Please Feed The Animals

MONDAY MORNING COACH

Note from Erik: The following is the fifth in series of career coaching articles written by Jeanne Schad. This feature will appear every Monday.

My senior year in college, a professor asked us to write down our five and ten-year goals. I came across this list a few years ago and was surprised to discover I had met or surpassed most of them.  Y’ay me.

But something wasn’t right. When I looked around me, I couldn’t find anyone I wanted to emulate. There were lots of wildly successful people in my chosen field, but not one of them had the life I wanted.  Once I reached my personal “top,” I realized I didn’t like it there.

At July’s TED Global conference, author and workplace expert Alain de Bolton highlighted how the modern definition of success is in need of a kinder, gentler approach.  He noted that the self-help sections of bookstores are paradoxically filled with achievement topics on one side, and repairing low self-esteem on the other.  De Bolton makes the claim that one follows the other in a society where “It’s easier than ever before to make a good living. It’s perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.”

So, this begs the question: What’s your definition of success? And if you realize it’s not quite what you expected, are you enlightened enough to evolve it?

If you took de Bolton’s advice of developing a “kinder, gentler” approach, how would you define success for yourself?  Does anybody else have a different expectation of success for you?  If you had different parents or didn’t have the friends you have or didn’t marry your spouse, how might that definition of success change?

Taking a few moments to write, blog or doodle about these things can help you clarify exactly what you want. Something as simple as a pros and cons list can crystalize what success actually means in your terms.  If you’re job seeking, this can help you focus your job search to what you want NOW.  Not what you wanted when you were concepting at ad school. Not what you wanted when you were 10.  The now you.

Bottom line: define success for yourself, write it down and use pencil.  Keep it handy and amend as your needs change.  Allowing your goals to shift with life’s circumstances will give you more control over your own success.

Sounds like a pretty good way to pass the workday, doesn’t it?

Cheers to a successful week.

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Jeanne Schad is owner of Internal Relations Professional Coaching Resource.  This former agency account service suit now works with companies to coach their people to have more fulfilling careers.  You can join Jeanne for a webinar each Wednesday for out of work ad agency professionals on topics like: defining your own success; designing a job search action plan and staying accountable; finding fulfillment and a paycheck.  Jeanne can be reached at jschad@internalrelations.com or (310) 823-8607, @jeanneschad, or http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanneschad.