Here is a playlist of all the videos I produced in February 2013.
You can find all my past videos on my YouTube Channel. If you enjoy a video, please click the Like button or Subscribe to the YouTube Channel. Doing that directly effects how many other people see my videos.
Point at each video thumbnail for more information and scroll through the available videos using the < > arrows in the lower right corner.
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I was invited out to speak to the career group, Tuesdays with Transitioners, in what has become an annual presentation. This year I present “A Year of Self Preservation.” You can watch the entire presentation below in this YouTube video.
It is a fact of nature that we often spend many hours of each day focused on someone else. We focus on our boss, our job, our family, our projects — but one person is usually left out of this focus — you! We can easily lose ourselves in the clamor for our attention. This year, though, I call for “A Year of Self Preservation”. A year of returning the focus to ourselves and our own lives, so that we can continue to help others.
It is my firm belief that we can only, truly, help others when we ourselves are in a good position. If we try to do too much, without the support of friends, family or a stable income, we risk placing our own life, work and income in jeopardy. This isn’t selfishness. Self preservation is about establishing a firm foundation where you can stand so you can offer a helping hand to others.
The tenets of A Year of Self Preservation are:
Taking care of yourself first — not last
Learning when and how to say — No
Distancing yourself from negativity and avoiding the downward cycle
Attendee Comments
“Valuable information, superbly presented. Time well spent.”
“Very good subject and some great insight on the topic. I enjoyed it.”
“Today’s meetup was very thought provoking. Douglas’s presentation was wonderful and very timely. We must constantly be reminded of this “self preservation” and the importance it plays in our happiness throughout life.”
It is a fact of nature that we often spend many hours of each day focused on someone else. We focus on our boss, our job, our family, our projects — but one person is usually left out of this focus — you! We can easily lose ourselves in the clamor for our attention. This year, though, I call for “A Year of Self Preservation”. A year of returning the focus to ourselves and our own lives, so that we can continue to help others.
It is my firm belief that we can only, truly, help others when we ourselves are in a good position. If we try to do too much, without the support of friends, family or a stable income, we risk placing our own life, work and income in jeopardy. This isn’t selfishness. Self preservation is about establishing a firm foundation where you can stand so you can offer a helping hand to others.
The tenets of A Year of Self Preservation are:
A rested parent/worker/caregiver is a good parent/worker/caregiver
Taking care of yourself first — not last
Knowing when and how to ask for help
Learning when and how to say — No
Distancing yourself from negativity and avoiding the downward cycle
Join Douglas at Tuesdays with Transitioners and see how you can make 2013 the best year possible.
The calendar year has cycled around again and so does the Career Opportunities podcast. While I celebrate the official anniversary of the podcast each September 24th, it seems appropriate to highlight the first episode of the 2013 Season. I am in my 8th year of this podcast show and column and look forward to another year of “Helping to Build the Career You Deserve!” — Douglas
As I have done for the past several years, 2013 starts with a word or phrase that I will focus on throughout the year. It is always my hope that you will find this focus just as useful. For 2013, I am declaring A Year of Self Preservation. A year of taking care of yourself so that you can help take care of others.
When we had our son nearly 15 years ago, our pediatrician passed on an important piece of advice — one that I share with almost everyone I meet at some point. “Rested Parents are Good Parents!” It is so easy, as a new parent to dedicate yourself so completely to your child that everything else in your life suffers. Your sleep suffers, of course, but also your relationship with your spouse and family, your relationship with friends and even your relationship with yourself. Your work and career can suffer, as well.
We took his advice to heart as much as possible. We slept when the baby slept. We found babysitters and family members who could give us a night out every so often. We actively thought about — and engaged in — self preservation. We knew that if we allowed ourselves to become too tired (both mentally and physically) we wouldn’t be the type of parents we wanted to be.
Fast forward to 15 years later and I find myself offering this “rule” of self preservation for a host of new reasons. I meet people who have been unemployed for months or years. I have friends who are acting as caregivers to elderly or extremely ill family members. I have fellow parents who are making their way through the teenage years with all the stress and confilct that can generate. To all of them I whisper “self preservation” in their ears as often as I can.
It is my belief that you can only truly help others when you are in a good position yourself. This good position might be monetary. It might be a good mental position. It might be the position of having available time. Whatever your particular situation, you must look to your own stability first before you can truly help others.
This isn’t a call to selfishness, though. I am not telling you to ignore others and their calls for help. Rather, I am asking you think about your own self preservation and not sacrifice your own stability, your own income, your own happiness to help others. If you do, you will soon find yourself in the same situation as those you are trying to help. You will quickly expend all your good intentions, most of your income and disturb your stability if you don’t think deeply about your own situation first.
Of course, this self preservation will mean that sometimes you have to say, “No.” There will be times you can’t help. People you can’t help. Actions you cannot take. This is simply the nature of life. Be aware though, if you try to help everyone at everything, all the time, you will quickly find yourself unable to assist anyone. You will use up all your energy and leave everyone worse off than when they started.
I urge you, in 2013, to think carefully about your own self preservation when asked to become involved with any endeavor. Here are a few questions to ask yourself on each occasion.
Do you have the time, skills, energy, money to help at this time?
Are there others who can help share the work? Will you be able to take breaks, when needed?
Will this activity take away from your own projects, work, happiness at this particular time?
Will this activity have a deep positive impact on both you and the recipient of your help?
Will this activity eventually no longer be needed or will it continue for the foreseeable future?
If you want to truly help others, you need to practice active self preservation. You need to take care of yourself first, so that you have the energy, time and income to help others. To do otherwise is dangerous to your own stability and well-being. This isn’t selfishness in any way. By thinking about self preservation, you are helping to insure that you will be there when people need help rather than being in need of help yourself.
I have a lot of interests, as most of you already know. Therefore, I have a lot of different blogs, events, and groups in my portfolio of online engagements. I also try to make myself available wherever people want to converse. This means that each of my interests usually has multiple presences on the Internet.
Here is a list of almost all of the ways you can talk with me and learn about what is happening in my life and work. You don’t need to, nor should you, try to subscribe to all of them. That would only lead to you seeing multiple copies of the same information. Rather, pick and choose whatever ways you would like to consume my “content.” If you are a heavy Facbeook user, you might want to join my pages there. Is Google+ catching your fancy? I have a home over there, too. Maybe email is your thing? No problem, almost all of my content can be emailed directly to your Inbox.
My goal is to make my content available in whatever way makes the most sense to you. It also means you can contact me and converse with me on your favorite online services. This list is also broken down by interest. If you want to see everything I post and share, the first section is where you can find it. This will contain information from all my areas of interest including events, careers, gardening, technology and my organizations.
Maybe, though, you are only interested in my gardening information. You can narrow your reading to my gardening blog or Facebook page. The same applies for careers, technology and my organizations. Select whatever is most interesting, and valuable, to you.
Thank you for supporting me, my blogs and podcasts and my organization over the years! I look forward to talking with you — and sharing more with you — in 2013.
All my interests and personal information as well as my Food-related blogging
Gardens can be beautiful or productive and are often both at the same time. Every gardener brings their own energies, their own attitudes, their own wants, needs and desires to their garden, making each one a unique statement on their creators. Whether you are growing vegetables, flowers for cutting or the world’s largest pumpkin, gardens can hold a special place in your heart.
Gardens can tell us a lot about ourselves, but we also end up communicating who we are to others through our gardens. One visit to my garden and you will see that I like things a little wild and not too tidy. You’ll notice that I garden with benign neglect — reveling in those things that survive and not worrying too much about those that don’t. My garden is a window into the very core of who I am. Sure there will be more to learn, but sometimes I think my garden is the best introduction anyone can have of me.
Navigating the special difficulties of a high-tech career can be troublesome for workers, young and old. Career Opportunities, a weekly column for ComputorEdge Magazine in San Diego, California and Colorado Springs, Colorado, has addressed these issues for almost 13 years. While simultaneously developing his own high-tech career, author Douglas E. Welch has shared his insights, trials, setbacks and successes with his readers. The High-Tech Career Handbook collects the best columns from 1997-2003 into a book for all high-tech careerists, whether they are just starting out, building their career or looking for a new career in the high-tech world. Topics covered in the columns include getting your career started, ethics, fairness and the benefits of doing honest business, personal development, professional development, and the tips and tricks for transitioning into a mature career.
While we often talk about one, monolithic, Reputation – with a capital R — I believe that there are a series of reputations that make up the whole. This book will focus on the combination of reputations that make up your one, overarching, Reputation. By examining each of these reputations in detail, I hope you will find specific areas where you can improve your work, your actions and your thoughts so that your overall professional reputation grows. Why break your Reputation down into its constituent parts? It is often said that you can’t “do” projects, you can only do the individual tasks that make up the project and achieve the desired result. The same can be said for reputation. You don’t build your reputation as a whole, you cultivate the smaller reputations that create it. Each individual action builds your reputation in unique ways and each requires some thought as to how they relate to the whole. Table of Contents
Imagine if when you were born you were given a magical compass to lead you through your life. It would always show you the way. It would show you the right answers on tests, lead you to the right college and to the right course of study at that college. It would lead to your first job, your first (and maybe last) love and always show the path ahead. This isn’t some idle fantasy. We each have a compass to show us the way, if only we would take it out of our pocket and use it. This compass, of course, is our desire. Instead of a needle, it is a feeling, a pull, a tension — in some cases, an overwhelming flood of feeling that says “Yes, this is the way — this is the one — this is where you need to go!”
“I am deeply convinced of the importance and effectiveness of social media. Like the Internet itself, which made social media possible, social media allows you to expose your talents, your products, your creativity to a huge number of people all over the world. The “loose contacts” we make online are the beginning of what I call our own global family.This isn’t one unwieldy global online community, but rather our own personalized family made up of those that bring value into our lives. Our communities might overlap in some ways, but they will never be the same. They can’t be. We are all unique individuals so therefore our communities will reflect this uniqueness In fact, when our communities are too alike, we might be just following the crowd instead of building our own community.”
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Looking for a job? There are a host of job listings available on Jobs.WelchWrite.comevery day. Enter the keywords you are searching for and your location to get fresh and focused listings.
Dysfunctions is structured more like a short story or novelette than a traditional business book. This allowed me to get very involved in the story. Indeed, I believe a good story is always the best way to approach life and business. Whether you are writing a resume or trying to solve difficult business problems, a good story can illuminate the issue better than any combination of charts and reports.
The end of the book contains a more “business-like” restatement of the lessons, for those who want a more traditional review.
More importantly, I saw many aspects of my past business dealings echoed in the book. I think that anyone who is involved in business, in any form, has faced many of these same problems and issues. I requested this book from the library after seeing a short mention, possibly just the title in some magazine I was reading. I had no preconceptions about what I might find within, and I have been pleasantly surprised with the quality and importance of Dysfunctions.
While telling a good story helped to clearly explain the concepts, there were a few times when the characters came around too quickly to the lesson.The main character, a newly minuted CEO brought in to build a better executive team, seems a bit too assured with her process, but yet exhibits some moments of fear and regret.
Overall, this is a great book and I would highly suggest that it be recommended to your employees and your peers as a way of explaining how teamwork can and will develop if everyone is committed to making it happen.
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