Career Makeover Wednesdays: Daycare Duty to Writer Extraordinaire

By Guest Blogger, Gina Blitstein

This will be my last entry on True Professions about my career reinvention. The time has come to wrap up my coaching sessions with Ellen and review my progress. The end of the coaching process, however, in no way means that my career makeover has come to an end. This merely signifies the end of this initial phase of my reinvention. This is a comfortable and logical place to step off and forge ahead using the skills I’ve learned working with Ellen these past few months.

I have learned so much in my sessions with Ellen! My career coaching has taken place strictly over phone and email. I’ve never met Ellen in person - in fact we are geographically separated by nearly 1000 miles. But through each of our meetings, Ellen’s encouraging words have come shining across the miles!

Ellen helped me overcome obstacles to my career reinvention by assigning me exercises to combat these issues:

• Identity - Ellen encouraged me to write a pitch, describing my business and what makes it unique.
  
• Shyness - She wouldn’t take “No” for an answer when I explained how uncomfortable I was doing in-person networking!
  
• Self-doubt - Ellen had me make post-it notes describing aspects about my professional qualities.
  
• Isolation - She gave me the assignment to make arrangements to call and speak with three freelance writers in order to begin growing my professional network.
  
  

Each assignment taught me something valuable. To be honest, some were uncomfortable and difficult while others proved easier. But each one helped me discover resources and abilities I never knew I possessed. I have at least tried some new techniques and I will continue to hone my abilities as my career progresses.

Her encouragement and professionalism have served as a steady heartbeat to the sometimes challenging situations I’ve encountered as I’ve stretched myself to grow and develop new skills. That is exactly what I needed to discover the courage and strength within myself to think about things in a new way and willingly put myself in vulnerable situations for the sake of my new career.

You can read back over the past posts to discover exactly what I wanted to gain from career coaching with Ellen - and you’ll see that I did indeed achieve those goals. And you can even read that I have outlined my next set of career goals. But I’ve reached a point at which I want to explore a longer-range vision of myself - the me I want to grow toward, now that I am empowered by my successes. I want to explore the future me because now, thanks to the skills I’ve developed working with Ellen, I’m not afraid to imagine the possibilities and most importantly, I’m not afraid to try.

A long-range goal is something I’ve never even considered until recently. In my former career as a daycare provider, that was it - there was no place to go, no dream to work toward. Now that I have successfully changed gears completely - I find that my new career possibilities are wide-open. What type of writing do I want to focus on? What kind of clients do I want to work with? When do I want to work? Where do I want to work? How far do I want to reach to attain the status in my career that I desire? All these choices are available to me for the first time. I can customize my work life to fit what I am good at and what I am passionate about. What unbelievable freedom I am now blessed with!

It’s just like Ellen says - when your work fits your interests and your personality, you experience maximum satisfaction in both arenas! Simply stated, I know I will live a more fulfilling life because I am doing work that I love.

Thanks to Ellen’s coaching, I know how to assess my level of satisfaction, imagine different possibilities and paths and do the work necessary to make - and keep - my career my passion. It can be - and will be - a lifelong endeavor. I know I’m up to the challenge because I have this recent success as living proof.

Thank you, Ellen, for helping me to find my own sense of comfort, identity and direction in my new career!

Career Makeover Wednesdays: Daycare Duty to Writer Extraordinaire

The thing that speaks the loudest to me in Gina's last post is: confidence. Clearly, Gina has moved from a place of uncertainty and self-doubt to a place with much greater clarity - and with much firmer footing. Gina uses words like "conviction"..."poise"..."confidence"..."satisfying"... and "valuable". To use Gina's descriptor, it is exactly like a metamorphosis: she has evolved from a woman who was forced to shutter her day care business to a woman who decided to follow her life's passion.

And it worked.

Everything Gina shares about meeting her goals, from making the same amount of money as she did with her day care business to finding her voice and marketing her new business with confidence, are all indicators of how much she is enjoying personal and professional success. In addition, she feels much more at ease when discussing her business with others, and talks about being a writer as no longer an aspiration or a dream....but a reality.

What I particularly liked about Gina's self-discoveries is the fact that she seized upon an important point: working on our careers and enjoying optimum career satisfaction is something we are never really done with. This is the fun of working on your career: the paths and opportunities for reinvention are endless, if you learn the methods and apply the tools that make a career journey successful.

Gina also learned that career reinvention is a continuous process of growth. Changing careers is no doubt a tough road. Much uncertainty lies ahead for those who contemplate it, and even more so for those who forge ahead and try it. Will I like my new career? Will I get any clients to buy my product or service? Will I fail? All of these questions come into play and make us question our ability to take a step toward enjoying a more satisfying career, and life.

But I guarantee that if you at least try, you are never a failure, no matter what the outcome. What lies on the other side of taking a risk, taking a chance on YOU, is full of surprises. Some may be good while others fall short, but either way, I promise you will learn so much about yourself and you will feel the greatest sense of accomplishment...just for trying. Just look at Gina!

Want to catch up on Gina's story? Start here! http://trueprofessions.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html)

Career Makeover Wednesdays: Daycare Duty to Writer Extraordinaire

By Guest Blogger Gina Blitstein

There have been changes happening within my “professional self” lately. I see it as a metamorphosis - a coming into my self as a professional freelance writer. These changes are happening almost imperceptibly as I follow the steps Ellen and I have laid out for me as I reinvent my career. Each assignment, whether it was to network in person, create my pitch, call fellow freelance writers or make post-it reminders of important elements about myself, has taught me something important. At the time I was completing each assignment I might not have seen its value, or it may have been scary or frustrating, but it always opened a door for me to walk through to get to the next level of my career development.

When I’ve been on the journey, I have been focused on the steps and how they make me feel, but I didn't always see the progress. When I look at the bigger picture, however, I see it very clearly. Now I am beginning to see how far I have come in my career reinvention. It no longer feels like I’m telling people, “I want to be a ballerina when I grow up!” when I tell them what I do. I now own what I do and I say it with conviction, not as an aspiration, but as a fact.

I recently had the opportunity to network with some folks at a professional dinner. I was invited as a guest so I was not necessarily expected to “pitch” my own business. The subject inevitably came up, of course, and when it did I felt I had valuable and interesting things to say to people about it. In fact, I found it particularly easy to talk about my profession with poise and confidence.

Those two words would never have been used to describe me a few years ago. I was as introverted and socially awkward as they come. How did I grow past that? It took a lot of diligent work on my part to focus on my strengths and remove myself from situations that made me feel inferior. Once I did that, it became clearer every day that I was intelligent, clever, interesting and enjoyable to be around. And once that seed of self-confidence was planted, it thrived in my new supportive environment of loving, caring people. I was comfortable being fully myself and when that was favorably received, well, my self-worth grew by leaps and bounds. The moral of the story is that no one - and no career - can thrive in an environment of negativity and self-doubt.

That’s what Ellen has helped me overcome - that initial stage of self-doubt that is part and parcel of any major life change. Those questions of, “Am I good enough?” “Can I do this?” are completely natural. Natural or not, however, I am glad to be moving past them. The great news is that I have succeeded at my first three goals for my career reinvention. To review, they were to:

1. Make a living at writing

2. Become comfortable marketing myself & my business

3. Realize my career makeover as a personal reinvention, complete with new skills and goals

AND I have accomplished those things. Here’s how:

1. I am actually earning as much at this point as I was as a daycare provider. That was an initial goal but as a next step I plan to establish some earning goals for myself.

2. As mentioned above, I am gaining confidence with marketing myself and my business. It came down to the same elements as in my personal metamorphosis - gaining confidence and experience in a supportive environment.

3. As a writer, there’s a lot of me in my work. I knew my career reinvention was going to take a lot of personal growth to get to where I wanted to be. How have I grown? I have developed confidence in myself and my abilities. Once those were in place, it was surprisingly easy to demonstrate that to others.

So from here it’s onward and upward! I have made two new goals for my business and they are:

1. To gain more control over the work I take on and the clients for whom I work. I feel that now that I know I can get clients - and keep them by providing quality work - I can take the opportunity to be a bit more selective as to the what and who. This is not to say that I’m inundated with work, but I do have choices and it is empowering to be able to say, “No, this is not right for me.”

2. To create my ideal writing gig for myself. This is based on the “If you build it they will come” theory. I have topics about which I am passionate and I am not going to let the fact that I haven’t been hired to write about them yet keep me from writing about them. I intend to write about that which I am passionate, in the belief that when I do, it will be appreciated and respected for what it is. It will provide the ultimate portfolio of the work that is nearest to my heart. While it won’t provide immediate income, it will be an investment in my future and provide satisfaction to me today.

I’m proud of my new goals. They show me that I need never be “done” with my career reinvention - that it is a continuous process of growth. It is an amazingly satisfying feeling to look back and see the progress I’ve made, and to look ahead knowing that there are more goals waiting for me to achieve.