#1 Take Ownership

• Your career is yours and yours alone. You have the power to create it and live it as an expression of your unique talents and energy.
• Forget what other people think of your choices. Even though people often mean well, you will be the one putting in the hours so be selfish enough to do something you enjoy and to have fun with it!
• Being yourself in your work gives power, creativity, and freedom. You are off track if you feel insecure or like an pretender at work.

#2 Look Inside Yourself, You Know the Answers

• Take note when you find yourself fully engaged in a work activity. If it feels like you are in the zone, or plugged in and energized, or connected to something larger than yourself: Pay special attention.
• Then describe it further…what are you liking about what you are doing? Is it this? Is it that? Keep asking yourself and you’ll know when you hit the answer that feels right.
• Start general then get more specific in your description of what you like about what you are doing. For example, is it the communication or connection? Is it the performing or beautifying? Is it the helping or healing? Is it the organizing or administrating? Then add more detail by asking why.

#3 Respect the Career Development Process

• The beauty of a great career is in the way it unfolds.
• Enjoy the present moment. Each small step adds up until you are for sure ready for more.
• Appreciate then forget when you felt lost or frustrated in your career. Through those times you learned more about what you DO want.

#4 Understand the Power of People

• People can be powerful and brilliant in sharing their connections with others. Use strategy in maintaining your 150 or so top connections to tap into the power.
• Accept that people can be dark, egotistical, and negative but this is nothing compared to an individual in harmony with self. Recognize the negative as the weaker power and stay beyond it.
• See and applaud the strengths of others as you do for yourself. Be a builder-upper who is generous with knowledge, info, and positive energy.

#5 Be an Opportunity Bulldog

• Take your individual strengths and mesh them into your public identity and no one can take your place.
• Research and understand the opportunities that exist because of the challenges in your field of expertise.
• Present a passion for being or finding the solution and be unafraid of asking for the opportunity.

New career mentor informational interviews added to the sample content area of CareerSparksClub.com. One titled “Get Your Opportunity Ears On” features Joyce Bone, author of “Millionaire Moms: The Art of Raising a Business and a Family at the Same Time.” The other with a retired human resources executive turned professional organizer for her encore career. That interview is with Karen Hancock of AmazingSpacesMacon.com and is titled, “Planning a Career.” Enjoy these complimentary podcasts!

Step #1 Pay attention to what you’re focusing on.

This step alone can do wonders for you almost immediately. First understand that what you focus on affects your emotional state, or how you feel.

If what you’re thinking about makes you feel bad it affects your energy level in a bad way. If you’re thinking about something that makes you feel bad you will quickly start to feel stressed or tired or just generally have a bad attitude.

On the other hand, if what you’re thinking about makes you feel good it affects your energy level in a good way. It doesn’t really matter if what you’re thinking about it is true or not what matters is if it helps you feel good.

So use this to enhance your career. For example if thinking about the weekend or free time makes you feel good then don’t wait until Friday to daydream about the weekend. But if thinking about the weekend makes you feel bad because you want it to be the weekend now or it makes you yearn for the weekend, then avoid thoughts about the weekend choosing to focus on something to make you feel good instead.

Here is another example. On a recent episode of Dancing with the Stars, Olympian Evan Lysacek was being coached by his dancing pro Anna Trebunskaya. Evan is a top notch technician but was not good at showing emotion in his dancing. Anna asked him, “What makes you happy?” Evan mumbled something about cars and then said, as his face lit up, “my baby nephew!”

He then proceeded to show cute little videos of his nephew on his phone to his coach smiling & laughing the whole time. Anna capitalized on that reaction and brought it to his attention. Long story short, he danced like a whole new man in that week’s competition. Even more importantly, he now knows a trick (shall we say, a Jedi mind trick?) for something to focus on when he notices he is not feeling as happy as he could.

Step #2 Use your strengths in your career.
Strengths as related to careers are activities that you enjoy doing, that you do well, and that you don’t mind doing repeatedly. This new hot philosophy on strengths was developed by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton in the book, “Now, Discover Your Strengths.”
They promote the idea that we can be happier in our careers by focusing on strengths instead of trying to improve weaknesses. In fact, they say that one can advance further and faster in skill attainment by practicing and developing one’s strengths rather than one’s weaknesses (for example, their idea that you can work everyday  to improve a weaknesses and achieve only lackluster results). The book is a little long winded because of all the theory and development talk, but when you buy the book you get an assessment code to enter online to take the assessment. The more recent version is StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. The book is much more of a friendly, quick reference which also includes an assessment.

Step #3 Be selfish.
No, I don’t mean selfish in a bad way. It is simply that factoring in everyone else’s opinion of what you should be doing in your work, (or for that matter what anyone thinks about the work you do) is exhausting and fruitless…so be selfish! After all, YOU are the one putting in the time and attention to whatever you choose for your career, and you are the one noticing everyday how you feel about your career (see step #1). So be selfish, and take charge of your career development to make sure your work is life-enhancing.

• Ever notice that often you’re trained to do tasks that aren’t on the job description?

• It seems that often one only gets “meets expectations” for doing what is outlined in the job description on annual reviews.

• One thing that is kind of neat is that often the highest praise and potential for advancement comes when taking charge of something that is not on the job description.

Morale of the story: Don’t take a job description too literally —and use that to your advantage to customize a job to best match your strengths.

1. Skill Identification in a process that expands client’s personal skill vocabulary and effects and builds a positive change in self-confidence.
2. Explore both old jobs and new options. “New career direction.”
3. Development of different career options through a method/process that opens doors of opportunity that otherwise would be overlooked or discarded.
4. Personalized training and individual attention to those things that will set you apart from all other candidates.
5. Developing a clear self-presentation and unique marketing materials as well as learning key job searching tools.
6. Campaign focused mainly on personal one-on- one informational contacts where the jobs are in the making. When there is a vacancy or posted opening, “client usually gets an interview.”
7. In addition to posting a LinkedIn & Facebook profiles, all kinds of e-media are explored to build visibility and credibility in your chosen market.
8. Three-stage controlled networking campaign. Adeptly using internet for background research to locate, and connect with “countless” contacts.
9. Dual-approach to get interviews from employer-
identified ads: applying through personnel and
 approaching Hiring Decision Maker(s) directly.
10. Primary interview training: Referral Interviews, which build connections to the hiring decision makers. without waiting for “openings.” These interviews also train candidates for actual job interviews.
11. Step-by-step coaching to handling salary negotiations/questions given at the beginning of the search. Coaching at time of the offer generally increases comp package by 10% and more.
12. Client continues to build visibility and credibility in his/her chosen field. 5-year goals established as well as the development of your network “Power Team” that has been built to advance your career now and in the future.

I encourage you to spend more time tracking your accomplishments than your goals. Accomplishments are actions you have already taken. Goals are actions you intend to take. Make it a habit to log your weekly accomplishments and turn them into bullet points for your resume and power stories for reviews, networking, and interviewing.

You may also want to add a space on your accomplishment log to mention how you felt while working toward each accomplishment. Say a 1 to 5 star rating, 5 being the best. This will help you recognize what activites juice you up so that you can make arrangements to do more of those.

The beginning steps to getting to the next level in your career.

1. Identify what the next level looks like.
2. Track your accomplishments.
3. Identify your personal brand.
4. Start talking to people and thinking often about what you are wanting.
5. Plan your networking.
6. Be on the lookout for the right opportunity.

In today’s fast-paced work environment, most people cannot expect to stay with the same company for 20 years then retire. The current environment is much more dynamic with more opportunities for multiple avenues of success. Workers now can custom design a work life in ways that were not dreamed of 25 years ago.

You can work full-time, part-time, temporary, and/or be an entrepreneur. You can work from home or commute to the office only a few days a week. You can be an independent contractor working project by project. Most importantly, you can go from one type of work arrangement to another depending on which type best meets your lifestyle goals and compliments your stage of life.

To add another interesting aspect of the world of work today, you can even return to school at various stages of your career. In fact, to be competitive in today’s workforce we all must keep participating in education as a lifelong learners more so than ever before.