Career Opportunities with Douglas E. Welch

One bad reason to choose a career from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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There can be many reasons for choosing a particular career. It might meet with your intellectual interests and native talents. It is an area of work that is becoming more necessary and more in demand. It has a large impact on your community and the world at large. It is satisfying to you personally and helps you to accomplish your personal, family and community goals. If these are some good reasons to choose a career, what is bad reason for choosing a career? Choosing a career because you think it will make you rich, famous or a combination of both.

Read One bad reason to choose a career from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

No one earns the right to “coast” in their career from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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As you get to be older — I just turned 49 myself — there is a problematic thought process that can creep into your daily thinking. When you are faced with a new career challenge, a new career idea, a new career thought — you balk. You think about all the work that this new thought is going to require and you wonder if it is really worth the time and trouble. To use an older term, you get “set in your ways.” You find the status quo is a much easier place to live. In some cases, you might even be thinking, “Well, I’m not going to be around in this job (or at all) for much longer, so why bother with all this new work?”

Read No one earns the right to “coast” in their career from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

What you need #2: Work that you love from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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What do you need to have a successful career? I think one of the most important parts of any career is finding work that you love to do. Great careers are not built on work you don’t mind doing or work you can do without any effort or work you can tolerate. Great careers are built on doing work that you love to do — work that you can’t imagine not doing — and work that excites you, invigorates you and gets you out of bed each morning ready to tackle whatever comes your way. 

Read What you need #2: Work that you love from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

†††

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Our own actions matter more than President, Pope or Prime Minister from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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In these days of global, instantaneous, communication, we are much more aware of what is happening in the higher circles of government. We know what bills are making their way to the House floor, what debates we will see in the House of Commons and how the latest tax law changes will effect us. That said, due to this better communication, we often overestimate how much effect these large governmental organizations have on our day-to-day life. In the worst cases, we can begin to ignore what is happening in our own backyard, in our own families, in our own careers. It is important to remember that your daily actions will have far more effect on your life than nearly any governmental action. 

Read Our own actions matter more than President, Pope or Prime Minister from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

†††

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Slow and Steady: Monitor the trend line to make your progress visible

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While it may seem that everything is hurry, rush, go, go go in today’s world, life still moves along at a very steady, slow pace. In our careers and in our lives, we can push, we can press, but both often unroll at a rather unhurried pace. Sure we can push for that new job, that new promotion, that new house, but we can only hurry life along so much. At these times it is always wise to remember the old cliche that “slow and steady wins the race.” It is through constant, on-going action that we change our lives and careers. Sure, there will be dramatic shifts in our lives, but these dramatic shifts are often underpinned by weeks, months and years of steady preparation and progress.

Read Slow and Steady: Monitor the trend line to make your progress visible

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

In Praise of Praise from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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Now that you have this image in mind, how do you think others feel when you praise them. If, like most human beings, they have a similar reaction, wouldn’t you like to be the cause of those same feelings in others? The sad truth, though, is that while we love to receive praise ourselves, most of us are absolutely lousy at giving it to others. Blame it on the American work or life ethic of rugged individualism, the harsh nature of work today, or simple inattention, but far too often we err on the side of criticism when a little praise might be just what we — and those around us — need.

Read In Praise of Praise from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

†††

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Breaking the negativity cycle from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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As we all know, it is easy to carried away with the emotion of a crowd. Whether it is cheering at a football game, singing along at a great concert or crying along with the audience at a movie or play, we can experience great uplifting emotion. While we can get carried away with good emotions, it is even easier — and I think, greatly damaging — when we are carried away with the negative emotions of a crowd. When we ride the downward spiral of negative emotions, we can reach depths we never could have imagined. Often in our careers and in our lives, we can be faced with overwhelming negative emotions from groups both large and small. For our own, personal, self preservation, though, we need to to break the negativity cycle when it occurs.

 

Read Breaking the negativity cycle from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

†††

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

High school is the time to think about your career, but not to decide it from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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When I was going to high school — back in the Dark Ages of the 1970’s — teachers and counselors would talk about possible careers,  but unless you were moving into a vocational education program, no one expected you to decide on a career right then.  College was meant to the be place where you ‘found yourself’.  Today, though, we have magnet schools — for junior high aged children — dedicated to zoology, journalism, science, arts, performing arts, math, engineering and more. It seems to me that, more and more, we are asking children to decide on their carers earlier and earlier. As someone who has yet to decide “What I want to be when I grow up”, I find this a bit troubling. For me, childhood is about discovering what you might want to do with the rest of your life, not deciding.

Read High school is the time to think about your career, but not to decide it from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

†††

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

A Year of Self Preservation from the Career Opportunities Podcast

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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.

Read A Year of Self Preservation from the Career Opportunities Podcast

Build the Career You Deserve with these books

†††

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

I’ve said much the same thing that Seth is saying here (see below) in past columns (Economic downturns makes career planning even more important
October 3rd, 2008) and I wanted to reinforce those words with his analysis here. Profit gained by extorting, abusing and defrauding others is anathema to our society and — I believe — not required for a decent (sometimes astronomical) profit. Still people will cut corners, lie, cheat and steal while all the while proclaiming “It’s not my fault! I did nothing wrong! It is all the company’s fault!”

Companies, by their very nature, cannot have consciences. They can’t distinguish between right and wrong. Only the employees of a company have that power, but they abdicate it in some false sense of righteousness that they were only “doing their job!” 

Avoid those whose only motive us profit. You will not be above their abuse. You’re only seen as another mark to be conned — another sheep to be fleeced.

Nearly fifty years ago, Milton Friedman published a polemic, an article that altered the way many people think about corporations and their role in society. Countless writers have explained why it’s poorly reasoned, dangerous and wrong. (Including business school deans, Harvard Business Review and Fortune).

The simple message of the simple article was: “there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits…”

Friedman does add a parenthetical, “so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud,” but it’s clear that his emphasis is on the first part.

Read Off the hook with Milton Friedman via Seth Godin’s Blog