I don’t know how you have been coping with this time nor do I don’t know how you’ve been feeling through this. And I don’t know what you’ve been missing or desiring that has made this time feel difficult, but I imagine that the feelings have been experienced as more prominent than in the past.

To speak of my own experience is to say that it has been a time of engaging with a certain unfamiliar wilderness inside of myself as I simultaneously witness events and pain that range from sad to devastating. And of course there’s been everything in between. Moments of love, kindness, joy. Frustration, annoyance and celebrations of life in ways that have all required a new etiquette in human interaction to meet our needs with those we care for near and far whether we know them personally or not.

It has been a time that is both trying as well as an honour to be human. The effects will be revealed for decades to come whatever your personal experience has been within the context of the collective. This has been a time of intensity in emotions and trying to put words to things that are new experiences that unpack some old and familiar feelings. Whatever your experience, we are each going about our day as human. Which is what frustrates us most about being human. Especially when very little might feel or look or sound ideal.

When it was the past, perhaps you found yourself wanting something different. And now that the past is the past and the future looks like more of this same (for at least a little while), you might find yourself wishing for the past. This is human. And so is the ability to see this state for the opportunity that it is. As a witness to a deep human need for satisfaction without an accurate way to acknowledge what is satisfying unless and until a time is firmly in the past.

To feel satisfaction lies in how we make meaning out of all of the experiences that we have without dwelling and ruminating in ways that encourage a negative bias. In a way that is with an almost remote perspective that we feel deeply connected to. Because the funny thing about meaning is that it’s pretty invisible to the naked eye of any onlooker. It’s a deeply personal experience.

As much as anyone wants to make everything or at least some thing feel better right now, there is too much for any one of us. However it remains that the feeling of actually making or leaving something at least a bit better than you found it or creating something of meaning is the intrinsic reward of being human. We feel good when we do, no matter how small what we do is. The bigger issue at this time is to count the little in the face of so much going on. To call upon the best of what it means to be “only human” during trying times.

This call to be human though does require something of you. And that something is the cultivation of compassion. Because this time is cultivating compassion as much as it is cultivating anything else.

It is abundantly apparent at a time when everyone wants more than any one person can give that no one person can do everything. And it doesn’t cultivate compassion to focus on how you can’t do what you used to do or what you know you would be capable of in different circumstances. Remember, that’s not now. But what we can do is our part and stretch to leverage doing more with less. Like doing a little bit more for ourselves while refraining from acting unless we can do something with compassion both for ourselves an another. This means looking for things to do that you’re happy to offer that may change up, rather than eradicate what you’re currently doing now.

What you require may not necessarily be a good night’s sleep per se, but rather a heart with compassion to give. Doesn’t sound so terrible, does it? But as a practice, we humans find this very hard because we were given to from martyrs and victims of guilt who didn’t understand that this is what diminishes love rather than cultivates it. So there is a collective unlearning happening since the status quo of how we gave is brought to its knees by this time.

We have to be allowed to admit that we got how we give wrong so that we can make it right.

Compassion is only human so it is possible to give. But what is it and how can it exist in our daily life? Here are some of my ideas:

Compassion is cultivated for starters. And it has to begin with yourself. Otherwise what you give will undermine or overpower what you seek to help. Like a sun scorched or drowned plant that cannot possibly thrive.

Compassion is the willingness and ability to observe the results of your actions, rather than just being focused on what and how you want to give. This is because people really are unique. To give truly from a place of your own love with insight into your own motives. As we cannot control how others receive. And noticing whether your own actions are meeting your own needs or tinged with resentment or expectation. It’s not uncommon to want to give more to someone that would benefit from less and to undergive to another that would benefit from more. Or to consider trading what you give to whom with someone else that’s a much better match.

Compassion is a ceasing of the diminishment of the tasks of the day. A shower is not less than a meal prepared. A dog walk is not less than a floor that is swept. An email completed is not more than a table that is wiped down. Do what you’re doing that needs to be done. Stay with the task and respect the effort. If you can’t, ask yourself why.

Compassion is a rising up of willingness to listen to your own pain and to console yourself without placating. “What is” is just “what is.” It’s not better to be happy than angry. If you’re angry accept that you feel angry. Anger is not what you are. There is no need to feel guilty when you are content and in the presence of someone having a completely different experience of the same event. Be with you yourself and you’ll be there for another.

Compassion is a way of making this moment feel fully accepted so that true change can sprout and take root. Returning again and again as needed to fully accept this moment in order for clarity to set in. And then again as needed. Repeat until your last breath.

Compassion is at the very least how we stop things from getting or feeling worse.

If misery loves company, what compassion heals is suffering. With compassion, we’ll all feel and do better because we’re all human. Even when that feels like the hardest thing to do some days. It’s only human to learn to go deep, rise up, let go, and love. It’s part of any career journey worth your while.

And while the solutions are logical for how to progress (wash hands, practice social distancing, don’t travel unless it’s absolutely necessary, etc), doing what is logical in these times given that we are dealing with a virus, has certainly stirred up feelings from the deep about what it means to be human. Or perhaps more specifically, what we find intolerable about being human that our life design could only ever temporarily hide. 

It’s a new climate to write in. It’s a new climate for all of us to work in, live in, and be in. And it took some time for that reality to set in rather quickly. Personally, as of right now, I’m not used to not writing as much. It has felt more tumultuous to sit and be with myself. To allow myself to be. Perhaps you feel this way too?

I have “tried” to write but I found myself just never really feeling the words that I was writing. Strangely I found myself wondering if meaning had gone away. 

What would I do without writing? For now anyways.  

I turned my attention to other things. Cleaning. Reading. Cooking. 

I’ve watched Contagion (the movie on Netflix). I found a documentary on YouTube on the swine flu pandemic. And I’m halfway through Grace & Frankie also on Netflix. 

I have been reading about trauma and The Egyptian Book of the Dead. I have lingered over daffodils and now tulips longer than I have ever done in the past because I was curious if they knew things that I didn’t and would have something to say. I’ve also thought the same thing about my dogs as I observed how the texture on Sonnet’s coat was made up by each hair. I look at her. She looks at me. And everything is okay. 

And then I look away and feel like maybe it’s not. 

Thankfully I have two dogs. 

So I look into the eyes of the one that loves to stare into my eyes. He’s Puck (aka “LaLa” and “Duckie” because he just seems to find those names so fun). They sparkle and my insides giggle. 

I’ve been hearing from and connecting with people that I haven’t connected with in a long time. I feel busy and find myself wondering “with what?” Nothing that I ever used to be busy with.

Where I live, where it’s usually rainy, it’s been clear and sunny heralding spring from long dark winter rains. 

When I looked up at the sky last night it was filled with stars  encircled by by trees. I felt so near to everything and yet so, so far away. 

I feel as if I’m taking in opposing forces that require some mysterious alchemy that I don’t yet have to bring them together. But I know that there’s brewing going on within, but it feels like unrest. 

And for the last three Sunday mornings, David Whyte has been speaking live on my screen. I’ve seen him in person a few times now, but somehow listening to him at home during this, where I can feel and let the tears run down my face, has felt like the most intimate ever. 

He has often spoken about having a horizon that you travel toward. Even if you never get there, even if you’re not supposed to get there.

It feels more perilous to live without one. But where has the horizon gone?  

He answers because words are meant to liberate and nourish, not confine you if cultivated just right. The outer horizon is shrouded and will probably be for a while, so there is an inner horizon to locate. 

One of the things that I’ve come to terms with during this time as I’m visiting with my melancholy is all the knowing I ask of myself. I know of those that are working hard in hospitals. I have elderly friends that I’m not nearly ready to lose and do what I can to help keep them safe. And I hear stories from people that I both know and don’t know about the losses from COVID. There are people who want to sell their husbands (maybe me too). People who are being creative. People who are dancing, and celebrating birthdays and anniversaries and babies being born. There are people who are quarantined with abuse, people on earth who can’t quarantine, and people who are making art.

Everyone is having an experience and part of the experience that I’m having is to practically be in awe as I feel into accepting all of these realities and so many more than I haven’t even named. 

There are so many figures in the world trying to keep us uplifted because that’s important too. And strangely, what I know for myself is that I’m uplifted when I allow myself to drop down into the darkness of becoming first. A darkness where the night has eyes to recognize its own (to quote David Whyte). 

It doesn’t sound sexy, but it is where the seeds of my creativity have always sprung strong shoots in the past. It seems that this is part of processing my human experience to be able to write to tell about it so what grew can speak, not as me, but through me.

I am stretching. To create roots to grow some new branches so that maybe one day, without knowing for sure, some birds will find a nest in what I have to offer. As those before me, did for me by visiting with their own darkness, their own aloneness, in order to find true belonging.   

The majority of us have never been through this before. Very few are alive since the last time something like this was experienced. So as we live, we are learning. This is the crucible of creativity. 

Sending much love at this time on your journey. It is a privilege to be here with you having this human experience. 

It’s a nice day today. It’s chilly, but the sun in shining. It looks normal outside. Spring seems to be peeking through and coming up wherever I look. A fresh green bit here. A skyward carpet of white blossoms decorating the trees. A whisper of pink still bundled up threatening to burst out with an announcement of life. Amidst all these signs of winter waking from its slumber, the world is taking a vacation from business as usual. Because of a virus.

It’s an interesting time as things that have previously been considered unfathomable become fathomable. Especially when it comes to work.

I remember having a job that was particularly onerous once upon a time. I remember my boss wanting me to complete reports. I remember offering to work from home one day without office distractions to get the report done because more reports to complete would come along in no time with my work schedule. And I remember being told that if I didn’t show up at the office that the work that I did would not be recognized. I was told that I would be treated as though I had taken some time off.

So I delayed the completion of the report because if someone tells you that they want something done, but they don’t do anything to support you actually getting it done, it means that there are other things that are more important to them. I was forced to accept that I had unfortunately found myself in a job where showing my face was more important than the work I was producing.

It was exhausting to put effort into what is essentially a game with no winner.

I remember taking that feeling on. The one called guilt, as though I was indeed a lazy person looking to accomplish less than not much at home while supposedly working. Though my boss wouldn’t say it, the logic between the lines was black and white – I could not be trusted to do what I said I would. And I took that on. It reminded me of all the times that I’d worked and worked only to still feel like anything I did was never going to be good enough.

I faced the fact that I lived in a culture that forced work out of people rather than worked with how work flows. There were certainly a lot of rigidities about how I had to work as time unfolded:

When I had to work. Who had to see me working. When I needed to arrive by. When I should leave by. What was okay to complain about in my work. What was not okay to ask for that would be useful for me instead.

It’s a lot of work to learn how to navigate defences just to be able to get you work done.There was certainly a lot to do to please the ambiance of the office and so it became a pet peeve of mine – the ineffectiveness of how we design our greatest, and indeed our only, asset: Time.

This extra navigation work was part of the recipe for burnout that would follow in a year’s time. My body told me “no.” But before that I remember sitting in my cubicle feeling tired but on edge about how I was perceived while working. Wanting to rebel from the rigidities that seems totally stupid to me. Upset that my work wasn’t as valued as the time I spent sitting there trying to work when it just wasn’t happening. Trying little experiments to prove my perception wrong because this couldn’t seriously be how things really worked. Perhaps I was mistaken.

But I was not.

When most people act like this is normal and you don’t want to, you start to feel like you’re the weird one.

It’s almost surreal to be sitting in my airstream now surrounded by sun and trees, with my two dogs sitting so close beside me. Before the virus, this was my life and with the virus, this is still my life.

At some point nearly 10 years ago, I had decided that I knew my own worth ethic and my ability to show up and complete things better than anyone else could possibly know me. For many years, as I took the steps toward today, I have been thought of as unrealistic, crazy, and heretic for questioning the relationship dynamic that we have with work. Then, along comes an incredibly contagious virus to help encourage others to work in ways that are more friendly to what it means to be a human being.

Without the help of this virus, our orientation to work would continue to be put off en mass and indefinitely. Things that were never possible before are being made possible. We are ingenious when we are moved to be. And it’s a part of us that has been experiencing dormancy.

The wonderful thing about the creativity that we’re accessing en mass to work with while the world is under quarantine breeds more creativity. And that’s a really good thing for the world because it’s a lack of creativity that created the ruts of how we work.

When you think about it, it’s been a really long time since we re-imagined what work could be. We’ve gone along with old ideas that were created in times that no longer exist. It’s good to update our thoughts about the world, ourselves, and our work. And to continue to check in with ourselves from time-to-time (say every two years, to see if we like the changes we’ve implemented and made possible).

In this time of minimizing virus spread, we don’t have the “luxury” of not trusting each other to do the work we can. Keeping ourselves and our loved ones healthy and our health care available for those who find themselves in need is our priority. But we needed the leadership in our world to encourage that because on our own, in our day-to-day, we don’t do that for each other. Unhealthy egos only encourages the opposite.

We’re overdue for changing how to engage with work. Virus or no virus.

It’s something to appreciate about ourselves as humans, the fact that we have needs. And one of the needs that I like to work on helping people to meet is their need for contribution. It’s equal to all others and the pain of not getting that need met doesn’t go away. Nor is it satiated when other needs are met at its expense. And when a human being can’t meet their need to contribute, any one of us would feel helpless.

We don’t like not knowing what to do with our time, energy, gifts, and creativity. And if some of your time, energy, gifts, and creativity goes into re-imagining how you work, what work is, and why you’re doing it because the entire world is slowing down, that makes this time useful. Everything won’t go back to exactly how it was before because we know now that it can be different. So it begs the question of why we were maintaining what we did before when there were other ways to do it. We made work into what we know it to be and now we know that we can change how we work and that how we work can change.

It’s the end of work as we know it.

I wanted to make a note of declaring immense gratitude for those who are considered essential to helping us through this time. And my heart goes out to any and everyone that finds themselves with a loss of income.

I hope that you’re all taking care of yourselves and looking out for one another. We gave some carrot cake to a neighbour outside and in return received some raspberry pie. And talking to our elderly friends on the phone just the other day was received with such gratitude that I felt overwhelmed with gratitude for thinking to connect. No gesture is too small these days. People are feeling deeply. So dive in.

Sabrina xo

Time and time again, when life feels really, really hard (and it does sometimes), it’s because I’m blocked from my creativity. I can only see the thing I’m looking at one way, when what I really need to do is to see in a multitude of ways. And that’s when the obvious and simple solutions present themselves.

This isn’t about rushing life, it’s about really living life.

Because my life is largely creative – or at least, that’s how I look at it regardless of where I am and what I’m doing – I work to keep myself in a creative mind space, and focus less on the difficulties I face. Because if I focus on the difficulties, I keep creativity out. Whereas if I maintain my creative muscles, I find that there’s less that I find difficult.

And if I get a really hard hit in life, the one thing that I do is never deny myself the same compassion that I would show another human being in my situation.

So keeping myself creative, isn’t airy-fairy nor for the faint of heart. And here are my seven top strategies:

1. I talk nice to myself.

Yup. I don’t yell at myself or call myself an idiot when I screw up. I also don’t “warn” myself that “the other shoe is going to drop” when I’m having a good time. I decline to fear monger myself because I’ve been alive long enough and have had enough experience to see that things weren’t always how I thought they were. They were just, how they were.

When life feels good, I say, “Enjoy this. This too shall pass.” When life feels bad, I say, “Learn from this. This too shall pass.” And sometimes, I end up learning from the times in life that I find enjoyable and find myself enjoying the difficult things mostly because I see them less as good or bad.

If I catch myself being mean to myself during something particularly trying, I see that for what it is. It means that I’ve been going too hard and canceled any sense of play. And that an accurately chosen playdate for myself returns me to sanity.

2. I detox my thoughts.

Most days. Like 90% of days, I write. It’s 3 pages for me. It’s 12 minutes for other people, but it’s still a shower for my insides. I get the pesky thoughts out of my system so that I have a clear mind for my life. I honor my experience of life rather than push away feelings that seem inconvenient. I might be repetitive in these purge pages, but that’s irrelevant. It’s about the measure of clarity I have from this long-standing practice.

When I first started doing this, I resented doing them. And after a few months, when I didn’t do this, I resented not doing them. Something had changed and it was something I liked. It helped me be nicer to myself day-to-day too.

3. I love my dogs.

Eckhart Tolle once said that dogs were “guardians of being.” I believe that and experience the sensation of my creativity being honored by my dogs. They tell me when it’s time for my walk and they’re never wrong about that. They connect me to myself and we have a community of other people and dogs. It’s great.

I’m not saying that you need a dog, but what I am saying here, is that you need something in your life that feels like a community that honors your spirit as you honor theirs.

4. I walk in the woods.

I feel like I’m aware of the passage of time as the seasons evolve in the trees, earth, ferns, and mosses. The snow, the mud, the dusty dirt, and crunchy leaves are cyclical. I even know an oak tree that I call “my father” and an arbutus that I call “my mother.” And then there’s this other tree that I call “my great friend.” I visit nature and she visits with me. In Japan, this practice is called forest bathing. And all I can say is that it renews me each time and keeps me focused on what matters until the forest and I meet again.

5. I wake up and lie there.

When I wake up in the morning, I lie there in bed and allow my mind to wake and wander (just observing how I am doing). It’s not a long time. Maybe as short as 10 minutes or as long as an hour depending on what is going on in my life in terms of plans. But there’s something very orienting about taking this time.

Waking up is like moving from one realm to another. And to really be present and make use of the day, this practice seems to set the compass within.

6. I keep in touch.

I take photos with my iPhone and use WordSwag to make postcards out of quotes I’ve made up and get them printed through moo.com. I stamp and address all of those postcards at once and put them on the coffee table with a pen.

And then whenever I feel like reaching out, I pick up a postcard and write to that person and on my way out for a dog walk, I make sure I walk by the mailbox (because I had already stamped and addressed the postcard).

Once in awhile, I’ll write someone a long letter instead of sending them a postcard.

I get mail in return, I get offers to come visit, I get visitors, and I get to always remember that we’re all in this world together. At least for now.

Sometimes I even buy pre-made postcards and mail them. I don’t have to be on vacation to send a postcard and I don’t obligate myself to make them. I just like to make them because I like to take pictures. I send mail to people about twice a year. I can hardly describe how wonderful it feels to do this very vintage act.

7. I read. Lots.

I am one of those people that has at least a couple of books on the go. As a Career Counselor, I view reading as my opportunity to network with other writers. It’s all the reason I need to read. And it inspires my own writing as well as my own living creatively.

Conclusions on living creatively (so far) …

I hope this helps you in your life to know that it doesn’t take much to actually cultivate a creativity mindset. Creativity is really, in essence, the act of connecting to the place from whence you came and using that communication to live your life.

Living a creative life is simply the act of learning about the true nature of your existence.

The secret though to the whole act of cultivating creativity, and why we live in a culture that tells ourselves that it’s a waste of time, or that it doesn’t produce results, or that it’s going to ask you to be different than how you are now, is because creativity isn’t something that you can control and so much of what we are doing in the day-to-day is to try to control what we can’t control or have no business trying to control that brings our vitality down.

We’re afraid that if we don’t control everything about us that something will. Something we don’t trust. And that fear was the reality for many of us as children. But being controlled and having a purpose is the difference between coercing and pushing yourself through life versus being lead, drawn, or guided.

Your will is always yours, but it takes courage to acknowledge that that is even the case now when you’re craving the cultivation of creativity rather than practicing the cultivation of it.

Their lives aren’t moving in the direction they want to be moving in. Even though they really want it to.

In reality, they swat away the suggestions or ideas or inspirations that might just be the ticket out of their supposed laziness. And in working together once we realize that their nemesis is this label, that’s when we really get to the heart of the matter.

It’s truly amazing how long you can go down a career path trying to be perceived a certain way when the thing you want most in the world is to be free of the label: lazy.

First I always ask: “What do you mean by lazy? Because I bet that you and I have very different definitions of what it means to be truly lazy.”

As someone that offers career counseling in a way that is very mindful about how we live out the definitions of the words we use that we might not even be aware of, I’ve had to come to terms with my own self-judgments of what it means to be lazy too.

In short: I’ve had to re-define lazy to be an actually useful word.

Here’s what I learn about people as they reach for this label to apply to themselves. Because you can get really mixed up inside when you’re expending a lot of energy to keep your life on its existing track while yearning for something completely different.

When you need to rest, reflect, consider, ponder, sort through, deliberate … and any other task that offers you insight or clarity or creativity for what ails you – that’s when you psychically punch yourself in the gut by calling yourself the l-word.

But really, have you ever considered the truth about why you’re so afraid of this word?

Oftentimes, growing up, you were considered “not” lazy simply because you kept moving – bustling to get those chores done, jumping up when someone yelled out to you a little too impatiently (because they were thinking that they themselves were lazy and needed to recruit you to alleviate the lashing out of their own self-judgement), or getting sick from doing what was beyond reasonable.

“At least look like you’re trying!” Maybe that’s what you heard. But therein lies the trap. All of your energy goes to looking like you’re not lazy so that you feel lazy when it comes to doing the things that you actually need to do to live your own life.

What other people put on you when you were younger does not make it you. It is your own honesty in the present with yourself that makes you, you.

Doing anything that just “looked like” you were being lazy, was considered lazy.

However … the possibility existed that you might have chosen to do what was considered lazy to protect yourself, hide out, or lay low – basically staying out of the fray of some harried person who was literally hellbent on doing things their own way.

Laziness was only truly laziness if you turned your nose up at living your life with some meaning and stayed in the womb by choice. And if that were the case, you couldn’t be reading this now.

Choosing the appearance of laziness was sometimes the lesser evil, but that didn’t actually mean that you were lazy.

But now, since you’re out of the womb, real laziness can be at work. You can be lazy now about putting your early critics in their place – whether that’s literal or metaphorical. And what used to be a choice to keep yourself safe or stable in some way, is no longer working because the fear of your own wrath calling yourself lazy is now actually making you lazy.

As an adult that’s capable and competent enough to be moving through your life, laziness becomes not a question of physical agility and speed through life’s pesky task of being alive. Laziness is the refusal to evolve your consciousness in the way that your life is asking you to.

Let’s look at your reality to know if this is true:

:: Are you tired?

:: Do you keep pushing through tiredness and cross the border into exhaustion regularly?

:: Have you entered a new country called fatigue yet?

Finding your way back from this land means to realize that you now have to appear lazy to others in order to return resources to yourself to use more wisely as you carry on.

“Lazy” is a judgment from hell that’ll keep you stuck in a rut without ever really meaning to.

You’re going to need to stop being lazy about not sitting with the feelings that you’re trying to run away from that are masked by the fear of being perceived as lazy.

Hit the break.

Dare to appear lazy.

And then be anything but: Mindful action is the key.

But like many things, all that is normal, isn’t necessarily healthy.

The number one way that you keep the stress loop going is by minimizing its impact on yourself, your work, and the people around you. And without proper care, stress will run your life … into the ground.

Even though stress is an expected part of life, you can learn how to be mindful about creating strategies that keep you more balanced so that you’re not caught off guard repeating cycles.

You are doing yourself and your community a favor when you create early detection systems as well as healthy habits.

And however stressful stress may be, let’s not forget that your piqued stress response isn’t an enemy. It’s a predictable human response that tells you that a need isn’t getting met or that you are pitting needs (that are equally valid) against one another.

For example, it’s okay to want freedom and security. Or rest and adventure. But we don’t necessarily always go about meeting those simultaneous needs sustainably.

What you’re needing in these moments of stress is awareness. But awareness is hard to come by without planning for the inevitable.

It’s a little-known fact that the more you like who you are, the more self-awareness you allow into your life.

So what can you do to get calm so that you can deal with the stress of your situation? How can you get back to being productive and effective as quickly as possible? How can you like yourself more to increase your self-awareness?

Here are 4 strategies plus some rationale for what you can do:

:: Acknowledge how you are really feeling to yourself.

Rationale:
When you won’t admit how you feel to you, you end up being the very person that you don’t want to be at work.

In an irritating moment, you could be escalating the situation and not even be aware of it only to regret it later. Whereas, if you admit how you feel to yourself first, your energy and what you can control will return to you.

:: Breathe.

Rationale:
Sounds simple enough but you’d be amazed at how disjointed, shallow, or disassociated you are from your body when you’re experiencing stress. Your body is having the mammalian response it would to physical danger – like something is going to jump out of the bushes and eat you.

If you can gather your wits about you to breathe fully and deeply into your belly in a soft, measured way you’re going to start to feel like your vital signs have returned to normal more quickly than you’d think. Instant calm.

:: Have a regularly scheduled appointment with a professional.

Rationale:
It’s kind of amazing (read: unreasonable) what we’ve come to expect of ourselves in modern times. There’s the house, the kids, the social media updates, the real friendships, the car, the vacation, the renovations, the presentations, the grocery shopping, the laundry, the house cleaning… it’s a lot.

And then on top of that, there are the hassles that come as part of becoming a fully realized human being that has something to contribute through their work.

It’s amazing that you remember to breathe at all, but even so, having a professional that’s there for you to help you process, digest, and metabolize your human experiences is what actually helps you to exist as a calmer version of yourself in the first place. Otherwise, things build up to steal your calm.

Is it an investment of time and energy and money?

Yes, but if it’s effective, it’ll be the best money, time, and energy you ever spend. If you’re the support that you expect yourself to be and ask other people to rely on, having someone there is a sure way not to falter for those you want to offer yourself to.

:: Rest well.

Rationale:
Though we live in a world where “work” and “life” are thought of as compartmentalized, this isn’t how it actually works. Not being able to turn your mind off when you get home from work will tell you that this is the case. So if you want to truly be someone that keeps calm, then rest well.

I’m not necessarily talking about catching your zzz’s – although that’s ideal, getting enough sleep comes from resting your strengths by giving them fun tasks and not just the tasks that have to get done.

Things like reading, doing a puzzle, building a snowman, going on a bicycle ride, stopping at the beach or the park on the way home to play with the kids, or browsing through the greeting card collection at your favorite store. These are mini vacations and as valuable as anything else that you do.

You’re not human if you don’t know how to rest well and you’re definitely not calm if you don’t rest well. If you’re struggling to make any rest time for yourself, I suggest pursuing number 3 until you realize that you matter, just not in the way that you think.

And about four years in, I started to write a book. I’ve been pretty quiet about it because I didn’t know if I could finish a book.

I totally have my doubts and I still do. Partly because I’m legally an extrovert (just kidding, it doesn’t work like that), but I live a life with copious amounts of solitude. I haven’t decided if I’m an extroverted hermit or if I’m the most hermit extrovert I’ve ever seen.

The only thing that I knew going into this book writing thing was that a book wasn’t going to write itself. If I was faint of heart or busy doing other things, like talking to people, writing wouldn’t be a consistent activity. So I practiced writing for a long, long time. And a few years in, I noticed something very peculiar.

While I still am a Career Counselor, I noticed that when I talked to people about what I did, something was feeling different. Totally off.

I didn’t know how to talk about myself anymore. I noticed the day that telling people what I did and how I did it felt like a pair of pants that had gotten too tight. It happened a few more times before it registered that it was that old familiar feeling that I didn’t know who I was. Only this time, it didn’t scare me at all.

I posted fewer and fewer articles and I haven’t posted anything in awhile (save for a few private notes to subscribers), not because I didn’t have things to write about, but because I was in the middle of a transition.

Transitions are about disappearing and reappearing. And what happens in between pretty much remains a secret. But I decided that I don’t want it to be that way.

And that’s in part because my job is to help people transition. And while what I do with my clients is ultra private stuff, I’ve been through many transitions before and had an idea:

What if I revealed the life of someone in transition?
What if I let you in on what it’s like to transition from being one thing to becoming something else?
What if people don’t transition because they think it’s this weird and yucky process where people ask you all kinds of questions that you don’t have answers to … yet? And what if that was okay? And even a good thing?

The reason I was struggling to speak about myself was because my life is lived as a Writer that does career counseling, rathar than as a Career Counselor that writes. And I was surprised when the tipping point for that arrived. I had no idea that it was even coming.

So you’ll see a shift in what I write about because I’ll write about writing and I’ll write about career counseling and this is in part because of you.

Without exception, every client I’ve ever worked with has a writer’s voice that has wanted or needed an outlet. Not everyone I’ve ever worked with wants to be a Writer for a living, but their voice has needed a space or permission or gentle coaxing out into the open. Voices powerful because they are full of the person’s essence rather than their ego that could never represent them well. It’s the act of writing that has allowed my clients to know themselves deeply, and that has made their speaking voice more representative of who they are, and that makes their career choices in the day-to-day of their work more potent.

The fact is this:

Your developed voice leads to the career in the heart of who you are.

This is what I know as a Career Counselor and as a Writer.

And if you want to take a look at the book I’ve got in the works, you can preview it here.

xo

But as we all know, the high of receiving the job fades. It fades much sooner than we’d like. And what was once the distant mirage of a better and brighter future is nothing you actually want up close.

And so here you are feeling if not outright thinking: “Oh no. Not again.”

You might even find yourself wondering why you didn’t know how to appreciate the last job if you were only going to feel this way again?

It’s more than a little disorienting. It’s annoying and agonizing and you don’t know how to trust yourself after this has happened multiple times.

What’s different this time is that you want to know why you have this affliction.

It’s not that the signs weren’t there. It’s that they were and you either ignored or didn’t know how to interpret them. Now that you’re in your new day-to-day, you actually have the information that could have been useful before you ever accepted that job offer.

So before you find yourself thinking that something is wrong with you (it’s not that at all!), unpack the indicators that the job was never going to the work for you. For this is how, through self-awareness, you can start to really trust yourself again.

Here are 5 signs that the job was or is never going to work out and what you can do to make things right with yourself:

No. 1 – You got this new job because you hated your last one so much.

You might be thinking: “Um, well yeah … what else was I supposed to do?!” What you don’t realize is that this is probably a pattern by now. Using your hate for one job as the motivator to becoming happy in another job is actually an emergency situation. So you begin moving from one emergency situation to another as quickly as your dissatisfaction can sink in.

Try this instead:

The signs that you want to quit actually give you lots of advance notice if you start to pay attention to the cycle or pattern you’re enacting. Peaceful and satisfying transitions are a process so create one for yourself rather than a state of emergency as the impetus to act.

Also, hating your job is a sign that you’re not considering choices that might be easy to make if you unblocked some of your early social conditioning with the help of a suitable professional. Remember all the options you always see in hindsight? This time isn’t going to be any different. Plus you can have more access to hindsight in the now if you are present and real with yourself about why you’re feeling hate in the first place.

No. 2 – Your boss and/or colleagues weren’t welcoming.

It’s convenient for everyone to claim that they’re busy especially when you come on board prepared to “hit the ground running.” But when your job involves helping other people in some way (and whose job doesn’t?), if your boss and your colleagues are expecting you to put in the greater effort so that you can help them (aka please them at your expense), maybe admitting that sooner rather than later can save you the investment of applying for and accepting the job.

Try this instead:

If becoming part of the team is a top priority for you to feel at home in your work, you can ask how your interviewers were on-boarded into their roles and what’s in store for you. You can also extend the interview by asking for a pre-visit to see your work space, meet your (soon-to-be) predecessor and anyone that you’ll be interfacing with regularly on the job.

During this pre-visit ask where the paper is for the photocopier, or how the shared spaces (coffee area, kitchen, meeting rooms) are cared for. Listen to what’s being said as well as what’s going unsaid and be honest with yourself about that. If you get “that feeling” or signs that that they are more glad to dump work onto you than to integrate you, it’s not worth it for you to “try to make things work.” Sometimes workplaces don’t want a colleague, what they want is to keep doing what they’ve always done using hope as a strategy that this time things will work out differently. And when that’s the case, it’s you that needs to see when and how that’s happening to save yourself the trouble.

No. 3 – Policies about major duties have yet to be decided.

Once you’re on the job, you learn that certain things are expected of you that may or may not be expected of other people. I once worked at a job where I was told that traveling was a perk of my job so I should not expect any time off after crossing international time zones. The same logic didn’t apply to my male colleague and the person that was responsible for making this decision (not my direct report) kept canceling our meeting to talk about it. Needless to say, I couldn’t physically sustain that job for very long and getting answers was a circuitous process.

Try this instead:

Ask if there are any gray areas in your job and who is responsible for resolving those with you once you’re on the job. If it’s not your direct report, ask that it be your direct report and/or ask about why it is the way it is. You’ll learn a lot from the answer if you pay attention. Especially if your concerns are being brushed off as something to be taken care of after you start. Alternatively, you could ask about what happens in a worst case scenario (e.g. “If I’m overseas for two weeks and come home and have to be on the plane two days later again, do you expect me to come into the office or would you feel okay with me working from home so that I can prepare for my next trip?”).

If “how things work” don’t make much sense to you or it sounds like no one fundamentally trusts each other or respects the nature of the job, acknowledge this. If this job means that much to you it’s okay to say: “I’m not entirely comfortable accepting this job with these things unresolved. I don’t want to quit due to burn out.” Doing this does two things: First, it makes what is going to be a problem that leads to you quitting, into an emergency because most workplaces respond to something only if it’s urgent (yes, we live in a culture that prefers our comfort, which makes us lazy to act, so creating a sense of urgency isn’t a bad thing). Also if you’re the candidate they picked, then you’re the candidate they want so this makes something unresolved into something resolved. And if they don’t want to do anything about the obvious problems to bring you on board successfully, then guess what? You’ve saved yourself all the trouble before you ever started the job.

4. Your boss or colleagues were codependent and you don’t want to be (… anymore).

You’re on a team where someone’s work ethic is questionable or at the very least, not shared with others, and you find yourself compensating for them by over functioning in your role. This can include checking on their work, devising strategies to “work around” an under functioning or interpersonally difficult team member, talking to your boss to try to create change, etc. The sad part is that a lot of effort goes into keeping everyone playing their part rather than resolving anything. All this “extra work” so that you can do you work is tiring and your boss indicated that your agreeableness is so appreciated. It feels totally yucky and tiring.

Try this instead:

Ask for what you want. If the under functioning colleague has the audacity to be a certain way and to ask for certain things, have the audacity to be authentic and ask for what you need to be able to be in your job sustainably. Know that you are of value to the organization and promise yourself that if a job is meaningful to you that you’re not going to let an under functioning colleague deny you your career bliss. And don’t wait until you’re angry or frustrated to start doing this. Beginning this practice from the very beginning means that you can say “yes” to a lot more than needing to quit from burn out. Don’t keep trying to be a martyr.

5. Your parents never wanted you to do that kind of work anyway.

Sometimes you get the job you want and it doesn’t work out. And you try again. And again and it keeps “not working out.” There’s no real reason for it. You make up reasons that sound socially acceptable (e.g. “I didn’t like my boss.”), but really, your parents think that what you do is either beneath your ability or above what’s acceptable and appropriate in the family. Basically you’re self-sabotaging to protect your family from feeling uncomfortable by failing at what you do for work (even if that means being “unhappily successful”).

Try this instead:

Fully understand that your parents (or other early primary caregivers) were the most influential force in your life growing up. This is because they taught you what you needed to do in order to be accepted and followed along to ensure your survival. In adulthood, we underestimate the strength of the will to survive with whoever was charged with our care all those years ago. So whether you selected your current work because it preserves what is labeled as a “strong family bond” or rebelled righteously in order to “do whatever you want,” you may still have this parent-child dynamic leftover from childhood to sort through. And you may require the services of a helping professional to untangle from it. So ask around and interview a few professionals to find someone that can help you grow from codependence to interdependence. But first, you need to not be embarrassed about the fact that childhood wounds make adult experiences pretty bumpy until they’re acknowledged regardless of whether you were intended harm, and especially if you were not.

It really needs to be okay to admit to yourself when your situation sucks. After all, hoping that your current strategy will someday get you something that feels different is futile at best. I know that you know that you have something that you’d like to give that feels right for you and for the world. But it can’t happen without the courage to see your human foibles and to embrace and tend to the scared person that we all are inside. xo

If that’s how you feel though, you’re in the right place. Because refining resume content ought to increase, rather than decrease which is often the case, self-understanding and confidence.

I think we’ve all had the experience of tinkering with content and, in the process, felt like doing so took you further and further away from what you wanted to write as your fears and other people’s opinions were incorporated.

So where do you begin to finish with the feeling of satisfied completeness?

You start with the original content. The unedited stuff that you first plop down needs to be completely reflective of you.

If you don’t like what you’re starting with, the task of developing resume content is going to feel at best annoying and at worst uninspiring and endless.

So how do you get better raw and original content to work with? Does getting better content take longer? And, is this going to be harder than it already is?

(If you’re not wondering, I would be if I were you. So I thought I’d put it out there first.)

What I’m proposing is a step that doesn’t make things take less time, but that doesn’t take any more time than absolutely necessary.

I’m not looking to waste your time, I’m looking to get you what you want.

This step is asking you to do something different and it’s probably something new even though it’s something very familiar. And doing this step that you’re going to take right here is what makes the rest of your resume making so much easier.

The success behind a great resume – one that you feel pleased to represent and that gets you the job you’re happier and more at peace with – happens when you take ownership of your story. And your own career storytelling is what this step is all about.

You are about to “mine” where the hidden gems are. You’re unearthing them. This way there’s nothing to “make up”, there’s just stuff to “dig up.” And since there are gems, not zombies, it’s good stuff you’re digging up.

To prepare for what’s next, here are the three preparatory suggestions:

1. Have your current resume printed and ready for viewing;

2. Open up a fresh clean electronic document or find yourself a nice notebook and pen that you want to write with.

This document or notebook is purely devoted to career storytelling. This is NOT your resume. It’s your mental, emotional, and psychic creating space.

It’s going to look like a mess, but if you judged a gem by how you found it in a mine, you would think you’re looking at a worthless rock. After you find the gem in rock form, the step that follows is about polishing and cutting the gem to whatever level of perfection appeals to you.

For now, just be prepared to make a glorious mess.

3. Set aside 20-90 minutes per writing session OR only write about one previous job per session.

It’s better to have shorter and more frequent sessions than a whole uninterrupted day of resume writing. How many sessions you need is completely up to you.

When I work with a client, we tend to end up spending around 20 – 60 minutes per job that appears on the resume and we take 20 – 30 minute, whole day, or two-day breaks depending on how we’re feeling. Always check in with yourself to know what you can do and how much of a break you need.

In terms of a mindset as you approach this step, consider that you’re not sprinting nor running a marathon to the finish – you’re learning how to run. So the last thing you want or need right now is to sustain an injury by making this anything but fun. This is why you create this resume long before you ever need it. And when you need it, you’ll be beyond grateful that you have it. It will practically point to what job is next, which is pretty darn cool (and I know I’m not very cool for saying that).

Perhaps it goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway because I know how we humans get when we work on something like this:

Keep your mind open and curious about yourself. That’s the real magic in this process because anytime you block off or try to corral yourself, you won’t recognize gems when you come across them. Gems can’t be polished and still embedded in a rock at the same time.

What else is useful to know?

You don’t have to begin working on the content in a particular order. In fact, I encourage you to look at your resume and start with the job that you have the most affection for. If you find yourself agitated, angry, annoyed (or any other negative feeling) thinking about any of your past jobs put a star beside them for now.

Because you run a very high risk of viewing this task as unpleasant and don’t trust the process yet, I strongly suggest that you start with the job that you are going to have the easiest time with. Once you begin to experience the process, the jobs themselves become irrelevant because you’re applying a process to them regardless of how you feel about them. You will start to have new perspective on yourself in the jobs that you’ve had.

And if you can’t seem to approach career storytelling with ease for a particular job once you have the process down, then there’s something here isn’t there? Something that needs to be looked at. Preferably with help and gently. And that’s okay.

This is when it’s a good time to contact someone in a profession who can help you because now you know what you’re struggling to talk about. Or you can visit with a really good friend who is willing to help you honor the experience that you’re struggling to make sense of.

Whether we want to admit it or not (or can admit it or not), the jobs we’ve had are as significant as our romantic relationships. And often when you think you’ve walked away unscathed, that’s a sign of how much you’ve disassociated from your pain. Numbness doesn’t make you unscathed. Part of you thinks, “what’s one more dissapointment?” Well. Lots actually. Until you start to emotionally digest your experiences so that you can change something about how you’re experiencing your life.

True, you might be thrilled to move on physically from a job, but experiences do stay with us and ask to be processed at the first sign of perceived safety.

Most of the time what happens is that your resistance or pain from past work experience shows up right when you need to work on your resume. And instead of realizing that there is something that wants resolving from within, you take what you’re experiencing to mean that you hate or can’t write your resume successfully.

Grieving is a very real part of joining and leaving the work families that we do. And this career storytelling process will certainly help you learn how to let go in the cleanest and most reverent way possible. Otherwise, it’s all too human to try to correct the past without knowing it wherever we go.

So, if you notice that anything unresolved comes up, it just makes sense to recognize it for what it is, rather than trying to push or do away with what is seeking recognition and healing.

Throughout this resume renovation process, you’re going to need to remember why you went to the trouble of starting to renovate your resume in the first place: Namely that its results weren’t making you happy and that you didn’t have the clarity on yourself that you would like. Go slow if you want, but always keep moving.

The career storytelling part begins:

There are several techniques to help you learn how to career story tell. I don’t make the assumption, nor should you, that you ought to know how to tell your stories just because you’ve lived through your life. Storytelling is a skill that comes from paying attention to what you draw your and other people’s attention to.

It also helps you to see where your attention is drawn so that you can understand how your existing career storytelling abilities are motivated. Meaning you’d be amazed at how much blame we each carry around either toward ourselves or others that make career storytelling something we’d rather avoid. And then we wonder why we end up with resumes that make us go WTF.

Career storytelling is a practice of self-awareness.

I used to begin this process by asking people to tell me about what they did at work, but the “storytelling” quickly deteriorated. So don’t do that.

Then I started asking people about why they chose a particular job, line of work, or employer, and it quickly became apparent that no one knew what had guided them to where they were with any reliability. So don’t do that either.

The “in” into the storytelling really matters.

With some experimenting, I determined that it was best to start with leading questions and “starters” or “prompts.” For yourself, it may take a couple of tries to determine which combination is best for you – it could be a bit of this or a bit of that or all of this and none of that.

Here are the instructions + some considerations as you lead into your own career storytelling:

Step 1: To begin, look at your resume and pick one job to start with. Put the job title, the timeframe you worked there, the company you worked for, and location at the top of the page.

Next consider what will help you write more rather than writing less:

As a personal preference, it seems to work well if I start with prompts and then questions that help to fill in any missing details.

To help you write more rather than less right now, write conversationally (you’ll translate things to bullets as a last step later). You want to be as detailed as you can be at this stage.

Don’t worry about what you were hired to do (the job title) vs. what you end up writing here. And don’t try to make yourself into a box or to fit into a box. We’re researching you – not the job.

Step 2: With a single job in mind, complete the following prompts (and make up some of your own if you’d like):

Consider with the writing prompts:

You don’t need a different example for each sentence starter (there’s no need to and it’s just more work UNLESS you want to and UNLESS that’s what feels right). Trust the “one” example that comes to you and develop the detail by bringing all the fuzzy memories into crystal clear focus.

The prompts:

One day at work that I really enjoyed was …

OR

The thing I was most proud of in this job was …

OR

I’ll never forget this one (good, fun, engaging) time that …

OR

The best day in this job was the time …

OR

My boss thanked me for …

AND/OR

My colleague thanked me for …

If no one was there to do this job (what would happen if this function wasn’t performed) …

Step 3: Next, conversationally answer any or all of the following questions still with the same job in mind. Imagine, for example, that you and I decided to meet at a quiet coffee shop and we’re sitting in two comfy chairs in the corner. Tell me in as much detail as you can:

What did you like or enjoy most about this job? What happened as a result of this?

What was your favorite thing to do in this role? What happened as a result of this?

What did you take charge or ownership of effortlessly and/or joyfully?

What one task, project or day in that job stands out for you? Why is this meaningful to you personally? And why is this important to others? What happened as a result of this?

What did people thank you for in this job? What did you like being appreciated for in this job? What did someone specifically say? And what did you take that to mean exactly?

Who did your work matter to? Who needed your results? Service? Time? Attention? And why?

What did you like about particular people in this example that you served in your work?

Remember: What you’ve written down will look, read, or feel like an organized or messy tornado of sentences, quotes, facts, details, feelings. It’s perfect.

Step 4:

Skim over what you’ve written and imagine that for each answer I’ve asked you:

a) Is there anything else about that?
b) Is there more here?
c) Can you tell me anything else to help me understand the context you worked in or what you were doing?

Consider: These three little questions are really important because you don’t realize how much of your context (the conditions) of your work you take for granted. As an example:

I once worked with someone who’s resume made it sound like she worked in an office but in reality, she was doing administrative work in or very near to active combat zones.

When she wrote “organizing classrooms” it actually meant that she was sending shipping containers to be used as classrooms near still active and recovering war zones. She also mapped routes to keep teachers safe from gun or bomb attacks on their way to those classrooms.

If a prospective employer asks her if she can handle stress I’d say she has that covered, but it’s her context that shows that without her needing to reiterate that in any way. But it would have been difficult for anyone to deduce that without the context of her job in the career storytelling part. So details, details, details about your context! Don’t take your environment for granted.

Step 5: Now go back to what you’ve written and try to quote quantities where you can that you might have overlooked (e.g. volume, the number of people, what $ you were responsible for, who specifically said what). Doing this helps you discern a few things:

a) A truer picture of your capacity,
b) Whether you liked working at that capacity or not; and
c) What capacities you would like to work with in the future so that you can include or exclude this detail as appropriate.

One of the things that makes career storytelling in person or in resume bullets compelling is numbers and quantities. This is because these specifics lend to the credibility of who you are without the need to be “fluffy” in your resume or without fearing that you should “fluff up” your content. Specifically think about:

:: Quantities of anything that you cared for (people, paper, reports, grants, profit, guests, etc.)

:: Quantities of anything you saved (money, time, heartache, headache, fees, lives, etc.)

You might think this is hard if you didn’t have access to the exact budget and/or the specifics have faded from holding the job over a decade ago. But I know that you remember more than you think you do and that you can truthfully present something.

As an example, when I worked with Tracey on her resume she told me about how a charitable healthcare organization brought her on board to do “office stuff” for them.

Once she was settled in the job, she learned that they did mail campaigns once a year. The campaigns cost $20,000 to outsource and garnered about $70,000 in donations. What the company didn’t know when they hired Tracey was that she knew a little bit of graphic design and it was something that she wanted to learn more about.

When she saw what was mailed out, she thought for sure that she could do a better job than that and asked her boss if she could try. Her boss said, “Okay, design something.”

Well, her boss was very happy with the results and Tracey ended up bringing the design and mail out production in-house. She knew what her time cost, she knew how long it took her to design the mail out campaign; she knew what the postage cost, she knew what it cost to get the printing done. The total was close to $9,000.

She knew that they still got $70,000 whether they spent $20K or $9K on the mail out. And she knew that that any savings went directly to the services they could offer. Should could confidently say that she saved the company $9,000 for each of the five years she worked there, which is $45,000.

I “walked” her through the numbers that she knew in order for her to be able to write something that she could proudly and confidently stand behind even if it was conservative.

You can do this too.

This is all the raw data you need to create your bullets.

Step 6: Do Steps 1 – 5 for each job on your resume.

Look at you! You’re career storytelling!

Articles that are upcoming in the Resume Project:

– How to write resume content when you haven’t been “in the workforce” for a while; and

– The process of (nicely) extracting bullets from career storytelling.

There’s a lot riding on crafting resume content. To elaborate on why this is so important, your resume content gives employers information about your self-esteem, what you get offered in the way of renumeration should you receive a job offer, in addition to providing clues about what you might be like to meet or work with in person. And let’s not ignore the fact that it needs compelling enough copy for someone that feels overwhelmed or busy to make time to meet you in person. And a lot of the times, this task isn’t their most favorite thing in the world.

Yeah. Who would really be enticed to write under those conditions? Not me. And probably not you either.

So when you sit down to write your resume content, you need to forget about all of that. I did. Which is probably why I got to thinking about what frame of mind I could be in in order to write the very best content I could and helped other people to do the same.

I started to think about if not for all that stuff that I’ve already mentioned, was there anything else standing in the way of writing content for my resume that was unique, professional, and intriguing? And here’s what I came up with …

What you may not have considered is that part of the reason you put pressure on yourself for such a significant task is because you don’t feel like you really know what you’re doing.

Conventional teaching expects us to “get the hang” of writing resume content by looking at samples.

Writing resume content isn’t like writing about something objective that you have perspective on. It’s writing about you doing something (working) which, by its very nature, is something that you have almost no perspective on. This is because we pay more attention to the responses and reactions others have to us than we do to the responses and reactions we have to ourselves in the course of living our day-to-day lives and working in our day-to-day careers.

Just watch yourself as you think about writing a shopping list compared to writing a resume. The contrasting emotional response should tell you that writing resume content is a big deal.

It’s scary stuff because your ability to survive and thrive in the world is riding on your ability to see your career path with clarity and explain how it’s a fit with who you are with equal clarity.

You have complete freedom for the task ahead of you, which is limited only by the bounds of resume creation, to decide how to stir the mutual desire in someone you’ve never met, to meet for an interview.

(Yes .. it totally feels like the dating scene.)

When creating resume content doesn’t go well, it’s because the content that you agonized over or rushed through (or a combination of both) falls into one or more of three categories:

:: One is where the bullets read like a laundry list of all the things that you were responsible for or took part in at work. It doesn’t say how or why.

This kind of writing tells the reader that you see them as someone just looking for “a bum in a seat” who “ticks all the boxes” for employment. And sometimes an employer is looking for that, but if they can get better than that, you know they’ll take it.

:: Another kind of content is the direct opposite of the sparsely worded resume. It’s the resume that’s “chock a block” full of text. And if you look closely within this category the abundance of content falls into two sub-categories –

– Lots of words that don’t actually say anything specific. It’s flowery, flowing and probably reads as (ahem) padded; or

– Is very specific about nothing that you actually want to spend your day doing because the content is written for the opposite of the job that you actually want.

This second category “happens” when your unacknowledged thoughts and secret motivations direct you to feel bad in the jobs you’ve had. In earlier articles, you examined that these were likely derived from parts of your childhood that socialized your understanding of acceptable vs. unacceptable thoughts/behavior/attitudes.

Also, perhaps you didn’t have parents that looked like they much enjoyed their work. And so what you ended up doing in adulthood was unconsciously maintain these mental patterns that control your outward behavior in an effort to create a sense of predictability and acceptability leftover from childhood.

In our families of origin it was shameful to name things that we saw or questioned in childhood, so realizing any of this is part of the “inner work” needed to value how you spend your time whether at work or not.

When it comes to struggling with resume content, you may be battling in the background a secret judgment you have that says “loving your work” isn’t really possible, which is the same as thinking that “loving yourself isn’t really possible.” This historical part of you probably believes that loving your work is a “new age idea” or “fashionable thing to say” that doesn’t have a place in “reality.” And because you think, “Nobody really wants to work if they didn’t have to. Everyone’s in denial,” you unwittingly do yourself the disservice of making sure that’s true for you and it shows up in your resume.

You’ll notice that reading the content of a resume is boring or flat or uninspiring because it’s trying to hide a low sense of self-worth. You leave it up to the employer to see the forest from the trees, as they say. As a result, you might be trying to be non-offensive in your resume, which ends up being non-descript.

Whereas in my resume writing methodology, I am advocating that you foster a strong sense of preference in the reader by being more definitive. Either the reader really knows that they want to meet you OR really knows that they don’t.

Sound scary? It did to me too once, but cultivating strong preferences in ourselves and others is how we end up liking what we do for work. And trying to be non-descript and interchangeable with others is how we end up not liking what we do for work.

Through the process of definition you will become more effective and joyous because you are no longer wasting your most valuable asset that’s completely irreplaceable: Time.

:: The third kind of resume content is one that blends lists with longer bullets in which the reader is left trying to make sense of the “data” they’ve been presented with. This presentation of your writing says that you’re trying to be all things to all people or that you don’t really know what you want and would like someone else to figure that out for you. Chances are too that your writing styles and information are conflicting – for example, statements like, “loves being on team” and “enjoys working alone” appear on the same page – which is it when and why? The resume has all the latest “right things to say and do” on it, and in essence, that’s what makes reading it feel strange and contrived.

Having said all that let me be perfectly clear before we move on: If your resume contains writing reflecting any of these descriptors or evokes any of the sentiments I’ve mentioned, I’m not saying that what you are doing is wrong.

You’ve worked and you’ve gotten work with your resume. So acknowledge that. You’re reading this and entertaining what I’m presenting here and doing what I’ve outlined because you’re re-visioning the whole concept of what a resume is as part of the Resume Project because you want something different. To be more self-determining in how you approach the work that you procure for yourself. You want your time in this life to feel like it matters. In fact, part of you is starting to insist on that.

Finding work and doing work that is congruent with your being that you also get paid for is something that you play a very crucial role in. And like it or not, a lot of people would still prefer to read about you before they see you.

A resume – yes, a piece of paper that you author and give to people to decide whether or not they’d like to meet you in person – has a lot of authority. That’s nothing to take for granted.

A second thing I’d like to be perfectly clear about is: This doesn’t mean that you need to be a brilliant writer to have a resume that you feel pleased and peaceful about offering to people. What this does mean is that you need to regard resume creation as a skill. It’s not something that you are born knowing how to do, nor should you “just know.” It’s something that is learned but isn’t very well taught most of the time.

So if you don’t like your own resume content, how it’s written, what it says about you, how you feel about it (and whatever else) … I can’t blame you. So you shouldn’t either. But it’s entirely your call.

Remember, I’ve done this 300 times and counting. I’ve learned some stuff. Figured out some stuff and I’m going to explain a process to you that not only gets your best resume bullets to show themselves to you, but that also simultaneously prepares you for any interview (whether it’s a networking, information, or job interview) and, and, and … it also helps you learn how to navigate the world of job postings and work opportunities. I strongly believe in using your energy very wisely.

In subsequent articles I will be more specific about how to use your resume created from pure clarity for the latter purposes, I just thought you might be interested to know that bit of information up front.

Resume bullet writing is not easy. And there’s a perfectly good reason for that. You will notice that resume bullet content isn’t written like a normal sentence.
Am I right?

In your resume, you don’t write “you” or “I”, for example. And there are innumerably more nuances that differ resume writing from any other kind of writing.

Resume writing is not like writing an essay, or a letter, or a report, a script, or a shopping list, or a tweet, or a press release, or a newsletter, or even a blog. In fact, if you have ever engaged in any of the aforementioned “types” of writing, you can probably bring to mind things about them that make them distinct from each other.

Writing resume bullets is … (ready?!) almost like learning to write poetry (but not the kind that rhymes … obviously … that would be weird).

Let’s look at how and why first before you think what I think you’re thinking (which is: “Is she mad?” Well, yes. Sort of. I’m freely and willingly writing about something that most people would rather stick needles in their eyes than do, so yes, I am sort of mad):

Poetry, in the words of one of my favorite poets, David Whyte, is a language without defenses.

Resume bullets need to have that same quality in order to be truly effective. What this means is that resume bullets ultimately need to say what is essential and nothing more. So poetry, like resume content, places high value on word economy and vocabulary resonance.

Poetry is poetry because of the precise wording (both in terms of placement and choice).

Resume bullets are given the same kind of painstaking and time-consuming consideration as each word in a poem (if the process is not first abandoned during the inner struggle unfolding in the face of a looming deadline).

Considerations like: Which jobs to include? How should the jobs be categorized? What should the job titles be? What word choice(s) best represent me and are the word choices right for the intended reader (especially if you’re looking for work in a new field)? All of these decisions are nothing short of what it takes to successfully communicate in a resume and strongly reminiscent of poetry.

Poetry takes something that seems “every day” and changes your perception so that what you took for granted is now infused with significance and meaning.

Poetry takes a small, tiny, or even miniscule aspect of “being alive” or “noticing” and blows ever so softly on the embers of a faint impression or memory in an effort to bring something into the realm of the known and appreciated. This is why a poem that resonates with you can so effortlessly draw you into stillness.

Resume bullets ask you to give attention to what you do and to precisely articulate how you do it (it’s highly likely that you’ve been taking “your special how” completely for granted). Resume bullets read as a “reflection in action” that invites the reader into a way of perceiving, seeing, and interacting with the world that is specifically you.

You’re drawing attention to a detail and creating connections and references to it in the way that a trembling leaf in the morning light speaks to someone about a lost memory, a loved one, or a realization about existence.

Without acknowledging and accepting what a resume is asking of you, it makes it hard to write something that has so much influence over what you do with most of your time during the week, your quality of living, and your level of peace within.

But before you get any ideas here, the reason I use poetry as the metaphor for resume bullet writing isn’t to scare or intimidate or even lure, or excite you. I wanted to convey that this is a reflective process more than it is a writing process. And that most of the resume writing that you will do has to do with your ability to make peace with the act of reflecting:

– Taking the time to be discerning;

– Releasing your impatience with being alive; and

– Understanding that to talk about and represent yourself on a piece of paper is something of value in this world – both literally and figuratively.

Our discomfort around the resume’s significance drives us away from the task of writing it or finds us doing it through a wall of resistance (making it both exhausting and producing results that distort ourselves to both the world and us).

It’s time to stop fighting your existence and instead get to know it better than anyone else by turning toward it. You’ll know you’ve done this when your existence doesn’t feel like a painful thing to get through, but rather something that is worth your time, energy, and resources.

I am grateful to be the one writing this for you more so than I can ever relate to you. And I do want you to do well and be happy. And I know that if you’re reading this, it’s because you know you want to do a bit better in that department too.

[So here’s (yet another) aside because I’d be thinking it if you’re not already:

If you’re the cynical type like I was, you’re wondering why – why would she do this? It’s because I know that very few people are willing to pay for resume help. They get their help from generic resume services and/or consult a resume book (which they will buy, borrow, or steal from friends). And sometimes you get the help you need from those resources. And sometimes when you’re ready to evolve from who you have been up to this moment, the help that you got before doesn’t seem adequate anymore.

And to my knowledge there’s no one explaining resumes how I’m explaining resumes. And basically if I didn’t share this knowledge and insight in this way, how else would I be able to ask you to believe that what I had to say was anything different from what’s already been written? I mean, do you have any idea how many people “pat my head” with their comments when I tell them I’ve got a thing for resumes? They think we’re talking about the same thing and I maintain that we’re not even though we’re using the same word. So I’ve stopped telling people. Instead, this is my way of showing you.

I never want to forget the agony that I felt in how I approached my work. And I trace that agony back to making myself write my resume while not liking myself and definitely not wanting to admit it. I really hated how I felt and I knew that I already knew more than what other people knew about writing resumes. So I was done with mainstream help. It would have felt at least hopeful to know that there was a new way to orient to resume content before I had taken a career tumble. But my tumble (that made me respect my existence more than anything else before) resulted in a new way of approaching something that a lot of career help professionals question whether or not we need anymore. And for that I’m grateful because very few processes help people talk about themselves in a way that feels professional + authentic.)

I also want you to know that, it’s really important to me that you do not feel stupid or silly about what your resume content may look or feel like now. That’s not helpful. Hopefully you’ve been able to have some compassion for why you have written as you have if you’ve been reading and actively participating in the Resume Project. There’s no reason to feel that having a resume that you like that gets you results that you want is beyond your ability from where you are now.]

And I didn’t tell you about the poetry thing because you’re going to learn how to write poetry for your resume. What you are going to do is recognize the shards of poetry that make good resume bullet writing (through some refining techniques) by engaging in a human process as old as human kind itself … story-telling.

In the sections that follow on the art and science of creating unique resume bullets, I’m going to teach you about career story-telling. I will explain exactly what I have done with my clients to help them create resume bullets that make them feel like they are living pieces of poetry at work in the world.

Stay tuned …