You can change your outlook on life. We all face situations that force us to confront what we presume is blocking our path to a desired result. This chapter addresses forms of job-related reality: Your outlook, your best friends' outlooks, the descriptions of those who've done things you haven't, and the validity of advice given by so-called experts, since people perceive life in so many different ways the underlying message is that there is no one way to live when it comes to your career plan. The precise facts surrounding your job goal are different from those of everyone else and change because you change them.
Changing Your Goals
Many people in miserable jobs talk about making a change. Few do it. Teresa Felicetti (see "Career Changer," later in this chapter) was forced to change her outlook on life by financial pressures. Fulfilling her vocational goal, one that required a master's degree, no longer provided enough income on which to live comfortably. Her paycheck-to-paycheck existence was not merely inconvenient; it gave her great stress and caused her to scrimp on one basic necessity in order to afford another. Teresa wanted her situation changed so much that she willingly and courageously changed her life. She enrolled in seminars for job-changers and followed leads of friends and family. It worked. Without a technical degree and with no knowledge of computers, Teresa got a job that if one went by the book should have required both.
Thus, this chapter may be rough going if you believe a dogged, connect-the-dots approach is the way to career success. That approach can work well because someone else has made the rules. Whether it will work for your version of success, though, is the crucial question, your version of success is part of which you were and you can change who you are.
The Meaning of Zen
Your intense desire, or yen, to travel may be aided by Zen. Zen Buddhism dates back to the early days of Japanese history and espouses meditation as the means to personal and spiritual enlightenment. In more recent times, for Word Zen has gained buzzword status and represents qualities any thoughtful person is reluctant to criticize, such as inner harmony, peace gentleness, etc. This chapter emphasizes the aspect of harmony of Zen and its importance to your career as you encounter the many ways people live.
How to confront change?. The pattern of logic to your actions takes strange twists when you successfully confront your old habits.
- An acceptance of your life as is prevents you from attaining what you want as long as your old habits remain the same. Jeannie Cowley accepted the fact that her extreme dislike of public speaking could deny her a job.
- Since your desire and need is a strong one, you maneuver published ways through sacrifice and hard work. Jeannie used subterfuge to get what she wanted, knowing full well that she'd have to work hard to overcome her aversion to giving presentations when she got the job.
- Hard work and sacrifice change your job situation, your perception of your needs and, ultimately, your outlook on life.
Fun on the job.
When you are in harmony with the way your life is working, many everyday-experiences become fun and enjoyable! This is easy to understand because you are engaged in activities others would classify as play or recreation. For most people classifying work as fun is difficult. Lucky indeed are the rare individuals who enjoy their jobs so much that, given the chance to do anything they wanted, would continue to work at the same place.
If you want it, though, fun can become a large element of your job too, if you feel the need to be productive, and feel the need to work is fulfilling. Games, whether professional baseball or a board game played in your living room, hold intermediate rewards for effort. A double in the third inning and a bonus square on a game board both provide demonstrable, but temporary, success. In a game it can all change in an instant. That is why if is fun. Likewise, achieve and to feel productive is satisfied. In short, fun is not a frivolous item to be discarded when we enter the hallowed halls of our work place. Fun provides satisfaction. If you are in harmony with the way you are, and are willing to accept the twists of the game, you will have fun. You cannot help having fun.
Job qualifications
Much has been written about the need for specialized education in order to obtain a good job. A college degree is assumed as minimum requirement. The people whose work stories appear in this book, however, have formal educations that range from limited college course work to two-year technical degrees to master's degrees. Education means different things to different employers.
Make the most of what you have, get more if you must, but don't get hung up on substituting education for other qualities you may need to get a job. An aggressive manager who likes you will take a chance on you; a timid manager will not. A recent survey of employers rated enthusiasm as the most valuable asset of a job candidate; everything else can be learned or taught-perhaps at an institution for higher learning, but always on the job.
Take Anne Morrow, for instance. She had been working at a variety of jobs, sometimes more than one at a time, since she was a teenager. She kept searching for the perfect job, the one that would satisfy her wishes for challenge, glamour, and an above-average income.
Her many efforts to gain a position that would take her traveling took her to the international division of a large electronics company. Her title of international marketing analyst impressed her friends. She had a competent secretary and an attractive office with a glass wall overlooking the expansive lawn of the company's headquarters. Her work was seen regularly by the president of the company. Senior managers frequently let her know that her work was valuable to their people marketing products in overseas markets. But she never once used her passport, or even her new luggage, in the two years she held the job.
When Anne realized she was literally going nowhere, she decided to take a serious look at her aspirations. She felt she had spent a great deal of effort trying to build her skills to match those she perceived were required to get the kind of job she wanted. She took the right college courses, learned her company's position within the industry, worked hard and long hours, and tried very hard to fit into her company's corporate culture, even when it seemed silly to her. All these efforts were not working.
Satisfied that she had done everything possible, Anne realized she might never get what she wanted no matter how hard she worked. She took a sabbatical to work on personal projects she enjoyed rather than continue to meet the demands of a job marketplace that didn't seem to be listening. A few months later, she went back to work, but for a different company. The new company felt Anne's particular mix of skills fit any of three positions they hoped to fill, and asked her to consider all three. Anne found herself in this enviable position because her hard-earned work experience and education were valuable to them. Her efforts began to pay off, but only after she had accepted the possibility they might not.
Of the three positions, two were similar to jobs that at her previous company she would have regarded as the most likely path to the responsibilities and travel opportunities she sought. They also sounded tedious. Although she felt capable of doing the jobs well, two other realizations assisted Anne in making her decision.
First, the tiresome nature of each job's duties reminded her of all the times she had performed the unpleasant course work and menial jobs trying to climb the ladder. Her previous experience told her that the end had not justified the means. Second, Anne learned during her sabbatical that enjoyment of her work was as important to her as advancement. Whereas she knew she could carry out the jobs' duties, she was no longer sure she wanted to excel at tasks she didn't enjoy.
Anne selected the third job. It required verbal and visual communication skills she had developed and used long before she began her corporate job. This job did not appear to involve much travel, but she knew she had valuable innate skills, and wanted to explore what they could do for her. In short, she accepted herself.
That's when it happened. Everything converged-the company's place within its industry, her role within the company, her boss's view of her ability-to put Anne on the road. A trip to San Francisco was followed by trips to the major cities of Canada. Soon she had visited most major cities on both coasts. Within a year Anne had flown more than a hundred thousand domestic and international air miles. In the process she discovered her innate abilities were just fine and perhaps more valuable than those she had been artificially cultivating.
A similar acceptance of self helped Teresa Felicetti (see later in this chapter) change careers. In her first interview, the hiring manager brought up the emotional bond one has with one's job. Teresa said she was very aware that it would be difficult to leave her current occupation. After all, she had spent many years in school to prepare for the job she now wanted to leave. That she was not flippant about making such a big change impressed the manager very much. Had Teresa chirped, "Oh, no problem!" the manager would have wondered about her ability to cope with stress, about her maturity and ability to handle a job on the go. As it was, Teresa was hired. Her new career has taken her many places and will continue to do so. Without self-knowledge and self-acceptance the story could have been entirely different.
Strategy or acceptance which actions finally delivered the rewards Anne sought? Were they the efforts she put into educating herself and adding to her repertoire of work skills? Certainly without these accomplishments she wouldn't have been offered the opportunity to select from three jobs.
On the other hand, did acceptance of herself and her basic talents open the gate to travel? Had she not accepted herself, Anne might have selected one of the other jobs and still be mired in tasks she dislikes, unable to recognize travel opportunities amid the mildly distasteful tasks that make up her daily activities. Her aversion to her job could have functioned like armor, deflecting the good as well as bad.
Both viewpoints have been expressed in many books, lectures, and seminars. Career strategists tell you to make out a five-year plan, and try to convince you that mapping your exact stepping stones up the corporate ladder are crucial to success. They overlook the fact that organizations are not stagnant; a five-year plan is nothing more than a snapshot that quickly fades in relevance as companies change. In addition, the industries highlighted in this book contain some of today's fastest-growing companies. As they adapt to their changing markets, the organizational structure, the jobs, even the products they produce will, because they must change frequently. In their business environments a five-year plan is a fleeting thing.
The other school of thought tells you to evaluate all job opportunities against the mettle of your needs, your wants. Then, almost coincidentally, see if there's a job to match. Woe to prospective employers who don't meet your requirements from the day you walk in the door. The job seeker who takes this approach too much to heart loses the understanding that hard work is required to get what you want. Little will be given to you or anyone else simply because you need it or want it.
Somewhere between the extreme response to the job marketplace and servile attentiveness to one's personal desires lies the answer.
Let's take a hypothetical example. Robert Pack lives in a small mid-western city. He has a liberal arts degree from a nearby university. His employer is the largest company in town and regularly hires new graduates to train for long-term employment. Competition for jobs is rather stiff among liberal arts majors because landing a job is considered a fitting reward to a successful college career.
The company's growth is steady but not spectacular. International business accounts for a sizeable part of the company's overall revenues. The department that actually handles that business is small, however, and composed of employees with twenty years or more of company tenure.
Bob inquires into the possibility of transferring to the international department and is informed it isn't feasible. He wants to travel sooner than allowed by the company's unwritten twenty-year tenure rule. Despite the status of his entry-level job to his family and friends, Bob decides he will change employers to get what he wants.
After research Bob learns that no other company in town offers the opportunity of his present employer. In most cases international business isn't conducted by the other companies. He realizes he will have to move to another city to find the openings he seeks.
Bob's desires now clash with his present situation. He will have to undergo the stress and possibly emotional trauma of relocation merely to have a chance to travel on his job; he has no guarantee of success. Moreover, unless Bob so impresses a prospective employer that the company is willing to pay for Bob's relocation costs, he will have to pay for moving himself with or without a firm job offer. Considering Bob's degree and relative lack of work experience, he will most likely have to do so.
Bob must now balance his yen to travel with acceptance of his particular situation. How Bob weighs what is most important to him will determine what he does. Will he leave a secure job for the possibility of another? Is his urge to travel stronger than his need for familiar faces? Would his situation change if he remained with his current employer and took night courses related to their international division? Does his existing degree and work experience qualify him for a traveling job with another company?
Is his urge to travel strong enough to convince him to try to change his reality? Let us sum up the message of this chapter:
- Understand that fulfilling work equals fun.
- Pursue your dreams with zest; if a particular situation stops you, examine it closely for validity, and change it if you must.
- Use strategy when you plan your career but not to the exclusion of your own desires.
- Expect to fulfill your desires through your work but use strategic actions to help you when wishes alone don't work.
- Seek balance in all things.
When I went to college to be in the education field, that was it-for life. I didn't think I could do anything else. My degree was in communications, and I was a speech pathologist for five years."
Fate gave Teresa a boot. "I was forced out of education simply because of economics, no other reason, not because I wanted to leave the field. But suddenly, I was twenty-eight years old living on a single income, and worrying myself sick at the end of every month when I'd open the door to the refrigerator and find it empty. One year I had to sell my bicycle and my typewriter in order to buy tires for my car."
She left the university environment for the ''big, bad corporate world." A friend of a friend put her in touch with a friend of his friend, and through these extended connections she found a job as a curriculum specialist for a telecommunications firm. To her satisfaction she discovered that her degree was not as inappropriate to her new job as she had thought. Her past training had helped her to develop strong written and oral communication skills, and her education and supervisory experience with adults proved extremely helpful. In her new job she developed standardized training course materials for a variety of PBX/computer related products, and used these materials when she trained customers at their locations.
Now, one might say, Teresa is going 'round with gusto. Her business travels have taken her all over the United States, and she has ridden the crest of self-confidence to Europe, where she traveled by herself and put her linguistic skills to good use. "The way you make up Your mind that you, can do it that is way the confidence factor is important."
Her enthusiasm and motivation turn her business trips into mini-vacations, even on the eight-to-eight jobs. "You learn to go without sleep, to allocate your time, and to not be afraid to ask questions to discover ways of doing what you want to do. Shopping, sightseeing or just observing, I walk any street in any town by myself. At night when I'm alone, I make sure I go someplace that's planned, and I usually go in a cab. And I take my camera everywhere.
"That is the fun thing about everywhere I've been-it's all documented on film. Sometimes I'll be sitting around my house, and I'll pull out a photo album, and look through the pictures. Or someone will come over and we'll have a beer, and they'll want to look through them."
One picture in particular that her friends get a kick out of was taken at Universal City in Hollywood. "I'd been to Southern California many times before and done all the tourist things you can do, but the person I was traveling with had never been there, so I was acting as a tour guide. We sat in the amphitheater and watched as they drafted people from the audience to participate in a videotape, or mini-movie, they were making. I was dying to be chosen. I enjoy getting 'out there' in front of people, even if it means I'll be on the spot. They picked an older person, a young boy, and other types, and I was thinking, 'How am I going to get in this movie?' Finally they said they needed a woman with a good sense of humor. My friend stood up and started pointing to me!
They yelled, 'Will the girl in the red shirt come down?' So down I went. They dressed me in a frontier-lady-type costume with a bonnet and a full skirt and it was hot! Then they gave me my instructions: I was to wait in line at a bank and get robbed. I waited and waited, dripping perspiration. There were fake gunfights going on and people getting pushed into the water-and then the robbers grabbed me. Chaos broke out. Suddenly it was over, and I thought, that s the end of the movie. I'm standing there getting my money returned, when I hear something whistling through the air and look up just in time to get two cream pies in the face (two paper plates filled with whipped cream, actually). I loved it! And I have a picture of it!"
Teresa's pictures are being unpacked now in her new home. She has purchased a lakeside house in a city in the Southwest, and become a woman of property. She has a new refrigerator too. If she happens to be home at the end of the month and opens it, now she always finds it full-like her new traveling lifestyle.
