Life & Work By Design Blog

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In the text of my web-site home page, I tell the stories of two different entrepreneurs who changed their course in mid-life.  I’ve had the chance to re-connect personally with both of these folks this summer and am happy to report that they are both not only still living their dream, but their businesses are growing and rising to new challenges. 

Evelyn Brumwell of YBNormal Farm looked right at home in her new expanded location at The Crossroads when I went by last Saturday.  Evelyn and partner Peter are the scientists who decided to chuck it all, buy some acreage, and start up an Alpaca farm in Western NY State a few years back.  Their herd of these wonderful, gentle animals has increased to more than 60 and their breeding business has become very successful.  Evelyn’s shop, which only operates during the summer months, is bigger, brighter and chocked full of beautiful skeins of alpaca yarn, wonderful locally produced hats and sweaters and mittens, and a careful selection of imported coats, socks and other wearables made with alpaca wool from around the world.  She showed me some new colorful naturally dyed rovings that have been added to the mix. YB Normal Farm is now listed on Vocation Vacations if you want to try life on an alpaca farm for a vacation!  

I’ve also been able to visit with Hope Alcorn of Joyful Noise Studio in Pittsburgh who is showing some of her beautiful jewelry at “Artists at the Market” here at Chautauqua Institution. Hope left the medical field about 10 years ago to “divorce my work and elope with whim” so that she could devote more time to becoming a full-time artist. Although she still works part-time as a hospice nurse, she continues to explore new ideas and is receiving noteworthy exposure. The summer issue of Surface Design Journal includes a photo of one of her acrylic on wool pieces entitled “Migrations Down Waterfall Number One”. Also, one of her pieces is currently included in the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh show at the acclaimed Mendelson Gallery on Ellsworth Ave in Pittsburgh, PA.

When I asked her about new projects on the horizon, she mentioned that she had a collection of the acrylic on wool pieces that she had never been willing to sell. Now, after several years, she is allowing a concept that would use those designs in a new media to percolate in her the back of her mind. Her philosophy is “to just let ideas grow in their own time” and that it is important for artists to resist forcing an idea to completion before it is fully formed.

Watch for a couple of stories next week about some other creative career folks I’ve found in the area.    

Technorati tags: creative careers, small business, changing course, mid-life career change, encore careers, second acts, life and work by design

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

Some of you have heard me say this before - “we are who we are because of the choices we’ve made.”  Starting at the ripe old age of about 12, you  began making a string of choices that have created the person you are right now.  

I will grant that the family you grew up with probably shaped not only the way you saw the world, but also how much of it you saw.  But, as a young adult, you could not help becoming aware of a whole universe of ideas and opportunities that are out there for the taking. 

So here you are, somewhere between 25 and 65 living every day in the life you’ve chosen so far.  If you were completely happy with that life you wouldn’t be reading this blog - so how are you going to shape your future now?  Let’s think about making better choices. 

If your life is stressful all the time, start analyzing who or what is causing the stress.  Is it your job, your lifestyle, your finances ?  Or is it  some self-imposed ideals like striving for perfection, believing you have to be a workaholic, and living up to some one else’s ideals?   Once you understand what is causing you to be unhappy, you can  start to think about choices that will  change your frame of mind and the direction you are headed. 

Another approach is to change some of the folks around you.  How long have you known the people you spend your time with? I’m not talking about your partner/spouse and kids - it’s all those other people.  Relatives, neighbors, friends from church or school, cohorts at work all affect your outlook on life.  If you long to break out a your rut, start going places where you can make new friends with new ideas.  Join a club or sign up for a class where you can find people who will challenge your mind and add new interest to your leisure time.  Start to build your “tribe” - a group who will be supportive and encouraging and helpful on your new road.   

And then there are our own bad habits.  My mother used to say that it took the same amount of time to create a good habit as a bad one and she was right.  It doesn’t take any more effort - think about that - it only takes repetition to turn a good practice into a habit.  You can become just as hooked on 30 minutes of morning thoughtfulness as you can on watching 30 minutes of inane morning television.  (And instead of riling you up over politics, celebrity gossip, and a bad economy, it will calm you down and allow you to focus on the good things in your life.)  

Every decision we make has an outcome that moves us further down the road.  If you desire to change your future, you have to start by making choices and decisions that lead toward the destination you have chosen.  Each time you approach a decision, stop and think about it carefully.  Does it lead you toward your goal? 

My favorite entrepreneurial mentor, Barbara Winter, always reminds us to talk to everyone we can - in lines at stores, in elevators, on planes, in cafes - it doesn’t matter where it is.  Find out what they do - you might get a great idea - and  spread the word about what you do or want to do.  You never know who they will tell.   

While I was waiting for a class to start this week, I saw an acquaintance sitting in the lobby at the YWCA waiting for her child’s class to end. When I told her that I was there to do one of my “What Do You Want to Do?” classes for a group of mothers, she immediately responded with a great story. 

She and a friend were sitting in the bleachers at the ball field last fall watching their kids play.  As they were talking, her friend mentioned that she had decided it was time to try going back to work, at least part-time, since the kids were now in kindergarten.  

They went on discussing her background in International Business Law  and the “problem” that she had no interest in getting back into the full-time grind of a corporate office . Suddenly, the Dad in front of her (whom she didn’t know) turned around and handed her his business card.

“I need someone to handle mergers and acquisitions for my company - send me your resume.” he said.   A month later she had a position as a consultant who works from her home with once weekly trips to the office for meetings.  She was able to negotiate a high billable hourly rate since she did not want to be full-time with all the perks just yet. 

This is a win-win for a small company who just acquired a very skilled team member to do only what they need her to do, and for a Mom who wants to get back into the flow of real work but with the flexibility that a pair of kindergarten-aged twins are going to demand.   I’m guessing she may never go back to the full-time grind of corporate law - she’s carving a niche that she can take to other small companies.  

I can hear you saying, “well, that was just a lucky break.”  Wait - there’s more.   My friend continued that she also found her part-time, home-based, media writing position by telling people at a cocktail party that she was a writer who was looking for free-lance assignments. 

Then, once I got into my class, two of the moms there had similar experiences to relate.  Sooooo…. what do you answer when someone asks what you do?    Work on constructing your career goal statement - here is one way to do that. 

I want to work with (who)______, doing (what)________at a (where)_________ during (when)_______ because I (why)_____________.  

Then start saying it a lot - to anyone and everyone around!

      (An excerpt from my E-book  for the over-50 crowd ) 

The advantage of finally being a “grown up” (if there is such a thing) is that once we are over 50, we find new roads opening up in front of us. Things that used to matter begin to pale. Our outlook begins to widen. We start to consider possibilities for change. Maybe we can make a dream come true. Maybe we can reinvent ourselves after all. We’ve still got at least 20 years good years in front of us.

There are lots of stories of folks who found their life’s work after 50. Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until she was 76. At age 70, Harlan Sanders started what would become the KFC restaurant chain. Frank Lloyd Wright completed Fallingwater at age 72 and worked on the Guggenheim Museum until his death at 91. Cezanne did his most important work after his 60^th birthday, and Clint Eastwood finally directed his best film, “Letters from Iwo Jima” when he was 76. Then there are those like Ronald Reagan, Jesse Ventura and George Foreman who completely changed their life’s direction after 50.

All of these people made choices to pursue their passion, to keep trying new things despite early failures, or to change paths completely at a time when many others consider their lives coming to an end. Do you have a dream that you still want to accomplish?

It’s never too late to start working on it. It’s a gift you can give to yourself and to the world.

In her book Pursuit of Passionate Purpose, Theresa Szczurek presents a process to help discover who you really are. It is impossible to define a purposeful life and work if you don’t know what is important to you. A list of priorities is essential to creating the mission statement that will guide you to success.

You may not realize it, but you make choices and decisions based on these three categories of self definition.

Values: These are your core beliefs, ideology, ethics, morals, attitudes and ideals that define who you are and what is meaningful to you. One way to identify your values is to look at the way you spend your two most valuable currencies – time and money.

Gifts: Your natural gifts are the sum of your talents, experience, abilities, aptitude, and education. These are not skills. Skills are taught. Gifts are either an innate part of you or are acquired through living. Ask others for input about what your unique gifts are. Think about your reactions to growing up experiences, adult life events and times of adversity. Everything in your past contributes to who you are today. Strengths are gained over the course of life especially during times of challenge.

Traits: These are the personal characteristics that allow you to effectively use your values and gifts. Traits are such things as confidence and self-esteem, curiosity, energy, integrity of effort, optimism, passion, regeneration and wholeness. (7)

Finding your mid-life passion can re-energize your life and bring rich rewards but only if it reflects who you truly are.

Determining your key priorities is an important first step and not one to be bypassed.

Mike Bellah, a columnist for many years at BestYears.com calls it taking inventory. “Before you decide what to change in midlife, you must decide what to keep.

Make a list of your values, strengths and interest.. …….Once you have decided what to keep at midlife, decide what you will change. What can be improved upon to make you even better at what you do?”

Pursuit of Passionate Purpose can be purchased in my bookstore, Web-site Link

A lot of assorted bits of conversation, sentences I’ve read, and a couple of personal experiences recently are playing in my mind this morning.   As a blogger, I have a responsibility to write something interesting, educational, inspiring or funny on a pretty regular basis, and this time of year makes all of us want to wax philosophical about the holiday season and the ending of another year.   I could go on and on about any number of subjects, but as I sift through all these sound bytes in my head, one very clear message comes through that I want to deliver. 

Give yourself a gift this year - the gift of SELF.  

Here are some examples: 

I just finished perusing a blog of a man named John who is walking from Boston to Washington, DC  to express his belief that the constitutional foundation of our country is being threatened.  It doesn’t matter what your politics are or whether or not you agree with him. He is taking the time, and making the effort, to do something that he believes in with all his heart and mind.  Considering that it is December in the Northeast, and his journey is  cold and perilous, many would say he is crazy.  I say he is truly blessed with a complete understanding of what his life is all about and has summoned the courage to ”walk his talk” as he puts it.  John is giving himself a gift of SELF.    (If you want to read about him, go to http://www.marchinmyname.org/)

The next example is a colleague who called to chat this week.  This man and his family have been through some challenging times in the last 18 months and they are now going about the task of putting their lives and livelihoods back on track.  Last summer he had agreed to be part of a group project and the rest of us were looking to him for leadership.  But in the meantime life has happened to him as it does to all of us.  He has realized that in order to be true to himself he needs to change direction one more time.  He will not have the time or inclination to work on the project and he is feeling badly about that.  My answer was to say, “you need to take the time to be whatever you need to be right now.”  Sometimes we just need to stop and re-trench - give ourselves the gift of SELF knowledge.  

An then from a personal experience…..On Saturday, a local town was celebrating an annual festival and I had organized a group of friends to meet for dinner and then to share the  festivities together. After spending the afternoon with my grandsons,  I proceeded to the appointed meeting place.  Thirty minutes later no one else had showed up.  I will admit that I was irritated for a few minutes. I stood on the cold sidewalk thinking that I should just go home and do Christmas stuff but something stopped me.

 I went on into the cafe and ordered the soup and sandwich special. The place was packed so I asked to share a table with two other women - strangers. We enjoyed 30 minutes of interesting conversation together and exchanged cards when we left.  Then I ventured back out onto the cold Main Street and wandered the sidewalk watching an amazing group of street entertainers.  A sign in the local bookstore advertised a special sale for the evening only - all books were $3.98!  I headed into the warmth of the shop and spent almost an hour scanning the titles in my favorite sections and left with a bag full of treasures.  By then it was time to join the street parade so I eased into the crowd of dancers and drummers and strolled my way laughing and singing back to my car. 

 I could have gone home hungry and disappointed. I should have finished my Christmas shopping and gotten some baking done I guess.  But instead I decided to enjoy a pleasant evening at the festival I wanted to attend.  It helped that I have finally learned to (1) feel comfortable being by myself  (2) enjoy the company of strangers  (3) be spontaneous with my plans and  (4) not be upset that the others had changed their minds.  I have learned to give myself the gift of SELF enjoyment and I came home relaxed and happy.  

And the last example is a new acquaintance who is a very talented writer, college professor, scientist and all-round versatile woman who has led a fascinating life.  I look forward to learning something new every time we get a chance to talk.  She announced yesterday that she is headed to a friend’s cabin in the southern hills of Indiana for a three month sabbatical alone to write a book.  She is giving herself the gift of SELF in solitude to be creative.  I am envious and I will miss her, but I can’t wait for the revelations that I know will be forthcoming when she returns. 

So, I will say the proverbial Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and Have a Wonderful Holiday Season to all of you.

 But most of all I wish that each of you can find some way to pause, for whatever period of time, to listen to your inner voices, feel the desires of your heart and to express your SELF, quietly or aloud, in a way that brings you joy.   

 Namaste