When Life Fills In… Where Do You Start To Get Back On Track?

 “How do you make it all work?”  You work really hard all day and get home late. You’re tired.  There are personal e-mails to get to, maybe kids or a spouse that you’d like to spend some time with or maybe you’ve just got to catch up on housework, holiday events/shopping and read the paper. Life is filling in and it’s packed with lots of stuff to do. Life fills in so much that when the day is over, so are you.

Here’s another reality. You really want to forget the ordeal of having to look for a job, do all the research, networking, and just staying out there. It would really be nice to just take one thing off the “to do” list and continuing to search for the right job or the right role in your organization is high on the “stop doing” list.

You know the importance of continuing to spend time on your career but how? I want you to know you can make it all work. Here are four things you can do to continue to move forward and make it all work for you.

1)    Make a decision that success means flourishing. We’ve been taught that success is based upon a series of projects. Each project has a beginning and an end. We graduate from school – end of a project. We get a good job – end of a project. We work hard, get promoted – end of a project. Finishing each project is one more cornerstone of success, but how do we measure success when our work life conflicts with our personal values, lifestyle desires and the inevitable unexpected bumps, twists, and wrenches that shows up? If you learn how to flourish, then no matter how life unfolds, you’ll be equipped to succeed.

2)    Increase your self–awareness.  By increasing your self-awareness, you can make decisions that inspire and motivate you. You will also be crystal clear on how you can continuously make money doing what you love. That knowledge will always keep you flourishing no matter what happens.

3)    Flourishing and being successful requires full engagement. Recently a woman walked up to me after I finished my exercise workout. She said “how she admired me for working out year in and year out outside.” Then she said, “I’d really like to workout, but I can’t stand sweating”. As I reflected on her comment, I thought about how many of us want ease, but aren’t willing to do what it takes to have ease. You see, I workout not because I like it, but because it enables me to do more with ease. There isn’t one highly successful person who doesn’t practice the power of full engagement. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz wrote a book called “The Power of Full Engagement.” In it they spell out the keys to high performance and personal renewal. In a nutshell, “Full engagement requires drawing on four separate, but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.”

4)    Nurture your network of supportive friends, colleagues and associates. No one succeeds over the long run without the help and support of others. That is especially true in the 21^st century workplace. There are a few things to accept. One, your career will last longer than expected. Two, the skills required to flourish are ever changing and require us all to continually embrace learning. Three, highly successful people know how to use their network well in both good times and bad.

Take the pressure off. I offer a program called “The Leader’s Journey.” It’s for anyone who really wants to stop repeating behaviors that generate unwanted results. “The Leader’s Journey” isn’t about a title or position. It’s a way of thinking about your life and the decisions you make. It offers anyone the opportunity to learn how to flourish and achieve success regardless of life’s challenges. If you want to learn more about creating your own personal Leader’s Journey give me a call today.