Can’t Think of a Career?

Having trouble thinking of a career?

Don’t be so hard on yourself – not only are you not alone, but you’re amongst friends. At least you’re struggling with the question rather than resigning to a career based on abstract criteria like pay, longevity, job security and practicality.

• Base your career decision on someone else’s abstract criteria and you’ll wind up working for Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns, oh and BofA and WaMu, or become a lawyer and work at a large firm because they believe they will be paid well and have tremendous prestige. Top of the food chain!

Not so much. As a lawyer who worked on multiple large bank bankruptcies, at a very prestigious, monolithic firm, I can tell you that not only are these jobs not secure or fulfilling for most people, layoffs are rampant, and almost no one is happy in their jobs – even in the “good” times when they make a lot of money.

I know it’s a little broken-record-y for me to be bringing the credit crisis/recession up again (speaking of which, can we let the outburst by the South Carolinian Representative Wilson who shall remain nameless go already? It was shocking and embarrassing rude. but I’m sick of hearing it replayed ad nausea), but the whole recession and credit melt down is a great myth debunker about so-called safe careers that people “thought up” for themselves.

In my experience speaking with many friends I have in NYC, now that jobs are scarce in the financial sector, and people are paid reduced bonuses, the appeal is GONE.  Money was the motivator in those career choices for many (not all) people, and what we all learned is that money actually cannot bring happiness.

Here I go, getting touchy-feely… You gots to get over the aversion to talking about things that matter just some of the time if you want a career you’ll love. Being cynical is all good and fun until someone looses an eye (arguably, then it’s just cynicism you cannot see) but release your death grip on being cool and detached and stick with me here for a second while we help you “think” up a career… using your body.

WHY YOUR BODY NEEDS TO RUN THE SHOW

We westerners live in a culture where our creature self gets a majorly bad wrap. We revere LOGIC! Our big brains can figure out philosophy, religion, politics! Mind over matter!  Cranium is king. The body is a mere vessel.

In my experience which is increasingly supported by observing clients’ lives -and scientific research, no less! – this is backwards. The more we learn through the advances of brain mapping, the more we see that our brains are much more like a computer than sophisticated intelligence. We have “ruts” in our brains from the same neural connections firing again and again and again.  Do you tend to get lonely? Do you have a self-confidence problem? It is pretty likely that you do, as these are thoughts I’ve not only watched in my own monkey-mind, but also see over and over again in others.  These or other unhelpful thoughts revisit all of the time, cruising down those same connective ruts, worn down by decades of use with no bump in the road, again and again and again.

Therapy can help you heal old emotional wounds from your past. But to change your thoughts (outside of the scope of this blog post) you don’t need therapy or an understanding of where your dirty thinking came from. You can literally rework your brain.

I provided this evidence to support your new belief that your brain may not be as helpful in finding a career as you thought it was going to be. If you want to actually DO this, check out my blog category Mental Sanitation.

Instead, listen to your body.

CAN YOU “HEAR” YOUR BODY?

Start with a few simple questions, assessing how tuned-in to your body you are:

• Can you withstand a lot of pain or consider yourself someone with an abnormally high pain threshold?
• Think of your left ankle, right now. Focus on your left ankle. How is it feeling? If this question is extremely difficult or impossible to answer, you are tuned out.
• Take a moment to think of the last time you felt very happy. Why not choose your happiest memory, gosh darn it! Write down how it felt, this extreme joy, in your body.  I don’t want to know what you were thinking, or what your mental state happened to be.  Write down physical sensations in your body. If it’s not connected to a body part, it doesn’t count.
• Try this out on the WORST memory. Same rules apply.  When you think back to the memory, if you struggle identifying WHERE in your hot bod you experienced the joy (chest, face, legs), you be tuned to the non-body station.

OUTCOME

GO, GO BODY COMPASS: If you could answer these questions fairly easily, you are ready to proceed with your career decisions by doing things that feel great in your body – opening, relaxing, freedom-ing – and not doing things that feel heavy in your body – shackles on, constricting, cage-like sensations.

• When you think of your current job or the last job you were in, how does it feel in your body? Imagine yourself going to work on Monday.  What does your body feel like?
• Take a moment to think of something in the creative field that you enjoy: writing, painting, creating media content, editing music, drawing, interior design. Any activity where you create something is valid that somewhat appeals to you. Imagine yourself doing this – even better, spend 5 minutes doing this on a small scale. How does your body feel? Be very specific about where you experience physical sensations.
• Pick up a pen in your non-dominant hand, and draw an outline of your own body. Stay loose and decorate it. Spend 5 minutes doing this. Now, gaze gently at the drawing and write down a caption, whatever happens to come to mind.

These exercises, using your body compass, are giving you VITAL information: your body compass is teaching you activities you should be doing (feel good in your body) and activities that are wrong for you (feel badly in you body).  Getting in touch with your creative side is an excellent to get out of your head and into your body, and working with your non-dominant hand provides a wonderful template for your non-logical, creative side to speak. Listen to it, and you are building muscles that permit you to make better decisions, in your career and in everything else.

Seriously, people, trust me here – your physical body is much, much wiser than your computer-like brain.  Play with these and other body-driven exercises and pay attention to the results. Take them seriously.

BODY WHAT?  If these questions where nearly insurmountable for you, your first step is to crawl back in that bodacious bod and learn to listen to what it has to tell you. Check out my blog category Thaw Out Your Soul which will give you practical ways to reconnect.

I’ll be posting some super-new and cutting edge ways in the coming posts to reconnect, so stay tuned!

Let me know your thoughts!

The New School of Exercise

The New School of Exercise.

For years, I treated exercise as a way to get results. I joined cross country in high school so that I would be forced to run a a lot (and be around a boy I thought was cute) and thereby burn a lot of calories and get thinner.  I kept training for marathons in college because I wanted the result of being thin. Ironically, I never maintained my goal weight with all of those miles and all of that calorie burn.

The reason why I did not get the results I was trying to get is that my focus was on GETTING – exercise does two things: It certainly can give you something so one of the things is that you get something from exercise. This is the “take” side of exercise that most people perceive as the primary motivation for exercise. But, more importantly, exercise is something you give to yourself. You give to yourself when you choose to exercise.  I want you to identify with only the giver part of exercising.

Back when I was a sophomore in college, I made friends with this girl who, oddly enough, enjoyed exercising because she only choose exercises that she liked doing.  I quickly found that I actually loathed running, but when I went with my new enlightened buddy to Pilates, I was in heaven. It harkened back to my toddler days in Gymboree, which I am told that I adored, and my mediocre and less fun times competing as a gymnast (that whole competition thing, just not for me, it turns out).

For MONTHS and MONTHS, all my amazing instructor taught me was technique. It was more like rehab than it was like exercise. And I dropped 20 lbs (more…)

One Size Fits All Food Categories

For everybody out there who struggles with food issues and their weight, knowing what kind of eating you are engaging in each and every time you eat is a crucial building block to permanently loosing weight.

There are four types of eating: Fuel, Joy, Fog and Storm. (We can all thank Brooke Castillo for kindly and correctly generating these categories.)

Each time you eat, you are in one of these categories.  Categorizing food will help you discern when you are not eating according to your body’s requirements for nourishment and WHY you are choosing (yes! It is actually a choice) to do this.  This also permits you to choose when you want to eat for fueling your body, and when you want to just for the enjoyment.

Fuel Eating

Fuel food is just what it sounds like: You are eating to put fuel in the machine that is your body.  90% of your eating should be fuel food.  This doesn’t mean that it want be delicious and enjoyable – just that the purpose of the meal is to fuel  your body.

(more…)

Excuses are Lame – Do Something About It

Write down one of your favorite excuses for not taking action in the area of least satisfaction in your life.

Seriously – like, right now. I’m waiiiiiiiting.

I’ll keep talking while you think of what that fav excuse is.

Is your career the area of least satisfaction?  ”I would ask for a promotion but there is a recession going on” – anything about the recession blocking your action?

Maybe you would lose weight, but you don’t have time to get started right now. Is that the one you tell yourself the most?

Okay, now that you’ve pinpointed the area where you feel stuck and the reason you haven’t done anything, it’s time to plug-and-chug!  We’ll plug your personal flava of excuse into a very powerful model.

Feeling deeply stuck is always the result of a stalemate between a command and a countermand from one’s own belief system.  A countermand (i.e., your excuse and “reason” for inaction) is an instruction that another command should not be followed - examples:

• “I see myself running my own business (command), but I need an MBA (countermand)”
• “I see myself getting married and having children (command), but my boyfriend won’t propose to me (countermand)”
• “I see myself being a restaurant consultant (command), but I don’t have enough time or money to start (countermand).”

Your mind ALWAYS denies that you are doing this – it pretends the countermand is some very real external circumstance or situation or force that makes it “impossible” for you to achieve you goal/command.  The big red flag that you are countermanding what will make you happy is the word BUT.

COUNTERMANDING SPELL

When someone is countermanding their heart’s desires with BUTS, you cannot help them solve the problem with logic because they will “yeah, but” your every suggestion.  Arguing does not work.  The only way for the person to see their way out of their countermand is by Byron Katie’s method – there’s a formula you follow each time.

This is what you do:

Step 1: State the Countermanding Spell:
I cant [insert condition A]__________________________________________
__________________________________________

because [insert condition B] .

Applied to one of the examples above:

I can’t see myself being a restaurant consultant (condition A) because I don’t have enough time or money to get started (condition B).

Step 2: Do a reality check

My mind is choosing not to have [insert condition A] _________________________________________
__________________________________________

because it believes [insert condition B] __________________________________________

__________________________________________

is a problem.  My true self can create [insert condition A] _____________________________ __________________________________________

because it knows [insert condition B]__________________________________________

isn’t the problem — my beliefs are.

 

Applied to our example:

My mind is choosing not to have a career as a restaurant consultant

because it believes I don’t have enough time or money to get started

is a problem.  My true self can create a career as a restaurant consultant

because it knows I don’t have enough time or money to get started isn’t the problem — my beliefs are.

 

Step 3: Discredit the Countermand.

First thing I would do if I did not believe condition B: _______________________________________

Second thing I would do if I did not believe condition B: _______________________________________

Third thing I would do if I did not believe condition B: _______________________________________

 

Applied to our example:

First thing I would do if I did not believe condition B: Get realistic about the time I waste each day and over the weekend (Tweets, episodes of Lost, Gmail chatting and loitering around the gym) and use this time to work on my business.

Second thing I would do if I did not believe condition B: Create a free, basic website using WordPress to advertise my services, which I can direct potential clients to.

Third thing I would do if I did not believe condition B: Call my contacts at restaurants, explain my service and see who they suggest I contact who either do this already or could use my services.

You have to try this on your own to really “get” it. I promise that if you really think about it, you have a desire that is thwarted by your own countermanding belief. Try these 3 simples steps with something you yourself believe, so that you get to experience the liberation when you do step 3.

Let me know how it worked for you in the comments below!

And check back soon for your next excuse-exploding mechanism (cheesy? Yea a little. But true!).

Excuses Are Lame

Question: What’s less helpful than excuses?

Answer: Nothing.

Then why do we all constantly crank them out?  That is another good question.  Before we dive into the answer, here are some of my personal favorites from the excuse bank:

• If it weren’t for my financial obligations, I would definitely quit my job and finally do something I enjoy, maybe even take a break.
• I am all that my spouse/parents/children have, it is my job not to let them down.
• I owe it to my reputation to stay in this job no matter how I feel about it.
• I can’t quit my job without another job lined up.
• I would switch jobs but I can’t during this bad economy. (personal fav)

Oh, the lies! Sure, you may read the above or recognize some kernel of something you truly believe that is your current excuse for staying put when you’re totally miserable, and think – yeah, but for me it is TRUE.

You are wrong, my darlings. If you think any one thought is God’s honest truth when that thought feels like shackles on your wrists keeping you in a miserable cage of a situation, you are sorely mistaken.

Let me explain…

Your brain is a computer. If you had your brain mapped (and nowadays, you can), you would see that certain neural pathways seem to be extremely popular for your brain. Repeat offender thoughts such as, “I don’t deserve to be happy and successful” or “I need approval to know that I’m worth something” are like ruts in the road. The connections between certain neurons are worn deep, and the thoughts these connections generate may be pathways created subconsciously, perhaps even at a young age. Maybe we watched a painful family situation and learned, “Nothing good is ever permanent,” or perhaps our teachers only paid attention to us when we scored an A+, and we decided that means, “You have to be successful to be loved.”

Whatever the unhelpful thought, our computer brains have be running those thoughts on loop ever since.

That’s all fine and dandy, but the problem is - we believe them.

On top of the crappy thoughts we’ve been playing over and over, there are all sorts of fear messages hard-wired to our most basic brain functioning that broadcast on repeat as well. For the survival of our species, fearing that there will never be enough resources motivated us to gather resources and form bonds with other primates, and constant fear of attack kept us always vigilant to defend our young and brethren. The portion of our brain close to our brain stem that very closely resemble the brain of a reptile is the origin of these “lack and attack” messages – also known as our Lizard Brains.

Today, in a world of abundance where we inhabit shelters impermeable to wind and rain, with automatic climate control not only in our living rooms but our refrigerators, attacks happen very, very rarely especially when compared to the constant struggle against predators and the elements experienced by our ancestors.

When you add up the computer brain playing bad oldies and our panicky Lizard Brains, excuses can feel pretty, well, real.

But here’s the really, really good news: We can literally outwit our brains and the call of nature that is currently hardwired.  If you could map your brain while you do the following exercise, you would see that different parts of your brain are activated when you rework an unhealthy thought than the part of your brain that is firing when the unhelpful thought is passing through your pretty little head.

Is this making sense? If not, hang on and try these next few exercises that I’ll post this week on for size.  It will help you get what I’m saying here and make some repairs in your own head, too.

It’s fairly likely that you will feel more relaxed, less likely to believe those pitiful excuses keeping you from better stuff and a much happier outlook – and life. Try it out, see how you feel. What’s the harm in trying?

Pinpoint Your Passions

Find What You’re Passionate About

Tuesdays @ 7pm, November 3 to November 17

So! You are in the wrong career, or you have a sneeeeaking suspicion that you might be in the wrong career, or you got laid off, or maybe you’re choosing your first job and don’t want to mess it up.

I think everyone here knows that being in the wrong job? Not fun. Not fun at ALL.

• Enduring a bad job is like wearing a shoe one-half size too small. At first, you suck it up because it’s a half-priced Jimmy Choo or sweet Ferragamo loafer or whatever.  Then, you walk a few blocks, and it’s actually painful.  Over years,your Choos are crippling you.

Stick it out (even in a recession) for long enough and your discomfort becomes so large that it can no longer be contained: Like King Kong devastating Manhattan, your mild unhappiness becomes a health-destroying, self-destructive monster, Jonathan Fields-style (scroll down his bio for the juicy part).

It’s total and complete awfulness even if you’re not in self-destruct mode.

I am going to level with you for a second:  The wrong job does not get better with time. Or with pretending to like it. Or even with a big enough pay check.  If happiness could be bought, Anna Nicole would be mentally healthy and still hear to share her wisdom.

And you know what else?  Things don’t have to go down like this. You can love your job like I love my job and many, many others love their jobs. It’s absolutely realistic to want this.

There is work out there that you will like. You don’t even have to quit your current job or make drastic life changes to figure out what that is. But you do have to do something to figure out what work is right for the unique person reading this, which happens to be you.

BUT LESS ABOUT STUFF, MORE ABOUT YOU. Here at BluePrint Balance, we know that you are awesome and smart. We know that you make things happen and do good stuff.

And we know, like you know, that what makes you awesome, smart and do good stuff is getting you a job that you love.

Don’t get us wrong – you definitely are really awesome, and we are being serious about that.

But all of your awesomeness won’t get you unstuck because you. need. help. And all your friends and relatives need help, too. EVERYBODY needs help to make their lives a decent place to live. No one does it on their own.

WE ARE EXPERTS

We have been stuck before. Oh, have we ever. It sucks. We get stuck and think we can get out by working on it all alone, in a corner of an empty room. This results in failure in a lonely, empty corner.

You may not know this, but we, too, have once been in a job that we suspected was sucking the life out of our faces.  It got worse (much, much worse) the longer we stayed. We searched inside ourselves for some godforsaken answers and because our little self had been ground down to a tiny nub, and we had zilch to give us.

Moments before the job ate our soul, we FINALLY reached out for some help from a real, live human. And approximately 1 second after getting help, we felt a little better. Not long after that, things got MUCH better.

Now, we are so very happy.  We still get help all of the time to keep good things good and bad stuff gone.

Not only have we been where you are now and tasted sweet victory, but we’ve been trained and certified to coach you out of this mess – and FAST.  Read about all of the goodness we’ve brought to people’s lives already.

Getting help is the way you will figure out your shiz. We love helping you with this and we are damn good at it, if we don’t mind saying so ourselves.  Also, get help sooner and you prevent a public melt down.

In 3 classes, you do things like:

Lesson 1:  Why not feel better now?

Progress is slow when you walk around feeling terrible.  Work on your fears and your thoughts and feel better now (without the use of any artificial substances) which, basically, feels a lot better. More energy means you make faster progress towards getting the hell out.

Lesson 2: Figure Out What Makes You Awesome. We help you identify work that you love love.

Sure, knowing that when you were a kid, your passion was to climb trees is helpful if you want to be a pro-logger. What you loved when you are five is only a tiny piece of the puzzle for most of you.  You’ve been ever-so-slightly disconnected from yourself ever since you started doing stuff that you thought you “should” do and that “everyone else” thought was a good idea. We help you thaw yourself out and get to know the real you and what the real you wants to do with your life.

Lesson 3: Hammer out what your very own perfect-for-you job looks like in the world.

Like we were saying before, you are awesome and smart.  We really like you.  You know even if you don’t KNOW IT yet what the right job looks like for you.  We help you access that knowledge and clarify.  We also give you resources to continue your journey once class is done because we like you the most when you are happy at work and loving your job.

The 3 classes are recorded. They are yours to keep forever and ever

But, Laurie! What if:

• There’s no time! It is okay if you have a conflict one night – the classes are recorded, you won’t miss out on a thang.
• Money is an issue. Do the research. This class is the most affordable class you will find. I am doing this as a test, because even though I don’t come cheap one-on-one, I want people who’ve been laid off to be able to to afford this.  Plus, not to get all cheesy up in here, but helping you find the precisely right, happy-heaven-party work for you is kind of, like, what I’m passionate about really into.
• Life coaching sounds lame.  Yeah, you’re right on that one. The term “life coach” could not be lamer.  We can call me something better (I’d definitely be into that) so let me know when you come up with a cool name.  The actual THING I do, which is getting you happier now, plus also getting you everything your heart desires, is something I think we can both agree is sooooooo not lame.  Feeling better, doing more, and having lots = why you want me as your life coach.  {OH! Maybe I’m your “Fairy Godmother”? No, too pansyfied.  I need something tough like Arnold but cool like Sienna.}
• Just 3 classes? What the eff is that going to do? Not to worry. In addition to each hour long class, the program includes:

15 minutes of Q&A after each class

Weekly assignments

Weekly tips and updates (until 2010, no less!)

Personal feedback from me to you in a kind but no-nonsense way

Email access to me in between classes

A group of like-minded classmates to learn from and support/be supported by. (This is HUGE.  No matter what happens today, find one person who like “gets” your struggle to find a job you like and supports that)

The right work for you is energizing and fun and feels really, really good a LOT of the time. If you want to feel that great at work, figure out what work is right for you.

• Location: It’s a telecourse, which means you can dial in from anywhere (and RECORDED!  Missing a class is no biggie)
• Time: 7pm Wednesdays, November 4 to November 18 (1 hour for class plus an optional 15 minute Q&A)
• Cost: $99
• You can cancel for a full refund, no questions asked, anytime, just by emailing info(at)blueprintbalance(dot)com before the class starts.

Space is limited to 10 people, maximum. It’s really important to me that the work we do together lets you work out your own personal situation and that means smaller is better.

And not to freak you out, and I need to confirm this with my assistant, but I think 5 spots are gone already.

Which means only 5 more people can figure out what would be the most fun and viable job for them to do live in this program.  There’s just one of me and I’ve got a lot of love to give (I can say stuff like that, I’m a “life coach”) but only enough for 10 people this time around.

[Hi guys! We are sold out! Sorry sorry sorry!

Check back in a couple of months, like around February, for another class. Or, sign up for the newsletter to be the first in the know and don't miss out.]

very cool phenomenon*

*Very Cool Phenom: Pinpointing your passions ALONE – even without cranking out some elaborate plan to get there – will do so much more than you will believe to actually get you that better job situation. It’s a little eerie, but very cool. Don’t get me wrong, real world actions have their place, too, but a game plan is useless if you don’t know where you want to go. Just by knowing what you want, you’re making your chances of having that great career strong.  Strong to quite strong, in fact.

How Does Demon Liquor Figure into Weight Loss?

Question: Dining out, happy hour, girls’ night, boys’ night, Saturday football and Cancun. What do all of these have in common?

Answer: Alcohol.

If you want to loose weight, reconciling alcohol consumption with your goal of the ultimate physical perfection, or even to loose just a few pounds, can be tricky. This is because drinking is FUN.

Wellllll, fun to a point… maybe fun while you’re drinking but not so fun the next day. Which makes a girl wonder how “fun” this really is…

But because dieting sucks, we especially want to have fun and temporarily escape diet hell when we are trying to lose weight through the lame diet route.

Unfortunately, diets are not only torture but doomed to fail. Wait, no – they are not only torture, and not only doomed to fail, BUT they also perpetuate a cycle you may already find yourself in, where all attempts to stringently restrict calorie intake through discipline triggers “famine brain”.  When the human brain activity is mapped, we can see the picture of our neural activity when dieting, which is identical to neural activity mapped for humans enduring a real food scarcity.

Famine brain means that your brain responds to this severe food intake restriction by sending your body very strong and, honestly, irresistible signals to eat everything in sight because, oh my goodness, didn’t you know, there is a famine! Your brain is not confident that there will be another opportunity for feeding, so not only do you compulsively inhale anything available once you finally respond to your brain’s commands to eat (and you will), but your brain has also engineered your metabolism to roll to a screeching halt so every morsel that can be stored as fat will be.

This horrible cycle that you know, as do I, from experience is the 7th level of Dante’s Hell, is called a “feedback screech” similar to when a microphone is held up to a speaker and a screech comes out because of the endless cycle of input into the mic and output of the speaker.

Next time you find yourself knee-deep in pasta or potato chips soon to be followed with deep remorse and a new-found resolve to restrict your food intake drastically, again, to make up for this “bad behavior” — STOP!!!  It’s not helping!! Like I was saying before, your brain is always going to keep telling your body there is a famine, and the feedback screech continues while you get fatter, more miserable and increasingly less likely to feel joy on a regular basis.

Let’s agree not to sign up for that any more.

But I digress. How does alcohol fit into the framework of self-love where you give yourself healthy and delicious foods because it makes you feel good, although you could choose to eat cocoa krispies 24/7 if you wanted to because nothing is off limits?

Well, basically, alcohol can fit into any of the food categories except for Fuel (remember the four types of eating? Fuel, Joy, Storm and Fog are the only four kinds of consumption. If you’re not taking my classes and the four types of eating info is new to you, check out If I’m so Smart, Why Can’t I Loose Weight by Brooke Castillo):

• Drinking alcohol is a Joy eat when you enjoy and taste every sip.
• It is a Fog eat when you’re checked out mentally and still downing the vino without taking note of whether you want this or how hung over you’re going to be tomorrow.
• Alcohol is a Storm eat when you are throwing back drink after drink like you’re on a mission.

Make sense?  Good!

Feel free to add any comments you may have or post questions – any and all are welcome.