Category: Improving Yourself

Last week, dealing with discouragement and confusion, I sat in meditation and heard the phrase, ‘Keep Choosing Love’. I was inspired to write the following prose.

As we celebrate not only the life, but the Spirit, of Martin Luther King Jr., I offer these words to carry into your work and your everyday life. May these words remind you of King’s life work that taught us to love and forgive more deeply.

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Keep Choosing Love”

If you are carrying a heavy weight of resentment, Choose Love and Forgiveness

If you are holding on to grudges and hatred, Choose Love and Understanding

If you are carrying sorrow or doubt, Choose Love and Faith

If you are hanging on to anger or pain, Choose Love and Compassion

If you are having troubles letting go of worry, Choose Love and Hope

If you are living in fear, Choose Love and Support

If you want to expand yourself, Choose Love and Peace

If you want to offer the best of Who You Are, Choose Love and Joy

If there ever was a time for healing, hope, and understanding, It is Now!

In the face of fear, anger, worry, stress, frustration, hopelessness:

Keep Choosing Love

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Linda is an author, speaker, coach, and consultant. Go to her website www.lindajferguson.com to read more about her work, view video clips of her talks, and find out more about her book “Path for Greatness: Spirituality at Work” available on Amazon.

Amber, a young professional at a recent workshop, asks…

“I spend a lot of my time and energy trying to build my ‘toolkit’, gaining experience and knowledge in as many different areas as possible. I hear many emerging leaders say they sometimes feel like we are stretched an inch deep and a mile wide. Are we more marketable as experts in one area or being well-rounded. What is the best career path?”

Amber, it depends. In fact it changes over the course of a career. For example:

Generalist

In the beginning of one’s career you’re asked to do everything (your job title could be program associate or junior engineer). When you start out it’s important to understand all the different areas so you can decide where you best fit. It also builds your network within the company which will be crucial in developing your career.

Specialist

Mid career you’re asked to specialize. The organization needs people who have or will develop an expertise in specific areas (finance, human resources, marketing, fund raising, etc.) Specialization leads to expertise, which means you are building a portfolio of functional knowledge and competency. Therefore, a career option is to move up the ladder in your area of expertise.

Back to a Generalist

When you are promoted to a senior leader you have to be a generalist again. You need to keep tabs on everything from budgets to leadership development to media relations, etc. What’s important at this level is to know the big picture, to be able to connect the dots, to see the interdependency between the different functional areas or departments. You have to move from your functional head into a strategic perspective – where is the company going and how should we get there?

Bottom Line: Your Career Goals

At any given point in your career, you have to ask yourself where you want to eventually end up and which next step is most likely to get you there. Perhaps you need to stay in your functional area to gain greater depth before moving on. Or make a lateral move to another division to build a broader knowledge of the company’s operations. In reality, there’s no one best career path. It depends.

Readers, what do you think? Let me know of your career experience as being a specialist or generalist or both.

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

In the issue of Parade Dec. 26, 2010 it featured Oprah and her biggest dream yet – her new OWN cable network. In the issue she talks about the power of her name. She shared how at first when she was a child she felt lonely that no one had her name. She said she would watch Romper Room hoping every time that they would “see her” and call out her name. It never happened. She reflects, “I would have to say that my deepest feeling about myself growing up, the word that would describe how I felt, would be lonely. And alone. It added to the feeling that nobody’s like me.” She shifts into the present and adds playfully, “now that’s a pretty good feeling!”

Talk about being one of a kind, someone who is known around the world by just one letter even – O! Oh, how unique Oprah is. She has created her life by following the unique mission God has given her to be herself and live her best life.

I’ll explore three symbols that are often linked to one-of-a-kind.

Heartbeat

The phrase walk to the beat of your own drummer is one that I’m sure you are familiar with. But did you know that each of us actually does have our own unique heartbeat? Our hearts all beat differently both physically and figuratively. When we are expressing our spirit, the core of who we are, is when we are in tune with our heart beats. What makes your heart sing or beat? Cari Vollmer, referred to the as the passion to profit mentor, has found that her heart beats faster when she follows her own brilliance and helps other soul-inspired women find their brilliance.

Snowflake

This is pertinent for me right now as I live in Minnesota and we’ve had a lot of snow already this season, more than normal! As I see mounds of snow everywhere, it’s hard for me to imagine how each snowflake can be unique and different. I think of this symbol as how we tap into our uniqueness during different seasons of our lives. One season in our life we were known for something and another we were known differently. This year I’ll be celebrating my 20^th high school reunion. If you asked many of my other fellow classmates, yes all 40 of them, many would probably say that my uniqueness was my enthusiasm. I loved sports and showed my enthusiasm on the court or track. Now, 20 years later, my uniqueness has changed seasons into one of being enthusiastic about helping people get to the heart of what matters most.

Fingerprint

Our fingerprints are another way that we are unique and leave our marks. This is how criminals are identified and this is how we can be identified with what we touch in life. Each of us who choose to listen to our heartbeats will have the opportunity to express our spirits in a way that is unique only to us. How we live out our spirit is through the fingerprints we leave along the way. Oprah is leaving her fingerprint on the legacy of 25 years of the Oprah Winfrey show to now her expressing her uniqueness through her OWN network.

Share with us how are you uniquely leaving your mark on the world?

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Janae Bower is an inspirational speaker, award-winning author and training consultant. She founded Finding IT, a company that specializes in personal and professional development getting to the heart of what matters most. She started Project GratOtude, a movement to increase gratitude in people’s lives.

What nine months does for the embryo
Forty early mornings
Will do for your growing awareness
— Jelaluddin Rumi

Starting on Jan. 15^th people around the world will set their intention for personal and planetary peace. They will begin their mornings with 40 minutes of daily spiritual practice and continue this for 40 days. I invite you to join us as well in this “Winter Feast for the Soul”.

Winter Darkness

Perhaps you already start your day with some sort of meditation, prayer, journaling, or exercise. “Winter Feast for the Soul” invites you to go deeper during the dark winter months. Winter is a time of inner reflection, introspection, burrowing, and slower movement. This time is not an interlude between the fall and spring activity. It is a time that provides richness in the stillness. Time for quiet, inner reflection can be healing, holy, and transformative.

Setting the intention to add 40 minutes to your morning routine may not seem like a lot of fun. At least that’s how I felt when I first heard the idea two years ago. Yet I found that those extra minutes in the dark and quiet really did set my day with a better tone. By the time I got to work, I felt more grounded, calmer, open, and receptive.

Spiritual Practice

Your early morning practice can include anything that will help you clear your mind, find greater inner peace, expand your focus, or achieve more clarity. You can listen to peaceful music, meditation tapes, nature sounds. You can exercise if it’s meditative or introspective for you such as yoga, stretching, jogging, or walking. You can start a dream journal, draw, knit, watch the birds in your yard. The intention is to engage in some sort of introspection or spiritually oriented activity that will draw you closer to your Higher Power, the Source of your being.

From this place of inner peace and stillness, you’ll be able to carry that mindset and mood into your work. Imagine how much calmer, quieter, more deliberate you’ll be from this place of inner stillness. Things that upset you will not seem to jar you as much. Situations that seem like obstacles may reveal new possibility. You may see the path more clearly for decisions that have eluded you. As you find your own inner peace, you can then bring that peace to others at work.

Group Experience

You can gather to do a meditation or prayer with a friend who also is participating. I’ve found that I have enjoyed a group to do some sort of meditation once a week or every other week as a shared experience. Afterwards we provided time to reflect on the experience of our daily practice, to share what changes we’ve seen happen, to discuss what may be stirring over the 40 days.

There may even be a group in your community doing this. Go to the website to learn more:

The Mission of A Winter Feast for the Soul is to support individuals around the world in making a commitment to daily spiritual practice. A life grounded in daily practice is one that knows inner peace. It is that peace which will translate into peace throughout our lives and ultimately, to peace and healing for our planet.

We know that it only takes a few committed individuals to change the world. We are here to do that, and hope you will join us in this endeavor.

If you decide to do this practice, write here to let us know how you are experiencing it. If you have any tips or reflections on the benefits for you, please let us know.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Linda is an author, speaker, coach, and consultant. Go to her website www.lindajferguson.com to read more about her work, view video clips of her talks, and find out more about her book “Path for Greatness: Spirituality at Work” available on Amazon.

Branding is not only a marketing term to promote products. It can promote your career.

A strong career brand conveys your identity and distinctiveness as a professional or leader. It communicates the value you offer. If you have a weak or wrong brand, you will have a much harder time achieving your career goals and having the impact you want.

So how do you build a strong career brand?

1. Answer two important questions:

• What do you want to be known for?
  Start with a large list of adjectives that describe your skills and personality traits. Then narrow it down to 3 to 5 words or phrases.
• What results do you want to achieve in the next 12 months?
  Look ahead to the beginning of 2012, where do you want to be and what do you want to be doing?

2. Create your career brand.
Take the answers to the above two questions and put them into the following statement:”I want to be known for ______ so that I can ______”.

Here are two examples:
“I want to be known for my analytical ability to simplify complex information so that I can guide senior leadership in making the right decisions.”

“I want to be known for my leadership ability so that I can mobilize and coach my staff to exceed high performance standards.”

3. Determine if your career brand will work.

• Does this brand identity best represent who I am and what I do?
• Will it create value in the eyes of others (my boss, my clients, etc.?
• What possible risks and opportunities are there in exhibiting this brand?
• Do I need to change it or refine it to promote my career more effectively?

Are you on brand or off brand?

Now that you have a career brand, you must have the day-to-day discipline to make it real. Check with those around you to see if they perceive you as you wish to be seen? For example, if you say you’re flexible and approachable, do others find you so? Remember, a strong career brand takes time and effort to make it stick.

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

We’ve all had successes and even some failures in our career. What can we learn?

Here are words of wisdom from experienced leaders I interviewed for a career management presentation at a recent young professional conference.

Seven tips to guide your career.

1. Have big enough goals.
“Don’t pay any attention to those well-meaning naysayers who warn you that you can’t do it. You’re young, assume anything is possible, and then go out and do it.”

2. But choose strategically.
“Successful professionals don’t start out asking, what needs to be done? Rather, they ask, What is important and how can I and my team make a difference?”

3. Stop being the Lone Ranger.
“One of the most important things is to be humble enough to allow others to help you. We seem to need to come up with our own brilliant ideas. My career didn’t move forward until I was willing to listen to others, especially those who had more experience than I did.”

4. Don’t burn bridges along the way.
“Each profession may seem big – but, as you move up in your career, you come to realize how ‘small’ each really is. Something you said or done may comes back to haunt you.”

5. Pull the plug sooner than later.
“Sometimes to change a situation, you have to change the situation. Don’t be afraid to change people, expectations, goals as long as you’ve thought it through. There’s a saying, if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”

6. Swim in water over you head.
“You gotta do things outside your comfort zone. Seek out opportunities to learn, to lead, to live on the edge occasionally. It’s the only way to grow.”

7. Finally, money is not everything.
“A great salary doesn’t equate to happiness. It’s doing what you really enjoy. Remember, you’ll be living and working for many years – perhaps another 40. Make the most of them.”

What are some of your lessons learned in your career?

I would enjoy hearing from both young and seasoned professionals as well as leaders. I’ll compile your words of wisdom for a future blog.

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

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In order for us to express our spirit in the work that we do, we must carve out the time to do it. At the date of publishing this blog post, it’s the first week of the New Year. I don’t know about you, but I’m carefully deliberating how I’m going to best spend my time in 2011.

It seems that time is the one commodity that we all have an equal access to, yet many of us spend it so differently. How will you be spending your time? You will invest it by working on bringing you more financial, relational or spiritual success? Or will you be filling your time with miscellaneous fillers and wasters?

The Slight Edge

How you spend your time is a daily choice and decision to make. How we use our time, can give us that “slight edge” in life that we are all hoping for.

The idea of the slight edge is a powerful concept. According to Jeff Olson in the book The Slight Edge: Secret to a Successful Life, every decision you make, which you have 2,500 decisions a day to make, are either a slight error in judgment or a slight step in discipline. “The thing that will make all the difference between achieving the quality of life you want and settling for less than you deserve and desire, lies 100% in which of those little “insignificant” actions you choose to do. The slight edge is always working – either for or against you. It’s working in you right now, every day, hour and moment. We just need to be aware of it so that we can be conscious of it.”

In whatever way you decide to chose your time, my hope is that you will do so intentionally and consciously. To help give you that slight edge, here is a one-page worksheet I’ve created for you to download (Click here: TimeAnalysisWorksheet) that will help you analyze how you are spending your time based on the main roles in your work and life. It will help you analyze the amount of energy you exert and what type of attitude you have. By doing so this will help give you that slight edge to figure out the best way to invest your time this year!

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Janae Bower is an inspirational speaker, award-winning author and training consultant. She founded Finding IT, a company that specializes in personal and professional development getting to the heart of what matters most. She started Project GratOtude, a movement to increase gratitude in people’s lives.

Do you have great ideas but can’t seem to get people to listen?

A recent email from a frustrated manager who, like many of us, has great ideas but finds it difficult getting them accepted and implemented. Perhaps a boss is too busy putting out fires to pay attention. Or, in the give and take of a meeting, your suggestions get lost.

In her years of writing about successful leaders, Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School, states that “getting ideas off the ground requires personal credibility and power.” Here’s what she advises.

Four Influencing Strategies:

1. Showing up: The power of presence.
It’s a cliché but true that 90% of success in life comes from just showing up. Digital and other remote communications are efficient, but there’s much to be said for being there – face-to-face with others.

2. Speaking up: The power of voice.
It’s more than making noise. It’s being articulate, putting your ideas into words that get people to listen and see you as a leader. If you’re uncomfortable with public speaking, get a coach, take lessons, join Toastmasters and then stand up and do it.

3. Teaming up: the power of partnering.
As you move into leadership, you technical or business skills aren’t enough. Success, at this stage of your career, depends more on building good relationships inside and outside your organization. So start “playing with others”.

4. Not giving up: the power of persistence.
Everything can look like a failure in the middle. Keep at it, make mid-course adjustments and surprise the naysayers. All successful people have dealt with self-doubt, but they keep on going. So can you.

Career Success Tip

There have been excellent big ideas which couldn’t get off the ground because they lacked proper uplift and effort. On the flip side, really good small ideas have revolutionized our lives. What’s the difference? Perhaps it’s these four influencing strategies. What do you think?

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

Your mission this year is to step more fully into Who You Are.

You are not your job title

You are not your salary

You are not your career ladder

You will know Who You Are by how you respond to stress, greed, temptations, challenges, conflicts, opportunity. You will have opportunities to speak your Truth and to call someone on their bull bringing them back to their Truth. You will be able to show your vulnerability and accept the vulnerabilities of others.

You will get the chance to see who you came here to be. Discover your strengths and practice them daily.

Honor all the people who enter your workspace. Are you ready to honor your adversaries as great teachers, way-showers who can help you see more clearly Who You Are? They are there to help you see through your false self, your ego, your wants, to the clear brilliant being you really are.

You will have guides of various sorts. Stay open and alert to recognize them. Welcome them and allow them to show you what they know. In so doing you can use your gifts more fully.

Use your talents and gifts well and you will experience rewards beyond your imagination. Rewards of the heart await you. These are the true reasons for you doing what you do and being Who You Are.

There are great changes happening around you. Prepare yourself to step into your greatness as you are called to respond to these changes. Your power and your beauty will become sharper as you learn to use your gifts for a purpose greater than your small self. Direct your gifts to a larger vision than you have now. You will receive many blessings in doing so.

Good luck with this mission. It is an important one.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Linda is an author, speaker, coach, and consultant. Go to her website www.lindajferguson.com to read more about her work, view video clips of her talks, and find out more about her book “Path for Greatness: Spirituality at Work” available on Amazon.

My hope for you as 2010 comes to an end is that you will be inspired to be of even more service to others in 2011. Here are three quotes that have inspired me this year and hope that these reflections encourage all of us into leading a more service-focused upcoming year.

Happiness consists in giving and in serving others.

–Henry Drummond

Two main focuses that I had for my 2010 goals was giving and gratitude. I knew that if I kept these as a priority for my year, it would bring me and those I connect with more happiness. According to Cami Walker (author mentioned below) this is her formula for success too. “Giving mindfully and being actively grateful for all I am receiving has become a part of my daily spiritual practice.” Here are two ways that I practiced giving and gratitude.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

– Mahatma Gandhi

Giving. Around Thanksgiving I found out about this amazing woman Cami Walker and how she is being of service to others. Her book 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change your Life and her website www.29Gifts.org explains how she is giving to others. She found out that in her 30’s she was diagnosed with MS and soon her health and life was falling apart. A spiritual teacher encouraged her in the midst of this madness to stop focusing on herself and to give to others – 29 gifts in 29 days. Once Cami was ready to do this, it transformed her life. Her health, relationships and outlook on life improved. She continued her mission and gave gifts for a year straight, setting up the website and writing the book.

To challenge our family to remember that the holiday season is about giving, our family did the 29 days of giving challenge together starting Dec. 1. At least one of us as family would give a gift to someone each day. We are keeping a video blog of our giving. Some of the favorite gifts that we did included:

• my husband spending 2 hours snow-blowing (we live in Minnesota and have gotten a ton of snow already) three neighbors driveways (which his snow-blower broke after he was done)
• myself volunteering in my son’s first grade classroom teaching them how to write a book and then giving each of the students one of my books as they shared with me their special books they made
• my older son, Gavin (age 6), sharing with a classmate about how God is good when his classmate said that God only makes things worse in his life
• my middle son, Grant (age 4), giving compliments and making special pictures for others
• my youngest son, Garrett (age 14 months), giving joy to others with his excitement learning how to walk
• a special thank you to our letter carrier for all of his daily service

Today is December 29 – our last day of giving as a family. This entry is my gift to you today. And I want to say a special thank you to Linda Ferguson, co-host of this blog, for all the wonderful posts she has given all of us this year!

Do what you love, give it back in the form of service, and you will do more than succeed. You will triumph.

– Oprah

Gratitude. Sept. 13 is the day I started Project GratOtude a challenge to encourage others to increase gratitude in their lives and as a way for me to give back in the form of service of something that I love doing and learning about. The first four months of the challenge have been special, highlights include:

• The 300+ members who have joined the community from around the world and the dedicated members of the Dream Team also being of service to the project
• The inspirational resources, gratitude-related products and free gifts donated to our community
• Eight recorded interviews with experts on gratitude. One of the gifts of gratitude include the gift of education, in which our very own Carter McNamara is our expert. Carter has been in service to all of us for many years as he is the one who created the FREE management library in which millions of us are all benefiting from. You can listen to the 25-minute interview with him by clicking on the link below.

http://www.audioacrobat.com/play/W1QJLkPL

Share with us how you’ve been of service in 2010 and how you plan to do so in 2011!

 

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Janae Bower is an inspirational speaker, award-winning author and training consultant. She founded Finding IT, a company that specializes in personal and professional development getting to the heart of what matters most. She started Project GratOtude, a movement to increase gratitude in people’s lives.