Jay Cross, one of my favorite learning experts, announced on his blog last week that he has a "new muse": For the better part of forty years, my work has focused on adult learning. I’ve strived to make learning at work more effective, relevant, enjoyable, and cost-effective. Today I am shifting direction. My new muse is well-being. I'm intrigued by how and why people make the career transitions that they... Read more →

The most common career advice around is to "follow your passion." But for some people, this is easier said than done. They may have lost sight of their passions or they may have a bunch of them. Sometimes it's a matter of re-framing things. So here are a few other strategies for re-defining your career that may work better than "follow your bliss." Focus on a Problem Maybe instead of... Read more →

Sometimes I find that when I'm stuck or I'm working with people who are stuck, what keeps us in the same place is that we're asking ourselves the wrong question. We don't realize we are asking this question, but we are. This is the question we're stuck in: What's wrong with me? This post by Andrea Sher about her struggle with infertility reminded me of how often we can get... Read more →

Allison Jones has a great blog post today on places where she finds career inspiration. She says: When it comes to career advice, it is very easy to focus on tactics: how to write a resume; how to use social media to find a job; how to network. However, in the time that I have been blogging about nonprofit careers, I have realized that while tactics are important, they make... Read more →

One of the hardest questions for me to answer is "what do you do for a living?" Unlike most people I know, I don't have one, simple bite-sized nugget to describe what I do. Depending on who you are, I might tell you that I do one or more of the following: Help people work through career transitions and develop their career/professional development plans. Work with government agencies and nonprofit... Read more →

This morning I'm re-reading Steven Pressfield's Do the Work. It's become a go-to-book when I need to remind myself how to start creative projects and move through the massive resistance I face whenever I want to bring something to life. Lately, I've been sifting through various options for where I want to go next, noticing that I've lost some of the passion that had fed what felt like awesome ideas... Read more →

I've noticed that for many of us, careers are binary things--we do this job OR that one. I can work for someone else OR I can work for myself. Twenty years ago, even ten years ago, this either/or thinking made a lot of sense in a more stable world with relatively limited options. For good or ill, that world has changed though. There is little place for binary thinking. We... Read more →

One thing I've noticed in my 15+ years of helping people figure out what they want to be when they grow up is how uncomfortable we are with questions. Despite the fact that the questions we ask inevitably shape the results and opportunities we find, we are so focused on answers, we don't pay attention to asking the right questions. Nor do we pay attention to how our questions can... Read more →

Our instinct is to try to ignore what’s going wrong so it doesn’t bring us down all the time. But really, the key to improving what we don’t like in our lives is to pay attention to it. By paying attention we can’t help but make it better. --Penelope Trunk For the past several months, I've been avoiding mirrors. I noticed my clothes getting tighter, but I didnt' really want... Read more →

A post from Chris Brogan has me thinking this morning: Jacqueline brought me iced coffee a few weeks ago, and I commented that it tasted especially delicious. She said, “I used two sugars instead of one or none, the way you usually say you like it.” As is often the case with me, I ended up thinking about a bit more than how many sugars I take in my coffee.... Read more →