is basically asking us about our target. What's the point on the horizon you are steering your ship towards? Without a point, we are rudderless, aimless and moribund. In other words, stuck!

As a coach for over the last 30 years, first giving golf lessons as a fledgling Assistant Golf Professional, then as a Swimming Teacher, and latterly as a Career Guidance Practitioner and Executive Coach, I have come to respect that without a specific bearing point on the map to aim for there is no direction. No drive to fuel the practice, no vision to visualise and no decision making muscles exercised. And in many cases, the cause is lost before the journey even commenced. Golf's got an obvious target with a flag-stick on a green and neatly mown fairways to indicate your path to success, but in life, although equally relevant, the pathways are not so obvious.

So there can be no doubt that time spent practising your sport, your craft or your vocation is a worthwhile investment, but understand first what it is that you're investing your focus, effort and time in achieving. This is why, here at The Purpose Foundation, and our sister organisation, The Talent Engine, we respect the key ingredient to any coaching success is seeing 'the point' clearly and how sport correlates so perfectly. If you're still asking "what's the point?" - then there isn't one! You need to set your goal. Your purpose needs to shine on the horizon like a beacon which compels you to tune into your inner compass and align all of your positive attributes. Otherwise, it's pointless!

Since inception in the 1950s by billionaire insurance salesman William Clement Stone, 'Positive Visualisation Technique' has become the keystone to high performance and spawned millions of coaching businesses around the world. In Rhonda Byrne's smash-hit movie 'The Secret' she attributes 'clear sight of success' as The Secret to having anything we desire in life - if only we first see what it is that we want. It is only then that 'The Law of Attraction' will work for us. She has so many of the world's greatest proponents of 'positive thinking' lend their crystal clear metaphors to the film's subject - "...a glimpse of a great secret!"

My deep belief is that so many sufferers of stress-related illness can be cured in the moment they switch-on to a purposeful goal in their lives. Even better if they can envisage a goal that interconnects the 3 pillars of holistic wellbeing in their life: psychological / sociological / physiological. Here again, even for the amateur, sport is a wonderful channel for your investment of effort.  Not only is it great stress relief from the ardours of modern life, it is a great focal point, commitment, dojo and laboratory for practising positive visualisation techniques. Tellingly, is a Japanese term which literally means "place of The Way".

I have born witness to inspiring transformations across all departments in many people's lives just by setting a sporting goal on the calendar to aim at. Hence, my long distance swimming spills-over into my professional life so perfectly as I function so much better day-to-day when I'm committed to a date on the calendar horizon to which I aim to hone my skill, build my cardio-vascular fitness and test my stamina. My training sessions at the times when I don't possess a visual goal tend to be empty by comparison and this is a symptom I work hard to legislate against.

These sporting metaphors translate so well into the workplace too. It is no coincidence former Olympic gold medallist swimmer Adrian Moorhouse's consultancy business is called 'Lane4'  because this is the lane he swam in when he won his gold medal. And why British Gas, one of the largest energy companies in the world, sponsor British Swimming and use elite swimmers to deliver motivational training to their personnel.

So in modifying the maxim to 'Purposeful practice promotes perfection' we start to transmit a far more empowering message to the world in that we have thought our options through, made an informed decision, valued our goal-specific attributes, fuelled our motivation with drive and chosen to discipline our actions with purposefulness. The net result of this knowing state is that it connects-together all of the dots in our life. The more clearly we see our purpose the more joined-up we feel and the more attractive our performance is to others. After all, 'charisma' means both 'a compelling attractiveness or charm that can confer devotion in others' and 'a divinely conferred power or talent'.

This is The Key to success in our working lives too. This is why understanding our career attributes and the faculties we possess within is vital. In my new book 'Every Person's Path to Purpose - Everyone's Work Manifesto' I introduce a new kind of energy called 'Vojo' (Vocationally Generated Energy). 'Vojo' has almost supernatural powers that I believe only a very few people possess. So few are in possession of 'Vojo' because so few people are truly in possession of purpose; possibly as few  as 5 to 10% of the working population experience the joys given to them by 'Vojo'.

You can spot people with 'Vojo' because they are the charismatic people who never work. They are the people who discovered a job that they truly loved. A job which sees every one of their career attributes in perfect alignment; dovetailed beautifully into The World of Work. As if it was always intended to be that way. I argue in my book that society desperately needs more people dovetailed into their perfect work and managing well-planned careers because they have so much to contribute to the wellbeing of society. No longer can we strip employment of its meaning in pursuit of profit and dividend paid to an ungenerous few.

'Every Person's Path to Purpose' is a blueprint for an interconnected, congruent and sustainable working world where all workers are encouraged to contribute to the betterment of their fellow humans. It talks about the nurturing powers of 'Work Aesthetics' where by honing skills over time workers construct meaning not only in their own lives, but those who pick-up on the resonance and purity of great work around them.

Progressives / Proutists such as myself see a future where not only is there enough resource in the world to go around equitably, but everyone extracts the benefit of living well and prospering with the egalitarianism borne out of personal effectiveness, merit, living well, being spiritually connected with our surroundings through the imperatives of ecology, cooperation and sustainable living.

Although too easy to forget in an increasingly greed-driven and engorged world, social cohesion relies on each individual wanting to give to their fellow citizen, unconditionally. For each of us to express our individuality through creativity, our quest for spiritual enlightenment - the answering of questions - and our perpetual pursuit of growth - yet contributing to - the greater good of the community we live in. Be that through maximising our potential, skills mastery and/or the fulfilment of our 'Hierarchy of Needs' (Maslow) in the culmination of self-actualisation. If we are not proceeding we risk being in decline, stagnating at at risk of falling foul of low self-esteem and entering into the minefields of mental illness and self-doubt.

As the aeroplane's wings need to be at just the right attitude in order to take-off, so purpose relates to the fulfilment of potential and growth in the individual. Drive - the fuel of maximising one's potential - must be intrinsic. It cannot be given to another. The push and pull of personal development and growth can be taught, mentored, guided, supervised and coached, but without a purpose, it is a pitiful waste of energy, resource and time. This is why when we wake each day we can measure our individual effectiveness simply by gauging the clarity with which we can visualise our purpose and our relationship to the goals we have set ourselves on the horizon. In this way all the time we devote to honing our craft as we pursue our individual potential will be guaranteed to pay the bearer a healthy return the investment! (Coincidentally, 'vojo'  is Esperanto for 'The Way'.)

Everyone's Path to Purpose - my new book is out!

The new book is out: 
Every Person's Path to Purpose: Your Work Manifesto. 
With 90% of workers in the wrong job as they quest for meaning, this surprising blueprint aims to sustain your career over the long haul. It helps answer the age-old question: "Why am I here?"; it infects us with an honest hunger to do well in the workplace and contribute enthusiastically. This 'work manifesto' constructs processes, systems and engines to help get more people into great work. 

Try a sample on Smashwords by following the above hyperlink. Or buy the traditional physical book from: 
http://www.completelynovel.com/books/every-persons-path-to-purpose-everyones-work-manifesto 

Whichever you prefer, I really hope you enjoy tuning in to your inner Work Aesthete and firing-up your Vojo!!

Making things spreads joy, makes people happier and sustains society:

I once heard a call centre manager saying it was tolerable to have a high staff-turnover in his industry because “it’s the nature of the industry”....

...This is b#@`S*^t! As long as workers get a sense that they are contributing to something positive, that their daily tasks in some way create something of value, then they’re going to extract a sense of job satisfaction, maybe even real joy. 

As more and more firms pinch the purse strings in order to turn a profit it is harder and harder for workers to feel as if their contribution is tangible and that their efforts are worth a dime. Their dilemma is made much worse if they don’t get any recognition other than a meagre pay packet.

This is why, increasingly, I get the sense that the makers of things are happiest. You know, those artisans who bake wonderful traditional bread recipes, the dry-stone wall builders, the farriers who work iron into works-of-art, the thatchers who construct timeless roofs on medieval houses and clay potters and wood turners making bowls of perfection.

Sustained psycho-social and economic wellbeing is dependent upon contributing positively to your community for the individual to thrive and prosper in the broadest and most widely rewarding sense. The world is in such a mess because Capitalism removed the individual’s ability to hone their technique and proper through a progressive mastery of skill. 

Self-preservation in the 21^st Century labour market is about being resilient to change and being able to do nothing in particular averagely well. There is no reward in this short-sightedness for either employer or employee. Hence, market volatility robs society of its meaning in the medium to long term with no sight of let-up.

Self-preservation technique, happiness-building and holistic wellbeing rely upon your ability to make, grow and sustain; to move forward and develop. Relearning from scratch every few months erodes resolve as everyone loses sight of growth indicators.

Set your sights on making something of value. Invent something that will make other peoples’ lives happier, more fulfilling and / or efficient. Give joy by building, shaping, designing, sculpting, crafting, tailoring, constructing, drawing, harvesting, divining, staining, whittling, plumbing, decorating, growing, dyeing, turning, potting, hammering, fastening, weaving, joining, smithing, sawing and stitching. Doing words help things grow. Be guided by your actions. 

Be the modern Artisan. Nurture your ability to work, invest effort, form and then step back on experience the meaning borne-out of making some thing tangible. Above, make and take joy in your being your own master. 

[And for those who can find no option other than 'serve', try sincerely to smile authentically. Your rewards are the smiles reflected back.]

Experience joy - Seek that your product live. See others shine. See society sustain. Create, generate, grow, thrive. It is infectious.