Queercents

In Part 2 of the Career & Money series I talked about how you can do some life planning and determine if you really want a job or a career. This time I am going to take that a step further so you can align your career choices with your values and the type of lifestyle you wish to live.

What Are Your Values?
Our values are the things that allow us to thrive in our life. After our basic emotional and physical needs are met, we yearn for something more in order to feel fulfilled, happy, and purpose driven. This is where our values come in. While we may all have numerous things we value, there are typically 4-6 core values that really make us tick. These core values turn on the Technicolor in our lives.

How can you determine your values? When I work with clients we take an extensive look at needs and values through a series of exercises. However, you can start getting clear on your values with this simple exercise. Read the rest of this entry »

In Part 1 of the Career & Money Series I talked about the question “How Did We Get Here?” when it comes to our work lives. This time I’m going to delve deeper into the career versus job distinction by giving you information and tools that will help you answer the questions “Do I want a job or a career?” and “What do I want my life to look like?”.

Most people plan for their work lives backwards. That is, we look at “what do we want to do to earn money?” and go from there. Rarely do we take a broader view and do some serious life planning first. Just as a business plan is crucial for someone starting a business, a life plan is essential for everyone. Since our work lives take up a significant part of our time and energy, it is so important that it is congruent with who we are and our overall life plan.

Life planning often gets a bad wrap. People think they don’t need to do it (or fear it is a futile exercise) and by omission end up living a life by default versus a life by design. We put off the things that matter most to tend to the crises of the things that matter least and eventually wake up one day and wonder what the hell happened. Read the rest of this entry »

In the coming weeks I will be doing a multi-part series on the topic of Career and Money. I plan on writing this series fairly organically so I don’t have a nice outline to share up front of what I am going to cover or how many articles will be in the series. So, for those planners out there, sorry to disappoint. However, I plan to approach this series much like I believe the career and money path unfolds throughout our life — there is an intention, plan, and goal, but we never really know how it is going to turn out; even the best laid ideas often take wicked ups, downs, detours, and new destinations. What I can say is that after you read this series you can bank on the fact that you’ll think about your day to day career and money differently. Even if you’re pleased as punch with what you are doing and what you are earning, I would bet my house that you’ll at least look at it from a fresh perspective.

Let’s start at the very beginning… how did we end up where we are today?

I think it all goes back to being a kid and the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. Quite a loaded question for a child, don’t you think? While some folks may have a deep knowing of what they really want to do (you know the person who knew at 4 that they wanted to be a doctor and actually became one and LIKED it), most of us haven’t a clue. We are just kids spitting out some idea of something because of what we’ve seen, heard, or read. Read the rest of this entry »