With COVID-19, we are navigating a shared change and very individual transitions.

Yes, there is a difference between the two.

They may feel the same, but they are very different. Change is external and transition is the internal process we experience in response to change. There are two books, both written by William Bridges, that I use when I work with clients in career and life transition. And this pandemic is certainly a career and life transition that none of us have experienced before.

• The Way of Transition – A more personal account of Bridges’ own experiences with change and transition.
• Transition: Making Sense of Life’s Changes – Focused on the meat and potatoes of the three stages without so much personal background.

“Change is something that happens to people, even if they don’t agree with it. Transition, on the other hand, is internal: it’s what happens in people’s minds as they go through change. Change can happen very quickly, while transition usually occurs more slowly.” ~William Bridges

COVID-19 has changed us all. And, we are all transitioning in our very personal ways.

Using Bridges’ model, there are three stages of transition. Endings, The Neutral Zone, and New Beginnings.

• ENDINGS: Loss, letting go, saying goodbye. If you are here, we talk about the importance of honoring what is ending. I’ve had clients plant trees, bury tokens, and unsubscribe to industry news to mark the ending of a chapter. Marking the end is necessary before a new beginning can start. 
• THE NEUTRAL ZONE: Characterized by chaos, instability, disorientation. Sound familiar? And, also present in massive quantities in this zone are creativity, innovation, and possibility. If you are here, this state is temporary. The most important thing we can do is be compassionate with ourselves, find resources, support systems, and use mindful strategies to be open to the innovation and creativity that shares this space.
• NEW BEGINNINGS: This is a phase of reorientation, acceptance, and identification with a new way of being. It may be that you accept the new that has replaced the old or that you see a sense of who you are becoming on the other side. If you are here, there may be relief that you’ve navigated through the uncertainty, there also may be new anxiety, excitement, and awareness that change may come again.

The change that the pandemic has forced upon us is shared. The transition we experience individually is very personal. Everyone moves through these stages at their own pace. I believe the more resources we have, the better.

These books are my go-tos. Bridges’ down-to-earth, practical concepts can help us navigate this shared yet very individual experience.

We know of the glass ceiling. Ever heard of the glass wall?

A young woman stood on one side of a glass wall, watching her company’s business event happening on the other side. She was in there moments ago with her heels and suit. 

But pretending that she cared about the corporate blah-blah-blah wasn’t her jam. She left to get some air and caught the scene through the glass that now separated her from the event – and her fake self from her real self.

After years of deciphering clues from many glass wall moments, she fakes it no more.

If you’ve had your own glass wall moments – looking in, not feeling connected, not wanting to be connected – ask yourself:

• What’s the scene I’d be excited to rejoin?
• Who are the people, what is the environment, vibe, dress, emotion from that scene?
• What are people talking about? Making? Creating? Building? Solving?

And maybe even

• How can I create my own scene and invite others in?

Shatter the glass wall. Live you genuine.

I can help you do that. It’s my jam. 

Is Your Purpose Unfolding During the Coronavirus Pandemic?

Sometimes we follow an instinct or our intuition, like an internal whisper, to make a career or life change and we aren’t clear on exactly why we are compelled to honor that whisper. Sometimes, we find value and meaning right away. Sometimes we struggle. And, sometimes, that “Big Why” is revealed much later…like during a global pandemic.

I am launching a video interview series and want to talk to people who are fully realizing the value of their shift during the Coronavirus crisis. I want to know how your your path unfolded. 

Here are two short ( 2-min) videos explaining the Honor the Whisper Project. Forgive the rough cut on the 2nd when my dog generously contributed to the audio!

Let’s create something together! Email Barbara@LiveYourGenuine.com or connect on LinkedIn to share your story.

Jonah Hill, actor-director-producer, was interviewed on the Howard Stern Show in October 2018 (I’m an unapologetic fan since the early ’90s) and something Jonah said about doing work he loves resonated so deeply with me that I made note of it and posted a meme. Little did I know that one month later, I would stumble across an opportunity to immerse myself in a brain-based coaching program to learn more about how creating and connecting forms the framework for building our capacity at work and in life.

Capacity. What is that anyway? Is it the amount something can hold? Is it output? It can be both; holding and doing. We can apply the word to how much water an unyielding glass can hold before it overflows or how many parts a machine can produce in one hour but capacity interests me most when applied to humans.  We aren’t always great at recognizing our potential for growth. Rigid and limiting visions of ourselves and can allow output, our “doing”, to be sabotaged by what we tell ourselves about our capacity.

You are more than your limited perception of you and your capacity is greater than you realize.

As a coach who works with clients in major career and life transition, I know that capacity for finding solutions, identifying new possibilities, and dealing with setbacks increases when people are in a builder mindset. Just as capacity can be described as holding and doing, getting to a builder mindset boils down to creating and connecting. Begin by paying attention to these three things:

1. Notice if you are separating more than connecting – with yourself and with others.

Humans are hard-wired to connect. When we rely only on ourselves or are not connecting with our genuine self in meaningful ways, we are limiting our awareness and possibilities. When you notice you are going it alone ask yourself questions like Who might have new ideas about this? And who else? If I asked my real self, what would she say? Who else could be on this team?

2. Pay attention to whether you are reacting more than you are creating.

Reacting is a fight/flight/freeze response and our best decisions and solutions aren’t born here. When you notice you’re reacting to everything “out there” or waiting for the next shoe to drop or reacting only to the needs of others and not your own, ask yourself or your team What possibilities does this challenge present? What opportunities do you see? What part of this can be influenced?

3. Take deliberate action to move on the scale toward creating and connecting.

Move away from separating and reacting. Make the call, send the email, schedule the meeting, wake up 15 minutes early, write the blog post…DO something to move that needle.

What you will find is that connecting leads to creating and creating leads to connecting and it is in this cycle that we build our capacity for almost anything life and business throws at us.

Want to learn more? Connect here to learn more about what we could create together!

“I didn’t realize just how much of a beating my self-confidence was taking from being in the wrong profession.”

This was an email from a recent client, who successfully executed a complete career change (functional skills and industry change).

You are more than your limited perception of you, and your capacity is greater than you realize. This is why I became a coach. Although I couldn’t articulate it in that way 5 years ago, I knew that personal growth was where I belonged, and it made sense to use my understanding of the hiring process and my interest in career development as a focus.

Five years later, I am more deeply in love with the coaching process and the impact it can have when done well. I know, because I’ve been in the seat of the coachee. The transformation I have experienced due to my continued training with some of the best coaches out there fuels a perpetual fire to help reveal people to themselves…their beauty, strength, wisdom, and worth.

My wish is that you find a way to fuel whatever fires YOU up so you can begin to #LiveYourGenuine in 2019!  Happy Holidays!

Thrilled to be tapped by The Morning Call, Lehigh Valley’s leading newspaper, for this piece in the Sunday career section. Thank you for great questions!

Read here: CareerWellnessInTheMorningCall

            “Meaningful work, for me, is about helping others find their meaningful work.” ~Barbara Berger, CCC

If you want to brainstorm ideas for your next career move, contact me at barbara@CareerWellnessPartners.com

 

 

Look back over your career. How did you land where you are? Chances are you’ll be able to identify a random meeting, an unplanned collaboration, or chance event that represents a critical moment that helped you on your way to where you are right now.

Pooneh Mohajer, founder of Hard Candy and two other startups, talks about career serendipity:

It’s funny, we have these plans for ourselves, these well-laid plans, and then you meet someone or are influenced by something or exposed to something; and we end up going in another direction, which is great.

Read the full Inc.com article here.

Notice serendipitous events. Be mindful enough to sense your gut reaction to them. Be brave enough to act on them. That’s how to create a brilliantly fulfilling career.

There is something incredibly rewarding about working they way I want to work, not because someone is telling me what to do or how to do it. Something so fantastically different about working my own gig and knowing that the compensation is a result, from start to finish, of my own efforts. Not to mention that I value the money so much more because I’m in a helping/teaching/giving role which is where my gut knows, and past career experiments show, I belong.

There is something so decadent about having the freedom to structure my work day as I choose. It might mean the ability to take a break to eat the last piece of cheesecake for a mid-morning snack (I just did that), or thinking through a presentation while taking the dog for a walk (much better option than the cheesecake.)

But that’s me.

Does it mean I sometimes work at midnight, or during the evening between my boys’ baseball games, and on weekends? Yes, it does. There’s a cost to every decision. However, for me, this way works best.

I love my offices. I have a home office where I work with candles lit, or incense burning, or loud music, or soft music or Howard Stern on XM. I talk to (and answer) myself. At my other office, where I see clients and pay rent and get my dose of human interaction, it’s tiny and cozy and it’s me. (Sans Howard Stern and the out-loud personal dialogue.)

I value freedom, and variety, and days that I get to structure any way I like. Some days I’m seeing clients all day, some days I’m delivering workshops, other days I’m writing resumes, or LinkedIn profiles, or blog posts. I love options.

But that’s me.

What about you? Do you need quiet? Do you need lots of social interaction? Do you need tight deadlines to perform your best? Do you want to walk away from the day at 5:00 and not have to think about it until you punch in again the next morning? Do you need to be outside?

There is no one way, no way more important than another, to work. There is only your best way and you need to know what it is so you can help make a well-informed decision about your career options.

If you know that you need structure and clear-cut, specific guidelines during your time at work, then that is a huge piece of the puzzle for you. And when you know something like that about yourself, and how you work best, you begin to make choices. Better choices. Aligned choices. Choices that lead to career wellness.

How do you find out what your best way is? You experiment.

Pamela Slim talks about “thinking like a scientist” in her book Body of Work:  Finding the Thread That Ties Your Story Together.

When talking about what makes or breaks an entrepreneurial journey, Slim writes;

What I mean specifically is a willingness to create a working hypothesis, test it, observe with curiosity, ask why, tweak, retest, observe, et cetera, until you are satisfied.

Experimentation is not only a journey for entrepreneurs, I believe it is how we need to view career development as a whole. Anyone’s career. We are all experimenting in our own way, to find our individual best way, to work.

Take some time to reflect on past experiences, pay attention to current situations, and make a list of times when you know you preformed at your best.

It’s not for the weak; this experimentation thing. There are lots of hypotheses that deliver disappointing results. When this happens, add the experience to your list, break down what you learned about yourself, and experiment again. And again.

Keep experimenting until you notice that one of your experiments leads to unexpected peace, surprising happiness and an increased feeling of overall wellbeing.

When that happens, celebrate with cheesecake.

He’d rather walk!

cheesecake photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10506540@N07/5806546039