A Creed to Live By (by Nancy Simms)

Don’t undermine your worth by comparing yourself to others. It is because we are different that each of us is special.

Don’t set your goals by what other people deem important. Only you know what is best for you.

Don’t take for granted the things closest to your heart. Cling to them as you would your life, for without them, life is meaningless.

Don’t let life slip through your fingers by living in the past or for the future. By living your life one day at a time, you live all the days of your life.

Don’t give up when you still have something to give. Nothing is really over until the moment you stop trying.

Don’t be afraid to admit that you are less than perfect. It is this fragile thread that binds us to each other.

Don’t be afraid to encounter risks. It is by taking chances that we learn to be brave.

Don’t shut love out of your life by saying it is impossible to find. The quickest way to receive love is to give love. The fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly;and the best way to keep love is to give it wings.

Don’t dismiss your dreams. To be without dreams is to be without hope; to be without hope is to be without purpose.

Don’t run through life so fast that you forget not only where you’ve been, but also where you are going. Life is not a race, but a journey to be savoured each step of the way.

Career Myth 6-Ignore your career dissatisfaction

Oh my!!!! If only this really worked. It does work at first, but in the long run, trust me, it really doesn’t. When you initially start questioning your career, it’s easy to push aside the random thoughts and pretending they don’t really exist. You know what I mean, the “what if’s” and the long list of regrets. Over time these random thoughts become real nagging thoughts. You start to find yourself day-dreaming about your options. You start building a list of reasons to ignore your growing dissatisfaction i.e “I’m too old”, “I don’t want to take a pay cut”, “I don’t want to return to study” etc etc etc.

With clients who are going through the same thing I work on identifying and confronting the fears; finding out whether the fear is real or just an excuse not to do anything and stay in ones comfort zone. Sometimes the fear of change remains but with a different intensity and there grows a greater commitment to living the life the client really wants to live, than to feeling the fear.

So this is the last of my career myths post. I hope if you are at a cross-roads in your career at this moment, you would have found a myth you might have been hanging onto, that you now realise is not enabling you. Now you know that it is really just a myth, what are you waiting for? Go for it and make the change!

Career Myth No. 5-“What’s the best thing for me to do?”

This is one of the most frequent questions asked by clients when considering a career change or a career move. It seems like a logical analysis, but don’t be fooled.
Do not ask yourself this question! It rarely leads you to the job or answers you are seeking. It will lead you to feeling overwhelmed with options, or feeling like you have to choose what’s practical over what seems to be impractical.

The question that will lead you to answers is simple (but not necessarily easy!) It is , “What do I really want to do?” This is a very different question to “what’s best?”

Career Myth No. 4-If you don’t like your job you are probably in the wrong career:

One way to tell if you are in the right career is whether or not you like your job. Now I know we ALL have bad days when we are stressed and we hate everybody and everything around us. I am not talking about those isolated days. I am talking about a constant feeling of dissatisfaction. This feeling is usually a sign that you need to re-examine your whole career choice. This is something I frequently hear from coaching clients who have decided to work with me. They know something isn’t right because they don’t like their jobs. In fact they usually hate their jobs. Their natural assumption is that their unhappiness is a consequence of a larger underlying issue...........their choice of career.

This is a clear case of false logic. Not liking your job might be telling you you’re in the wrong job. It doesn’t necessarily mean you are in the wrong career. Let's not forget they are two different things. You could just be working for the wrong person or the wrong company. It really takes a skillful approach to discern the source of your discontent, and it usually is very hard to do without the help of someone independent (sorry for the shameless plug for all Career Coaches)

Career Myth 3 - Always have a back-up plan:

OK, here goes. Another career myth for you; a further myth that stops people living the life they really want to live.

Sometimes having a back-up plan is a smart and prudent course of action. They seem smart and grown-up and responsible. But what happens when you’re standing with one foot in and one foot out? In my experience, we usually close the door and retreat. We become reluctant to commit ourselves and then we end up denying ourselves what we really want. Even worst we end up with feelings of regret and those damn nagging questions of “what if?”. (These questions really kill me and I avoid them at all cost).

I think back-up plans diffuse our energy, and diffused energy diffuses results. Give all that you’ve got to your passion, your dream, your risk
and you’ve got a better chance of being successful.

Career Myth 2 - changing careers is risky!

What’s riskier than leaving what you know to pursue the unknown? Changing careers means leaving behind a piece of your identity-your “I’m a lawyer” response to the dinner-party question, “what do you do?” It might also means admiting to yourself that you made a mistake with an initial career choice. Or it might mean acknowledging that you’re unsure of what’s next, and lets face it, smart people are always supposed to know what’s next, right?
Absolutely not!!!!
Successful career changers often don’t know or have a plan. Sometimes waiting until you actually have a plan can be riskier than just “sucking and see”.

I love this quote from Kathy Cordova’s books ‘Let Go, Let Miracles Happen’- “If you want to make God laugh, make a plan......”

Nothing, absolutely nothing is riskier than not changing careers if you’re longing to do so. Here’s why: The longing just will not go away no matter how hard you try and push it to the back of your mind. It will always be there, bubbling away under the surface, waiting for you to do something about it. And there is nothing worse than the thought years later of “I wonder if...........”

Career myths you need to bust!!!!

There are usually two times during the year when we re-evaluate our careers/jobs. It’s usually just after our summer holidays when we return to the routine of work and bosses we hate, coupled with the summer blues. And, in the New Year when for the umpteenth time we say we are going to take a risk and follow our passion. I know that I made some of my biggest career decisions during these two periods during the year. To this day I can remember clearly when I made the decision to move to Spain. It was after a fabulous holiday in Spain, I was on the plane home to the UK feeling so sad to be leaving beautiful blue skies, wonderful food, a relaxed and safe way of life, and the kind of lifestyle I was just getting used to. It was early September, and as we touched down at Heathrow ariport in the early afternoon, the sky was black. The pilot advised us there were storms on the way, the traffic out of the airport car-park was grid-locked, the car-parking fee was exorbitant and the journey home took 2.5 hours instead of the usual 1.5 hours (because of road-works everywhere despite it being a Sunday!) I just remember saying to my husband, “Why are we doing this? Who says we have to live in the UK?” And so began our first foray into chasing our happiness and not our pensions.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to give you some career beliefs that need to busted once and for all as a way of helping you “chase your passion and not your pension!”


Career Myth 1: It’s a tough job/economy at the moment, so now is not the time to make changes.

Despite the newspapers and TV news constantly telling us that unemployment is at it’s highest and job grwoth is at a standstill, or that we will experience a slow economic recovery, not to mention down-sizing and outsourcing, don’t believe it.
It’s a myth because it doesn’t reflect the whole story. The fact is it is a different job market today. How we transition from job to job is different. Hiring practises have changed but NOT stopped. What makes it tougher is that we’ve been slower to change. We’ve held on to old practises and old behaviours. For example methods of networking have changed considerably in the last few years. It’s nearly all done on-line. That’s not to say the old ways don’t work anymore. They are just not as effective anymore. Despite being told we are in a recession you just have to glance at some of the top job sites on-line and you will see there are new jobs, in every sector, for just about every country and for every salary range, listed every day. I have also worked with countless clients that have made the jump and changed careers, gone back to University or started new businesses (and are exceedingly well) all during the recession we are living in at the moment. The problem is news programmes and newspapers thrive on instilling fear. My first piece advice is go on a “news/media” diet for a week, and just see how differently you will feel. Once you stop absorbing all the negative news that we are bombarded with, then you will start to feel in a better place to start making decisions. Let me tell you, I have not watched the news for over 1.5 years. It is banned in my house, and my husband and I are always being asked how we are always so positive and happy. I put it down to our “news diet”.