The Lateral Career Move: Why It’s Worth the Effort

Have you encountered a log-jam in your business channel? Do you feel that you have outgrown your current position? As I write this, the economy brings uncertainty with it… which is why this might just be time for a lateral career move.  Your new position may not be for more pay… but in the long run, you will be happier if you’re not bored or pigeon-holed into one area of expertise.

Moving to avoid or alleviate stress

Sometimes you just don’t sync with your boss or even your boss’s boss. Ask yourself if it would be worth changing jobs to work for someone else. This can make your work day more pleasant and your mind less stressed when you are off the clock. If despite all effort, you simply do not know how to please your boss or be on the same page, then a lateral career move seems pretty straight forward. It is not worth the stress to work for someone that you have tried repeatedly to work with but cannot. And this can be no-one’s fault. Sometimes personalities and/or workstyles simply do not meld. It’s better to move on than to make both of your lives miserable, or to struggle against the grain each day just to bring home a paycheck.

Moving with the changing times

I have friends that have been in the same position with the same company for over ten years. Though there is something to be said of job stability, the changing times bring changing priorities. Who is to say that such careers will go on indefinitely? Many companies are going “leaner” these days – eliminating positions entirely, consolidating job responsibilities so that one person may be responsible for many more tasks than previously known. If you’re concerned about job stability, a lateral career move will put you ahead of the game by allowing you to get new skills under your belt that may make you a hot commodity for another position, maybe even with another firm. Don’t pass up the chance to move sideways and, in doing so, broaden your horizons and make yourself even more marketable than before.

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Harnessing the Power of Your Subconscious Mind

More and more people are becoming aware that they have two distinct minds–the conscious and the subconscious. We are generally more aware of the conscious mind, because we spend most of our waking hours there, while we spend our sleeping hours in the subconscious mind. The conscious mind is like the tip of the iceberg that you see above the water, while the subconscious is below the surface.

We think, reason, decide, compute, and reason with our conscious mind. That would make it seem indispensable and far superior to whatever the subconscious mind does. And until recently, the vast powers of the subconscious mind remained fairly untapped. As science continues to explore its depths, we continue to learn more about its capacity as the quiet dynamo behind the conscious mind.
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How to Dramatically Improve Your Daily Communications

Every day we communicate–whether orally or written. Not a day goes by that we’re not communicating in some way with someone. If you work outside your home, you communicate with the people you work with. Orally, you talk with your colleagues, you present information in meetings, or you train your staff. With writing, you send emails, memos, and letters. You create proposals, articles, or books.

If you work at home, you communicate over the phone as I do with coaching clients, or you call vendors, customers, or associates. You probably spend a lot of time on the Internet maybe communicating by email or through social networking sites, blogging, or your website.

And if you’re not in the active workforce, you converse every day with family, friends, merchants, and people in the community. You email, write letters, send birthday cards, or write in a journal, where you communicate with yourself.

With all this communication in your life, how effective do you think you are? Do people always get what you’re saying? Do they respond as you expect them to? Do they ask a lot of questions for clarification? Do they completely misinterpret your intentions?
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Want To Improve Your Life? Tell A Whopper!

We all know it’s not nice to lie. And most of us realize that, aside from the little white lies that get lumped under the innocuous (and incredibly flexible) heading of “social lubrication,” lying can be both negative and highly destructive.

But what about exaggeration? The average person would probably lump exaggeration in with lying, although most of us consider it more along the lines of a harmless and annoying fib than serious deceit. But that mindset may just need a bit of tweaking. In fact, a recent study shows that exaggeration, far from being either negative or destructive, may in fact be a vital part of our self-improvement.

According to psychology experts, lying causes stress and significant mental tension. People who are lying, and who have a vested interest in getting away with those lies, tense up when they lie, because trying to remember a lie and make it sound believable takes a lot of energy. But when people exaggerate, not only don’t they tense up, they seem more at ease when discussing those exaggerations than if they were talking about the truth.
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Using Creativity to Carve Out Your Niche in Life

Creativity can be the act of bringing something new into this world. Or it can be the uniqueness of each person that sets them apart from others. In the first instance, you may be creating something with your hands like painting a picture, or with your mind like writing a book. Even though in this case to create is to bring forth, you can’t help but stamp all your creations with your uniqueness. Your picture won’t be like anyone else’s and neither will your book.

So in the act of creation, we are impressing the object with our creativity. We see this aspect of ourselves developing at a very young age. Do you remember your first creative endeavors? Did you build cities with your Lego blocks? Did you make up songs in your head? How did you express your creativity? And was it encouraged, supported, and appreciated? Or was it suppressed by ignorant teachers and critical parents?

Schools typically are set up for each student to conform to the rules and do everything the same as all the other students. I remember a girl in my 7th grade class who used pink to paint the sky, only to have the teacher say, “Skies are blue!” Well, we know paintings are interpretations of how the artist sees the world, so it’s a strong probability that girl never picked up a paint brush again.
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Career Maintenance: 5 Ways to Fine Tune Your Professional Life

There are two ways to go about your career. The first way is to simply put your head down and do your thing – show up on time (or maybe a bit early), do your work, take the opportunities that come your way and see what happens. The second way is to take proactive control of your career, to actively seek out ways to improve your chances, put yourself in the path of opportunities and steer your career in a clear direction. The former is less work, but the latter is far more likely to get you where you want to go.

Here are five ways you can take control of your career and improve your professional life.

1. Open conversations with the upper echelon. Talk to those in charge about where they see the company going and how you can best support that. Find a mentor or two who can share their wealth of experience, guide you around hidden pitfalls and go to bat for you when the need arises. This is not about sucking up. It’s about opening the lines of communication and making yourself visible as someone who is taking active steps to be the best they can be.
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7 Secrets to Improve Your Ability to Learn (For Students of All Ages)

No matter what your age, throughout your life you will be learning. Your formal education ends with high school, but for many the learning never ends. You may attend a university, trade school, night school, community college or adult school. You may enhance your knowledge via business seminars, lectures, books, e-courses, and whatever else shows up in our information society. So wouldn’t it be helpful to have some good study habits and some tools to increase your ability to learn?

Although you may not be studying information to get good grades, retention of what you are learning can help your career, your parenting skills, your business, your relationships, your hobbies, and so much more. So it makes sense to acquire good learning skills sooner than later. Skills such as speed reading and good comprehension are useful for all the great information you want to take in.

Here are some more secrets for improving your ability to learn. Most apply to classes, but you can adapt them to any learning situation.
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Choosing a Career Over Love

The choice between having a career or making time for love is an extremely personal and individual decision. There are many factors which can affect your choice, and there are many people who have discovered how to achieve a healthy work life balance that allows them to have both.

Careers and love fulfill us in different but important ways. Having a solid career gives us a sense of accomplishment and self worth, aside from the practicalities of paying the bills. Many people develop their entire identity based upon what they do, elevating their career to a level of great importance in their lives.

Then there are those who measure their success in terms of having a pleasant and rewarding home life. They develop their identities based upon the accomplishments of their children, and derive their self worth through the love and support of a spouse.

So what happens if you cannot or do not wish to make room in your life for both? While the happiest and healthiest people have managed to develop a work life balance that allows for both, it may not be for everyone. Consider these factors when pondering which is more important for you.

1. Your Career May be More Important When You are Young

Many people these days focus on careers first and family later. The reasoning is that, while you are young and unencumbered, you have the time and energy to fully devote yourself to a career. If you have lofty career ambitions while you are young, it may indeed be the time to start making progress towards those goals.

Once you get married and begin to build a family, much of your time and energy – by necessity – becomes devoted to your family. This is as it should be. You should not start a family unless you are willing to devote time and attention to your loved ones.

Many people who accomplish great success in their careers when they are young, and establish themselves in a secure position, are then more willing and comfortable later on to devote themselves to family. By the time they do settle down, they are more prepared to handle the responsibility.
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The Beauty of Occasional Abundance

Depending upon our life experiences, each one of us has a different definition of abundance, much of which is learned during childhood. We are taught at an early age to either want for nothing or yearn for more. We learn how to react to those who have much more than us, and we develop our thoughts and attitudes about sharing with the less fortunate. We decide which things we hunger for the most, many times based upon those things that we lacked early in life.

As we grow and develop, we are constantly bombarded by messages regarding wealth, power, money, and greed. Magazines, newspapers, television, and movies all express society’s thoughts regarding such matters, and as time has progressed, we have developed into a more materialistic society. More emphasis has been placed on the ownership of elaborate possessions and such things as spirituality and family values seem to have been cast aside.

This sets us up for great disappointments, since we are taught that we can never have enough. It leaves us striving to reach an ambiguous and unattainable goal – to have “enough.” Yet there is never any definition of what enough truly is.
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Spirituality for Dummies

When many people think of spirituality their minds automatically go to religion. This is not, however, an entirely accurate understanding of what spirituality is. Having spirituality simply means believing in something greater than yourself. It can be incredibly powerful to have a sense of spirituality in your life, and very often it can haul you through the difficult times in your pursuit for success, happiness, and fulfillment.

Your sense of spirituality may involve the divine. Our society is rooted in the belief of a supernatural, omnipotent being who oversees our personal destinies. Other people shirk these beliefs and prefer to take destiny into their own hands, and in choosing spirituality invoke the aspects of nature or the cosmos rather than an all-knowing religious icon.

Spirituality is deeply personal in nature. It serves to rejuvenate and enlighten the soul and feed the human spirit. It helps guide our decisions in life and helps to direct our conscience. Recent surveys have shown that the vast percentage of society holds religious or spiritual beliefs. It is also interesting to note that a majority of these people have broken from childhood teachings in order to seek out a belief system that holds greater personal meaning to them.
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