Life and Work by Design Blog

I get a daily inspirational message from a web-site called The Universe@tut.com that is sometimes whimsical, sometimes inspiring and sometimes challenging. One day recently, the quote was,

“Often you don’t know what you can do until you do it;

what you can be until you become it;

or what you can have until you have it. “

This is pretty simplistic, and also so true. Take my current life as an example.

Just a few years ago, I didn’t know anything about working on the internet – how to maintain a website and create a blog. This summer I am learning how to create e-books, record podcasts and self-publish a book. None of those things were on my radar until the recent past.

I certainly didn’t know that I could become a writer and a coach but here I am working on a book and teaching a creative career workshop.

And finally, although I had always wished for it, I wasn’t sure that I would ever be able to spend an entire summer at my favorite place in the company of my favorite person, but here I am sharing an amazing experience with my 92 year old Dad for the entire summer.

I’m currently reading a book by Frederick Hudson*, an originator of the concept of redesigning your life. His message is simple also. Have a vision, get a plan and stay on course.

You can start by defining your vision – what is it you want to change – how will the future look? Write about it in your journal in detail. What will you do, what will it feel like, how will you know when you have reached that first goal? Start with just one thing you want to change and work on that for a while. Then go on to the next.

Before you know it you may be doing the most wonderful thing you can think of.

* Life Launch; A Passionate Guide to the Rest of Your Life    4^th Edition,    2001 The Hudson Institute Press.

         http://www.hudsoninstitute.com/

Technorati tags: life changes, goals, life visioning

Technorati tags: summer camp, life lessons, Chautauqua Lake

It’s a damp, cool morning with a heavy misty fog hanging over the lake. As I sit at my favorite bench on the shoreline, I hear loud screams and laughter coming from the children’s camp pier nearby. It takes me back many years to my own experiences on that pier as a camper.

Every one had to pass a swimming test at the beginning of each summer and invariably, because it was early June in Western NY it would be chilly and rainy. The lake looked gray-black and very, very cold.
We would be lined up on the dock, a bunch of skinny little kids covered with goose bumps, wiggling and laughing and dreading having to jump into the water. We would all beg to do something else until the teenage counselors would finally yell, one…..two…..three …and gleefully shove all of us in.

Oh how I hated that! At that age I was somewhat afraid of the water, especially in lakes where I couldn’t see the bottom. And in this lake, a perennial seaweed of sorts grew on the bottom that would tangle around my feet and ankles. Nothing could be creepier! Who knew what else lurked down there?

My only motivation to do this was that once I proved that I could swim to the raft and back, I could graduate up to the canoeing and sailing lessons that I loved. So we would all take off swimming, in any fashion we could, to finish the test and climb out with our blue lips, shivering all over.

It was a rite of passage every summer, and a bunch of kids learned the lesson that it’s better to just get the bad things over with so that you can go on to the good stuff. An important lesson at a young age.
Now I just go straight to the sailing part on sunny days when the twinkling lake light draws me in willingly. I can’t remember the last time I swam to that raft…..

Technorati tags: redesign life, retirement, new career, career coaching, creative careers, new life

Vacations are so good for inspiration and I am staying in a cottage on a lake which has been a place of soul-searching and new perspectives often during the course of my life.   Those of you who have been a reader for a while know that I see many things in life as a metaphor and this morning I’m offering another one. 

Over the harsh winters here, the painted wooden steps up to the porch take a beating and this year we just couldn’t ignore them anymore.  So earlier this week the son of a friend came over to help me refresh them.  There were several layers of paint and they had bubbled up and chipped and peeled away in places.  Josh scraped away all the lose pieces and then sanded the planks down as smooth as he could.  After 30 years, they are not perfect, but now that I have put a fresh coat of paint on this morning, they look pretty presentable again. 

While I was doing this, I realized that this is kind of what I encourage my clients to do in redesigning their lives and work.  Most are at least 30 and have lives that have been layered up over the years by family, friends and experience.  The choices we make along the way lead to other choices and sometimes we end up with a not so acceptable “weathered” life that needs repair and re-painting.  

Parts of the steps were still very acceptable, some were just slightly chipped, and a couple of places had to be sanded down to the bare wood again.   Isn’t this true of our lives?   We all have some parts that are truly us and always will be just fine.  Then we might have some areas that are beginning to wear a little thin and crack - maybe a job you’ve stuck with for too long. 

And most of my clients call me because there is one part of their lives that has become unacceptable and they are ready to scrape it away and start over.   If I can carry the analogy a little further, the process I’m suggesting is to sand down to your own “bare wood”, discover the “grain” of your person, and begin the process of making it shine again. 

It takes careful preparation(scraping away the loose bits), attention to detail (sanding carefully) and patience (painting carefully and then letting it dry) to create a successful project. 

If you need a 30 minute free consultation to figure out what your process needs to be, please send me an e-mail and we’ll arrange a time to chat.  This is a working vacation….. just not as much as at home.   

When I started investigating the whole concept of second careers for boomers a couple of years ago, Marc Freedman had just written his book entitled “Encore”. He founded Civic Ventures and has created a community of energetic, motivated, and intentioned folks who are finding rewarding, meaningful ways to contribute to their communities in the second half of their lives.  

As I started talking to friends and acquaintances about my vision of helping others to find their passion in life, most had no idea that this was a concept that they could embrace in their own lives.  Fast forward just a few short years, and the Encore Career movement is catching on and the buzz is getting louder.  

Two recent columns in the NY Times by Nicholas Kristoff called Geezers Doing Good and another by Jane Brody on the health benefits of “doing work that matters”  have highlighted the increasing awareness of the endless possibilities that are available to those of us who are approaching retirement age but have no intention of retiring. 

Retirement is no longer just an extended vacation of travel, golf and bridge games.  The need for income for many, and the desire to do something meaningful for lots of others is fueling a whole new world of opportunity.  If you want to  learn more about what others are doing and to find ways to generate ideas about what you might do, check out the Encore web site. 

Now about this GEEZER thing.  That has always implied a grumpy old person to me, and I’m definitely not grumpy and not all that old.  On the other hand, I really don’t like the name BOOMER either.  Can someone please come up with a new name for us???    If you have a good suggestion, send it to me by commenting below.   

Technorati tags: retirement, meaningful work, second career, encore career, geezers, boomers and careers