You want to start something new but you keep putting it off.

Who's going to give you permission to become what you want to be?

And if not now, when?

You don't need permission to:

🟢 buy a bike and become a cyclist

🟢 go back to school and become an MBA

🟢 take the plunge and become an investor

🟢 start a side hustle and become a business owner

🟢 find a remote only job and become an expat somewhere warmer

🟢 take a completely new direction and become a programmer or a lawyer

There might be barriers and everyone's barriers are different but ultimately it's on you to give yourself permission to become something new.

If not now, when?

If you want to read more of what I don’t post on LinkedIn, sign up for my newsletter. I’ll send actionable tips, advice and insider info on how to navigate your career moves with ease.

Link is in the first comment below 👇

What you don’t need right now if you’re looking to move jobs in a few months time:

🔴 A perfectly polished CV - that can come later down the line.

🔴 Absolute certainty about what your next role will be.

🔴 A trigger-happy finger hovering over the ‘apply now button’ on LinkedIn

What you do need right now if you’re looking to move jobs in a few months time:

🟢 Small, consistent actions to raise your visibility - let people know see who you are and what you do.

🟢 Creating networks and actively engaging with them - this can give you a world of information about what that next role could look like.

🟢 60 minutes a day to dedicate to 👆🏻

Keep putting in the reps and the opportunities will come when you're ready to move.

In 1970 Dick Bolles published What Colour is Your Parachute?

50 years on and one key piece of his advice comes up in my client conversations almost daily.

Understand what lights you up. Why is this so important? 👇

My friend was trying to train her dog and was reading lots of advice on the internet about ‘treat training’. It’s where you use snacks to reward your dog when he’s done something good. The trouble was, her dog didn’t really dig the snacks.

She read she should switch to ‘high value’ snacks.

So she tried sausage, cheese, weird stinky pate. Nothing.

The dog wasn’t motivated by food.

One day, she was playing ball with him on the park and realised that this dog would do ANYTHING for the ball. The ball lit a fire under him, he could play all day and never get bored of it. Even after a long walk, that dog would chase the ball like a demon.

So she started using the ball as the reward. And it worked.

The things that light us up are all different.

In the workplace and beyond, it’s usually our strengths which draw us to the tasks and roles which create interest and motivation. They are our energisers.

The Strengthscope tool we use at Henley Careers tells us that the chances of two people reporting the exact same top 7 strengths is one in 346,000. So we can’t assume that even two people doing the same role have the same strengths.

Often when we feel miserable our jobs, it’s because we’re doing too much of what de-energises us and there’s not enough focus on our strengths.

Working out what your energisers are is the first step to getting more of what you need in your job.

Ask yourself questions such as, when am I absorbed by what I'm doing so that I don’t notice time passing? If I had to do just one thing from my current role all day, every day, what would that be?

If you do this, you'll understand yourself better and able to articulate your wants and needs to current and future employers.04

______

If you want to read more of my posts, follow me and tap on the bell 🔔 on my profile and you’ll be notified as soon as I post.

______

In 2005 I walked away from a permanent job at the BBC.

HR couldn’t believe I was handing in my notice and double checked to make sure I knew I was on a permanent contract.

I knew.

It was a really hard decision.

But I also knew that this wasn’t right for me, that I wanted something different from working life.

In leaving that career there was so much I was walking away from:

• All the work I’d poured into getting my journalism qualification

• The investment I’d made in working freelance and on short term contracts to get to where I was

• The prestige of working for the BBC

• The idea of being a journalist/producer

• The dreams of my parents

None of those things were important for what I had planned to do next.

Some of those things would come in useful for the rest of my life.

And the rest of those things were not mine to lament and in some cases, not even real.

I knew that I wanted to do something more directly people focussed and I knew that to get it, I had to give up quite a bit. And it wasn’t certain that I would get what I wanted.

I did get what I wanted though.

A few twists and turns later, I do work that I love and I still know I made the right decision back then.

This time, to further my career and grow a business alongside my job I have to give up some things. This time I have to give up:

• An extra hour in bed a day

• A little bit of my peace of mind (always feeling like I haven’t done my homework)

• Hours of leisure time to learn new skills

• Comfort; some of the new learnings are bringing me to uncomfortable places.

And I don’t know if it will pan out down the line. But I don’t want to look back in 20 years and kick myself for not trying.

What do you need to give up to get what you want?

Where else can you shine in the job interview process?

👍 In how you show up online - are they seeing someone they want on their team before you walk through the door?

👍 In how you reach out to their employees during your research phase and the way in which you deal with those people

👍 In your written communications before, during and after the interview. Responsiveness, courtesy and professionalism are all essential here.

If you’re getting great feedback from interviews and aren’t getting selected then tweaking (or adding) the peripheral elements might be the difference that makes the difference.

Excel brings tears to my eyes.

Not tears of love for its ugly little rows of boxes, mystery formulas and other witchcraft.

Tears of boredom: spreadsheets drain the living blood from my body and suck my soul out of my face.

Talking to people, sharing ideas, coaching, training and developing others.

That’s what I love doing.

I try to do more of that wherever I can to make my working life better.

When my working life is better then I’m more energised and performing better (except when I’m doing spreadsheets, then I’m annoyed).

So I intentionally find as many opportunities as I can to do the activities that give me the energy to do them as well as I can.

What do you love doing in your working life? Where can you do more of it?

Doing more of what you love doesn’t always mean moving jobs.

You can refresh the job you’re in now.

Does your current manager know where your strengths lie? Do you?

Think about what energises you, tell your manager how they can best get value from you.

Can you negotiate carving out more opportunities to focus on what gives you energy and therefore what will bring benefits to your organisation?

Change doesn’t have to be radical. It can be incremental and small and that can be enough to give you renewed life and enthusiasm for your work.

In 1970 Dick Bolles published What Colour is Your Parachute?

50 years on and one key piece of his advice comes up in my client conversations almost daily.

What is it that’s so relevant half a century later?👇

My friend was trying to train her dog and was reading lots of advice on the internet about ‘treat training’. It’s where you use snacks to reward your dog when he’s done something good. The trouble was, her dog didn’t really dig the snacks.

She read she should switch to ‘high value’ snacks.

So she tried sausage, cheese, weird stinky pate. Nothing.

The dog wasn’t motivated by food.

One day, she was playing ball with him on the park and realised that this dog would do ANYTHING for the ball. The ball lit a fire under him, he could play all day and never get bored of it. Even after a long walk, that dog would chase the ball like a demon.

So she started using the ball as the reward. And it worked.

The things that light us up are all different.

In the workplace and beyond, it’s usually our strengths which draw us to the tasks and roles which create interest and motivation. They are our energisers.

The Strengthscope tool we use at Henley Careers tells us that the chances of two people reporting the exact same top 7 strengths is one in 346,000. So we can’t assume that even two people doing the same role have the same strengths.

Often, when we feel miserable at work, it’s because we’re doing too much of what de-energises us and there’s not enough focus on our energisers.

Working out what your energisers are is the first step to getting more of what you need in your job.

Ask yourself questions such as, when am I absorbed by what I'm doing so that I don’t notice time passing? If I had to do just one thing from my current role all day, every day, what would that be?

If you do this, you'll understand yourself better and able to articulate your wants and needs to current and future employers.

If you want to read more of my posts, follow me and tap on the bell 🔔 on my profile and you’ll be notified as soon as I post.

I was able to use my right hand to get something out of a cupboard today.

Big wow, you say.

But it was a huge milestone for me. That arm has been out of action since February this year, a rotator cuff injury made infinitely worse by a house move and all that entails.

I'm nowhere near back to full functionality but I will be at some point.

I'm feeling so happy today though, to get some key movement back. There was a point when I thought the shoulder would never regain function and that I would never be out of pain again.

Some learnings for me from this:

1 Trust the process

My osteopath, my partner and those who knew all reassured me that it would get better with time and rest. I had no choice but to believe them and get on with it.

2 Slow down when necessary

I am impatient and restless but I had to learn to do only the things that were necessary so that I could rest and recover as much as possible.

I set myself back a decent two weeks, I think, when I tried to pull out rawl plugs from the wall with a set of pliers. I also hit myself in the face doing this so double the learning on that one!

3 Small progress = big progress

Little movements every day mean I can now reach the bottom of the top cupboards. I only need the trusty step stool for the top of the top cupboard, which, to be fair, I need anyway.

I won't blart on about how these learnings apply to anything we don't like and want to change (but they do).

I'm a huge fan of small, consistent actions to produce huge, impactful results and I see the outcome of this everywhere I look.

I coach using lots of these principles too. Who do you know who could benefit from a chat to me about this? DM me for more details or go to my website in my profile to know more.

In 2005 I walked away from a permanent job at the BBC.

HR couldn’t believe I was handing in my notice and double checked to make sure I knew I was on a permanent contract.

I knew.

It was a really hard decision.

But I also knew that this wasn’t right for me, that I wanted something different from working life.

In leaving that career there was so much I was walking away from:

• All the work I’d poured into getting my journalism qualification

• The investment I’d made in working freelance and on short term contracts to get to where I was

• The prestige of working for the BBC

• The idea of being a journalist/producer

• The dreams of my parents

None of those things were important for what I had planned to do next.

Some of those things would come in useful for the rest of my life.

And the rest of those things were not mine to lament and in some cases, not even real.

I knew that I wanted to do something more directly people focussed and I knew that to get it, I had to give up quite a bit. And it wasn’t certain that I would get what I wanted.

I did get what I wanted though.

A few twists and turns later, I do work that I love and I still know I made the right decision back then.

This time, to further my career and grow a business alongside my job I have to give up some things. This time I have to give up:

• An extra hour in bed a day

• A little bit of my peace of mind (always feeling like I haven’t done my homework)

• Hours of leisure time to learn new skills

• Comfort; some of the new learnings are bringing me to uncomfortable places.

And I don’t know if it will pan out down the line. But I don’t want to look back in 20 years and kick myself for not trying.

What do you need to give up to get what you want?34

Where else can. you shine in the job interview process?

👍 In how you show up online - are they seeing someone they want on their team before you walk through the door?

👍 In how you reach out to their employees during your research phase and the way in which you deal with those people

👍 In your written communications before, during and after the interview. Responsiveness, courtesy and professionalism are all essential here.

If you’re getting great feedback from interviews and aren’t getting selected then tweaking (or adding) the peripheral elements might be the difference that makes the difference.00

Nobody is interviewing you for shits and giggles.

I talk to a surprising amount of people who don't really get why they've been invited to interview, especially when it's a big name company.

They say they're happy to give it a go and see what happens.

"It'll be good practice", they say.

Nobody is wasting their time inviting candidates to interview that they don't believe have the goods.

What if there's an internal candidate already lined up for the role?

What if there is? What if you can't know that?

Don't prepare for your interview like you already know it's going to go to someone else. It might not. You might show them a candidate they just can't turn down.

If you're invited to interview, prepare for the most powerful hour you've ever had.

Prepare like you deserve to be there. You do!

Excel brings tears to my eyes.

Not tears of love for its ugly little rows of boxes, mystery formulas and other witchcraft.

Tears of boredom: spreadsheets drain the living blood from my body and suck my soul out of my face.

Talking to people, sharing ideas, coaching, training and developing others.

That’s what I love doing.

I try to do more of that wherever I can to make my working life better.

When my working life is better then I’m more energised and performing better (except when I’m doing spreadsheets, then I’m annoyed).

So I intentionally find as many opportunities as I can to do the activities that give me the energy to do them as well as I can.

What do you love doing in your working life? Where can you do more of it?

Doing more of what you love doesn’t always mean moving jobs.

You can refresh the job you’re in now.

Does your current manager know where your strengths lie? Do you?

Think about what energises you, tell your manager how they can best get value from you.

Can you negotiate carving out more opportunities to focus on what gives you energy and therefore what will bring benefits to your organisation?

Change doesn’t have to be radical. It can be incremental and small and that can be enough to give you renewed life and enthusiasm for your work.

What if it's not bragging???

One of my biggest regrets is not having found the FIRE community sooner in life.

The Financial Independence Retire Early community show you how to create financial independence, slowly but surely through sensible spending and investing.

One of their concepts is F-You money.

It’s the money you have invested/alternative income which would allow you to retire or take a mini retirement if you wanted to or had to tomorrow.

But what about F-You capital?

It’s the network, skills and visibility so that if you needed to leave your role tomorrow (hello redundancy) you could pull the trigger and feel you’ve done enough to move fairly easily to the next stage of working life.

And it's something you can start building now, especially if building the F-You money pot is something you possibly should've started at least 10 years ago.

Starting today to put those pennies in the pot, just in case you need them, could mean the difference between taking on new opportunities (or not) as and when it suited you.

It could mean the difference between panic and calm if the company restructure actually goes ahead.

And worse case scenario is that you don’t need to spend the pot right now and all you’ve done is enrich your professional network and up-skilled, which is never time wasted.

👎job search strategy:

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