Many people have their careers and their lives set up with a blind. The bind is that they limit their options to either one thing or another.
With job hunters, they think, “I work for a bank and that’s all I can really do. I would really like to change this but I don’t see how I can get there.” If you’re in business for yourself, you’re in a situation where all you see is how you can take a trivial job with another firm.You don’t see any other possibilities for yourself. Or, maybe, you’re a virtual assistant and you like theater. You haven’t figured out how to tie the bow and bring these things together for yourself.
The problem is that when you see things as in either-or, with no other possibilities, you have really limited what your choices are. This becomes a problem because life becomes miserable.
There is a way out and I’ll just simply say that whether it is me or someone else, a few coaching sessions goes a long way toward helping people break their self-imposed limitations and do something very different.
It’s like the old “Saturday Night Live” skit with Roseanne Rosannadanna as played by Gilda Radner . . . if it’s not one thing it’s another. When you’re set up in this small space and can’t see any other options, life becomes very painful and you start to feel stuck. Worse than that, you don’t get any help for yourself (which I know is a cultural taboo in the United States because you have to figure things out for yourself)… But that’s a lie and excuse that you use to keep yourself in this position.
What I want to encourage you to do is work with a coach for a few sessions and (1) get some ideas for how to 2 things differently than the way you have it set up and, more importantly, doing in a way worrying and have some fun… Play, experiment, do things differently.
When you were a kid growing up, not everything that you did work out, did it? But it was fun! In college, you try different things and when they didn’t work out, you thought, “Oh, well. Onto the next one.” As adults, we forget that, “Oh, well onto the next thing” attitude. .
As a result, we, don’t do as much stuff outside of that self-limiting box that we have put ourselves into.
Working with a coach, someone who could help you have some fun, encourage you to play, experiment and try things like you did when you were young… Things may not work out. That’s the reality to it. Along the way, you will learn to not beat yourself up or punish yourself for “MAKING A MISTAKE.”
Making a mistake.
How many mistakes did Alexander Graham Bell make before he created a telephone? The phone itself was a mistake but that’s a different conversation.
© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC 2016
Do you really think employers are trying to help you?
You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.
The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.
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