Yes, almost everyone needs to stop worrying about work, but it’s a bad idea to think that to relax, you need to stop thinking about work while you’re on vacation. Here’s a better idea: allow your best vacation mind to transform your workdays so they are all more fun, more relaxed, more satisfying. Consider:
1. When you’re relaxed, it’s easier to see new options, discover new allies or resources. Continue reading
If you think of work as only the means to earning money, you’re missing work at its best — like work with meaning, work with joy, work that stretches your talents, engages your body and spirit as well as your mind, and sends you home inspired by deeper connections with other humans and the earth. And if you think of work as something that ends when the official workday ends or when you retire, you’re not considering how rich the work of our lives is. Continue reading
I am always being reminded by my 16 year old how out of touch I am; or how I don’t take enough time to just have fun; or all I think about is getting my projects done; or I worry too much about how much things cost, or, or, or.
I am sure my son’s generation will do just fine (as long as their mothers follow them all through life picking up after them). It’s just how we go about getting there that’s a lot different. I was taught to plan, prepare and perform (in other words – Git-er done!) My son thinks it should be done either by mom, dad someone else, or later on after his buddies go home. Continue reading
How do you get money fast when jobs or clients are scarce? Mention that challenge in any brainstorming group, and inevitably someone will joke, “rob a bank.” Laughter will inevitably ensue, then the group will go on to same-old ideas that already haven’t worked.
But what if you could turn the outrageousness of the bankrobbing suggestion into a catalyst for absolutely ethical client-building or job-finding strategies? Here’s one set of tips you could discover with quick brainstorming questions. Continue reading
Most people really want their work to be purposeful. But beyond a vague, generic “I want to help people,” most can’t define what that means. This makes it darned impossible to land the right helping-people job, perfect clients for your meaningful business, or donors for your non-profit agency.
Fortunately, you can learn much of what you need to know about purpose-finding and marketing strategy from a 99 cent box of Trader Joe’s tissue. Continue reading
While the official unemployment fluctuates around 10%, the real rate is much higher considering those who are no longer counted (e.g., benefits having run out) and people struggling with part-time work. Many economists feel there will not be a significant surge in jobs before 2012.
What to do? Perhaps its time to take a closer look at starting your own business. Continue reading
I’ve always loved to watch the Olympics, both winter and summer. Being the empathetic type, I feel the excitement, nervousness, and exhilaration they must feel as they perform, as well as the joy or sadness from winning or not winning.
Economic problems cause major stress (I hear you saying “no duh!”) Job loss, cut in pay, cut in hours, or failure at a business can put pressure on a people. Financial stress mars the spirit and makes even the healthiest person forget good relational skills. Too often these external pressures erode relationships inside and outside of work.
So, how do you safeguard all your relationships in these economically trying times?
We’ve got to slow down and be like white lines on mountainous roads to each other, my Dad, the late Bill McHenry, once told me. Otherwise, how can we see and safely navigate the inevitable ethical fogs of work and life?
Even when I was very young, I knew that my dad had gone successfully through several huge ethical fogs. Several years before Dad met my mom, he turned down an unethical but lucrative job at the height of the great depression. When I was just six months old, he blew a whistle on his powerful embezzling boss, a college president. Four years later, soon after Dad’s testimony helped send the boss to jail, Dad turned down another lucrative but unethical job at a social service agency.
As a child, of course, I didn’t understand the full impact of these stories. As an adult, I got enough details about whistleblowing and its impact to fill a book.
In the end, Dad’s only regret was that no one had stopped the president when the wrongdoing was small, by saying simply, “No, Dr. Meadows, you can’t do that.” Over the years, I also learned a lot about the stress of Dad’s whistleblowing on our family, and I healed.
What was left after the forgiveness and healing were some very powerful life lessons in basic integrity. May they also serve you. Continue reading
Almost 30 years ago, whistleblower therapist and stress expert Donald Soeken asked my help to write some how-to materials on whistleblowing. I got the gig not based on any published clips (I didn’t have any then), but because the writing sample I gave him was my father’s story of blowing the whistle on an embezzling college president when I was just a baby. In that sample, I detailed the story I knew all too well about how the retaliation Dad suffered impacted our whole family for decades.
Almost all the people I told about the writing gig made what they thought was a joke: “Whistleblowers? Oh, you mean ratters? Snitches? Stool pigeons?” Given my father’s story, and given the 95-5 odds that my mother’s early death from a rare illness was caused by the FDA’s lack of attentiveness to under-reported side effects of a popular prescription drug, it’s amazing I didn’t do bodily harm to those jokers.
Today, it’s still considered okay to slander whistleblowers, then wonder why more people don’t speak out to warn us about fraud, waste or abuse. And there are many who are so focused on not being “negative thinkers” or buttinskies or poor team players that we become complicit in all types of wrongdoing. Fortunately, there are a whole bunch of resources to help you tell truth to power and thrive and/or to support those who dare to speak on your behalf. Continue reading
