Workstyle Lifestyle Midlife Career Companion

Wow!  have you noticed that the techniques for finding work have dramatically changed since the last time you were in the job market?

Here’s an opportunity to hear all the latest.  Career coach Lowell Ann Fuglsang and career counsellor Marilyn Henigman have put together a free webinar that explores all sorts of new approaches in their Golden Keys – New Insights and Perceptions.

Sign up for this free webinar here

yoUnlimited

Carolyne Taylor

Another huge thank you goes to everyone present who supported Bridges For Women.

 When the stresses and pressures of business get you down,

how do you overcome the resulting procrastination?

 Napoleon Hill in his book “Think and Grow Rich” revived the concept of “master mind”.  He defined it as “the coordination of knowledge and effort in the spirit of harmony between two or more people for the attainment of a definite purpose“.  A great definition for a Success Team!

Do you have a purpose that you want to move forward?  Take charge of your situation and join this Success Team and experience the support, encouragement and accountability that will ensure that

• Your income is increasing
• Procrastination has stopped
• Time & energy are being used efficiently
• You make decisions more strategically
• Frustration & stress have been reduced
• Your business has a direction

When we meet:  Twice monthly on the first and third Monday night of the month @ 6:30 pm PT for an hour.   Beginning March 5th

Where We Meet:  Success Team Webinar Room on the Internet.

Cost:  $50 per month.  Payable through PayPal.

Facilitation: by an experienced career/business coach Lowell Ann Fuglsang.

 Call Lowell Ann at 250.686-3640

for more information, or sign up here

Last time I mentioned that Expectations would be the next item on the program agenda.  What I learned was that the founders of this material freely give these modules with the hope to give back to Internet community while at the same time receiving affiliate fees for programs that participants might choose to purchase when the course is over.  Fair enough.  So far I have not been inundated with promotional messages, however they state that they will keep us apprised of new products as time goes on.  We are free to unsubscribe at any time.  My reaction to this is that there is integrity here, everything up front.

The next major item was an explanation of the ” Magnificent Symphony“.  The four parts to marketing on line:

1. Market Research
2. Traffic
3. Conversion
4. Product

Stress was placed on the importance of the order, and the typical mistake made by all of us – Beginning with Product.  To begin the market research step we are being shown how to use Market Samurai.  Lots of research work to do here.

From the forum I was able to connect with 5 other people and we have formed a support team  using Google Groups.  We are a diverse group from Canada,  US and UK and we are all at roughly the same place in the process. We are just getting to know each other, and I have discovered I’m the only gal.  It would be great if we had a couple more!

If you are interested in participating, you’ll find the program at The Challenge

While following something down a rabbit hole, I stumbled on a gem.  The Challenge is a free course offered by Ed Dale and his Australian team.  This course is intended for people who want to do business on the web, and is suitable for beginners as well as those who are reasonably savvy.  Each video module is 30 minutes in length and lots of supports are provided.

Since I’ll be promoting a new webinar series in the new year, I decided to participate.    If you are like me, you want to know as much as possible about navigating the web, so do sign up!  I’ll be documenting my progress as I go along.  I invite you to do the same.  Let me know that you want to play by adding your comments here.

To date, I have covered:

• The Introduction which provides a guided tour of the training site.
• Getting set up with Ustream, a video site
• Registering for the Challenge Forum, a community support bulletin board
• Twitter set up
• Chrome setup

I must admit that after the Twitter lesson, I was wondering if this would be right for me since I have been a Twitter user for quite some time.  Was this going to be too elementary?  This morning I did the lesson on Chrome.  And while I have used Chrome off and on now for a while, I discovered four extensions that will provide a lot of additional information about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – just what I am looking for.  I wonder why I didn’t know about these before!

The next lesson for tomorrow is about Expectations.

I have always found the month of December a stressful one.  While it is usually great fun to attend all the extra events and connect with friends and family, I am often left in a state of overload.  I need to remind myself that I will need to recharge my batteries.  That means taking a block of time just for me.  So what shall I do with this time?  Here’s my brainstormed list, in no particular order.

Recharge through meditation

• Walk the beach at sunrise with my fitness partner Robyn;
• Turn off all external noise and dive into a juicy novel;
• Spend an afternoon sewing;
• Dig out all my CDs and listen to a few that I haven’t heard for a few years;
• Work up a vision board for the coming year;
• Make a list of all that I am grateful for;
• Write a long chatty letter to an old friend – better still, phone her;
• Take a photographic walk.  Choose a theme to guide the choices;
• Meditate in a tranquil place – beach, forest, garden;
• Spend the afternoon trying a fancy recipe – no deadline of course;
• Reflect on the past year and journal my observations;
• Sleep all afternoon.

As I review this list, the realization comes that I need to find opportunities to do these things regularly.  How often do we take individual time to do just what we feel like – Whatever the spirit moves us to do.

What will your spirit move you to do over the holiday?

In my quest to stay on top of my game, I stumble on a number of great people and interesting ideas.  In this week’s blog I will  share a couple with you.

While working with my web coach Ryan Labelle of Honeycomb Webworks, we got to discussing how to make my WordPress website and blog more accessible to smart phone users.  There is a PlugIn called WP Touch which I did have loaded but didn’t have maximized.  We did some exploring of its capabilities, did some tweaking and now both my blog and website look just great on the smart phone.  Thanks Ryan! 

While attending a very interesting workshop with Angelique and Chrystyanna Queensley at Communication House  called “Flower of Life”,  we stumbled on a film that is bound to generate some lively discussion.

The film, which was released on 11-11-2011,  incorporates sacred geometry, ETs, antiquity, the banking industry, sources of energy and many of the current worries we have about the health of our planet.  The film offers a number of suggestions though mainly concerned with the US, have some universal appeal.  You can find Thrive – What On Earth Will It Take  on their website and you can watch a trailer on YouTube -

I would be very  interested to hear your reaction to this film.

Recently a client was describing what she regarded as a very unsuccessful job interview “because the interviewer was at least 25 years younger than me and she had a poker face throughout the interview”.   She concluded that ageism was present.

It got me thinking about what it must feel like for the interviewer. She has this very qualified and confident person before her and she begins to feel intimidated and uncomfortable. She’s thinking “How could I ever give direction to this person that knows way more than me?

What can the Third Age Job Seeker do about this?  Our programming from a previous time tells us to go into job interviews with an air of confidence.  Well, perhaps it would make sense to tone that down a bit now.  Here are a few ideas that come to mind for putting the interviewer at ease:

• Find a way to connect, even though the interviewer has control of the meeting;
• Be relaxed,  as well as professional;
• Smile into the eyes of the interviewer;
• Don’t be afraid to use a bit of silence;
• Answer questions factually, without a lot of embellishment – focus on last 10 years; focus on skills rather than positions;
• Stay light and use a bit of humour about yourself;
• Show that you don’t take yourself too seriously – be truthful about your answers about your weaknesses;
• Find a way to communicate that you value collaboration and you are ready to share what you know with other team members, and pull your weight;
• Communicate your fascination with the speed of change and technology;
• Mention how much you enjoy working with diverse groups:  young people, other races & cultures.   Mention what you have learned from them.
• Ask questions that communicate that you are interested in furthering the vision and purpose of the company.
• Explain that you don’t need to be in a high level position now – the satisfaction derived from staying connected and contributing;
• Focus less on what you need than on what the company needs;
• Above all, don’t be condescending.

If you have had an unpleasant interview experience, I would like to hear about it. Maybe we can come up with some more strategies.

I recently wrote a guest blog for a long time colleague Nancy Zimmerman.  I thought it would make sense to share the link with you:  Nancy’s Blog

What words do you use when you think of your own Third Age?  Please drop me a comment with your words or phrases and I promise to reflect them in future Third Age postings.

How do you react when when circumstances demand that you change the way you work?

Work processes, once learned, go into a semi-automatic mode that require only part of our brain power, and work flows along quite comfortably.  Then when the process gets changed, we become very uncomfortable and we may even feel frustration and some resistance.  I’ve experienced this numerous times in my life and work:

• Learning to make a meal in the microwave.  I had to relearn everything I knew about cooking.
• When our department upgraded from DOS to Windows, we had to move away from keyboard functions to mousing.  That was very painful.
• When I shifted away from the paper appointment book to the Palm calendar.  That was sort of fun, and felt leading edge but meant a totally different way of working.
• Learning to file elecronically.  There was a lot of reluctance here because I was never sure if I would ever find the item again.  It wouldn’t be at my finger tips when I needed it.

Well, recently I did it to myself again. 

For various logical reasons, I decided to upgrade to Office 2007, and spent the better part of a week saying ” Where did that function go?”  Nothing automatic happening here.  At the same time, I moved to Google for my e-mail.  This meant a whole new way of thinking.  How does one make good use of labels or conversations rather than the old Outlook way?

And even more recently I’ve shifted from a Balckberry to an Android smart phone – from cable syncing to auto syncing.  Now I must learn how to ensure privacy and security.

This has prompted some reflection on breaking old habits and shifting to new ones.  How do we move from discomfort to mastery? I decided to chronicle my progress:

1. First the researching and testing of various options.  Being really clear about why I’m making these changes.
2. Final decision.  Making the shift from the old to the new all at once.   Being careful to make the change when there is time to experience the transition.
3. Watching tutorials and getting a handle on the wide angle view.
4. Trying to do a critical task quickly.  Can’t find anything…where did everything go?  Hunting and pecking and getting nowhere.  Frustration!!!  Desparation!
5. Determination.  I’m stuck with it , so I’d better get on top of it.
6. Remembering to make use of “Help”. How to…..?  Turn it into a game.  How fast can I discover how to do the usual things?  Now it’s sort of fun.
7. The pride of knowing that I can figure it out. Also remembering that the learning curve will always slow us down, but will not overcome.
8. Now the challenge and joy of discovering all the short-cuts one at a time and as needed.
9. Remembering that the speed of change is accelerating, so I need to perfect this process.

Now it's great!

My conclusion?  Creating new brain pathways can be both painful and stimulating.  It’s definitely a way to maintain brain health and youth.