"Beautifully written and full of wisdom, The Ring in the Rubble is a gem." --Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One Minute Manager ® and Leading at a Higher Level
Career Builder
The Ring in the Rubble Free Career Building Tool
How to Get Back on Track: Find the Ring of Opportunity Beneath the Rubble of a Career That’s Somehow, Someway Veered Off Course
What happened? This is not what you expected when you entered the work force. Then, you were young, energetic, perhaps a tad naïve, ready to take on the world, make money, and have fun in the process. Now you’ve been downsized or right-sized out of a job so many times you have to glance at your paycheck to see who you work for today. Maybe the drive and energy that once defined you have cooled. Something’s missing, but you’re not sure what. You don’t derive the same satisfaction from your work you once did, even if the money is there. Your cheese has been moved, or you’ve lost your mojo, and you’re not sure how to get it back. Now what?
The Ring in the Rubble: Dig Through Change to Find Your Next Golden Opportunity offers fourteen tools to help you lead yourself and others through change. Several tools are especially relevant to career change issues; especially the tools covered in chapters 2,3,9,10, 12, 13 and 14. Read them for inspiration and practical clues on how to proceed. Share them with others who find themselves in a similar boat, for I can assure you you’re not alone. Getting stuck in the rubble of career disruption or staleness is a common occurrence. It’s those who learn to climb out who ultimately win. The tools in Ring will show you the way. Meanwhile here’s some additional tools to get you started
Five Tools to Find the Ring of Opportunity Beneath the Rubble of a Career That’s Somehow, Someway Veered Off Course
- Be clear on why you go to work: Okay, money. I’ll give you that. But if that’s the primary reason you go to work I can almost guaranty that’s part of your problem. It doesn’t take a psychologist to tell you money won’t make you happy. Life experience should tell you that. If it hasn’t it will. Meanwhile figure out what is important to you at work: working with people? Not working with people? Being part of a team? Contributing to something greater than your self? Drubbing the competition? Winning together? Losing together? Coming back from the brink of failure together? Creating something new? Know what it is that drives you, then drive towards that.
- When is enough, enough? Back to money again: if you don’t have enough to pay your bills, that can be nasty. But you get to decide which bills you’ll have. You can rent, or own; remodel or not; drive a new car or used; buy a boat, skis or get by on water wings – your choices all. None of this stuff, just like money, will bring lasting happiness. Brief bursts of joy or pleasure sure, but lasting happiness? Not stuff. So if it seems like you never have enough, whether it’s time, money or stuff, maybe it’s time to reevaluate what it is you think creates joy and happiness. What you are searching for is not ‘out there;’ it’s ‘in here.’ Pay attention to ‘in here.’ You’ll find it.
- Don’t let fear manage you. In The Ring in the Rubble I talk about fear, a lot. That’s because fear is a common emotion attached to change. We like to know what we know; we like to be in control. Change changes that. We can’t predict what will happen next when we are in the midst of change. For some, that’s exciting. For many more, it’s scary as heck. The key is to learn to manage your fear, to make it work for you versus against you. Fear is not a bad thing; it helps keep us alive. But treating non-life threatening situations as if they were can lead to bad outcomes. Fear is nothing more than energy. Learn to harness it to your advantage. (See chapter 13 in The Ring in the Rubble.)
- Start digging before you find yourself buried. Career staleness comes from standing still for too long. Either we don’t keep our skills up, or we don’t keep abreast of changes impacting our industry, or we simply get lazy and prefer to do the same thing day after day: whatever it is, we get stuck in a mold, a way of being or operating that has come to define us. In our comfort, we don’t notice the pile of rubble accumulating about us. We may not be changing, but the world around us is, and if we’re not careful, we’ll wake up one day lost in a world we no longer recognize. To avoid this fate, start digging a little at a time. Take a course here, read a book there. Take a friend or colleague to lunch and talk about what about their job makes them happy, or unhappy. Go to work and look with fresh eyes: If this were your first day on the job, what would you want to know? What questions would you ask? Ask, “Why do we do it this way? What might be a better way? How can we do this simpler? Is this even necessary?”
- Start digging now. It’s easy to put off everything I suggest in the points above, and in the book, until later. Complacency is the enemy of change. Often, it takes a jarring event like 9/11 or a personal SCI- Serious Career Incident-to wake us up. Don’t wait for an external event to trigger internal changes. Decide to start living the life you want and making the changes you want and decide to do it now. You have to make it happen; no one else can do it for you. And you can’t do it yesterday; nor can you do it tomorrow. All you have is now- make the most of it.