I shared the story of my career transition from Opera into the Professional Development work I do today. Making that change eighteen years ago was a huge challenge. My career journey all of the sudden took a turn into uncharted territory and I was shaken to the core, but also changed for the better. If you find yourself in the midst of a career change where you find yourself “off-roading” away from the safe o...

When it comes to career, there’s a lot of pressure in our culture to achieve our goals…to “make it”… to “get there” – yet each time we “get there”, there’s always a new “there” to get to. We reach a goal, and that brings us to ‘What’s next?’ – and then we’re off again – working toward the next new goal on the...

When it comes to our work lives, the one sure thing is change and challenge. We may moan and groan when faced with hurdles large or small on the job – but these are the experiences we’re most likely to remember for the growth and wisdom they bring. Through my coaching practice and travels for speaking engagements, the most heartening stories I hear about career challenges are the ones that have led to positiv...

For many of us, work is often characterized as “serious,” “nose-to-the-grindstone,” “no-nonsense” and “down to business.” There’s this idea that work is work and play is…well…for after work. In an INC column, Brendan Boyle, a partner at the design firm, IDEO, says play in the workplace has a “PR problem.” “Some think of play as frivolo...

If you’re looking for more challenge in your job, and there doesn’t seem to be a promotion in the offing, you may be asking yourself, ‘What’s next?’ That’s how my coaching client (I’ll call her Dawn) was feeling when we first met. Dawn was a manager at a non-profit and felt like she’d gone as far as she could go in her position. She’d been taking on more responsibilit...

Have you ever wanted to hit the “pause” button at work – getting away for longer than your allotted vacation time allows? University professors have traditionally taken sabbaticals to recharge and refresh, and now more and more American workers are doing the same. Many employers, including MeetUp, McDonalds, Pantagonia and Morningstar, to name a few, offer sabbaticals – allowing their employees th...

The donuts are there to greet you in the break room…the Diet Coke is the “perfect fix” for getting through the afternoon…it’s so much easier to “push through” rather than get up from the desk to stretch… and so it goes, often day after day. We spend the majority of our lives at work, and, while we’re there, we’re focused, productive, and taking care of busine...

Job searches are always hard, but going through them after being let go can make them even harder. Not only is your morale low, but there is a sense of pressure to quickly find a job as to not feel the impact of lost wages. It takes an organization an average of about fifty-two days to hire on a candidate for an open position. While a month and a half might not seem like a long time, it is long enough to cause serious harm...

When it comes to your job search, there’s no arguing that the Internet is an incredibly valuable tool. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, online search has become the most used tool for job seekers. But even though the posts are there — are the jobs themselves? The research team at Reviews.com aimed to answer this question with a six-week long study. They consulted with experts and hands-on tested th...

We often put our own well-being to the back of the proverbial back burner in order to get ahead, but over time all this does is set us back. It’s estimated that nearly a third of the working world is sleep deprived, which may equal meeting short term deadline goals, but it doesn’t take long for a lack of sleep to begin to cut into success. Not only does it add to our stress and interrupt how we cope with it, but...