A post about passion - conveyed with passion

In my ideal world, we all spend our days maximising our uniqueness, living our dreams and letting others get on with theirs. This is a world where we have pleasant, productive conversations and there is no one wanting to ambush our plans or hijack our work. 

In other words, we all live and work in relative harmony. Why not?

Is this a picture of your ideal world? Or are you already objecting, saying things like 'I like a bit of competition, it keeps the adrenalin pumping', or 'That's impossible. The world is not a friendly place. we just have to suck it up. Life wasn't meant to be easy.'

Besides, I hear others say, 'We can't just have everyone doing what they want! That would be anarchy. Who would collect the rubbish, clean out the sewers, gut the fish and change baby diapers? Who would clean up after the incontinent old people and put up with their ramblings'

Actually, plenty of people - probably the same as now. Nobody is holding a gun to anyone's heads, at least in Australia, so one can only assume people willingly take on these roles. Why? Because people are prepared to do some of the shitty work if it means they can do other things they love. And, luckily, we are all different, we have different things on our 'I will never do that' list, just as our hopes and dreams are all different.

As a writer, my shitty work is editing the fourth, fifth, and even tenth draft of what I started writing as an 'almost perfect' manuscript. I would sometimes gladly give that part up and go clean toilets for a week - er, no, not really.

Seriously, if we want to even start having a conversation about passion, we have to see the world as having some kind of natural form and rhythm, as chaotic as it seems to us.

Then, we have to see ourselves as well-formed beings who can instinctively tell where we belong - if only we would stop trying to tell ourselves and each other what we should be doing.

After that, we have to start seeing everyone (including our children - especially, our children) as unique, with skills and talents to bring to the world. As adults, it is our place to nurture their gifts and show them how wonderful they are.

If we don't do all of these things, the world will continue to spiral downwards into a very scary place where humans will start behaving worse than animals (oh wait, that is already happening), resenting the people who seem to have what they don't, who dress differently and who have different belief systems, and complaining about all the injustices in their world without taking any personal responsibility for them.

We have amazing resources at our disposal, inside us, and if we don't use them, we will lose them. Our brains and our souls will frizzle up and die under the weight of indifference. We will become robots who cannot think for ourselves, and like Pavlov's dog will spend our lives salivating in anticipation of the ever-decreasing morsels the corporate machine is prepared to give us - just enough to keep us working.

That scenario sucks doesn't it? But it is happening all around us. On the treadmill, I see people going about their working lives, too tired and too fearful to contemplate that they are ruining their health, their family lives, their relationships, and their chance of happiness.

As you can see, I am passionate about this.

Let's reverse that trend, starting now. Please.

As Dr Seuss wisely said,

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.

I am not advocating that everyone quits their job and makes their home in a tree. I am advocating that people use those brains in their heads to at least identify how they are being subjected. At the end of the day, if they are truly

happy with this, then all power to them. But - I don't see this, as I look around - instead I mainly see people who are stressed, anxious, depressed, mentally ill, tired and with body parts fatigued by overuse.

Maybe none of what I am saying applies to you. Maybe you love your job, you feel no physical or mental pain, you are never stressed about a meeting that is coming up. You never cringe about needing to explain why you didn't finish something on time or did something wrong - after all, that's what life's about, isn't it? Maybe you always reach your KPIs and only ever work from nine to five (with an hour for lunch). Maybe none of this is true, but you still feel happy and fulfilled. (Are you wavering on that?)

As a career specialist, and I know that not everyone in my field will agree. By passion, I mean a career that is fuelled by:

A strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire 

(that is just one of several definitions, but it's the one that fits my interpretation). 

To my mind, logically, if something is fuelling a passion, this is our instinct speaking loudly to us, guiding us. Denying this is what has led many of my clients to be miserable and disconnected.

For any psychologists reading, no, I am not a qualified psychologist and I speak from a perspective of wisdom, observation, and interest that has been built up through experience - my own personal experience, and that of the people I have worked with. When I started out studying for my Bachelor's degree, I though Psychology would help me to understand people and the world - it did not; my passion was fuelled instead by the disciplines of Sociology, Linguistics and English Literature. These areas of study helped me to give myself permission to write and to work with others who were seeking their own pathways, through work, study and a range of other activities.

I have wanted to say this for a long time. These words and phrases have swirled around in my psyche for years, I have not spoken them out loud or put them down on paper or in a blog post, mainly out of fear of ridicule. This fear still sits in the pit of my stomach as I send this out into the ether, but it is a message that must be sent, and I am the vessel who is sending it. I am my passion, my passion is me - finally.

So, to come full circle back to my opener about my ideal world, in which we all get along; passion-driven careers may cause some debate as people explore their passions, but if everyone is unashamedly working towards self-fulfilment, rather than competing for those empty rewards of dollars and ego-driven recognition, we will be heading to that better place, I am sure. As a career advocate, this is my best attempt from where I sit right now at living my passion, which has, for several reasons, lain dormant for the best part of ten years (and is the subject of one of the books I am currently writing).

How to tell if you have a passion

'Get a real job!'

'You won't make any money doing that!'

'Music/poetry/dancing/drawing/taking pictures (etc. etc.) won't put food on the table.'

'There are too many people already playing sport/reviewing books/tasting wine (etc. etc.) and they are much more talented than you.'

'Wait till you have some money behind you, then go and fulfill your dream if you still want to!'

If you are a creative type, or your passion lies in an area where only the elite get paid, such as sport or theatre, you may have been on the receiving end of this well-meaning advice. You might have even talked yourself out of pursuing a passion using one of these statements.

Whether you want to work in a refugee camp, write a novel or play in the AFL, I have no doubt that you have been warned off such a pursuit by well-meaning family members, friends and professionals.

The problem with passion (and to do any one of these things requires a high level of dedication) is that there are no guarantees of return - monetary or otherwise. The only thing you will be able to say, definitively, that there was the thrill of the chase, the knowledge that you did your best, and maybe making the world a better place.

I often wonder at the competition between money and happiness when it comes to career choice, yet history has shown that the people who we love to hear and read stories about are the people who have faced the odds and done it anyway.

As a society, we have become, increasingly, victims of capitalism - so much so, that it has become a kind of god that we bow to. Only recently I have been noticing that people are saying things like, a little less money would be fine, and a little more time to do what i enjoy beats working 60 hours a week. The tide is slowly turning, we are becoming less sucked in to the money pit, although there are still enough advertisers and manufacturers trying to show us how much we need that new car, holiday, gadget or appliance. 

I have to ask myself, do we really need things more than we need the personal reward of living an authentic life? I have spoken to doctors, accountants and engineers who wanted to do something else. 

The doctor had only wanted to play the cello, but was told to wait till she had achieved wealth. At sixty, she was close to retiring, and had not touched her cello for years. She had completely lost touch with who she was - she was miserable, lost and lonely.

The engineer wanted to be a chaplain, and disliked his environment so much that he had a mental breakdown in his early forties - only in recovery did he realise that his own happiness was worth any sacrifice he would need to make.

The accountant, in his thirties, wanted to travel around Australia on his Harley and write poetry. One day he made the decision, quit his job, got on his bike and rode off into the sunset. Last time I heard from him he was working the mines in Western Australia, with plenty of time off (and money) to write poetry and see the sites on his weeks off.

Did you sense the pattern here? The younger a person is when they decide to live their passion, the easier and more successful it is. it is never too late, but once the flame has extinguished, it is really hard to light it again.

If you have a burning passion to do something in particular, my advice is, don't wait. You only get one stab at life. And who says you won't get paid for it? As human beings, this is the only thing we have that separates us from all the other animals in the kingdom - the ability to go our own way, to take delight in something that is deeply personal to us.

Another question I often get asked is 'How do I know if I have a passion?' This should be easy to answer, but it usually boils down to having at least three of these things:

• You can't go for more than a day or so without thinking about it
• You feel like something is missing when you are not engaged in it
• You bore other people to tears talking about it or showing them something you have done/learned/made
• You don't mind at all spending hours/days/weeks on something
• You feel fulfilled with each achievement, no matter how small or insignificant
• When fully engaged, you suddenly find 'soul mates' that you never knew existed.
• Once you have established yourself along a pathway that is passion-driven, stopping is not an option, even if you have to temporarily wander from the main path (perhaps to take care of someone, earn some money, or overcome a hurdle in your life).
• Financial reward and fringe benefits become less important and meaningful as you realise that you can actually live on very little.

None of this is meant to indicate that you cannot make money from a passion - in fact I have argued on many occasions that if you do what you love, the money will follow, but even if it doesn't, what kind of reward is there in living a life denying that part of you that makes you who you are?

Ten things to do when your work is casual

I have several clients, family members and friends who currently work in casual work settings. This is not by their own choice, but due to the nature of the industries they work in.

This means that, despite them being great workers and good at what they do, and even though some of them have worked for their employers for a long time, they never know from week to week when they will be working, and for how many hours.

The work is seasonal, but also fluctuates on a week to week basis, so until the start of the week they don't know whether they will be required for one, ten, or sixty hours over the following five or six days.

This is bad enough if you are single, let alone if you are supporting a family, which some are doing. 

If you are working as a casual employee, like most who are doing this, you might be hoping that this is just a stop-gap, while you look for a job with a more permanent arrangement. Unfortunately, this is not an option for most, especially in regional areas, where it seems that the casualisation of the workforce is at its most intense. In any case, having worked in, and observed the recruitment industry over three decades, it is clear that we are on a trajectory to even greater workforce casualisation, so we had all better get used to the idea that for many of us, working life will involve juggling two or three jobs each week, or over a year, just to get the required hours and income.

The problems of casual work are ongoing topics of conversation.

In addition to making it harder to manage one's personal finances, being a casual employee makes it harder to get loans, and there is the constant fear of how to exist if the casual job dries up (which can happen quite suddenly), due to there being no more work, or if the person has an accident, develops an illness, or simply wants to take a holiday. Most of these are things that the waged employee has no concept of.

Don't despair. There are several steps you can take to limit the downside of this way of working. With a bit of luck, you will start to see the positives and embrace it.

1. You may want to stop reading at this point, but please don't. It is important. You need to set yourself up an entire and proper budget, so you know what your regular outgoings are, including your rent/mortgage payments, utilities, food and other bills. Write up all these amounts in a yearly format, as this makes it easier to see how much you need to earn and to account for fluctuations. If you can use computers well and calculations don't make you go into meltdown, you can probably do this yourself, using Excel or a specialised system. If not, hiring a service like My Budget will save you heaps of time and worry. I've had several clients who have done this and they have all given rave reports, even those who were skeptical at first.

Once you know what your yearly outlay is (including a percentage buffer - most financial planners recommend adding at least 15% to account for inflation and cost increases), you can break this number down to more manageable chunks - for example, if you are usually paid fortnightly, divide the total cost by 26, if weekly, divide by 52 etc.  (If you want to factor in a couple of weeks off, divide by 25 or 52 - it is a good idea to do this anyway).

Whatever else you do, take the time to get this step right, it is the floor, the bedrock, on which your casual working life will stand.

2. Next on your 'to do' list is to anticipate your earnings over the next year. If you have already been working on a casual basis, this means looking over your past year's income; if you are new to this type of work, you will need to do some thoughtful projecting. Ask your employer when the peak work periods are, whether there are forced down-times (for example, do they close down for the month of January?). Ask other people who work in your industry, or talk to recruiters. When you have finished your guesstimation, check this against your list of outgoings and see if there is a discrepancy. This will help you to work out if you need to make changes to your lifestyle, or perhaps find other work to support you. 

Knowing your financial situation is a precurser to anything else you do as a casual employee. (I presume you are doing it for the money it brings in, not simply for the love of the job. If it is the latter, I have a slightly different strategy for you.) If you are not getting paid enough, this work is only going to cause worry and anxiety, and you will resent the work you do and may fail to work to your own, or anyone else's, satisfaction, causing problems now and in the future.

3. Make sure you use two separate bank accounts. On the weeks when you earn more than your allocated budget, the excess goes into an account that you only touch during the 'dryer' weeks, when you are earning less (or nothing at all). Because you already have your fortnight's costs written down, you will be able to see at a glance how many fortnights you have in store. Pay as many bills as possible in advance, pay others as soon as you get them, or pay in instalments to help prevent the surges (you know, those times when all the bills come in at once.). Just remember that often you pay more when you pay in instalments, so only do this if it is totally necessary.

4. (Nearly finished with the boring stuff, I promise.) Cut up your credit cards. I'm serious. Casual work and a credit card is a bad marriage, and multiple cards will be your nemesis. if you must, keep ONE with a $500 credit limit, but don't use it, if you need that kind of security. You don't actually need it, as much as you think you might, and you certainly won't want it when you get your monthly statement. You can use your debit Visa or Master Card like a credit card, to pay online etc., with the advantage that it is only your money you are spending.

5. This takes us away from the finances into more interesting areas (for me, anyway, and hopefully for you as well). This is about making yourself employable as a casual. Everyone needs to maintain a good set of work skills and attributes, but for casuals this is even more important.

The first way to do this is to provide good value to your employer or employers: turn up when you are rostered, don't ask for changes to your roster unless these are essential, be on time, put in the effort and tidy up before you leave. In any job, the biggest gripe I hear from employers is that a person was late, or that they left a mess behind at the end of their shift. They remember these two things more than anything else, so if you get those right you are already on a winner. Oh, and try not to slack off while you are there, either.

6. Make yourself indispensable. This could mean that you always handle a particular task (preferably one that your boss doesn't like doing). This might be dealing with a difficult customer, if your boss prefers to stay in the background, or sorting out a storeroom to make it easier for everyone to find things. This way, when you are not on shift and something is not working, everyone will be saying 'We need (insert your name) here, to sort this out.

7. Make yourself as attractive as you can in the workforce generally. After all, you know, this job won't last forever. This might mean developing a specialisation. For instance, there might be a new piece of equipment that no one wants to learn how to use. You learn how to use it! You will become the expert in your workplace, and no doubt other employers in the field will be purchasing this piece of equipment, so you have a unique transferable skill to your credit. (Don't forget to add it to your resume).

8. Be flexible about the kind of work you do. Most jobs are relatively easy to pick up, and making yourself available for other tasks makes you more skilled and experienced, with more to offer in this increasingly competitive field. Make sure you get appropriate safety training!

While this seems to be almost saying the opposite to point 7, in which I suggested you specialise, I prefer to see them as a pair.

9. Always make sure in job search mode. Loyalty will only take you so far, and being a casual means you can never be sure you will be employed tomorrow. Scan your neighbourhood for other work, keep your ears and eyes open for other opportunities, and keep your resume up to date. This way you are prepared whenever the axe falls on your current job.

10. Consider becoming your own boss. Plenty of people transition from the casual workforce to becoming a sole operator. You can usually command a higher pay, and while you do need to organise your own tax and superannuation, there is little or no greater risk involved, as a casual. All you need is an ABN and an invoice template to begin. (I will talk more about this in another post). You might even find yourself working for your old boss, but with more klout (and money). 

Autism Spectrum Teenagers - Why is it so hard to get work experience?

Despite all the research that has been done over recent years describing the benefits of employing young people on the autism spectrum, it seems that we have a long way to go before we, as a society, fully embraces the power of the kid with autism (and the adult, as well, mind you).

Evidence abounds that people who display autistic behaviours are actually the ideal employees. Those employers who have been brave enough to employ a person 'on the spectrum' attest to their:

• ability to get the job done without distraction (no social chitchat, slagging off for an hour or two, long lunches etc,)
• learning abilities which mean they usually only need to be shown how to do something once
• attendance record (they hardly take any time off, because, well, work days are work days)
• timekeeping prowess (if you want them to start at a particular time and finish at a particular time, they will be there)
• determination to do the job to the best of their abilities, and
• not providing minute-by-minute updates on just how great they are at their job (they just do it!)

So, I was mightily upset when a local dad posted on the local community facebook page just yesterday that, despite there being so many jobs coming up for young people where 'experience is not necessary' (we are in a beachside area where the crowds swell for summer), his 16 year old son had been rejected for upwards of a dozen jobs. No doubt he would have he had trouble completing the bizarre online form, and answering questions about 'where he would like to be in five years time' and 'how would he deal with an angry customer'.

Clearly, these kinds of stock-standard interview questions are anathema to people on the autism spectrum. They think from day to day, and long range plans are just not something within their scope. Likewise, dealing with a difficult situation can be learned, but without a context, a question like 'What would you do if...' is irrelevant to them. 

The other problem faced by young people with autism is the form-filling stage, which often eliminates them even before they get to the interview. People on the spectrum can be brutally honest, for example if asked about working preferences they might put down that they are not willing to work evenings because they don't understand the concept of evening, or they find it too vague - providing the actual time periods involved would lead to a better level of understanding on both sides.

Interview questions and forms aside, when you consider that a significant number of customers of  nurseries, fast food chains, supermarkets, cafes and hardware stores will demonstrate autistic traits, the owners and managers of these establishments would find added benefits in employing a broader range of workers with 'different gifts and talents'.

Thankfully, the power of social media worked well for this dad and his son - they received several invitations to attend workplaces, and, with a little bit of luck, this young man will be on his way to his first paycheck by now.

With a little support and education, I am sure that most employers would be happy to adapt their practices to enable them to find the right employees. I have developed a check list that I have used in my interactions with employers, which many have found very useful. If any potential employers, or parents of young people with autism would like a copy of this, just let me know by sending your email address in the comments section.

TAFE and the Invisible Graduates

So I was talking with a group of graduate recruiters the other day and they were commenting on how hard it is to find suitable IT grads. Another part of this discussion was around recruiting practices and the qualities required of graduates - 'cognitive competence' was high on the list, along with 'Leadership' and 'Emotional Intelligence' (usually referred to as EQ and EI).

Is it clear to anyone else that the number of people, especially those in their early 20s, with an IT bent, are probably not going to have a high level of social maturity? More importantly, does it matter?

When it comes to recruiting techos, I see many problems with the graduate recruitment practice, but i want to focus on two of these.

Problem 1: People who are technically brilliant may not be excellent in the areas of communication, emotional intelligence and leadership. The fact that recruiters are finding it so hard to find IT grads supports this. A selection process that bundles people from all disciplines together is fraught with difficulties. Most IT nerds don't crave leadership roles; climbing the ladder is anathema to them - what they need are new technical challenges and the freedom to work through these independently, or in small teams. Whether they are the back room boys who don't mind working amongst a trail of wires and electrical sockets, or the types who need to be left alone to sort through the complexity of data and programming symbols, they do not have much time for the corporate life - although they will reward employers with loyalty as long as they are valued. Of course there are exceptions - some will move on to management roles, but no employer wants or needs everyone to be a leader, even the graduates who they invest so much time and money in recruiting and developing.

When I raised this point with the graduate recruiters, a short discussion ensued and there was general agreement that what I had said held true.

Problem 2: This relates to sourcing. Having just been shown the statistics which indicated that there simply weren't enough IT grads to go around (which exacerbates the first problem), the next question I asked was 'Have you considered TAFE graduates?'. The responses I got, in order, from around the room were 'No, we don't do TAFE!', 'What is TAFE?', and 'No, we are high-end corporate so we only ever recruit (university) graduates'.

It became apparent at this point that our TAFE system is in serious difficulty and this goes way beyond the current fee cuts and competition from 'new' private players who have shown a a lack of integrity to the sector. It is not so much that it has a negative image, than no image at all. Although there was genuine interest among the group about TAFE and VET generally, I didn't leave with any sense that any of them would follow up to find out more information,

Going back 30-40 years, there were no university IT courses. People wanting to enter the industry were taught on the job or via a short course run by a vendor. Obviously, the industry has become a lot more complex since then and it is reasonable to expect that entry level personnel will have some training. The thing is, VET programs in schools equip students with up to Certificate III level, and many TAFE courses provide far more relevant training than universities. A young person of 18 or 20 straight from school or college may well be of greater use to an employer than a four or five-year degree holder, but employers will never know what they are missing out on.

One further question that I was asked during the break was, why would a young person even consider TAFE? Why don't they just go to university? Actually many do go on from TAFE to complete a degree course, but some don't - university is just not for everyone. TAFE generally provides more practical (and I would argue, more useful) training than universities. Young people often fail to achieve the best marks at school, not because they are not very smart, but because the business of growing up and becoming independent gets in the way. The other distinction is that, even today, TAFE courses aim to be vocational preparation courses, while university courses are more about learning for its own sake.

At various stages over my career, I have managed (with some difficulty) to persuade employers to consider TAFE students in their graduate and general recruitment programs, and can site various successful outcomes. I'm more than a little bit sick about the negativity around the TAFE sector. There is rarely any good news about it and the media should take responsibility for this. In any case, a general lack of awareness and interest in TAFE graduates means that employers are missing out on a large pool of potential employees, to their detriment. The TAFE sector needs to engage in robust marketing to and networking with larger employers, otherwise they are doing their students a great disservice. State and Federal governments also need to do what they can to ensure TAFE students have access to a wider range of employment opportunities.

The Real Meaning of Career Success - Part 1

I've been blogging a lot lately about careers, passions and dreams. Why am I doing this?

The answer is simple - because they are so important.

For some lucky people, there is the dream, and then all the 'doing' simply follows the dream, without deviation. The dream doesn't change, or if it does, it just becomes bigger and stronger. I'm sure you know at least one person who has a career that fits like a glove, that is just so perfect for them that you wonder how they got it so right!

Unfortunately, for most of us, the path to career success is rarely simple or straightforward. For a start, many people don't have a dream (or at least they don't think they do). This usually manifests as 'I don't know what I want to do when I grow up.'. In career parlance, this means the person has not yet 'discovered' or 'tapped into' what they want to do.

At this point I would just like to reiterate what I said in my last blog post (This was not a gratuitous remark to end the post nicely). We are all in fact already engaged in our careers, but we might not realise it yet.

I know this sounds complicated - but it needn't be, there are always clues.We just have to learn how to identify the clues.

For some people, the clues lie in their childhood dreams. Often our childhood dreams are dismissed as silly, or as 'a phase we are going through'. So, a girl might have spoken about her wish to become a doctor, but was told she was not smart enough, or that she lacked discipline. Even worse, she might have been told, either directly or indirectly, that only males could become doctors. Fast forward and bring this child back to her forty-something reality, and she might realise that she has missed her vocation; that she really should have been a doctor, and now it is too late.

Let's stay with this case study for a while. Do you think this woman - let's call her Marta - has led a false life? Do you wonder that she might have been unhappy? She probably has, at least to a point. Does she feel unfulfilled? Most definitely. She has lived a life, and a lot of it has been good. But, there was something missing.

Something she has searched for from time to time, and the need to work out what was wrong was evident when Marta (not her real name) came to see me a while back. She was not getting along with her boss. She was being bullied, felt trapped, and she wanted to make a big change. She had started out as a nurse (did you see that coming?), and after thirteen years or so had done the rounds of the nursing jobs, including a number of settings, and found her way into policy administration. She was working on cases in which patients were suing hospitals, doctors and nurses for malpractice. She was good at her job, and everyone liked her, but she hated going to work with a passion. On the day she came to see me, she talked about how she could not get out of her car for about 20 minutes the previous day, she just sat in the basement, numb, unable to face the day ahead.

This was, I told Marta, a wake-up call. Her body was telling her she must not do this any more, that she was becoming ill. She felt 'weak and a failure'. I said she was strong and successful. She didn't believe me - not that day, anyway.

Over time, Marta and I explored a whole pile of things: why she wanted to become a doctor all those years ago, what her good work days had been like, and what happened during the bad times.  Where and when she felt happiest, and what would make her sad. We explored her 'success' signs, which were when she stood tall and felt in control. We explored her hobbies (she was a very good artist, but had also let this joyful activity slide over the years).

Eventually, we got down to Marta's core 'career success factors' - the ability to be technically excellent and to 'see bodies restored' (her words) though medical intervention. This had made her a competent but unhappy ward nurse, but a great administrator. There was something about this job that wasn't right, though, she said she felt too time-pressured, to process information in time for deadlines meant she could not be thorough. Her her current job was also lacking in 'challenge' - her key career motivator.

Whether she knew it or not, Marta had been building towards her next, big career step for many years. She had developed an incredible knowledge of the latest tools and technologies, just from reading medical journals. Now all she needed was to undertake specialist training and get her new job working alongside doctors in an oncology unit. This job involved high level technical expertise and had not existed until recently, so how could she have dreamed it up all those years ago? Unfortunately, being bullied had made her feel unfit for any role - she had stopped dreaming, and even looking out for other roles.

Had Marta become a doctor, she may have been just as frustrated in her early career. (This often happens, especially in the medical field where high achievers get stuck doing boring, repetitive tasks while waiting for their chance to get into what they really need to do.)She may have become disillusioned with all the chores of a junior doctor, the role wasn't actually anything like she imagined, she now realised, but her 'doctor dream' provided us with the platform from which to develop a solid career plan.

Sometimes, what we call career success doesn't come early in life. The only crime is if we give up too early, and stop being engaged.

What was holding Marta back? Right now, it was, simply, that she needed to give herself permission to move past this stage, to take control and move forward. And the other thing? This was the first time anyone had actually encouraged her to talk about her dreams, rather than pouring water on them. Is it really that simple?

On jobs and careers, passions, needs and happiness: The story continues

Do a job you love and you will never work a day in your life.

This oft-quoted saying has been attributed to many great people, including Confucius. It is a fine saying, but it might make it sound like having a career is easy. From my own experience, and from that of people I know to have careers, this is far from the truth.

Jobs can be hard: you might have to work hard, for long hours, or your job might involve heavy labour. Some jobs are physically demanding, others mentally and intellectually so. Sometimes, jobs are hard because of difficult bosses or competitive, destructive work colleagues. Sometimes they are hard because they are repetitive or boring, or worse, because you feel undervalued or bullied.

Careers are hard for different reasons. When we practice a career, we are effectively backing ourselves. If we succeed or fail, we are responsible. When jobs go wrong, we can easily find a scapegoat (this doesn’t actually result in making us feel better about ourselves, though). We can move from job to job, always finding a person, a system, or something else to blame. When we have a career (which is self-driven), we can’t really blame anyone but ourselves - the buck stops with us.

However, the good news is we can’t really go wrong with a career, because a career is for life, it may permutate and change as we evolve, but it can’t go wrong, as long as it is allied with our true purpose. There might be failures. The actual performance of a career involves challenges and risks that you can avoid by simply having a job.

It is rare, but some people are fortunate enough to have a job that is perfectly aligned with where their career is at that point. This has happened to me twice in my life. (You can tell if this happens as both the rewards and the challenges are intensified). I lost both of these jobs during restructures. Fortunately, while this impacted significantly on my position and temporary earning ability, my career was intact and I was already looking forward to the next phase in my life.

A career is a choice we make. It might start with a vocation, a calling, a passion or it might be something more mundane – a need to do something small, that becomes bigger as we do it. Often, people fall into a job and then realise it gets into their soul, their psyche – they want to have an impact, not simply ‘do’ it. (This is what happened to me, but it took a long time for me to realise it).

A career in action involves bringing something into existence, making it better, or overcoming something you perceive as negative or wrong. It is always values-driven. This can be in any area of life, even if you clean toilets for a living. I had a client a while back who did just that; she reported a hygiene problem to the centre management. She didn’t leave it there; she also had a well-thought out and inexpensive solution. She was told a week later that her services were no longer required. We worked together for a long time; this woman went on to become a consultant, working with local government to make public toilets safer. It was a hard road, with lots of submission writing (she required assistance with this as she was not educated in Australia and had difficulties with the language), TAFE studies, and creative ways of getting to talk to the right people. Does she regret any of this? Not for a minute. She is now highly sought-after for input into a range of safety concerns.

So, if you feel that a career is something only other people can have, that you don’t have the space or time for it, think again – carefully.

Don’t just take my word for it. There are loads of passionate careerists out there, in a wide range of situations.

Last week I hijacked some words written by Daniel Reeves, a musician. I didn't ask him to write them, – I didn’t even know Daniel until very recently –  they fell onto my facebook page like a gift; a truly honest and heartfelt message about having a career, though he doesn't even use that term. I'm hijacking some more words from that post this week:

My dream is like many songwriters’ dreams would be, to spark inside someone the experience that music gave me this morning. To have someone stop for just a moment, to have a look at the big picture, to who they really are, where they really are and to be thankful for who they are. 

So I think it’s important to always do what you love, love what you do and most importantly, believe in yourself. We are a product of our experiences so just remember that when you’re at an age where you can’t do much and the majority of your life is spent inside, you will have lots of time for thinking. So you may as well pack as many good memories in there as you can.

If you are unsure about your own career, don’t worry, you are already having it. You might not be actioning it fully yet, it might need some work, but it is there, waiting to be tapped. Stop, sit still and listen to your inner voice – it won’t steer you wrong.

On jobs and careers, passions, needs and happiness

How can you tell if you have a job or a career? Can you have both?

Well, yes you can. A job is something you do. A job is a transaction – you provide something (your labour) and in exchange you receive payment (money and perhaps other benefits).

Many people who have jobs say they have careers – perhaps they climb the corporate ladder, or become highly skilled at what they do. But unless they would do this without any external reward, they don’t really have a career.

A job is what you do. It is always negotiable. A career is who you are. It is not negotiable.

You are welcome to dispute this. I am sure many of you will. You might say, but I need money to survive, to pay the mortgage, to pay for the kids’ school, etc. But, how much money do you need to do these things? How much do you really, really need? Chances are, you are sacrificing a career for nothing - careers provide an income as well, even if it is not in conventional ways.

Many people who say they have careers are not really happy. This is a real shame. Now I am not saying that if you have a career, every day will be like heaven on a stick. It won’t, and that is life. But if you really have a career, the days that aren’t so good – the days that challenge your determination, that question your ability, that push you on to greater success (on your terms) – these are the days that are most important of all.

A career is not something you drop after you leave the office (I don’t mean taking work home that you haven’t finished, because you are really doing two people’s work). A career is something that you carry with you – it is aligned with your purpose, your soul, and you find yourself doing things that continually reinforce who you are, even when you are ‘off the job’.

Everybody has a career, because everyone has a purpose, a raison-d’etre. When this is aligned with your job, it is an amazing thing. You might not be consciously aware of it, but if you are developing and exhibiting your career on a daily basis, you are most likely content with life most of the time. You are probably less competitive too, and more willing to share your knowledge with others, because careers are not selfish.

Another thing about career is that it is driven internally. People give you a job. You develop your career. Can you see the difference?

Can everyone have a career? Yes they can. In a developed country, we all have a choice. 

I have had jobs I have loved, and jobs I have hated, and some that were just OK. In my younger years I looked for jobs that matched my interests and suited my needs at the time. I enjoyed working in the inner city area before I had my kids, and commuting an hour each way was no problem. When we got into family mode, I looked for a job closer to home. I moved up the ladder and was happy enough.

I didn’t have a notion of career until I was in my forties. It was a culmination of a lot of things. Losing a job I loved and enjoyed going to, the collapse of my industry, finding a new talent, and a lot of soul searching and trying out of jobs that just didn't cut it.

I’m glad I found out what my career was. It changed my outlook on life completely. I no longer worried about whether I was ‘good enough’ in other people’s eyes, I set my own benchmarks. I have allowed myself to take risks, to succeed and to fail, and to label all of these as ‘experience’.

I’m glad I have a career, because at this stage of human evolution, jobs come and go quickly, and provide the least stability experienced since the Great Depression since the 1930s (except this time the instability is not going away). In this climate, losing a job is extra hard – there are financial consequences, of course, but the greatest barrier is related to the loss of identity that having a job brings.

We live in a time of constant and dramatic change. Life, and work, is unpredictable. Other than saving for a rainy day (something that is becoming more and more imperative), we have to face the fact that the future holds no guarantees. It is best if we all take the view that no job is safe; there is no course, no profession, no organisation that will provide us with a livelihood for the rest of our working lives.

 So, to the main point of this post: 

Having a career is excellent insulation against the vagaries of the labour market. It is the new 'essential' quality. It also helps you look at things more objectively, to be less beaten back when things go wrong. It is a reason to keep going, to find new ways of doing what you love, to be joyful about your life.

Let me explain.  Or rather, let someone else.

I’ve been given permission to quote a young man who has, in my humble opinion, a fine career – Daniel Reeves, a musician. Maybe you have heard of him? Maybe not. It doesn’t matter, his happiness does not hinge on acceptance by others (but do go and see him if he happens to be playing in your town, you won't regret it). Daniel expresses the true sense of career in these words:

I’ve spent half my adult life working on roads and the other half has been spent driving them. Although I have nights where I’d just love to crawl into my own bed and have the pleasure of a peaceful and uninterrupted 8 hours sleep, to reach in the fridge to grab my food instead of an esky in the back of the car, or when I stop at a road side shop and hope that the food hasn’t been in the warmer for hours and that I remain healthy for my show later that night. It really doesn’t matter if my change room is a bunch of trees on the side of the road before I get into town after spending all day driving, or when I visit my life’s possessions at a storage shed to grab what I accidently packed into the wrong box instead of getting it from my room. The journey and the experience of entertaining people by playing music is always so rewarding, whether I play a song that makes people dance or whether I play a deep and meaningful song that at some point or another has kept someone strong enough to move forward and keep going. The journey is always rewarding and full of rich life experiences. 

As a musician you soon realise there’s nights where there’s big crowds and nights where there’s not so big crowds. Nights with much applause, and nights with only the dishwasher humming along behind the pub bar after you strike the last chord of your song. But the journey and the experience are always calling. No matter how uplifted and on top of the world you are, no matter how tired and exhausted you are, there’s this life force of its own, this world of noise and beauty which just keeps driving you along.

Sometimes my wallet is over flowing with cash and other times it’s praying for rain. Like any role in life, there’s the good and then there’s the other side that goes along with it. But I could never swap how rich and rewarding this life experience is. 

My wish for everyone reading this post is that hasn't already done so - find your career – it really is a blast!

The Could,Would and Should of University Education

For the last twenty-five years, give or  take, parents have been sold the idea that their children must attend university in order to guarantee their future employability,and, more importantly, income. Federal and State governments have reinforced the notion of the 'clever country', urging Australians to be better educated. This has been the dominant message, reinforced by Australian schools who stopped focusing on anything other  than which university course a young person should do; somewhere along the line careers advisors largely stopped talking about apprenticeships to students (not their fault entirely, as the apprenticeship system became much more complex and difficult to navigate), and since they have been able to offer more places and compete with each other, the universities have poured big money into attracting as many students as possible.

What we have in Australia right now is a tertiary system in chaos, which will increase exponentially if the current government's education policies are implemented (because what we heard on Tuesday night was less to do with budget and much more to do with ruling class snobbery).

Some good things have happened over the past twenty-five years. Some students who were previously shut out of universities have found a place; these include students from low socio-economic backgrounds, students with disabilities and refugees. We have seen a surge in 'first in family' students coming to uni. Perhaps this has worked too well, and underwrites the current Liberal government's reaction towards exclusiveness.

We have also seen the great grab for money in attracting overseas students to study in Australia. This was most effective over the 2000-2010 year period, after which this arrangement started to sour for the students and the families who paid the big bucks to send them here. Universities in China and India, for example, started improving the quality of their education, while ours remained stagnant. The promise of settling in Australia after graduation (which was part of the sell) became an idle hope for most; and after paying all that money for their kids education, parents found them back at home and unable to get a job.

Getting back to Australia, there are three glaring statistics related the Australian context. I am not going to put money on these figures being exact, but I am happy to stake my reputation on them being reasonably accurate. First - despite all the hype around university education, the percentage of Australians with degrees has not significantly altered in the last twenty-five years: still only around 25% of the population actually has a degree. Second, in around 80% of jobs that are advertised, a degree is not a mandatory requirement. And third, while raw statistics show that people with university degrees are less likely to be unemployed than those without degrees, many of these are not working in an area related to their degree, (or in any job that requires a degree) and are underemployed (working part-time or casually). Those from 'equity' groups including low socio-economic or indigenous backgrounds, people with disabilities, have much lower graduate employment outcomes than the traditional university graduates.

The statistics on employment outcomes for graduates are also influenced by the fact that many graduates, if they do not get a job, will go back to do further study - in many cases this actually lowers employability because of expectations of higher pay or better jobs on the part of the graduate, while employers may think they are overqualified but under-experienced.

As a career  practitioner, the message that I have the most difficulty in delivering is that employers want people who have already worked, that have an understanding of workplace expectations and the maturity to handle the rigours of holding down a job. So, in fact, employers want experience PLUS a degree, not a degree plus experience - but trying to get this across to the students and their families is almost impossible.

I digress a little. Back to the question of whether a degree is a could or should for young people and career changes. Obviously, for some jobs, a degree is essential - law, medicine, teaching, for example all require one that is specific to the field. For others, it can be an asset, such as accounting, public relations, and business. Sometimes, the things taught in an undergraduate course are less tangible, but important in careers that involve complex reasoning, research skills and the ability to look at problems or artefacts through different lenses, such those traditionally taught in the now much-maligned arts degree. The rush to university has also led to a multi-tiered system in which graduates are ranked by employers - some universities don't even rate in many cases, making the degree that is obtained relatively worthless. It has also led to a lowering of quality as the lower-tiered universities invite students to enrol, simply to fill seats, rather than assessing their ability to undertake the course.

For some job roles, a degree is unimportant or not required at all, but young people are still being told that this is the only post-secondary option they should be aspiring towards. This is one of the major contributing factors behind the lack of qualified tradespeople and the well-established pattern of students drifting from one university course to the next, trying to find one that suits, when the answer to their career dilemma lies elsewhere.

This does not mean that people who really want and need to go to uni should not be able to. What we need is for governments to stop their social engineering and trying to force us into particular kinds of education and return to the natural order of things. People undertake university courses for a range of reasons; this should be encouraged and those who have the ability and desire should have a much easier pathway, one based on equality and fairness.

I find it untenable that we are regressing to that place in time where university education was only for the elite. The right of all Australians to an education that befits their career aspirations, work interests and abilities should be unquestioned. We should all be working hard at young people into a range of work areas, especially those outside the standard professions, but if we are to remain a progressive society students  must not be the victims of their parents' economic status. Neither should any government, federal or state, allow education to become a pawn in their desire to 'balance the books' as this is a snake that will most definitely turn its head to poison the very society that created it.

What is fundamentally wrong with the direction the Abbott government is taking us is that it is preventing people from participating equally in society, reducing everything we do to an economic formula in which only the rich can win. Further to this, while Australia has always been known as the country of the 'fair go', this is becoming something our children will only read in history books (if they haven't banned them.).

The latest job search strategy - environment scanning

We've heard about networking, information interviewing, tapping into the hidden job market. Chances are you have used all these strategies, or at least heard of them.

Last week I talked about the trend towards insecurity in employment, so this week I want to tell you about a less well-known, but important career development technique called environment scanning, which can assist with the career decision making and subsequent planning processes. This actually started as an organisational development tool, offering businesses and other employing entities new ways to look forward and plan for a future that is characterised by many unknowns. In career development today, this term makes sense, as these days we are all trying to 'best fit' ourselves for futures that cannot be guaranteed. We have all heard the news that most of the jobs we will be doing ten years from now have not been invented yet, and those that will continue to exist will be carried out quite differently, thanks largely to technology and the increasingly global nature of work.

The kind of environment scanning I want to talk about bears some similarities to what career practitioners have traditionally called 'opportunity awareness', 'understanding the world of work', or just 'labour market awareness', but these are not quite the same. Let me explain.

'Opportunity awareness' is part of Career Development 101, it is the other side of the coin to 'self-awareness'. Broken down, this means that in order to have a meaningful, self-directed career, you need to understand yourself in a work-sense (your skills, talents, interests, motivations, core values and drivers, your social context, also your perceived and real limitations), as well as what opportunities exist for you. Sounds fair enough, doesn't it? Unfortunately, though, what this implies is that there is a job out there with your name on it; that there will be something just right for you and all you have to do is prepare yourself and it will come.

The thousands of law, medicine, education, engineering and accounting graduates working in non-related and often low-skilled jobs should be evidence enough that simply doing a course and graduating does not guarantee a job in that field. More than ever before, the labour market is far from being an =SUM equation.

The fact is, there may be a large number of jobs you can apply for, or, there may be just a few, or in fact zero opportunities. There may be a hundred jobs you would be more than happy to undertake, and which you feel at least somewhat qualified for, but for one reason or another, you are never going to get thanks to the increasing knowledge of creeping credentialism and the multiskilling hangover (to be the subject of another blog post). Understanding the world of work generally may be useful in developing your theoretical knowledge, but it is not going to get you a job and could, quite possibly, be a source of disillusionment. In any case, even if you find the contemporary labour market a fascinating field of inquiry (as I do), this is a field of constant change, and I doubt that many people, even career practitioners, have the time or energy to keep up to date.

This is the basis for the mistakes parents and other adults with good intentions make when they advise young people to become a this or a that.  Their knowledge is, quite simply, limited and flawed. This is why people believe, truly, that because there are well-paid jobs as a doctor, accountant, lawyer, therefore studying to become one of these will mean you will in fact become a well-paid doctor, accountant or lawyer. In most cases, this is really bad advice, on a number of levels, but most of all, because unless you are truly gifted and passionate, you will only ever be an average doctor, accountant or lawyer and the really good jobs will always elude you.

So, what is environment scanning and where does it fit in? It is a number of things.

1. Firstly, it is an active process, or should I say a pro-active process. You are not passively reading the Job Guide or listening to an industry group paint their field with a coat of gloss. You are actively engaged in finding out the information you need to make the right decision for you.

2. Secondly, environment scanning is unique, because you are unique and your career needs and goals are unique. So, every single person will develop a unique and different view of their environment.

3. Thirdly, environment scanning puts you in the driver's seat. You are actually making decisions about the environment, whether it is friendly or hostile, open or closed. This helps you adopt an analytical approach.You determine the parameters for your scan: how far will you search geographically, how in-depth, and over what period of time. In fact, if you are properly engaged, environment scanning is something you are doing, to a greater or lesser extent, all the time.

4. Placing this in fourth position does not mean it is less important. Environment scanning is a holistic process: it engages the spirit, the imagination, your creative core. You need to, firstly, imagine one or more possible futures for yourself - you want new information, not old data. You are adopting a stance of curiosity, which enables to you discover new possibilities inside organisations, or perhaps in a business idea for yourself. Does that sound exciting? This process is akin to 'job crafting', in which you work towards creating your own 'best fit' job, perhaps by showing the leaders of an organisation how you can assist them to achieve their goals, or maybe in starting a business yourself to fill a gap in the market.

5.Lastly, if the last four elements are taken seriously and implemented, environment scanning is profound, creating a lifelong interest and the motivation to achieve. You have, in essence, found your life's work.

Does this all sound a bit new-agey and creepy? That's OK, you don't have to engage in any of these activities. In fact, I predict that less than 5% of people will ever be brave enough to really embrace this technique, which makes it all the more likely that the 5% minority will succeed.

If you are part of the 5 % and want to know more about how to undertake a successful environmental scan, along with other contemporary job search techniques, you'll be able to do so very soon, by reading my books, 'Who's Who in the Zoo? and 'What's New in the Zoo?'; both will be out later this year.

The latest job trend - insecurity!

Is your job on the line? It probably is, whether you are working on a permanent, casual, or contract basis. I wasn't around during the Great Depression, and it sounds like it was pretty bad for a lot of Australians, but I think the outlook for workers today is equally grim, but in a very different, twenty-first century way.

I've seen a lot of change in the Australian labour market since I was a fresh, bright-eyed nineteen year-old clerk in the Federal Department of Employment (then it was tied to Immigration, interestingly). This was my entry point into my own world of work and my initiation as a budding career development practitioner. While I thought I was just having fun working with larrikins in the Commonwealth Employment Service I learned the ropes of social security benefits, government funded employment programs, jobless statistics and industry reports, and, even more importantly, I learned a lot about people and what they want and need from jobs.

I have often made predictions about what was going to happen in the labour market, with some accuracy, but mainly to myself and family members, or to colleagues and friends during philosophical discussions. I have never thought to put out a prediction publicly. I have never seen the value in it, especially when the outlook does not look good. However, I am going public with this prediction, actually, in the hope that it does not eventuate.

I predict that, for the average Australian worker, real wages will fall significantly over the next five years. Tony Abbott wants Australians to earn less, and, like it or not, what Tony wants, Tony seems to get. One way or another, he is definitely not the Australian worker's friend. The 457 visa floodgate has opened and willing workers are pouring in from overseas. Didn't you notice all those people flying in while the Liberals have been so busy announcing their successes in stopping what  was always a paltry number of boat arrivers? Anyway, these 457 visa holders are very happy to work in crummy conditions for far less than the minimum wage, as recent 'alleged' news stories about Koreans working for a certain mining company illustrate . Unions have shown little grunt or ability to change or end this situation and will not, at least as long as we have Liberals in power.

I'm obviously not happy with our neo-conservative political situation but I am going big picture here, way above the blame game. So, back to the prediction. Wages will be cut for Australians who want to compete with the incoming workers, but so will jobs for Australians. Like manufacturing, white collar jobs are heading overseas. Health care and insurance claims are processed in India and Japan, while your call centre is in the Philippines.

Alongside this, I predicted a while back that as the 21st century advanced, more and more Australians would be working casually or under contract; that there would be less jobs in large organisations and more need for outsourced labour. This is already becoming obviously the trend. Cutbacks and retrenchments (or is that right-sizing) are everywhere.

We want all of our young people to get good vocational training, but where will they find jobs? Australia is a living conundrum. On one hand, we already have far too many graduates than there are available jobs.On the other hand, we need more teachers, nurses, doctors, paramedics, but we have education systems that fail to supply these in the right proportion, and career opportunities at the end do not match our actual need.

For the seventy-five percent of us who don't have a degree, plus those who do not work in the area in which we qualified, one of the chief barriers to success in job search is that 'demonstrated skills' drives the whole recruitment process. This means, people are competing with hundreds, possibly thousands of others, for jobs that have an extremely 'tight' set of required skills (which is heavily enforced by the Applicant Tracking System) - unfortunately the notion of transferable skills has not penetrated the minds of most recruiters and hirers. For example, a client came to see me recently, she had worked as a bookkeeper for many years using a range of software, but not MYOB. She had absolutely awesome bookkeeping skills. After more than 200 applications she was still not hired because, rather than asking questions that would identify her ability to use MYOB, the questions stopped after 'Have you used MYOB?' and her truthful answer was, 'No'. I sighed, gave her a free copy of MYOB I had lying around and told her to go home and set herself up a home accounting system. She did. We wrote on her resume that she had used MYOB. She applied for a job. At the next interview, able to answer 'Yes, I have used MYOB', she got the job. Interestingly, they did not ask one more MYOB-related question.

One of our big problems is the mismatch of qualifications and available jobs. We have a large pool of workers trained for jobs that don't exist.We have jobs going that people could actually do well, but the selection process begins with a particular qualification (even for lowly clerical roles, older workers with years of experience are shut out because they don't have a Certificate in Business Administration).

Does the answer lie in retraining? Retraining for what?  Besides the fact that spending 6-12 months studying something you already know is ludicrous, how do we know that next year the benchmark for entrants will not be a Diploma, that the Certificate in Business Administration is all but useless? How can we be sure jobs will be available in any other current line of work?

Retraining is simply not an option for many people, especially if it means sacrificing opportunities to job hunt. Studying is far less palatable when you are fighting to keep a roof over your head, and with funding cuts to training programs anyway, it's not hard to see why most people aren't warming to the prospect of undergoing lengthy self-funded training programs with dubious employment possibilities at the end.

Not long ago, employers used to train people on the job, nowadays they will be more likely to purchase a product and leave it up to the person operating it to work it out, or if they are lucky, they may get a few hours of vendor training thrown into the purchase price. When they hire someone new, it becomes a requirement to already know the product - the employer is not interested in wasting time training a new person, they want them pre-manufactured.

So, in summary I further predict that within the next five years we will have a large pool of workers with outdated or unusable skills that do not match employers' requirements. This is a safe prediction, because it is already happening. But this situation will get much, much worse as no one, not even me, can guarantee what course a person should do to ensure any level of job security.

A also predicted a while back that as the 21st century advanced, more and more Australians would be working casually or under contract, that there would be less jobs in large organisations and more need for outsourced labour. This is already becoming obviously the trend. While for some of us, the jobs we had are still needed, we are just doing it another way, more Australians are becoming, effectively, itinerant workers, at the mercy of the on-hire process. Those of us who want to take some control are opting to go into business for themselves. These new-age entrepreneurs are often reluctant business people, and are ill-equipped to handle the rigours of financial and business management, not to mention marketing, administration and tax accounting.

We currently have a labour market in chaos. It is disconnected, unpredictable and constantly shifting. My prediction is that it will get a whole lot worse, and that there will be many casualties. For individuals who find themselves in the middle of this maelstrom, unsure which way to go, I offer this advice: Stop and breathe, accept that many things are out of your control, then accept that you must take control of your own life. This is your anchor. This means not rushing into anything, especially not because someone on the TV or radio tells you that you too can have a career in aged care or personal training (some of us will, but most won't). Take stock of your successes, and eliminate from your thoughts the bits of the 'old you' that are hampering you in the present. Times are changing; you are reshaping yourself. Look around with fresh eyes at what is happening in your local area, or in a new area you might want to move to, and try to identify some areas of interest for you. This is called 'environment scanning' which is the topic of my next blog.

Adios for now
Julie

Thoughts on passion and whether a job is just a job after all

 In my professional circle, there has been a lot of discussion lately around the topic of career satisfaction; this mainly comes down to an argument between the people who think we should each find our passion and let that drive our careers, and the people who say 'work is work' and it is not meant to be enjoyed.

The careers people on the 'passion' side argue that we spend more of our lives at work than in any other area, so we might as well love what we do. These are the people who usually believe we are put on the earth for a purpose, and it is our duty to work out what this is. If we don't do this duty to ourselves, we are more likely to become stressed and ill - physically and mentally. There have been many books devoted to this subject, some from career practitioners but many from the life coaching, motivational speakers/writers, and the self-help industry as well. 

Some people (myself included) have found this argument persuasive; although I didn't actually read it in a book, it was more a matter of listening to that small voice inside me that gradually grew bigger and more all-pervasive. There is an element of liberation in following one's passion, of 'treading one's own path' (thanks Barefoot Investor!), but it can also be hard work (mainly in trying to keep a roof over your head and food on the table while carving new territory), so it is no surprise that many people have preferred to view work as something that must be endured..

The most pervasive argument for work as something to be endured is a transactional one. There are only so many jobs in the world - what would happen to society if everyone just did what they wanted? Who would collect the garbage, hold the 'Stop' and 'Slow' road signs up in all weathers while work is being done? Who would clean the public toilets? (oh, wait - we have technology for all those things now).

Whether or not the transactional argument is true, most of the reasons relate back to our society, how we want to live and what we are prioritising. As a society, we value wealth, material possessions and competition over family, community and equality. This is a harsh truth that cannot be disputed. We like money and the type of freedom it brings. Thanks to the scaremongering going on in political circles and the superannuation industry, we now believe that we are going to live a long time and we are going to need lots of money to do it - we'd better store it away now or we will be living on the streets, old and incontinent, with no one to look after us. Short of winning the lottery or becoming a game show champion, we can only do this one way - by working hard and getting lots of money so we can store it away till later. Yes it is true - the Protestant Work Ethic is alive and well!

I propose a rethink on both these extremes. It is about balance. It involves following our hearts/intuition/gut feel to an extent while paying attention to opportunities. Getting locked into one, unsupported but possibly romantic, fixed idea is fraught with dangers. 

To avoid the tragedy that comes from a life devoid of any sense of purpose, the first thing to do is to get in touch with who you are and what you want RIGHT NOW! It's really not hard - you just need some space and time so you can think clearly. Write down some key points; draw a picture, talk to a non-judgemental friend over coffee.

The job market is constantly shifting, so it is really hard to make long-term plans. Also, over  the course of our lives, as we grow and change (along with our priorities) we need to adopt a 'fluid' approach to our careers rather than the fixed one that many of us still buy into. I am amazed when I hear well-meaning adults still saying things to young people like 'Do this or that course and you will be set up for life', or  'Go to uni and get a law/medicine degree first, then when you are earning good money you can do a bit of art on the side.' You can pretty well guarantee that the young person in question will have killed off any artistic talent well before the end of his/her course, and do you know how many hours young lawyers and doctors work? These are definitely not just jobs 'to do', they involve a great deal of attention and many sacrifices - they are important jobs for those who have the heart to do them well.

If you are a young person reading this, remember, you have all the time in the world to make your career something fantastic! Don't jump into the first thing you think of, and especially do not do a course just because you got  the marks to do it! That is the first bad mistake that is easily avoided. Give passion a little bit of a chance to have its say as well as all those other, boring messages you keep hearing from those who want to lock you up in a job title for the rest of your life. As financial advisor Scott Pape so wisely says, 'Tread your own path' (But I did say it first, many years ago now).

If you are an older person who is in a new career stage, remember - your career has been building all your life, whether you have been in work or not. It is a continuum, and your past has relevance - even though it might feel like it. You have a wealth of experience, skills, successes and failures who have made you who you are. Use this as an opportunity rather than a threat and you will be energised rather than encumbered by change.

My next blog will be about how to be over 50 and attractive to employers. Yes it is possible!