The Career Success Doctor, Author at The Career Success Doctor

Do You Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway?

Listening to the radio over the weekend, I heard an interview with someone who has undergone gender reassignment. She talked about the unhappiness of her teenage years, and the presenter remarked how wonderful it would be if you could stretch back over time, and reassure that teenager that it would all be alright. Made me think, there are times when I need to stretch back over time and draw out some of the qualities I had had a a teenager – in particular the quality of hell to the fear, just do it anyway.

I was profoundly unhappy as a teenager (school doctor put me on valium at 13) bullied, etc, and, by way of protection I put up a ‘I don’t care, I’m tough’ facade. (That, I don’t want from my teenage self, thanks very much). And I would go off and do things, just to prove that I was tough. Things that underneath really scared me – like going off to work with Palestinian refugees, and getting myself into genuinely dangerous situations, or taking taxis on my own at night when we lived in Brasil, which was perceived as dangerous by everyone except my father!

I am no longer scared of whether people will accept me for who I am, which is a huge relief, and I have started to rediscover my ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’. But there are times when it is so easy to get busy and do stuff as way of not having to face the fear, or just pretend I don’t know what I need to do, as a way of not doing that which scares me.

Which is probably why I’ve started to move my business in the direction of helping others deal with the fears that hold them back. It’s something I love doing and have a talent for. I have a great range of tools and techniques and insights, which mean I can help them do it FAST.

My current fear is wonderfully ridiculous – it’s doing a google hangout (a business thing)! I have no problem talking in public whatsoever (as many of my friends can testify – can’t shut me up on a stage), but this whole hangout thingy has me in paralysis. I have had generous offers of help, but still I can’t quite bring myself to the table. It’s not what I would say – it’s the technology – despite the fact I am comparatively very tekkie. Tried hangouts a while back and did not enjoy.

I start to understand what my mother went through when she asked me to teach her how to use the internet. We’d have a session, she’d get it, do it all by herself successfully, then found myriad excuses why not to practice when I wasn’t there. My patience eventually wore out – payback time I guess!

And of course, now I have gone out into the world and said hangouts terrify me, I HAVE to do something with them.

Self-Deceit : How To Sabotage your Career Success and Happiness

Written by The Career Success Doctor

If you read the biographies of successful women from Sheryl Sandberg to Karren Brady, there are various common themes that emerge. The one I’m interested in here is the sense of feeling a fraud. These ares seriously successful women who questioned whether they deserved to be in the positions they have achieved, because they have learned to tell themselves a story that women don’t deserve to be taken seriously or to reach the highest level.

For years I used to deceive myself about who I was and what I wanted out of my life. I had some great stories I told myself about all the things I couldn’t do, particularly because I was a woman. And it was less than empowering! I totally believed them, and they shaped my identity. The classic one was to tell myself I didn’t have enough qualifications. It’s only now, with 5 degrees including a PhD that I realise it was never about the qualifications!

Men do it too; it’s not the preserve of women. However, women are notoriously bad at asking for a pay rise or a promotion, and their confidence levels in the workplace tend to be lower than those of men.

What these stories do for us is to protect us. We keep ourselves safe by keeping ourselves small. We tell ourselves our stories over and over again, so making them true. The problem then is that we don’t step out our comfort zone, and we don’t achieve the real greatness we are capable of. We don’t achieve the happiness we want, let alone the career success.

I just watched an excellent TEDx talk from Cortney Warren on this very subject. She’s a psychologist who has researched extensively into the subject of self-deceit, and the video makes for a very enlightening 15 minutes’ viewing.

What are the stories you have used to protect yourself and hold yourself back? Leave a comment in the box below.

And if your stories are still keeping your life smaller than you wantl, and you’d like to change them, please get in touch.

The Power Of Connection When You Come From The Heart

Written by The Career Success Doctor

Yesterday I had a powerful, and emotional experience that came as a result of making a connection, and it got me thinking. Then today, I received a LinkedIn message from someone who I had helped out with a free resource back in 2011.She couldn’t remember how she knew me, but my name and what the fact that I specialise in career coaching had stuck with her. And now she has an opportunity for me. That’s the power of connection when you give of yourself unconditionally.

Anyway, back to yesterday, when I gave a talk to the supporters of The St John Of Jerusalem Eye Hospital. The hospital and its outposts offer eye-related health services in Palestine. Their patients are of all races and all religions. Blindness is a real issue in those parts, and their services are world class, yet hardly anyone outside Palestine has ever heard of them.

I’d been asked to talk to them because my mother had left them a legacy. She led a fairly extraordinary life in her 20s and 30s, including a spell working as theatre sister at the hospital in Jerusalem when it was a major conflict zone. She left because they had to close the place temporarily in 1948 when things became too dangerous.

I’d got the talk planned out – the real challenge was to compress things into 10 minutes – but when I walked into the hall where I was going to be giving the talk, everything changed. Around the walls are portraits of the great and the good associated with Order of St John. Each and every one wore a large Cross of St. John – the same cross as my mother wore in the old photos of her; the same cross as was on the medal they gave her for her (medical) services to the Order.

And I remembered that we’d often talked about going to St John’s Gate (the London headquarters), but we’d never made it together. Now I was standing there in St John’s Gate without her, talking about her life, because she had died and left them some money.

That changed my talk, I can tell you! All I could do was speak from the heart, and who knows what I said, but it made a connection with many of the people there, some of whom wanted to stay in touch. It was a far better talk than the one I had planned!

The funny thing is that it nearly didn’t happen. I knew two years ago that the St John’s Eye Hospital wanted to get in touch to thank me for my mother’s legacy, but I really couldn’t be bothered. Recently they contacted Mum’s lawyer again, so reluctantly I got in touch. And yesterday I met some extraordinary people, doing life-changing work in a very difficult place, and was able to celebrate my mother’s life with them.

It’s so easy to miss these chance connections, to ignore the opportunities, but it’s amazing how powerful and even life-changing the most unlikely contacts can be.

What unlikely requests for contact have you responded to unconditionally which have then proved worthwhile – whether in terms of happiness or success or wonderfully unexpected consequences? Feel free to comment in the box.

If you want to know more about what The St John Of Jerusalem Eye Hospital does, here’s the link.

Gratitude, Chocolate And Why I’m All Teary

Written by The Career Success Doctor

Moonset Hawaii I’ve just come back from teaching Huna to a fair sized group of delegates, and the overwhelming emotion it has left me with is one of gratitude: I am just so grateful that I get to do this, and do it in Hawai’i, and that there are so many amazing people supporting me on my journey.

I’ve been teaching on Matt James’ Huna workshop for nearly 10 years now. However, its only recently that I’ve had to really step up and take myself out of my comfort zone to teach day in, day out, to teach material that I haven’t used for a while, or to organise other people to make things happen. And one of the things this dis-comfort has made realise is that I don’t have to struggle on my own. Independence is all very well, but there comes a time when you just have to accept help from others. And this trip, that was what I did.

I felt cosseted – people fed me, gave me chocolate (really good chocolate!), and even did my washing for me, which is a big one when you’re spending 2 weeks in a hotel!) They offered help – and meant it. And now, people who have no direct connection with Huna are offering to help me start teaching it over here. It truly fills me with a sense of just how magnificent human beings are, and how lucky I am to be tapped in to people who have such generosity of spirit. I am indeed humbled. Just thinking about the generosity of my friends and acquaintances over the last few weeks brings tears to my eyes.

Because sadly, it’s so easy to get trapped in the humdrum of daily life that we forget that we all do have that generosity of spirit. I’ve been there many times. And in that state, it’s so easy, too, to forget to be grateful, or to think that you don’t have time to show your appreciation.

‘So what’s this got to do with my career?’ I hear you ask. Well, a lot actually. I was reading about a recent report that indicates that employees feel that bosses don’t show enough appreciation. At the same time, what bosses and employees think of as ‘appreciation’ is very different. If you want to be appreciated as an employee, why not start by appreciating others and actively, consciously noticing those things in life that give you joy? At the very least, it will cheer you up. As like as not, it will rub off onto others. And since appreciation attracts appreciation, it might well bring you some of that recognition you’re looking for.

If you are a boss, bear in mind that 80% of employees say they are motivated to work harder when their boss shows appreciation – even down to thank you cards, or little treats. Thankfully, the days when everyone thought they had to be a complete ball-breaker in order to demonstrate that they had leadership potential are over, at least in the majority of companies and industries. What a relief that is!

So now, with gratitude, I am off to ponder one of those rather splendid chocolates someone gave me. She knows who she is.

Gratitude, chocolate and tears

What The Pope Can Teach Us About Leadership

Written by The Career Success Doctor

My PhD is in spirituality and leadership, so I was really interested to read an article this morning discussing what the Pope can teach us about leadership. I’m not a Catholic, but I have been really impressed by some of the actions Pope Francis has taken. He is clearly living in accordance with his beliefs – starting with the washing of the feet of some of the most alienated people in society – and, as this article shows, he walks his talk.

The research on leadership shows clearly that people look for leaders they can trust, and authenticity (walking the talk, living by your beliefs and being willing to stand up and stand out for what you believe in) is an important element in creating that trust. So is the ability to trust others through delegation. The best leaders give opportunities to their people, they stretch them, they rejoice in their development. And they recognise that, to be a truly successful leader you cannot do it on your own.

As a student of what makes a good leader, I have looked at many leadership models, including authentic leadership and servant leadership, and the Pope incorporates many of these models into his leadership style.

If you are in a leadership role, or you aspire to move into a leadership role, then the current Pope is a powerful example of what good leadership looks like, irrespective of whether or not you support his religious views.

You can read the full article on the 7 management lessons of Pope Francis here, and if you’re interested in seeing a copy of a paper I wrote on the subject of leadership and spirituality, leave a comment in the comments box below.

Photo: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pope_Francis_in_March_2013.jpg

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