Tag: #career

Finding the joie de vivre in our life’s work

I’m writing this on a lazy Sunday, where I’ve been feeling anything but with the essence of joie de vivre.

I had an injury on my abdomen return on Friday. My Saturday was watching England get hammered by South Africa in the Cricket World Cup (and also lose to the same opponent in the Rugby World Cup, but I follow that less). Meanwhile, Chelsea managed to throw away a 2-0 lead against Arsenal in the last 15 minutes to draw 2-2.

But this week was around connecting with my joie de vivre about what I do.

Plant the seeds for the life you want to live

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.

Our lives are created based upon the seeds we are planting. If we want a field of sweetcorn, we better plant sweetcorn seeds. That makes sense for us logically, but this also applies to what we want in life. For example, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want a happy, positive and fulfilling life. So the best thing to do is plant happy, positive and fulfilling seeds. It is very simple, yet very effective.

Many of us want these things – happiness, success, love, money or any other number of things. Yet the seeds we plant are the opposite.

Are you travelling to escape the reality of your life?

We often spend a lot of time fantasising about our next great escape. But what does that say about how we are feeling right now?
I’m travelling to India for ten days. In fact, I’m writing this on my layover in Istanbul Airport. I’ll arrive in Delhi in about 9 hours
A few days ago I started wondering whether I ‘should’ be feeling more excited about my trip. After all, isn’t the excitement part of the fun part. In the midst of my active life, was I missing something?
Ironically, by being more present to my day-to-day experience, I am strengthening the muscle which will allow me to enjoy my travels more fully.
What are you escaping from?

The Life and Times of an ‘Author’​

One of life’s great achievements is to write a book. But what happens when you achieve it?
I started my book, Make Diversity Matter to You in 2020. After the events of Black Lives Matter, I wanted to do more to make a positive change in the world. I had previously worked in Diversity and Inclusion in the UK government. My experience demonstrated that the way in which diversity was polarised made it inaccessible to many people who would care.
So writing a book, what an amazing achievement right!? In fact, when I told people they frequently told me how I should be extremely proud.
Except, I wasn’t.

Putting yourself out there is scary. But it is also incredibly rewarding

According to LinkedIn, this is my 100th article.

I had no idea I would do this many. Yet when writing becomes a habitual moment of joy, everything else just flows. If I had spent too much time focussing on writing 100 articles, rather than just enjoying writing, I doubt I would have made it to this many. Let’s see if I make it to 1000 articles!

The theme around ‘putting myself out there’ feels very appropriate. My first article back in August 2020 was a nervous foray to sharing my thoughts to a public audience. I am so glad I made the step to do it. It started a new source of contentment and a new identity for me as a writer.

This week has also been a new, nerve-wracking adventure. On Saturday, I published my book, Make Diversity Matter to You.
There isn’t anything quite as exposing as putting a piece of work out there with your name on it. I still feel free around whether the content is of a good enough quality, or whether I’m charging too much for the book. Despite knowing that people enjoy my writing, that early feedback of pre-release versions was positive and that I’m happy with the content, I still feel nervous.

Starting Fresh – how to handle starting a new job

It’s officially September. Summer is over. For some of us, that also means a fresh start in a new job.
A new job can be a daunting process. We are entering into a new role with a new team, new area of work, as well as potentially a new organisation and location. A year ago I experienced these changes when I left the UK to come to Belgium for a new role in a different sector.
Understandably, getting off on the right foot brings a lot of anxiety to people. Often, people want to make sure they make a good impression and are keen to demonstrate their competence as early as possible.
But do new jobs really need to be that stressful?

Balancing between mastery and being a jack-of-all-trades

I was in a conversation this week with someone who talked about having many different interests. It prompted me to think about my own experience and the guidance I got – on the one hand, people talk about it being good to have lots of different skills. On the other hand, am I meant to be ‘settling down’ on one thing and becoming the best at that?

Like most things in life, the answer depends. It depends on you, and what you want to do.

What does working with a coach look like in practice?

You may have come across the idea of a ‘coach’. You’ve certainly seen sports coaches too. But what does it actually look like to work with a coach on personal development?
Different coaches have different styles. It’s why it’s important to find someone that you feel will genuinely help you. Like any profession, unfortunately there are coaches which give it a bad name. It doesn’t take long to find get-rich-quick schemes or people who get their sales by pressuring people into paying for something that isn’t right for them.
I take the time to speak with people several times before even looking at the idea of a client relationship. Coaching is a personal, transformative experience, and you would only want to do that with someone you can genuinely trust and you think can genuinely help you. If I believe I’m not that person for you, I’d much prefer you find someone else who will fit what you’re looking for.

If you want change, you need to want something new

When we want to change something, it can often be hard to figure out what we want to change. The easy part is to say that whatever we have right now is not working for us, and that we need to shift this into another thing. But the harder part is deciding what this new thing we want to do should be.
The focus can quickly become on how bad everything is right now, and therefore the change is needed to fix things. Change in of itself becomes the solution, whatever that change might be.
Whilst this is perhaps a good starting point, most of the time it is not enough to want change for change sake.

My reflections three months into a job transition

Moving to a new job is a stressful time, though particularly so when moving to a new sector or shifting career. For me this was also combined it with moving countries, as well as having to do so during the pandemic which just made everything more complicated.

So I thought I would share some early reflections of what helped me settle into my new role, and the pitfalls to avoid when shifting careers, based upon my recent experience.