Pivotal Choices Coaching

How to Start a “Must-Have” List for Greater Job Satisfaction

If you are looking at what comes next on your career path, look back over the choices you have made in the past.  Start with the degree/major your chose in college and come forward.  Take note of the first job that you chose.  Was it in the field you studied in college?  What did you consider when you chose that job? 

As you assess the career choices you have made, what do you consider as pivotal along the way?  What were turning points?  Do you feel an aliveness as you consider any particular choice or step? 

Recently I was talking with a client about what had brought him from college through various jobs to where he is now.  As he got to the point of talking about his current job—the one he doesn’t want to keep—his energy level increased and his voice became animated. 

While this job may not be his dream job, clearly something about the current experience energizes him.

If you feel particularly alive at one point in the recounting of your career path, stay in the moment and take note of the learning that’s available there for you.

More than likely, you’ve identified a “must-have” component for your next job.

Let me know how this exercise works for you. 

I would be glad to share more tips and thoughts with you.  I invite you to visit my website at www.nwcoaching.com, and while you're there, please sign up for my newsletter.

Small Changes Can Add Up to A Big Life

A brilliant, creative client has been working toward a long-term goal.  It’s been challenging for her, but she has kept going.  She thinks of herself as a tortoise, slow and steady.

Being focused on a goal for a long period has had the effect of blinding her to the pleasures that await her.  She has started to forget the possibilities that can be ahead for her.

Recently, she made a change from one fairly staid locality to a lively area, and it has made all the difference.  She refers to her previous area as “mini-van city.” She is quick to say that people who move there and live there have made good choices—for them.  She, however, had forgotten her cosmopolitan side and all of the choices that are available to her because of her strengths and interests.

Interestingly, she had resisted this move, and finally gave in after much prodding from her partner.

This relatively small shift has reawakened her.  She’s still the tortoise, moving toward her goal, but she now sees the good life that’s ahead for her.

Making changes, making mistakes, making small choices can all add up to the life that she had meant to live. 

What Was Your #1 College Choice?

Many of my clients are working on choosing what comes next in their professional and personal lives.  When I ask them about key points or pivotal choices in their lives, they rarely speak of getting into a college.

They may talk about a particular professor who mentored them or their becoming interested in a particular field of study, but seldom do they even speak of how important it was that they get into a particular school.

My clients’ infrequent mention of their undergraduate school is in direct contrast to the importance attached in much of the US on a young person’s admittance into a particular school. 

This past week an acquaintance from the Midwest called while he was taking his 16-year-old child on the college tour.  This so-called college tour is a pseudo-pilgrimage to Ivy League and 7 Sister schools on the US East Coast. 

The pressure to gain entrance into one of these schools has brought about a systematized process, not unlike training for a marathon.  There are certain procedures that Ivy-hopeful high school students seem compelled to take—the prerequisite balance of IB/AP classes, the perfect types and number of volunteer activities, the requisite travel to countries that are off the beaten pathway, and then the application process, which may include the help of an editor, and a video included with the submitted application. 

The choice of a college is only one of the many important choices one will make.  There are many pivotal choices where learning takes place.  With so much emphasis on college entrance, I wonder if the opportunities for learning from the many other small pivotal points during the high school years may be missed.

Fall for me always brings up possibilities of change and learning.  The fall one goes to college is indeed a pivotal point, but the location of that college—which college it is—may not be nearly as important as we were led to believe.
 

Giant, Oversized XL Choices

In this Pivotal Choices Coaching blog, I will shine a light on choices that seem to mean so much and also on those choices that, at the time, seem to be fairly insignificant.

Pivotal Choices are fertile fields. 

Huge, oversized choices look like turning points even when we’re far afield.  Those are the big ones that are right in the middle of our path.  We struggle with those, worrying about the best way to proceed, and sometimes we get really stuck and mired down. 

When we’re sweaty and muddy from wrestling with the Big Turning Point,  we often overlook the small choices that are important for so many reasons.

Taking any kind of action can help us break out of that stuck place.  You never know what small action could set you loose.