The Bamboo Project Blog

Antidotes to Imposter Syndrome

Last week, one of the women I've been working with in a Career Club sent me an email asking me about what it was like when I first started working for myself--was I as freaked out about self-employment as she is now by a stretch position she'll soon be taking on. At the end of her email, she asked me this:  

What I want to know is, how long does it take to turn into the person who actually 'feels' comfortable, confident, and competent on the inside, rather than the person who believes they are a fraud in these three categories, and taking a new setting hour by hour and hoping they don't get discovered in their inept-ness.

 

I love when people ask me questions like this, because they force me to think about my own experiences in new ways, to find my own resilience which isn't always an easy thing to do. Here's what I wrote back to her:

Let me answer the easy questions first. When I started my business, it did feel like a risk of sorts, but it also felt like something I HAD to do. It was the only way I could find to pursue work that to me felt interesting and meaningful. What felt riskier (or at least more soul-crushing to me) was continuing to do work that didn't build on my strengths or feel very useful in the world. I just got to a point where the risk of stagnation and burnout seemed greater than the risk of starting my own business. 

 

I was fortunate in that I didn't have to deal with a ton of financial risk in the process. I started my business when I did in part because we could live on my ex-husband's salary at the time. It took me a couple of years to get to the point where my net profit replaced the salary we'd lost, but we were OK with that because we'd sized our life to be OK with one salary. So I was more fortunate than a lot of people who, on top of everything else, must take a financial risk. 

 

But those aren't answers to your real question. Your real question is did I feel like a fraud inside and, if so, how did I get over it? 

 

Here's the thing. There are days when I feel very good about myself professionally and then other days when I feel like I don't know what the hell I'm doing at all--a complete, inept imposter.  The days when I feel confident, competent and comfortable are gifts.  I can do things to encourage the gift to come more often, but I can't control it all the way. I can only try to create the fertile ground for the gifts of grace and ease to come to me. 

 

So to create more "good" days, I try to focus on what is going well, not on what is screwed up. I try to focus on bringing out my strengths and using them, rather than thinking about my weaknesses and trying to "fix" them. I try to see myself as someone who is learning all the time and sometimes learning means being uncomfortable and challenged and "out of your league," so what can I learn from those moments about myself? I try to surround myself with people who are positive and supportive and nurturing and to limit my time with people who are negative and who drain me of my energy. And I try to work with problems and issues that really engage me on an emotional level so that I'm able to keep myself going, even if I'm not feeling good about myself just because the problems themselves need to be solved. 

 

I also try to share with people when I'm feeling out of my league--to say "I'm not sure what to do here and it makes me feel stupid and incompetent to say this." Ninety nine times out of 100, people will melt when you say this. Everyone can relate. 

 

Notice how often I say "try" in all this though, because I'm not always successful in doing any of those things. So then I'll have a day or a series of days where I feel like I'm a big failure or I'm having no positive impact in the world or I'm pushing things that other people don't really want. That's when it helps me to go back through my journals (journaling is HUGE, HUGE, HUGE in all of this) and see the times when I was down like this before and then the next day, something clicked and I was changed back into confidence. I see that my fear and anxiety about myself is a fleeting thing and that this too will pass. 

 

You are embarking on a big journey and it's been awhile since you worked outside the home, so it's not surprising that you're feeling anxious and concerned. You're going to make mistakes at first--that's part of learning. You're going to feel like you're a fraud because you haven't been a nurse before--it isn't a full part of your identity yet. Accept that. Don't fight it. Don't beat yourself up. Just try to stay with it and and your emotions and give yourself kudos for every small win. 

 

My last bit of advice is to "fake it till you make it." When I have to do things that feel really uncomfortable and out of my league, I spend some time doing grounding/centering exercises, I set my intention for how I want things to go, and then I just go in and pretend that I'm someone else making it happen. I don't put my "real" self out there--I put on a mask. Most of the time that takes me far enough into it for me to then see that it's working and I experience the real success that I wanted. Faking it is one of the best things you can do in those circumstances. 

 

Now my question for all of you--How do you deal with feeling like an imposter? 

Career Resilience Tool: The Career Journal

 

Awhile back, I wrote about the value of having a career journal and discussed some of the ways that I used my own journal. I'm a huge proponent of reflective practice and a journal is a critical tool for that work.

A lot of people think of journaling as a "nice to do," but as Harvard researcher Teresa Amabile has found, a career journal, especially for anyone who does creative work, is really more of a "must have." It becomes a tool not only for managing what's going on today, but for thinking about the future and gaining perspective on the past. 

The video above is a synoposis of what Amible and her colleagues have found in their research on keeping a daily work diary. (Hat tip to Idealist.org for the find, btw) They identified four key benefits:

• Celebrating small wins, which helps people see overall progress in their work. Much of resilience is about seeing the positive, so celebrating small wins is a way to do that. (see more about the Power of Small Wins here) 

• Planning next steps. If you don't make the progress you wanted to, your journal can be a place for thinking through and planning next steps. What do you want to try tomorrow? What could you do differently? 

• Nurturing personal growth. This is HUGE for developing resilience because it's a way for you to work through challenges and problems and to find your own inner strength and resources. You can see patterns of behavior or reactions you may want to work on. You can also re-frame experiences so that you gain new perspectives and insights into what happened. 

• Cultivating patience. This is also big for resilience, which requires persistence in developing new habits. And you can see that in the past, you were able to solve various problems or issues, even on days that may have been worse than today. 

The video is definitely worth watching. The examples and discussion offer even deeper insight into how people are able to use a journaling practice to stay in touch with themselves and their deepest and most personal goals and values, even in very turbulent, rough times. You may also want to check out this HBR post on Amabile's research into journaling. 

I admit that there are days--even weeks--when my journaling suffers. I will write sporadically or not at all. But I inevitably return to my journal, often when things begin to feel unmanageable. I need to find a way back into the work and into my motivation for doing it and my journal is one of my most reliable practices for making this happen. 

I've also found in working with the idea of resilience that journaling is one of the best ways to support the four key patterns of Clarifying, Connecting, Creating and Coping. It's a tool that can help you reflect on your experiences and gain insight into which patterns might need shoring up or just some attention for you to keep making progress. 

For more resources and information on keeping a career journal, check out my earlier post on the topic. Also see how to use career stepping stones for a longer perspective on your career activities. 

Building Career Resilience: Networks vs. "Circles of Connection"

 

One of the issues that is clear to me when it comes to career resilience is that we need to build our connections to other people. Humans are social creatures, built for attachment and primed from birth to connect with others, and the more isolated and alone we feel, the more fragile and rigid we become. Caring for and being cared for by other people is critical to our emotional and mental well-being. 

Typically when we talk about our connections in a career sense, we use the term "networks" to describe the people we are connecting to. We talk about living in a "networked world" and how it's the quality of our networks and the people in them that will help us be successful in our careers. 

The problem I'm having with this, though, is that the term "network" carries many connotations that I think get in the way of building resilience. Maybe it's me, but networks feel very transactional, focused on whether not you are "bringing value" to a relationship. We want to network with people who have power or authority or influence, people who can bring us something that will help us be successful. Networks have us thinking about the WIFFM--what's in it for me?--and that's hardly a recipe for resilience. 

I also find the term "network" to be very mechanistic, making us feel like cogs in a machine. It calls to mind computer networks, which are simply collections of nameless, faceless machines harnessed together to accomplish some larger task. There's enough in the world that makes us feel that way. Why do we have to talk about relationships like they are machines too? 

I think I might not be alone in my concern about networks as I find that the one thing that most job seekers seem to consistently resist is the idea of "networking." They know on some deep level that networks and networking don't carry the same relationship ideals that really resonate with us as human beings. 

As someone who believes that "words create worlds," (an appreciative inquiry concept), I think we need to think differently about the relationships we are building in our lives, focusing not on building "networks," but on building circles of connection. 

 

Why Circles?

As human beings, we have a deep, primal relationship to the circle. It is a universal symbol, found in all cultures. From our earliest days, we have gathered in circles around the campfire to receive protection from the dangers of the dark and we have used circles in our spiritual and community practices to represent inclusivity, connection and belonging. 

Circles represent sanctuary--those who are in the circle receive protection from and provide protection to those who are gathered with them.  This sense of safety and containment is critical to developing our resilience because it strengthens the sense of attachment we feel to other people and our sense of safety so we can relax and trust. 

Circles also represent inclusivity and wholeness. Whenever we see the symbol of a circle, we are drawn to enter it. It is inviting and suggests that we come closer to experience its warmth. 

While networks carry a connotation of information and messages carrying ever outward, circles close the loop. They emphasize the cyclical nature of life and experience and remind us that "what goes around, comes around." What we put into the circle will eventually cycle back to us. 

Circles can be small, with just a few people, or large. They can intersect (think Venn diagrams), interlock or be completely separate. We can have a few circles or many circles. If our goal is resilience, though, it's the circles that will provide us with the support and nurturing we need.

For me, thinking about expanding and building my circles feels far more energizing and supportive of resilience than does the idea of "building my networks." Circles resonate at a very deep, emotional level, and connecting for resilience is about creating those deeer connections.  

What about you? How does the idea of building a circle compare to building a network?  

Sanctuary and Healing Our Relationships with Work

 

Many of the people I talk to and many I work with are in pain about work. They have been treated poorly by toxic bosses, stressed out colleagues and uncaring organizations that regard them as  disposable.   Job requirements are constantly shifting and they live with daily uncertainty about the stability of their jobs. And as I've discussed before, the quality of many jobs from an employee perspective is trending downward, with expectations at all-time highs and wages and working conditions at some all-time lows. 

I work with a lot of people who are unemployed and their lay-offs have been handled poorly, leaving them bitter and angry about work. The job search process itself is a daily exercise in rejection and humiliation and the longer people are out of work, the worse things become. 

I know I'm not helping things either, talking about how technology is eating your job, how we live in a 401(k) world and encouraging you to have a lay-off plan.  I'm trying to communicate with you about the realities of modern work, to encourage you to make changes now, but these realities are bitter pills to swallow for many of us and only add to the fear. 

So I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of sanctuary and how we need some sort of safe space to develop our career resilience and heal our relationships with work. Many of us are caught up in anxiety and stress  (sometimes without even realizing it because the pace is so ridiculously demanding) and we need a break from this cycle. It's difficult to replace unhealthy career habits with healthier ones if we don't give ourselves the space to breathe. 

As I've thought about the work issues so many people face, the ways in which work has become a source of ongoing anxiety, pressure and toxic relationships, the concept of sanctuary has continually popped into my head. It has seemed, in many ways, the necessary container for the transformations we need to go through to adjust to our changing work circumstances and develop the habits that will allow us to thrive. 

A sanctuary is safe space, a refuge from outside dangers and pressures. It is a source of help and comfort, giving relief in times of difficulty and protection from the outer world. 

You are not meant to live permanently in a sanctuary. It's a way station for a particular time of your life. It gives you the sustenance and support you need to carry on when you're ready to resume your journey. 

There are few sanctuaries available to us in modern life that will allow us to heal and grow strong. We also have a peculiar distaste for the idea of retreat into sanctuary. It might mean we can't hack it at work or we feel we don't have the time for such luxuries. 

But as I see it, sanctuary--safe space--is increasingly critical to our ability to thrive in this strange new world. We cannot live indefinitely in fight or flight mode. We need a break to re-group and restore before moving on to the challenges and opportunities that await us. And we need connection to people who understand and support our need for safety and who can provide us with the resources to continue to the next phase. 

Resilient people recognize when toxic emotions and experiences have eroded their ability to respond well and take steps to heal those places that have been injured. Seeking sanctuary when you need it is not a sign of disease. It's a healthy response to difficult circumstances. 

I think we need more sanctuaries and more opportunities to recognize, acknowledge and work with the changing dynamics of our jobs. We need safe space to mourn what has been lost and to look for the opportunities in our new circumstances. And we need support and resources that will help us continue on our journey. 

Where do you find sanctuary in your life? How do you use it to heal and restore? 

 

Your Career in a 401(k) World

More things seem to be changing in my world than ever before, but I can’t quite put my finger on it, let alone know how to adapt. So let me try to put my finger on it: We now live in a 401(k) world — a world of defined contributions, not defined benefits — where everyone needs to pass the bar exam and no one can escape the most e-mailed list.--Thomas Friedman, It's a 401(k) World 

As I've been exploring career resilience and trying to talk with people about the shift that they need to take in their attitude toward their careers, I've been struggling with how to get it across to people that showing up is not enough anymore. That they can't just keep their heads down and hope that if they just follow directions, they will be OK. 

Now I see that Tom Friedman nails what's going on in an editorial from a few days ago:

Something really big happened in the world’s wiring in the last decade, but it was obscured by the financial crisis and post-9/11. We went from a connected world to a hyperconnected world. I’m always struck that Facebook, Twitter, 4G, iPhones, iPads, high-speech broadband, ubiquitous wireless and Web-enabled cellphones, the cloud, Big Data, cellphone apps and Skype did not exist or were in their infancy a decade ago when I wrote a book called “The World Is Flat.” All of that came since then, and the combination of these tools of connectivity and creativity has created a global education, commercial, communication and innovation platform on which more people can start stuff, collaborate on stuff, learn stuff, make stuff (and destroy stuff) with more other people than ever before.

What’s exciting is that this platform empowers individuals to access learning, retrain, engage in commerce, seek or advertise a job, invent, invest and crowd source — all online. But this huge expansion in an individual’s ability to do all these things comes with one big difference: more now rests on you.

If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone. But if you’re not self-motivated, this world will be a challenge because the walls, ceilings and floors that protected people are also disappearing. That is what I mean when I say “it is a 401(k) world.” Government will do less for you. Companies will do less for you. Unions can do less for you. There will be fewer limits, but also fewer guarantees.Your specific contribution will define your specific benefits much more. Just showing up will not cut it. (My emphasis) 

This is the thing. Each one of us is placed in the position of either steering the ship of our own aspirations and development or of having those decisions made for us by companies and organizations that aren't going to have our best interests at heart. It will be virtually impossible for you to thrive, and possibly even survive if you aren't willing to take a more active role in your own development. 

I don't entirely agree with this shift. I'm personally troubled by the fact that the belief seems to be that we all need to figure it out on our own and that if we aren't actively contributing to the economy, we can forget about having any kind of safety net or supports. I aspire to something different as a way of life. BUT, I'm also aware of reality. And we have to always plan for what is, not what we wish could be. 

Right now, we are living in a world that REQUIRES you to be self-motivated and in charge of your own career if you hope to maintain any level of security or stability in your work life. Even with self-motivation, it will still be a rockier road.  As Friedman points out in his piece, it's difficult to get the information that's needed to make good decisions about developing your competencies even when you are taking charge of your career. 

Friedman also points out the value of many of the things I've been talking about here in terms of the 4 resilience patterns of Clarifying, Connecting, Creating and Coping:

 “Just as having a 401(k) defined contribution plan requires you to learn more about investing in your retirement, a 401(k) world requires you to learn much more about investing in yourself: how do I build my own competencies to be attractive to employers and flourish in this world,” said Byron Auguste, a director at McKinsey and one of the founders of Hope Street Group, which develops policies to help Americans navigate this changing economy. “As young people rise to that challenge, the value of mentors, social networks and role models will rise.” . . . 

When I say that “everyone has to pass the bar now,” I mean that, as the world got hyperconnected, all these things happened at once: Jobs started changing much faster, requiring more skill with each iteration. Schools could not keep up with the competencies needed for these jobs, so employers got frustrated because, in a hyperconnected world, they did not have the time or money to spend on extensive training. So more employers are demanding that students prove their competencies for a specific job by obtaining not only college degrees but by passing “certification” exams that measure specific skills — the way lawyers have to pass the bar. Last week, The Economist quoted one labor expert, Peter Cappelli of the Wharton business school, as saying that companies now regard filling a job as being “like buying a spare part: you expect it to fit.

To see where you need to invest, you need Clarity about your strengths and the opportunities around you. Mentors, role models and social networks are the heart of the Connecting pattern.  And "passing the bar" means Creation--creating value and creating structures that allow you to continually renew and refresh your skills. 

The biggest change, though, that we're going to have to deal with is ensuring that we all recognize the profound way in which the world has shifted. It is not enough to just show up anymore, ready to follow orders. Only those who become active creators of their own careers will be able to survive, let alone thrive, in this new, hyperconnected world. 

The question is, how willing are we to accept this responsibility for ourselves? How well are we communicating this to our children and to the other young people in our lives? 

 

Preparing for the Worst: What's Your Layoff Plan?

What's Your Layoff Plan? from Michele Martin on Vimeo.

A big part of career resilience is being prepared for what work throws at you. The more prepared you are when something bad happens, the better you'll feel.

One work event more and more of us are having to deal with is a lay-off. Sometimes you'll see the writing on the wall and can plan for a lay-off. More often than not, though, it will come as a surprise. I know people who thought things were great on Monday and were being escorted from their desks on Friday afternoon. Honestly, you just never know.   

In today's video post I go through what you should have in place to avoid being blindsided in the event of a lay-off.  These are some tips that will help you jumpstart your job search so you don't end up in the ranks of the long-term unemployed. 

A couple of follow-up comments to the video:

I mention in the video the need to have contact information for your network. What I mean here is that you need to have this information accessible to you from a place outside of your job. If all of your contacts are in your work Outlook, you need to do something about that now.  You may not get a chance to access that info.

Related to this, make sure that you can access your LinkedIn account via a personal email address. You do this by going to Settings and then selecting "Edit/Add" next to "Primary Email account." Be sure to add a personal email address and then if you get laid off, make that your primary email. 

Finally, for your personal business/networking cards, you need to have your home contact information, not your work contact information on those cards. The point is that people are able to reach you outside of your previous employment. 

Additional Resources

• 6 Easy Steps to a Great Elevator Pitch---Via Tim Tyrell-Smith 
• Moo--My favorite place for business cards. 
• More on having multiple income streams

 

Reflections on Seth Godin and Career Resilience

 

Knowing that I've been doing a lot of writing and thinking about career resilience, fellow career coach Scott Woodard recently pointed me to a Seth Godin post on the topic. A few things from Seth's post stood out for me, further underscoring the points I've been trying to make here. 

First, he says:

Most of the time, we build our jobs and our organizations and our lives around today, assuming that tomorrow will be a lot like now.

 

This is something I see many of us doing--assuming that what has happened before will happen again. It's a big argument I get from people about the impact of technology on our jobs. They argue that we've always created more jobs when technology disrupted us before, so we should expect that to happen again. 

But if there's ONE thing we should have learned from the last few years, it's that tomorrow will NOT be like today. The only thing we can depend on is that we live in volatile times, which means that prediction specific events is getting harder and harder to do. 

Another quote:

Intentionally stripping away dependencies on things you can no longer depend on is the single best preparation to change.

This is a challenge for folks, I know. But it's necessary. Dependencies can get in the way of our ability to be resilient because they limit our opportunities to respond to changing circumstances.

Think carefully about what you are dependent on that you can no longer depend on. Jobs as your single source of income is one thing that comes to mind. Being rewarded for blind loyalty in the workplace is another . . 

Third key quote:

Invest in a network. When your neighbor can lend you what you need, it's far easier to survive losing what you've got. Cities and villages and tribes with thriving, interconnected neighborhoods find that the way they mesh resources and people, combined with mutual generosity, makes them more able to withstand unexpected change. And yes, the word is 'invest', because the connection economy thrives on generosity, not need. (my emphasis)

 

This is what I've been saying about Connecting as a key career resilience pattern. It's crucial. What Seth points out, though, is that it needs to be connection based on being generous, on sharing and paying it forward, not connection when you need something. It's relational, not transactional. 

Finally:

We're tempted to isolate ourselves from change, by building a conceptual or physical moat around our version of the future. Better, I think, to realize that volatility is the new normal.

Putting all your eggs in one basket and watching the basket really carefully isn't nearly as effective as the other alternatives. Not when the world gets crazy.

 

Isolation and trying to insulate yourself from change aren't going to work. Change is coming anyway and you won't be prepared. The "moat" approach is a recipe for disaster. 

Career resilience isn't about "putting all your eggs in one basket and watching that basket really carefully." It's about building the right patterns into your life now that will allow you to respond to a volatile future. The more we focus on our capacity to respond to change the better off we'll be. 

Career Resilience Success Story: A Guest Post

As I've been talking with people about the idea of career resilience, I've also started collecting stories of how these individuals have incorporated the patterns of resilience into their lives.

Over lunch a few weeks ago, one of my learning professional friends agreed to share her story (anonymously) through email. She's one of the many people I've talked to who is who is expressing her resilience by developing a small business with multiple income streams. She is a resilient entrepreneur. Here's her story:

A story of career resilience, or “I’m the greatest star…”

We are, in many ways, the stories we tell about ourselves. So when Michele asked me to share my story of career resilience, I hesitated. The career story I tell is not one of resilience or triumph over adversity; it’s one of choice and deliberate action. I don’t generally share the harsh details and existential pain I encountered along the way, but I instead stick with a narrative – also true – of a satisfying and successful career built on self-reflection and deep knowledge and skill building.

I decided to tell my story anonymously because I don’t necessarily want to be seen as a resilient person; I prefer to be judged on my current skills and accomplishments. But for this purpose, I’ll tell some of the parts of the story that are balled up and tossed in the wastebasket – not forgotten, but not in the story either.

In a 30-year career that has also been marked with accomplishments, I have encountered just about every set-back you might name. I have been fired, laid off, reorganized out of a job, demoted, and pushed into “retirement” in a role shuffle. I have had to keep “proving myself” for new bosses even though I kept the same job.

I can clearly remember tears of despair and frustration during some commutes, and I can still feel the sting and shock of surprisingly negative performance reviews. I have wrestled with the hard questions… How did I get here? How could this happen to me? What do I do now?

Here’s the main thing. I’m still standing, and currently enjoying the work I do every day. (It’s a shame how few people can say that.) Moreover, I have a solid reputation in my field (on a national level) and people who I deeply respect also deeply respect me. I have worked very hard to ensure that set-backs don’t keep me down for long, and I have refused to let others define me. Along the way, I have indeed relied on – and had opportunity to fine tune – my career resilience.

When Michele discussed her career resilience patterns with me, they resonated on many levels. I am happy to share some stories to underscore how these patterns can help others gain some resilience as well.

Clarifying

The most rewarding step I’ve taken in my career is to get very clear on what my talents are and what I want to be contributing in my work life. By analyzing what makes me energized and what brings me down, I have been able to gain perspective on my skills and come to a deep understanding of the ways I might apply them in how I make my living. I know what kind of work gets me in the “flow” state – and I know the strengths that I contribute to that work as well as the weak areas that I need to mitigate along the way.

Another critical, mental-health-supporting bit of clarifying is that I have developed my own standard of excellence. I know my field very well, and can define what quality work looks like – and so I am much better able to respond when others might try to tear me down. I certainly listen carefully to constructive feedback, but I am also able to recognize when those giving direction don’t share my standards and perspective – which puts their feedback in a different light.

Connecting

Being an introvert, this pattern is actually tricky for me. But I have learned to initiate invitations for lunch, to plan ways to start conversations, and to reach out to those with whom I think I might have a mutually beneficial relationship. I have to set goals for myself so that I don’t let too much time go by without expanding my network and staying in touch with contacts.

The best advice I’ve gotten in this regard is to be generous. I don’t worry so much about how a relationship with another person might benefit me – I try to do what I can to help others – to listen, to share resources, to offer advice, and to make connections if possible. You don’t have to believe in karma to endorse this as a good strategy– studies show that helping others does come back around in a positive way.

Creating

Like Michele, I think we have to get better at creating jobs for ourselves. In the last turn of events, I took a HUGE risk to go out on my own because I knew deep in my heart the kind of work I wanted to be doing, and I knew that I could best be doing that work in my own consulting practice.

It’s not the first time I’ve invented my own job. I created the department that I worked in for ten years, and the role was very unique – I don’t expect to ever find it on a job board. For a time, I was also able to create a “portfolio career” – a combination of part time jobs that added up to the right balance of different kinds of work that I wanted to pursue. These things don’t always last though; either the organization changes, or my own needs change. So I try to keep myself open and ready to create new opportunities along the way. Even now, I have my mind and heart open for new possibilities.

I have also tried to create a rich and complete life that works for me… family time, work hours, leisure time, vacations, community involvement, spiritual practices, exercise, and so on. We have a tendency to think of “work life” and “personal life” as if we have two lives to live… and we have just the one. I’ve learned it’s important to take time to craft a way of living that suits me.

Coping

I imagine my standard coping mechanisms are much the same as other people, although I am an introvert so they tend to be more sedate strategies. I escape into reading books, and can sit for hours absorbed in a good story. I love walking – especially at the beach, along the riverfront, or around the paths of a local park. Walking clears my head, and I try to get out almost every day. I love spending time with my family and friends, and getting out of the house (and home office) to see other people and recharge my batteries.

I have to say, though, that when my resilience is really being tested, I cope best with Barbra Streisand blaring on my car radio. Sing along with me: “I’m the greatest star. I am by far, but no one knows it…” “Nobody, no nobody is going to rain on my parade.” “Why settle for just a piece of sky?” Seriously, having those small snatches of lyrics playing in my mind has gotten me through many a dark day. They injected just that small bit of mental fortitude that made clarifying, connecting, and creating possible. 

Clarifying Your Career Path: Breaking Destructive Career Patterns

Patterns, not problems, will ruin your business. . . “Problems aren’t the issue. Problems are the work.” 

            --Dr. Henry Cloud

As I've been thinking and writing about career resilience, one of the main points I've been emphasizing is that resilience is about the patterns we build into our lives.

We tend to think of our careers as being very event-based, but in reality, the events we experience are a product of the patterns we've created in our careers. When we have positive patterns, we are more likely to experience positive career events. When our patterns are negative, then we will have problems.

This post from Dan Rockwell on breaking destructive business/leadership patterns go me thinking more about the issue of career resilience as a series of patterns. The quote above, from Henry Cloud, is from Dan's post and I think it applies equally to our careers.

Here's what I know for sure:

It's not the individual problems in our careers that will break us. It's the patterns we've set up in our lives that will be our undoing. 

Three Typical Destructive Career Patterns

In my work with people, I continuously see three persistent patterns of destructive behavior:  

• Having no career goals beyond those set for us by our current job. This creates a pattern of dependency on our company and supervisors that can make us stale and irrelevant when the world shifts. We focus on becoming really good at the job we have today, only to find that it's no longer needed and no one else wants someone with those skills. 

• Living in a career silo. All of our connections are in one industry. Any reading or professional development we engage in is related to our narrow industry and occupation. To the extent that we become aware of things happening in other industries or occupations, we automatically tell ourselves "well this won't impact me or my field." Career siloes keeps us blind to the developments happening in other areas that eventually will impact our own work. They also put a career straitjacket on us, limiting our options when change eventually comes. 

• Crisis-managing our careers. There are two times when I'm most likely to hear from someone about their career development--when they are so crushingly unhappy with their jobs that they can't take another day and when they've been laid off or fired. I rarely (if ever) hear from people when their careers are going reasonably well. Yet one thing I've learned in therapy (which applies in most other parts of life too) is that crisis management doesn't work. It just makes us lurch from crisis to crisis. We do our best work  when things are relatively stable and we aren't feeling afraid or anxious. 

These three patterns are not the patterns of career resilience. They are patterns that lead to career rigidity. And career rigidity is the last thing you need in today's economy. Inflexible people and inflexible careers are a recipe for disaster when the landscape changes so quickly.

Breaking Your Destructive Patterns

So how to break destructive patterns?

First, you have to be aware that patterns are in play. Look at your career thus far and ask yourself if you are managing it according to one or more of these destructive patterns. Specifically, ask yourself:

• What are my career goals? To what extent are these goals tied up with my current job and/or my current company? If I lost my job tomorrow, how would those goals change? 

• How siloed is my career? Am I connected to people in other industries/occupations? Do I read and learn broadly? Do I try to expose myself to many experiences and communities? 

• When am I most likely to think about my career and do things to actively manage it? Do I do this all the time or is it only when "big" things happen, like when I'm unhappy or I'm worried that I'll lose my job? 

Spend some time really considering these questions, looking at previous career experiences and how these patterns might have contributed to their creation. Try using the Career Stepping Stones activity in conjunction with these questions. 

Once you have a clear picture of the extent to which you've been engaging in these more destructive patterns, start looking for ways to change your habits and bring in new, more positive patterns. In particular, look at how you can find ways to incorporate the patterns of career resilience into your work and life. How can you focus on Clarifying, Connecting, Creating and Coping on a regular basis? 

Your final step is to actually implement new behaviors in support of these more positive patterns.  Don't just think about what you could do differently. Actually DO things differently. Awareness is not enough. Planning is not enough. Change only comes when you act on what you're thinking. 

As part of this implementation phase, it's important to connect with other people who are working on the same sorts of changes. Often it's the people we are currently connected to who will hold us back from changing our patterns. They worked as connections for us in our old ways of being, but they may no longer be our best companions for this new career work we want to do. We need support and encouragement to persist and that often comes from connecting with new groups of people. This will have the added benefit of building one of your resilience patterns--Connecting. 

Here's what I've found as I work to build my own career resilience. You cannot control all of the career events you will experience in your life, but you can create patterns that will minimize destructive events and the impact of those events on your career.

Remember, it's not the problems that will kill you. It's the patterns you've created that lead to those problems that will be your undoing. 

Laid Off? Don't Put Off That Job Search!

There are two labor markets nowadays. There's the market for people who have been out of work for less than six months, and the market for people who have been out of work longer.--The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

 

Many laid off workers I know decide they want to "take a break" in between jobs, especially if they got some severance. Big mistake!

In today's job market you simply can't afford to do that. Too many potential employers are only interested in you if you're currently employed or have only recently been laid off. 

Here's a money quote from an article in the Atlantic on some research into the impact of long-term unemployment on your ability to find a new job:

As long as you've been out of work for less than six months, you can get called back even if you don't have experience. But after you've been out of work for six months, it doesn't matter what experience you have. Quite literally. (my emphasis) There's only a 2.12 percentage point difference in callback rates for the long-term unemployed with or without industry experience. That's compared to a 7.13 and 8.95 percentage point difference for the short-and-medium-term unemployed. This is what screening out the long-term unemployed looks like. In other words, the first thing employers look at is how long you've been out of work, and that's the only thing they look at if it's been six months or longer. (my emphasis) 

 

That's right. The longer you are unemployed, the harder it is to find a job. In fact, your best likelihood for finding a job comes in the first few weeks after you've been laid off. That's when your skills are freshest and when people are most willing to help you out. 

I'm in the process of working on a series of posts about things you need to do when you get a lay-off notice, but here's the one piece of advice I want you take right now:

If you lose your job, your # 1 priority needs to be finding another one, ASAP. 

Don't take a break to rejuvenate. Don't take time off to figure out your next move. Don't say "I'll take the summer to be with the kids and then look for a job in the fall." You. Will. Be. Sorry.

Even if you think you want to start a business, I still encourage you to put some time into a job search. You don't know how your self-employment efforts are going to go and believe me, it's easier to start a new business when you're not freaking out about how you're going to pay your electric bill. 

I've worked with too many people who have put off job searching until it was too late. You cannot afford to lose a single day in this process. The time to look for a new position is yesterday.