Me, I went to a kind of “adult summer camp” on the Pacific Ocean at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California for 28 days to escape the confines of the virtual life. Living and working alone was killing my inspiration for Work from Within, and sapping my energy.

I opened my heart. I fed my body a dose of hard labor. And I was transformed.

Now, I am evolving a new, more vital and engaging vision for Work from Within.

Flash back to May, 2011. I was feeling extremely lonely and depressed. A dear friend pointed out something I really didn’t want to hear. He said, “I don’t know how you do it. I don’t think it’s healthy to live alone and work alone. That combination will sap your soul.”

Then he asked me an important question:  “What can you do to get a dose of community?”

He knew the answer I would give him. Immediately, I thought about the Esalen Institute, where he works. Sitting right on the Pacific Ocean, between San Francisco and Los Angeles, Esalen is sited on intensely rugged, gorgeous land, where the mountains practically kiss the ocean. For nearly 50 years, the Esalen Institute has been a hot spot for personal growth. Famous philosophers, psychotherapists, and teacher like Fritz Perls, Abraham Maslow, Ida Rolf, Aldous Huxley, and Alan Watts all lived, studied, and taught at Esalen. They ushered in an era where personal growth was encouraged and supported.

Amazingly, I have been blessed to have taught at Esalen (and I’ll be teaching a career transformation workshop there September 30 to October 2. You’re invited!) I love being a workshop leader at Esalen.

But from July 31 to August 28, I had a much, much tougher role. I decided to be a work scholar.

I agreed to work 32 hours a week. I was assigned to the kitchen. Not as a chef. Not even a sous chef. Nope. It was not glamorous work. I cut cucumbers and carrots. Sliced bread. Wiped down tables. Refilled coffee urns. And washed a ton of dishes, by hand. I mean a ton. Giant soup pots and massive bowls, all used to prepare 300 to 370 meals a seating. It wound up being the most physically demanding work I’ve ever done.

Additionally, I was mixing it up for 28 days with 23 other work scholars, ages 22 to 78, who like to dive deep in understanding themselves and others. After living alone for the past decade, I had three roommates in bunk bed space. I was worried about how I’d deal with others. Fortunately, no one snored. Everyone was friendly. And we didn’t have to cook our own food, so there were no sinks with dirty dishes to create frustrations. Mostly, we worked from 7 am until the early afternoon, took workshops, and arrived home around 10 pm to sleep and repeat the cycle again, with two days off per week.

When I wasn’t working, eating, or sleeping, I could take movement classes, soak in the hot tubs, take hikes, get a massage, take a nap on the lawn, volunteer on the garden, sit on the deck and talk to interesting people from all over the world, or find a spot and write in my journal. Interestingly, I had almost no interest in getting on my computer, even though the lodge has wi-fi 20 hours a day. No, I was much, much more interested in talking than typing. Why? I was in cultural heaven. Our group of 24 included men and women from Israel, Germany, Spain, Australia, and France. And in the extended staff, I met people from Canada, Japan, Korea, Argentina, England, Ireland, and Turkey. I love the multiculturalism of Esalen.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some of the lessons that I learned. But let me start with the lesson that touches my heart most deeply in this moment:  To create truly meaningful community, I had to unplug and reach out to people, face-to-face, heart-to-heart.

Virtual connection just doesn’t fill me. Sure, it’s information, and it’s nice to visit Facebook and read my friends’ updates. But consuming too much Facebook, Twitter, and email forms an incomplete diet for me. No, I wasn’t a monk before being a work scholar. I did have a social life, but it was insufficient. And difficult to put together. It took a lot of effort to get friends together, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, where everyone seems to be so darned busy. Bottom line:  I was simply spending too much time alone, plugged in to a virtual world on my computer, staring at the screen instead of looking into someone’s eyes.

Before my Esalen experience, I was starting to question whether I was actually an introvert, not the extrovert I sensed myself to be at heart. I now know — from all the conversations, all the times I easily created a bridge and introduced two people, all the times I practically ran across the lodge at meal time to listen to a friend describe the massage she’d just had — that I’m an extrovert, for sure.  The contact with other human beings has just got to be real. I need my daily quotient of hugs. I need to be able to see other people’s 3D facial expression. I need to be able to take a walk with a person, or touch their hand when they’re having a hard moment. Or give them a “high five” when they’re celebrating a victory.

I’m a touchy-feely kind of gal. I confess it. (That confession is especially for myself.)

And I’m a social, connection-loving, community-building kind of woman.

So, instead of doing my most of my work of helping people bring out their best at work via the all-too-impersonal telephone, I am hatching a plan to create in-person, super yummy, highly experiential, community-generating, personal growth events related to work. I envision salons. Not the kind where you get your hair and nails done. Salons where people gather under the roof of an inspiring host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of one another through conversation. The intention is to educate and enrich like-minded, like-hearted people. If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area and would like to host a salon, contact me and let me know.

I will also be speaking, in really dynamic ways, using theatrical, improvisational approaches, partly inspired by the performances some of my fellow work scholars created under the direction of the ever-humorous writer and performer, Ann Randolph.

Hey, if you’re outside the San Francisco Bay Area, no worries! I will still do teleclasses and create eBooks and eCourses for you. But, more ideally, you’ll contact me and invite me to teach a workshop or offer a salon in your area. Then, I can meet you in person and shake your hand.

No, scratch that. I will meet you, but I’ll give you a hug. I need to be touched. And I bet you do, too…

QUESTION FOR YOU:  Am I right? Do you need to be touched? Let me know how you feel about living in a world that’s going more and more virtual…

Sending you a big hug,

PS – If you want a real, in-person hug from me, and tons of support for answering the question, “What’s next?” in your career, it’s time to get your butt (and the rest of you, especially your heart and guts) to the Esalen Institute retreat center in Big Sur, California, September 30 to October 2, 2011, for my workshop, “Crafting Careers That Truly Fit.” Will I see you there…?

However, the HR manager exclaimed to Hebert, “We don’t want anyone to know we’re doing this. We are going to tell the recipients not to talk about it. They aren’t allowed to tell ANYONE. We don’t want other employees knowing that we did this. Think about it. If this got out, everyone would expect to be recognized and get a reward. Everyone. I can’t handle that. I don’t have a way to do that – nor do I have the budget. We’re just going to keep this very quiet.”

Hmm. A bit strong. Then Hebert suggested, in his blog post, that this is an example of where Human Resources professionals need to get louder and prouder. I got so emotionally worked up (express your emotions, it’s good…) that I wrote a reply. And I thought I’d share my reply with you, to get YOUR reactions thoughts.

I wish HR folks would be loud and proud! If only it were easier. The problem I see is an inherent conflict in the HR role.

The conflict is this: While HR professionals want to represent the employees and their needs, they also need to support the company mission. And sometimes, employee needs and the company mission are at odds. For example, one of my former clients was an HR director at a large energy company. An employee came to her, reluctantly, because she loved her work but found her manager’s angry tirades and constant criticism too harsh to take. She wanted some counseling. The manager was seen as a rising star in the company, and when my HR director client tactfully discussed with C-level executives in the company the possibility of counseling for my client, or coaching for her manager, the top brass defended the manager — and demoted the employee for complaining. This rightfully irked my client, and was one more straw in the camel’s back that got her to make a career change.

I spent a decade coaching high achievers & fast trackers who were weighing the decision of whether to remain in their companies or leave. In that time, I sadly heard too much grousing that “you can’t trust HR.” Too often, HR is in a bind, feeling at the mercy of entrenched corporate cultures and policies that dictate fairness and equity.

While I totally agree with you that HR ought to go to bat for employees, especially for giving them thoughtful recognition and incentives, until the incentives for HR professionals become aligned, I think these kinds of situations will repeat themselves.

I do see hope, however, among HR professionals who are proud, loud, and armed with good data about why they ought to be able to go to bat for their employees. It takes foresight to envision a new strategic HR role. And courage to stand up and create it, despite the entrenched cultures and policies. And the change is likely to be noisy — getting the masses to speak up, rather than keeping quiet.

So, what do YOU think of this reply?
What would help HR to be loud and proud?
How can we overcome entrenched corporate cultures and policies and say what we really need to say?
How can HR play a more strategic role in organizations?

I’m listening…

I saw these changes happening in the early 1990s, when I was in business school. Already, companies had employees all over the world, creating “virtual workers.” For example, offices were not the staid, same, “compete for the corner office” places that I’d known from the start of my career. When I worked for Accenture after business school,

the firm already had a “hoteling” concept for booking employees into workspaces for a short duration, rather than giving everyone an assigned office. With so many people “on the road,” so much of the time, it didn’t make economic sense to maintain space for them in the office. So we’d make reservations, and a concierge would arrange for our file cabinet, on wheels, to be rolled into a temporary space. It was actually kind of fun to get a different view each time I came into the San Francisco office. Oh, and we did have this gigantic bowl of chocolates at the concierge desk. I have this “thing” for dark chocolate…and it made work a little sweeter. (Just a little…)

Flash forward 15 years. The world of work continues to shift. I think this video, by oDesk, is one of the best I’ve seen to explain six major trends that are changing the world of work. These changes are already upon us. So instead of fighting them, inform yourself. Get yourself ready, so you’re adaptable, resilient.

As a recap, the future of work is:
Flat (as in “you can work anywhere”)
Competitive (can you say “crowdsourcing”?)
You (as in “know your talents and promote them:)

What do YOU think of these changes? And what are you doing to prepare yourself for the future of work?

Not because I use their deodorant. I don’t. It’s way too manly for me.

I’m angry at Mitchum because they are glorifying the Puritanical work ethic with a new contest that they have, The Hardest Working _______ in America. They ask people to submit videos of themselves working super hard. You might be the hardest working cattle rancher, baker, coach, florist, physical therapist. These don’t even have to be physical laborers. For example, they include a woman who’s a web entrepreneur.

I believe it’s possible to get creative and work smarter and enjoy your life and livelihood much, much more. And I’ll share some ideas about doing that so that you get to imagine them for yourself. But please, if you take anything away from what I’m sharing, it’s that you do not have to kill yourself at work.

So really: What is so right and so virtuous about working so hard? Granted, some of the people that Mitchum’s showing clearly love their work. And I applaud that. But not at the expense of overall well-being. Too many hours at work is just plain draining. In Mitchum’s contest, some of the participants clearly look like they are “slugging it out.” Many of the people they show in their promotional video must be working so hard that they have no time for exercise, because they are quite overweight. Sorry, but that’s no good for your body, mind, or spirit. Can all of these folks truly be happy? I doubt it.

Why must we glorify knocking ourselves out at work? Americans seem to have an obsession with working hard, demonstrating our strength, and just plain working our noses to the grindstone and running ourselves into the ground.

I know a thing or two about pushing myself to work hard. Back in the mid 1990s, I was a management consultant. My colleagues and I seemed to think that it was completely normal to work 80 hours a week. I was expected to bill a minimum of 50 hours each week. So when I worked 100 hour work weeks, which did on occasion, I’d be exhausted, but it was like I earned a badge of courage. Secretly, I was downright ecstatic when I only had to work 60 hours a week, but I also felt guilty, like I wasn’t contributing my share.

Rare was the day at work when my shoulders did not ache. I simply attributed that pain to sitting at the computer for six to ten hours a day.  Nausea and digestive pains were my frequent companions, and their impact seemed more forceful when I was staffed on a project out of town.  At the time, I simply rationalized the intestinal aches away by assuming they were caused by eating hotel and restaurant food, instead of my own home-cooked meals.


About three years into my time in management consulting, I was involved in a car accident. As I drove home from San Francisco International Airport, returning from a client engagement in Southern California, I was rear-ended by a drunk driver.  Although the accident was not serious, I started getting painful migraine headaches immediately afterwards.  My doctor wanted to run diagnostic tests, but I would not allow it.  I was determined to show how tough I could be.  I was not going to let mere headaches keep me from working on what I thought was an extremely important client project, one that seemed to assure me a promotion!  Then, two weeks after the car accident, I passed out in front of a group of clients.  The pain in my head was overwhelming, so I literally fainted while making a presentation. The project team took me to the hospital to check my health.

I ignored the migraine symptoms, continuing to push through them so that I secure a promotion, even if I was conflicted about moving ahead at the firm.  To my project team and to myself, I pretended. I acted as if I was fine.  Fortunately, when I received a doctor’s orders to take a month off from work to relax and recuperate, the managing partner of my office insisted that I follow his professional guidance.

Deep down, I felt torn. On the one hand, I wanted to demonstrate to my project team that I was as strong as everyone else, and that I could fit into the workaholic culture by continuing to work.  Yet on the other hand, I also wished I could simply find work that was more fun, or that I could even stop working for a period.

I ultimately took the medical leave, and I’m so thankful I did. I got back in touch with my body. I got clear that I wanted to work less and enjoy more. And since then, I’ve always found ways to do that, including ways that make plenty of money, thank goodness.

So, how do YOU do work that fits, and not knock yourself out in the process?

(1) Talk to people who are doing work that they love. Ask them what they love about their work. Ask them how they got into it. Listen to their journey. Almost no one goes from frustration to freedom overnight. It’s a process. Find out how people talk to themselves, how they overcame obstacles, how they motivated themselves. Take what works for you and leave the rest.

(2) Read Tim Ferris’ book, The Four Hour Work Week. This book is a game changer. It sounds absurd, especially if you’ve been working more than 40 hours a week. But stick with it. He has great ideas for how to make work as much fun and easy as possible. He has ideas both for making your current job easier, and for launching a product that you can sit back and watch make money. Ah, passive income!

(3) Read a recent article from Bloomberg/Businessweek about Working on the Waterfront. Yes, people really do work at the beach. If a serious business publication is giving you ideas on how to get a tan while you work, why not investigate? Or do you really want to sit in your cubicle day after day, turning pastier white by the second?

Seriously, though, I’m committed to helping people find ease, engagement, and enrichment from their work. What are YOU going to do to find those qualities in your work?

Working well,

Susan

Are you fed up with your work?

Well, you’re not alone! Have you noticed that other people around you just want to throw in the towel at work?

I say “ARGH!” (Not very articulate…just ultra frustrating!)

World at Work recently reported on a study by The Conference Board:
The report, based on a survey of 5,000 U.S. households conducted for The Conference Board by TNS, found that only 45% of those surveyed said they are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61.1% in 1987, the first year in which the survey was conducted.

“While one in 10 Americans is now unemployed, their working compatriots of all ages and incomes continue to grow increasingly unhappy,” says Lynn Franco, director of the Consumer Research Center of The Conference Board. “Through both economic boom and bust during the past two decades, our job satisfaction numbers have shown a consistent downward trend.”

So, what’s causing this frustration with work? My answer may surprise you.

I don’t think it’s just that we have crummy managers and unattractive offices. It’s not just that tasks can be boring.

The big reason I believe job satisfaction tends to be low:  We give our control for our careers over to other people.

I talk to hundreds of people about their work every month. And when I ask them, “How did you come to be doing the work you’re doing?” I hear over and over again:

• I fell into my work
• I stumbled into my work
• Someone (my boss, my parent, my spouse) told me I should do my work
• Someone told me I shouldn’t do the thing I really love
• I figured that if I did what I love, I’d be a starving… (you fill in the blank…artist, musician, chef, etc.) so I just gave in and did something to pay the bills

Are you guilty of one of these? I was. My first week of college at the University of Arizona, I called home (a collect call, on the dorm’s hallway payphone) to my father and told him that I’d declared a major.  “What did you declare?” my dad asked.  “Psychology!” I exclaimed, breathlessly excited. I knew my passion. I’d be studying it.

Then came the silence. I waited. And waited. And waited for my father to say something. “Dad? Dad? Are you still there?” I begged to know, panicked about his lack of enthusiasm.

“Susan, you’ll never make any money until you get to the PhD level.”

Those words were sufficiently frightening to me, at the tender age of 18, to send me in a new academic direction. I studied Economics and Marketing. I sacrificed my passion for money. I did that for most of my career. And slowly but surely, the life energy was draining out of me, until finally, in 2001, I decided that I didn’t want to be a 70 year-old woman before I studied my first love. I wasn’t 100% sure what I’d do with my studies, but my heart was calling to me.

We so often leave our hearts out of our decisions about our careers. This is a recipe for disappointment. Work will ultimately become a dirty four-letter word if your heart’s not in it.

What can you do about increasing your job satisfaction?

1. Take back control. Instead of surrendering your control to well-meaning friends, co-workers, managers, spouses, family members, listen to your heart.

Ask your heart:

• What are you needing more of?
• What are you hungry for?
• What do you truly want to express to the world?

Be patient. If you’ve not listened to your heart in a long time, it may be shy or reluctant to share. Or, it may be itching to talk to you. Get a journal and write down whatever comes. Trust your heart. Listen to your gut. Then, put your mind in the service of your heart (and your gut, and all your inner wisdom, even in your little pinky toes).

2.  Take baby steps. Most of us try to make change too quickly, honestly. I know, I know, we feel like we’ve gotta have that new job now. Or we have to make everything all better in one felt swoop.

I would ask you:  What’s ONE thing you could try out doing differently this week? Here are some ideas for first steps:

• Frustrating colleagues? Plan a conversation to clear the air and start fresh. Put it on the calendar. Then prepare by reading about a subject like Marshall Goldsmith’s non-violent communication so you have a model for communicating effectively.
• Angry manager? Read a great book like Douglas Stone & Bruce Patton’s Difficult Conversations so you know how to talk to your manager. Find something to do to let go of the anger, like taking a walk or writing in a private journal.
• Ugly office? Bring in a vase and fresh flowers. Put up a photo that pleases you.
• Unreasonable deadlines? Prioritize all of your projects, so you know what’s most important.Write a workplan and discuss it with your manager. If you can show that you’d need to work an incredible number of hours, look for solutions to eliminate or shorten steps, delegate portions, or create time-off after you put in a big push of work.
• Massive bureaucracies? Find experts in your organization who’ve mastered the art of getting things done – take them to lunch and pick their brains, so you learn how to do it.
• Never-ending meetings? Suggest trying out stand-up meetings as leader Bob Schoultz suggests. Most people will go faster if they’re not sitting down.

3. Believe that great work is possible. Many of us block ourselves with expressions like “work sucks” and “well, this is as good as it gets” or “I can just suffer through this.” Do you really want work that fits you? Then I believe you must craft your “work from within,” for if you do not believe, deep within yourself, that this is possible, you will sabatoge your possibilities for great work.

Great work is not just an idea. When you have great work, you embody it. So take charge, and follow your heart. Let it set your direction. And then ask your mind to help you move in that new, heart-felt direction.

With care,

Dr. Susan Bernstein
Life/Work Transition Expert
www.WorkFromWithin.com

PS – Do you really, truly want work that fits for you?

What are you doing to create it?

I’ve got a great new 7-week webinar series, “Don’t Look for a Job! Create a ROLE That Truly Fits for You” that I’m offering on Wednesday nights from April 7 to May 19, 2010. Check it out at http://www.workfromwithin.com/calendar/rolethatfitswebinar/

Go ahead and get a taste! Sign up for a free preview call to learn more about that webinar. The free call is on Wednesday, March 3, 6-7 pm Pacific. Get all the details at  http://www.workfromwithin.com/calendar/rolethatfitswebinar/#1

If you hate your job, do you toss yourself out of a window?

Um, hopefully not.

But that’s been happening in Europe at companies like France Telecom, Renault, and Peugeot, according a recent Economist magazine article. This is not good. It’s very, very bad. And the problem is not just confined to Europe. That same article goes on to cite two sets of findings that highlight a similar dissatisfaction with work in the U.S.

“A survey by the Centre for Work-Life Policy, an American consultancy, found that between June 2007 and December 2008 the proportion of employees who professed loyalty to their employers slumped from 95% to 39%; the number voicing trust in them fell from 79% to 22%.”

“A more recent survey by DDI, another American consultancy, found that more than half of respondents described their job as “stagnant”, meaning that they had nothing interesting to do and little hope of promotion. Half of these “stagnators” planned to look for another job as soon as the economy improved.”

My own opinion is that it’s not just the current economic climate that’s been creating this intense dissatisfaction with work. The problem of employee frustration has been mushrooming over time. Since at least 1994, when I took a class with Professor Homa Bahrami at the Haas School of Business, which was then entitled “Managing Knowledge Professionals.” Even then, we were talking about the ultra-mobility of the workforce, and the writing was on the proverbial wall, making it all-too-clear that employment was becoming more and more tenuous.

And now, those who survive layoffs have at least two issues to contend with: (1) constant fears of losing their jobs and (2) the added burden of taking on the work of their former colleagues. From what I hear from clients and other career coaches is that the stress level in companies is boiling out of control.

If you’re an employee, your company asks you to be very loyal. And yet employers are creating less and less certainty about employment contracts. Work becomes psychologically taxing if you don’t know how long you’ll be in the game. How do you decide where to live? Or what purchases to make, if your income could be pulled in an instant?

It appears that companies are going even more in the direction of temporarily contracting employees. That’s more and more the case for C-level executives. Business Week reports that to avoid making bad hiring decisions, companies are turning to tryouts of a few weeks to a few months. I’d heard about this trend just a few weeks ago, when I was on a panel at the Haas School of Business with Lauren Doliva, who is one of the world’s leading recruiters, with Heidrick & Struggles.

What is the answer? More and more, it is to rely on yourself, and create and share your own assets, and build your own network, so you’re “ultra portable.” So, how do you do that?

(1) Rely on yourself: This is mental shift. It’s all-too-easy to become reliant on companies, especially when they offer attractive perks, like gourmet meals and on-site mega workout facilities. But really, you need to see yourself as moveable, changeable, adaptable to new environments. Value yourself for your own skills, not just for the brand-name of your current company.

(2) Create your own assets: Right now, it’s more important than ever to create a distinguishable skill-set. In other words, this is a terrible time to be a generalist, and especially a general manager. Be a problem solver. Be crystal clear about what pains you help to ease, what emergencies you clean up, and find the organizations facing those issues. For example, while you might call yourself a finance manager, if you describe what you do as watching the bottom line and knowing how to increase revenues and decrease costs, you’ll have more ears tuning in to you.  Those assets ought to include knowledge capital that you’ve accumulated, based on your experiences and research (formal and informal).

(3) Share your assets. Once you’ve built up some expertise in an area (give yourself credit for what you DO know), it’s important to share your perspectives. That’s easy enough to do in a blog, but you’ll want to share your ideas with people who can decide to hire you, so be sure to get out to industry meetings and offer to speak on topics where you have knowledge.

(4) Cultivate your network: No longer can you rely on your company to take care of you for the long run. That contract’s been gone for many years. But you could be let go in an instant. So, in addition to networking within your company, be sure to meet people in your industry and your functional area. Joining and participating in groups on LinkedIn is one way to do this. Another is to attend industry conferences and professional associations. You might even be amazed that Meetup.com can connect you with interesting professionals at interesting events.

It’s also a great idea to talk to your friends who are contractors and consultants, because you’re likely to become one — eventually. Ask them how they built and promoted their expertise. Discover how they get their gigs. Find out how they deal with uneven income streams.

You may also find that people who contract and consult actually like their work better, because they have greater creativity, freedom, and mobility.

What are YOU doing to create work that truly fits for you?

Susan

Dr. Susan Bernstein
Life/Work Transition Expert
www.WorkFromWithin.com

Fortunately for me, I was able to stay positive and motivated because I had a phone call already planned with Kyra Cavanaugh, from Life Meets Work. We set up a time this morning to talk about what's happening in the economy, and why we think that there's actually a lot to be happy about and how people can stay positive and upbeat, even when the Dow is down.

We've had so much fun talking with each other over the few months that we've been acquainted, and realized we had a ton of inspiration and education to share.  So we planned to record a friendly conversation to share with our readers (now, listeners). 

I hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed sharing our ideas, which include:

• Opening up to new job possibilities, so you don't get locked in by your industry or function
• Finding flexible work options (Kyra reminds us that those are more attractive than ever)
• Doing what's important to keep your job or get a new one
• Ways to do contract work
• The positive good that's being created in our current economy
• The need for cooperation and community, instead of competition

We'd both love you to post your comments. This creates community, fosters conversation, and lets us know what else we can provide for you.

Happy listening!
Susan

Dr. Susan Bernstein
Coach, Speaker & Author
www.WorkFromWithin.com
Work From Within, LLC

It’s a big deal for a mom to decide to go back to work,

 All working moms, in my opinion, should be given a paid day off a week, because boy, do they work hard!

So, moms re-entering the workforce need all the support they can get.  And I want to share an information-packed video for all working moms who may be outside the San Francisco Bay Area who missed the View from the Bay show with LinkedIn PR Manager Krista Canfield, who spoke about what to do if you’re a mom who’s going seeking new work:

• Begin your hunt at least six months before you want to start work
• Update your skills and talents, if necessary, with courses
• Be a news hound
• Give your resume a facelift (you can learn to do this masterfully through the Job Search Gym)
• Do your homework on salaries (Use salary.com and payscale.com)
• Reconnect and rebuild your business network (of course, LinkedIn is amazing for this!)
• Feel confident in your dress
• Tap into local resources, like your state’s department of labor office, and of course, blogs!

Happy hunting to all you amazing moms!
Dr. Susan

Dr. Susan Bernstein
Coach, Speaker & Author

www.WorkFromWithin.com

Work From Within, LLC

PS – I’m very happy to be newly-officially-affiliated with YourOnRamp as one of their featured career coaches — take a peek!

And, boy, when I used to work in a big office, I ate a lot of really junkie but yummy foods.  My favorite?  Oooh, when I worked for Accenture, our reception area was stocked with all of the flavors of those decadent

Lindt Lindor Balls.  In the morning, in lieu of coffee, I would eye one of those colorful
individually wrapped Lindor Balls
in their chocolate shell and go crazy selecting the smooth, creamy filling.  Would it be dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, hazelnut, or peanut butter? 

After lunch, another treat. 

Around 4 pm, when my blood sugar was low and tension was high, I would “sneak” yet another luscious morsel.  Mmm, mmm, mmm.  I didn’t really care what the receptionists thought of me.  I needed it.  I was working so hard…I felt entitled.

Eventually, those goodies turned to baddies, when they showed up around my waist.  Not pretty.

I now weigh about 15 pounds less than when I worked in the corporate world, and part of that has to do with a better diet.  I prepare almost all of my own foods, particularly because I love to cook (thanks to a mom who’s a true gourmet) and partly because I like to know what’s in my food.

Well, now my father sends me this article from The Economist about the effects of nutrition on cognition.  In other words, eating to feed your brain.  Our brains are busy.  Right now, aside from really using my leg muscles training for my first century biking ride (other muscles, too, of course), my brain is definitely the next most-used muscle (OK, yeah, I know,it’s not a muscle).

Here are some interesting finding related to eating to care for your brain:

• Folic-acid supplements can help those
  between 50 and 70 years old ward off the cognitive decline that
  accompanies aging
• People should eat more antioxidants. Vitamin E, for example, which is found in vegetable oils, nuts and
  green leafy vegetables, has been linked (in mice) with the retention of
  memory into old age, and also with longer life.
• The brain is very susceptible to oxidative
  damage. The brain consumes a lot of energy, and the reactions that release
  this energy also generate oxidising chemicals. Moreover, brain tissue
  contains a great deal of oxidizable material, particularly in the fatty
  membranes surrounding nerve cells.

  That suggests, among other things, the value of a diet rich in berries. These have been shown to have strong antioxidant effects.

 So, when you’re at the office, or working in any capacity, here’s what I suggest you can do:

• Bring a Tupperware (or other container) of blueberries.  Yummy, low-calorie, dense and satisfying AND good for your brain.
• In summertime, do my brother’s favorite trick.  At home, prepare grapes as mini-popsicles.  Take grapes off the bunch, and wash them.  Put wax paper on a flat tray, and arrange the grapes in a single layer on the tray.  Then, pop them in the freezer for a few hours.  Yummy treat.  Tote them to your office in a mini-ice chest, and then pop them in the office freezer. The grapes will be crunchy, cold, and sweet.  They wake you up and are definitely better for you than a candy bar. 
• Choose a salad for lunch, with tuna or salad.  Good taste, good omega-3s, and filling.

This will power up your day, and leave you with less around your waist and more in mind.

Happy healthy eating — it’s just what this doctor orders!!  
Susan

Dr. Susan Bernstein
Coach, Speaker & Author

www.WorkFromWithin.com

Work From Within, LLC

Today, I felt such a pull, so in the flow, so inspired to write.  Why?  It was the final session, at least for a while, with a dear client, who's allowed me to share his name.  Jeff Kennedy blends his care and concern for people and companies facing employment issues (think performance reviews, promotions, dealing with difficult managers, setting up HR processes…and much more) with the deep experience managing HR for Fortune 200s and the legal expertise to know what he's really talking about with a JD from UC Davis School of Law and practice as a California Employment Attorney. 

Standing at a career crossroads, as all of my clients do, Jeff came to me as he was trying to decide "what's next" because his last job didn't turn out the way he'd planned.  It turned out that we could use the dissatisfaction to uncover Jeff's deeper desires.  I find Jeff incredibly sharp, organized, empathetic, and strategic.  For him, the corporate world often left him compromising his values and ideals, morphing himself to be something he's not, or having to hide the issues about which he's passionate, which include standing up for the rights of individual employees. 

Well, in our work together, Jeff gained clarity — he wanted to go solo.  That was not immediately clear when we started.  Like many people at a crossroads, confusion was prevalent, and kept him churning and worrying and wondering — and basically up in his head. 

Four months later, he's already got clients, just through word-of-mouth, and now he's consumed, among other things, with getting a website up.  Wow!  He let himself envision life in this new solo work, it felt good to him, and the energy just started to flow…and keeps building. 

Jeff inspires me — he reminds me what's possible when we start expressing what we really want to express — and stop holding back.  From a mind-body point of view, when we squash our self-expression, the result is depression.  But when we express, we free up the energy inside of us to find more of what we really want.  To take a corporate job would have held Jeff back from his bigger energies, the voice that wanted to emerge.

No, he's not a trust fund baby, and, like the rest of us, he has financial concerns.  But, he's also in the flow, letting himself follow his interests, and he's already starting to get paid to do what he loves.  And, since I've also been walking a similar path for a few years, I know that he's got more riches ahead of him as he invests in what he appreciates — his own talents.  Yes, folks, it's possible to do what you love and get paid. 

Jeff truly inspires me.  He wanted to share with me, during this last session today, a poem by Mary Oliver, that he'd heard from another one of his teachers.  What a kind and warm soul Jeff is for taking the time to read this to me.  His gesture and these words poems touched me so deeply that I had to share the poem with you…

Thank you, Jeff, for being willing to take your own journey, with the hills and valleys, the beautiful scenery, and, yes, the frustrations, too.  Thank you for allowing me to do what I love, which has been to help you listen to your own voice, your own needs, and support you along the way.  I know that you will help people and support them in meaningful ways.  You are already doing that.

Blessings to all who walk the courageous path of change, saving your own lives…and in doing so, inspiring and touching the lives of others.

Wishing you inspiration for your journey,
Susan

Susan Bernstein
Coach, Speaker & Author

www.WorkFromWithin.com

Work From Within, LLC