Archive for February, 2012

“Success means that we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and abilities were used in a way that served others.”                                               – Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

I like Marianne’s statement, which builds personal fulfillment into the definition of success. Later on in A Return to Love, her commentary on The Course in Miracles, she states that whatever work we choose to do, our purpose is to spread love in the world. How we go about living and working, then, is the most important ingredient in creating success and fulfillment in our lives.

 That does not mean that we cannot make a good living from our work. She obviously does. What it means is that we need to keep our focus on how we can help others, and figure out how to make the life and living we want while doing it. It is not an either/or scenario. You can have both.

In my own life and work, I find that the people I encounter who are most satisfied with their work are doing something that “makes a difference” in some way, to other people’s lives. One way making a difference can be done is through direct involvement in a “helping” role of some kind. Some of the obvious examples of this are work such as health and wellness professions, social work, therapies of all kinds, and teaching, the so-called helping professions.

 But many other kinds of work allow us to have positive interactions with others. In my own life, I am grateful to, among others, my financial advisors, the auto saleswoman I keep returning to, the receptionists in my chiropractor’s office, sales people who want to help me and are cheerful about it, my favorite cashiers in supermarkets and many others. They bring brightness to my day whenever I encounter them.

 Another way to serve others is by creating something that makes a positive difference in people’s lives, even if you never interact with them. Examples of this vary widely, anything from creating beauty to developing new technologies to making quality products to finding the illusive cure for cancer.

 Not everyone approaches their lives and work in this way. It’s a choice that we all make, to make a positive difference, or not. Those who “spread love” are the happiest people I meet. The happiness comes from how they choose to live and work, and it rubs off on others.

 How do you choose to live and work?

To your success!

Lee

The clients with whom  I most love to work are people who have achieved some degree of worldly success, but who are not happy in the work they do. They want both success and happiness, but are having difficulty figuring out how to do that. One day, I mentioned this in a brief presentation I made to a small group. The next day, one of the group members dropped off in my mailbox not one, but three, articles that argued it was somehow selfish and irresponsible to want to be happy and fulfilled in your work!!!!! One even suggested that you should be moderately unhappy in your work, to make you hungrier, I suppose. I was stunned that some people really believe and argue this nonsense.

Actually, what the writers were doing was assuming that being happy in your work means that you aren’t making any money – the “starving artist” image. Unfortunately, many people who are unhappy and unfulfilled believe they cannot have it all. They think it is either “success”/or satisfaction. It isn’t. We spend far too much of our lives working to be anything less than happy and fulfilled. Otherwise it is a horrible waste of our energy, enthusiasm and talent. It is a “lose-lose-lose” situation. We lose, the organizations for which we work lose, and the world in general loses, because we could be contributing so much more.

The first step, then, toward finding both success and satisfaction in your work is to get rid of the idea that you can’t have both. You can, even if you don’t know yet how to do that.

To your success!

Recently, I started working with a new client. One of the first things we did was to look over her resume.  I asked her the question I always ask before discussing a resume, “What makes you really good at what you do?” Her answer came out instantly, starting with “Because I care….” and continuing with a series of statements clearly indicating what she was passionate about in her work, while emphasizing how she was excellent at what she did. In all the years I have been doing this, I have found that very few people answer the question by leading with their passion. They may think it is too risky. People may get there eventually, often prompted by me, but they don’t start with their passion. I was impressed!

My client, whom I’ll call Sue, has been working as a Human Resources manager, in a specialized area. What she is passionate about is the people whom she hires and supports in their career development. She lost her job in a corporate reorganization that eliminated her position in this region. Her former employer made it clear to me that it had nothing to do with her performance, which was excellent.

Sue is not looking for a job. She is looking for the right job, and I have no doubt that she will find it…soon. Potential employers are already contacting her. Sue’s issue is being clear in her own mind what her ideal work is. She is taking her layoff as an opportunity to think carefully about how best to apply her passion. It will definitely involve helping people in some way.

I love being around people who are positive, energetic, passionate about their work, and who get things done. So do hiring managers. If you are looking for a job, a promotion or for new work that is a better fit, what can you say about yourself in these same areas, being positive, energetic, passionate and delivering results?

The other question to ask yourself is the one Sue is asking herself: “What is the right work for me?”

To your success!