Meditation at Equinox: A Job Seeker’s Rite of Spring

Image via Wikipedia St. Patrick's Day Parade, Dublin Ireland

Rite of Spring California farmer applies fertilizer to his farm

Spring approaches! Having made the daylight time adjustment (hopefully) we are sidetracked with wonder at the outburst of color and life everywhere. Personally, I begin dreaming in the Aisles of Michael’s Craft Store and  dive into a little “default activity”: crafting spring-themed wreathes and arrangements to cheer myself up after the seemingly endless grayness of the past season. Sometime during the week of St. Patrick’s Day, I clean out my closets and put my warm  winter interviewing suit away for the season (it’s one of those personal  rituals that helps me keep track of the passage of time without the artificial fixtures–like counting down the days to vacation– usually given by employment. Creating these personal time keepers is one of the other things that happen after 1/2 year of non-employment).

It is time to quicken winter’s snow-encumbered pace; to clear away the winter-kill of past failed projects; to lay out  new gardens and plant fresh seed of an effective search. Last season’ lessons  informs this season’s efforts. Some ancient cultures called this “horse back season” too, because it begins the time when plans for conquest and acquisition laid in winter’s cold can now be acted upon. A few centuries ago, a land owner would ride throughout the property to review the condition of the real estate holdings while collecting rents in person. Battles were scheduled to be fought. So it is with the job hunt.

Equinox is a point in the cycle of the year where the hours of  daylight and darkness balance. From that point, the light advances, becoming longer and stronger into the decadent  high productivity days of summer. If there was any time to “work your plan” this is it. Taking a lesson from the early rising bees, we know in our aching bones that all the hard work will pay off somehow at harvest time.

Beloved Eire

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Just Being Me: “Default Activity”

a featured illustration from Shay's Word Garden on Blogspot

Some people actually cannot imagine themselves alive on earth having nowhere to go every day that promises a monetary reward at the end of a week. It was from graduation to first job. No space between. It is simply mind-boggling for some folk to consider there could possibly be other places to be during the day and none of them involve parking on the living room sofa watching daytime TV.  ”Being me” happens in the spaces not filled up by “the job”. Satisfying the need for a more meaningful life while having a low-paid, boring job causes this space.”Disassociation” from a former job will open more of this space too.

When I'm not working, I'm at...

Let’s play a game.Pretend suddenly you flew off to your favorite place to be; the place that could be called your “second address”…a place where if anybody goes there, they would find you. Are you there? Answer me honestly from where you are hiding. MARCO!

Who said, “POLO!”?

Found you. I know where you are. After the initial drama of joblessness, what might begin to happen is a rediscovery of joyful activity engaged in before there was any thought about paid employment. I call that “default activity”. For some, this kind of activity is laced up tightly into weekends and often called, “hobbies”. For others, it is what one naturally turns to when the day is over. It is what people do to “decompress” or “unwind”. Another word for it is “pastime activity”. Some people take chunks of time to do special projects like teaching kids to read in another country. Still others are gaming, treasure hunting, cooking, painting, sitting in front of the fridge inhaling more than the fragrance or on the dock of the bay “watching the tide roll away”. Default activity. It comforts; it relaxes; it probably started in childhood and it is organic to the personality. After the six-month anniversary of joblessness, default activity might be just the ticket to realign the soul with  authentic purpose. Who knows where a default activity might lead? A business, ministry and yes, a new career, may suggest itself that way.

My Wonderful Life Between Jobs: How To Keep Going

I am the queen.

Of course one day the crashing reality must be faced. One must give a straight answer to the question: what have you been doing for two years since you last drew a paycheck? At first that intrusive, incredibly boorish question used to throw me down. That question is so lacking in class.  I remember when I first heard it I used to lie there and let the anger-embarrassment-sorrow pound me into the dirt and hope the whole experience would just be over quick. After that I could hobble away; pretend it was a dream until the next time. This was my life until something remarkable happened in my thinking. Something happened in my soul that changed me forever.What was I doing between jobs? I was living, of course. I was being me. What I do does not define me (see our talk last week. Scroll one posting back). With or without employment I am still me and that is important because I am an incredibly talented, worthwhile human being. Our humanity determines that  we all have intrinsic worth.

A person’s real worth is not her net worth whether she is a queen or a courtesan. It was only when I came to believe this  that I began to see myself as also a worthy employee or, why not, a worthy entrepreneur. This is the mindset that has to be in place within a job seeker before she can conduct an authentic search for work:whether I am employed or not I am a worthwhile person. I don’t even have bus fare right now, but I am still someone who is valuable and highly valued.This has to exude from within. Not a puff of light powder fresh from a motivational seminar, this is what will keep the job seeker continuing to be on top of the earth when all indicators point only to the futility, the uselessness and to the conclusion that a better position is to be among the dead.

I am the courtesan

Some call this the brave heart. Some call this  the lioness’ heart. Whatever anyone names it, this is the survivor’s heart.

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The Day That “What You Do” Is Just That

"shape shifter" art by: "Thunderhands"

One of the things a job seeker who has been out  of work for a half-year or more learns to do is to “disassociate”. By “disassociate” I mean uncouple a former job title from the definition of the self. Please allow me to elaborate.

Many people will introduce themselves like this: “Hi, my name is Sean; I’m a mechanic down at ABC Garage”. Notice that a job title is used as a modifier in the statement of personal identity (like a little commercial for the company especially if the brand name of the company is well-known) as if  the company name is a part of personal identity. For a long time after the loss of a job, a former employee might say, “Hi, I’m Sean who used to work for ABC Garage” before launching into a tirade about being out of work and cursing the government official currently being blamed for it. After not having lived in an employer-employee relationship for over six months, that introduction may begin to sound like this: “Hi, I’m Sean Dannon, Angelica’s husband. I noticed you were alone at the punch bowl so I decided to come over and say hello”.

What is the difference you might ask? Disassociation. The more remote the last  workday becomes in memory, the weaker the emotional ties to that employment become. Making new possible work relationships feels less like betraying  the old workplace. The company name is dropped as a modifier of  personal identity. Notice how people whose job search has been longer begin to identify themselves by their own names plus the relationships that have meaning instead of the former job title tag.

The process of disassociation in the beginning feels something akin to a child’s separation anxiety on the first day of school. It can be so acute, it feels like choking;  imminent death; annihilation; non-existence. Once on the other side of this first stage of the  shape-shift, behold, “all things are become new”. The sun shines and there is something to get out of bed for.  The mere fact that day has come and being out of bed is what happens after a period of sleep feels “right” and “normal”. There is a day to plan. There is a looking forward to Life presenting her challenges, joys and surprises. The search for new work takes on a different meaning. Looking for work ever so slowly become less “the new job”  but just one of the tasks necessary to accomplish a certain goal. It becomes something on a “to do list”. This is sane, businesslike dispassionate disassociation.

About the same time or soon after the frenzied stretched-to-the-limit attention, “looking for a job is my new job” phase is over, “finding a job” falls into a new position in the order of things.  No longer queen, it becomes merely one part of the mix in life. Certain seekers begin to cast glances around and find out that “having a job” or being an “employee” is not the only way to do “making a living”.

Half a year out from the initial event of job loss, “what I do for a living” and “my person-hood” are two very non-associated things. This is actually a new reality. “I am me, not what I do”.

Related articles

• The problem with job titles (wall-notes.com)
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• Disassociation, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (theupsanddownsofmyworld.wordpress.com)

Marketing A Career: Wake Up, Sleeping Beauty!

There are two fairy tales that simply charmed me when I was a child. One was “Cinderella” and the other was “The Sleeping Beauty”. Today’s career marketing fairy tale takeoff is from The Sleeping Beauty”. To review the story…

nce upon a time there lived a childless royal couple who lost all hope of ever having a family when the queen discovered she was pregnant. Upon hearing the great news the entire kingdom went into baby-overdrive. The preparations for the new arrival were lavish and everything surrounding the pregnancy done with painstaking care.

Now, these were the days when belief in the fae was rife and fairy folk moved about between the human and the fairy realm unrestricted. The fairies were overjoyed about the new baby, so when the little princess arrived, three fairy godmothers attended her baptismal party.

Each one in turn went up to the crib and laid her gift on the child. The first fairy godmother gave the princess beauty; the second gave her love, but the third cursed her. “She will prick her finger on a spindle when she turns sixteen and die!”, the blackgaurd pronounced over the crib. Acting quickly, the second fairy godmother mollified the death sentence and turned it into “she will not die, but sleep for 100 years. Only a true prince will be able to awaken her”. After that, all spinning wheels were banished from use in that kingdom.

The years went by and the princess grew into a beautiful, kind and sweet young woman. The king and queen rested in the security that no harm would come to her since no spinning equipment was allowed within the borders of the kingdom. The princess was kept very close and had no knowledge of the weaver’s craft, so a crone who came into town with a loom on her cart aroused the princess’ curiosilty.

Apparently, the old woman had no knowledge that spinning was disallowed in that kingdom, so she set up the wheel in her cottage and began to make the raw materials of her product from wool she brought with her.

The princess was taken with the song of the spinning wheel and asked the old woman, “what are you doing?” “Spinning, my dear”, the weaver woman answered. “Would you show me how you do that?”, asked the prinecess. “Of course, little one. Come here and hold the spindle”. The weaver handed the princess the spindle so she could spin the thread as it came off the wheel, but the inexperienced girl took hold of the instrument the wrong way and cut herself.

Suddenly, the old woman changed into a dark fairy–the same one who had cursed her at her birth. As the princess fell to the floor the fairy-woman shrieked with anger when she found out that her curse did not kill as expected but only produced a deep sleep. The king, the queen and everyone in the village around the castle fell asleep as did their princess who could only be awakened with a kiss of pure love from the lips of a true prince…

…And that’s the way I conducted my career in the early days. As did many young women, I thought all I had to do was be a “good girl” and wait to be ”discovered”. The university is very good at what it is built to do, but beneath it all, the attitude seems to be that any smart student will “find her way” into a good job somehow. Yes, there are entire departments dedicated to helping students find their way in the world after college. The better ones pull in the odd group of company recruiters on occasion, but none of all that expensive education includes a single “best practices techniques to finding employment” or even a “life/career management/” course.

It is embarrassing to tell you how long I held on to that fairy tale. Hidden in the bowels of the companies that temporary agencies farmed me out to, I quietly buried myself in my work having confidence that someone would notice. I thought that some day, some executive with a pure heart would see me, become my mentor, and give me the “kiss” of a successful career. I would be “discovered” just like in the stories about famous screen ingénues (some of those “discovery” tales are manufactured, you know).

My first job hunt after leaving college was simply a shotgun resume send (pure numbers game) of 100 resumes. It produced several responses, two in-person interviews, and one job offer, which was withdrawn the very next week.

Waiting to be “discovered”? Waiting around for a magnanimous executive, a prince, to notice a quiet, “good girl”? There is an interesting article from  Careerealism about managing a career by playing the Sleeping Beauty role and how to snap out of it.

Wake up, Sleeping Beauty!

The one, most important lesson I ever learned in the business world is that Sleeping Beauties are left behind asleep. That is where having an effective career marketing plan comes in. As threatening, vulgar  and unromantic as it may sound it takes an effective marketing plan– well planned with plotted action steps and logistics to get Beauty before the eyes of her target audience–fashion editors of Vogue magazine or before the eyes of a future king.

The Ugly Duckling Days Of Change

The Ugly Duckling

Change. Everybody talks a good game about change. Chrysalises of hopeful futures hang on every Christmas tree. They partly open in gyms and in clinics and in journals. Then about March, they fall slain by the struggle like early buds that freeze in an untimely spring snow. The “failures at change” have a pint of ice cream to console themselves and return to “what was” having given up becoming the butterfly.

Why don’t more people succeed at elemental change?  The truth is that change is not easy. Change is difficult. I believe it is the “ugly duckling effect” that many find so challenging.

Say, what? The “ugly duckling effect”?

Are you familiar with the tale of the ugly duckling? Allow me to revisit that story with you. I am telling my version of the tale I learned from Hans Christian Anderson.

A duck was going about her duty one season setting on eggs. She did what ducks do; what she had always done with all the clutches of eggs she laid season after season. However, this brood she was setting was unusual because one of the eggs seemed to be a little different. The mother duck ignored that difference and kept setting; kept going about her duty.

 

Right on time, as they did every season, the eggs hatched. One by one the little wet heads poked through their shells and in minutes they were all blow-dried in the spring air into bolls of yellow fluff with yellow beaks and feet–except for one–a boll of grey fluff with  a skinny black beak and wide, black feet. The mother duck was puzzled. She dismissed the “different” duckling as just a freak of nature and led them all down to the water for their first swim. They all swam beautifully, though she wondered why the little grey duckling dipped her head into the water so long. And her voice! She did not give a melodic “quack” like her brothers and sisters. It was more like a “honk” with a little broken squeak on the end. Ugly voice.

 

As time went by, this “different” duckling grew taller than her nest mates; even her walk was different: more upright off the grass. Such big feet she had. One day, her nest mates’ yellow fluff began to fall off their bodies and juvenile feathers appeared, showing the mark of their species.  Their sister did not have that distinctive stout neck and low, compact form. She was grey and gangly with a long neck, longer wings and a black mask across her face. “If you aren’t the ugliest thing we have ever seen!”, they hissed at her. “You’re hideous!.” Then they poked her; bit her and drove her out of the ducks’ area. The gangly, grey duck shuffled away to the next pond alone.

 

As the ugly duckling paddled silently across the water, she was startled by a family of neighbor birds. She hid in the reeds and watched them parade by. Behind some of the magnificent, white feathered adults were the fledging teens, preening themselves of their grey feathers. Behind some of the adults were small, fluffy grey hatchlings. “Ducklings?”, the ugly ducking thought. She looked at her reflection in the pond and saw that she looked like them. Immediately she swam up to the  ones who seemed to be her own age and hailed them. They drifted around her and giggled in their harsh voices, “You’re not a duck! You’re one of us–a swan. You must be our lost sister”.

 

They invited her to float down the stream with them. Eventually, she met her original nesting pair who were thrilled to see the daughter they thought was lost a season ago.

Trumpeter Swan-charleyharperprints.com

When fall came, the ugly duckling’s juvenile feathers were all shed and in their place were the feathers of an adult swan. She was all white except for a slender, black beak and a black band across her face, the mark of her family.

 

I told this tale to say this: sometimes job seekers change something about themselves to “repackage” or “reimage” themselves. It is part of a “reinvention” movement to craft a  younger, stronger, more active, smarter, more up-to-date image. People who are not in a job search mode tend to laugh behind their hands and roll their eyes heavenward at all this metamorphosis, I have read. No tea and sympathy from folk who think about the unemployed once per week–when the “unemployment figures” come out in the news media.

We job seekers change hairstyles and glasses. We color our hair. We buy new clothes (an inside change has really happened when we start to revamp our wardrobe). We “get work done”. Many of the changes have stages. This takes time.

We head straight into change. We begin to “shape shift”. The stadium of friends and family seems to be smiling and cheering for change in the beginning. It feels powerful when we first trot out our dreams and intentions, but that first rush of success does not last. Actually going through the process of change is a long, lonely stretch of road. Change is not a sprint, but a marathon we find out. Change exacts its fees in patience and pain. These are the “ugly ducking” days.

 

 The hard work of change is largely solitary and unrewarded. The unprepared become discouraged and fall away in the early stages. They who persist longer become tempted to relax the standards when the change regimen begins to actually challenge established patterns and habits. Believe me. I know  whereof I speak having made many, many attempts to loose ”baby weight” since 1985. The “baby” is married now, but the weight is still there and has gained company.

 

The real work of change is a period of discomfort in increasing intensity. There is so much pull to fall back into the older, more familiar and comfortable. This is why “change” is so popular initially, but so hard to really get done. This is why people tend to put off necessary change until forced to by outside events. At that point change mounts a coup and snatches the command position instead of being managed and controlled with dispassion, strength and mindfulness.

VICTOREE SPECIAL: Stereotyping and Image

VICTOREE’S BLOG continuing the discussion about personal image will appear later this week.

• The real Aunt Jemima
• Cosmetic surgery upsurge among Baby Boomers
• Best body types for job seekers

and more!  Stay tuned…

DE-COMMODIFY YOURSELF

Not For Sale

Much is being said these days about job hunting and personal branding:  “potential employee = product”.  It has become fashionable in career thought that people should “market  themselves” as though they were snow tires or cooking oil. It sounds practical. It seems rational. It feels positive. Let’s slow down to breath pace and take a few weeks to mull over this idea, shall we?

 So what am I…one more pack of razor blades or bath soap on the endless shelves?

Brand ?

The question becomes, “how do I, and what is the most efficient way to  distinguish myself from all the other packages of razor blades or bath soap?”  “How do I become known–visible–in the market and get a distinguished place on the shelves too?’ This is the sense I get from reading articles and books on “personal branding”.

Wait. Am I missing something here? In the minds of business, are people being reduced to being mere packages of skills? Are we potential employees beginning to think about and to define ourselves as either useful or not useful in this society? Is this the idea at the bottom of the ubiquitous depression walking the streets these days?

Do people have a “freshness-sell-by” date? Listen to us talking about people being “stale”. Have we become bread with a 1-day shelf life?

Look at the long lines of people who will possibly never work again because they are “too old”: the throw-away society throws people away like greasy cardboard boxes. People submit themselves to outrageous surgical procedures to look “saleable”.  Are there corporations/healthcare planners/urban managers thinking about the turnover problem: what if we throw away too many of them all at once? What if they keep living and living and not dying fast enough?  Do we have enough space to warehouse them and keep them entertained long enough? Can we encourage them to elect to die to make room for  newer/better/improved product”? What do we do about the broken ones who don’t have money?

If I get my history right, there was a time in this nation when people were property; farm equipment that ran on grits and bacon. Why does this whole “personal branding” thing seem so nightmarish? Am I having a premonition that we are going the wrong way in business?

I say the idea of packaging and marketing a human being like a bottle of shampoo is monstrous. There must be other ways to think about the subject of distinguishing oneself in the marketplace. I say people are not products, and we should not be herded into thinking of ourselves that way. I say, reclaim the dignity of simply being human.

De-commodify yourself.

A RETRO-MOTIVATION FROM VICTOREE

Watch Your Mouth

 This year

Do not resolve to do anything. Do it.

Spoken words are the seeds of realities:

Sow faith-full words; reap positive reality fruit.

Sow fear-full words; reap negative reality weeds.

Stay armed in the battle of the marketplace with faith, knowledge and wisdom.

Unconditional victory. No white flag.  No prisoners.

Have a  prosperous 2011

Victoree

Victoree’s Job Gypsy Card Game Full Spread

Victoree's "Full Spread"

When you finish making all your cards, place them in order on your black or white mat, the “full spread” looks like the illustration at left. With all the information in one place, the next thing to do is…stare. that’s right. Print it out and look at it. I do not mean a passing glance. I am talking about taking this into a space where you are undisturbed for a while and giving it full attention. Concentrate on what you see. Take it to a Starbucks or another favorite place and put it out in front of a good friend. Ask him/her what it is a picture of. A career; a job; a direction may just arise in the middle of your meditations.

Mind you, I am an introspective type by nature and meditation states are my home element. However, when attempting to redefine yourself or “shape-shift” into a new position/way of looking at yourself; if you are trying to recover from the damage of going against your authentic self; if you are trying to course correct onto your true path it is useful to “gaze” at your spread. It may speak to you. Mull over it. Look at it the last thing at night. Keep it handy for quick reference.

Here’s your assignment for the winter holiday-Christmas break-Solstice: take a clean sheet of paper and write down your impressions of your spread. Is it suggesting a type of job; an industry; a service; a business? Never mind about grammar, spelling, and format. This is a free-write.  It may very well surprise you. While you are at it, the time toward a new year is always a good time to take a long look at your present path. I am not talking about making another resolution to loose weight or stop smoking or stop overeating. These are good things, but are you really convinced that this is going to actually happen in your life? How dedicated are you to the work of changing/shape shifting? Do you have the courage it will take to keep your word to yourself?

• Are you headed in the right direction?
• What are you going to do differently in 2011?
• What are you not going to do?
• What are you going to do to further your goals in life; in your job; in your personal life?

This is the last post for the year 2010. It is time to determine whether or not to end or revamp “Victoree’s Blog”. If it has been  useful for your personal development, I would be most happy to know that.

Be at peace within and without.

Put a poultice of intensive love on those spots in your life you commonly neglect.

This is war. Take no prisoners.

Victoree