“Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become. But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
At first that quote may seem a bit confusing, but when you read it again the message is clear. The author is simply saying (in a more poetic way) that as humans we need to be both grounded and connected to the earth while at the same time we must reach for something greater within and beyond ourselves.
The spiritual energy channels of the chakras have two pathways; one to manifest (downward flowing) and one to liberate (upward flowing). As we see our dreams & charge up the energy flow to project us to higher states of consciousness; we are liberating. And, when we take those dreams, visions, & feelings of euphoria into reality and make things happen in our lives; we are manifesting.
Where you are you today? Time to liberate or manifest?
The energy in our root chakra helps us deal with tasks related to the material and physical world, the ability to stand up for ourselves and attend to our self care needs. With a healthy flow through the root chakra, we live more fully as we nourish ourselves, balance our spiritual wellness and allow good thoughts and situations to enter into our lives.
Yet, if we don’t have the proper energy balance in this chakra we will feel physically weak, experience fatigue and perhaps have a manifestation of physical ailments such as lower back pain or sciatica, frequent colds, and even cold hands and feet. Low energy in the root chakra can sadly lead to depression and feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem.
Do you dare to dream or are you working for a living? This is the time of year when we are all feverishly making our New Year’s resolutions or what I call the biggest to-do list of the year. Yet, what are the odds of success? Usually it is natural to decide that this is the year that you will make the big changes and create the life you’re destined to live.
Before you embark on this path, let’s review your past history. Have you made New Year’s resolutions before? If so, then how many have you kept? If you’re like most people, it’s just another way to validate why your life and career aren’t working or living up to your expectations.
Let’s review these expectations. Where do they come from? Do you decide how you will rate your progress or is it defined by how you compare yourself to others? Are you satisfied with the standards by which you measure yourself, or are you ready to take a look if this is really working for you? If you are willing to peek under the hood, let’s explore how you can easily shift your focus to tune into your true vision.
When I was growing up, my father called me a “dreamer.” Yet, without our dreams, how can we even get clear about what we truly want? Take a stroll down memory lane and begin to remember when you were about 8 or 9 years old.
What were you involved with?
What captured your interest? Your imagination?
List the activities you enjoyed.
Any similarities or differences from your later years? Sometimes our early years may reveal your true interests without censorship or comparison to others.
Pay attention to your observations or insights.
If you’ve strayed away from your earlier interests and just fell into the work you’re doing, this could be the reason you’re no longer satisfied with your progress. If that’s the case, even if you reach the pinnacle of your career and appear extremely successful to others, you still may not be happy. In my book, 3 Brains for Success, I explain the model I developed for success and happiness. It all starts with clarity. Once you have clarity about where you’re headed, you can develop a personal strategic plan and move forward. The key is to start with your true heart’s desires because otherwise you will be working hard and going through the motions but will never become satisfied with your progress.
According to the latest Gallup Well-Being Survey, the highest income earners and senior citizens reported the highest job satisfaction. With age, satisfaction increases. How do you define satisfaction? Does it mean abandoning your childhood dreams and settling to meet your budget? Is there a way you can discover your true heart’s desire and make a plan to slowly transition or integrate it into reality? I’m not advocating quitting your day job or changing careers. I’m just encouraging you to examine your true motives and where you would like to be at the end of your working life. It’s never too late to start.
Take a look at my favorite example of someone who dared to dream, was very clear about her heart’s desires to become a professional singer and astounded the world. Listen below as Susan Boyle sings, “I Dreamed a Dream” as she begins her dream at 47:
Are you ready to discover your dream? Remember, it’s not what they say you are, it’s about what you know you are.
Try a free coaching consultation with Wanda Ropa, your success coach, to get you started and get clear about where you’re going with your career, or with your life so you can develop a strategic plan that really works for you. With clarity, success becomes a natural outcome.
Posted by Wanda Ropa, The Success Coach.
The thought of a job interview evokes fear for many individuals, including many of my clients. The majority of the time it’s about lack of confidence or the pressure to perform. This feeling is enhanced when you really want a specific job or believe this is your dream role.
Research has shown that our minds and the way we think can affect our bodies. Yet, do you realize that your body posture can actually impact the way you think and feel about yourself? This is especially important during a job interview or when you’re giving a presentation.
Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist has conducted research on power and dominance in human behavior. Her findings validate that people in power roles or those who feel powerful actually exude confidence and are resilient to stress. Being confident and unaffected by stress are 2 traits that are desired in a job interview or during a presentation. So, what can you do to easily shift into success when it feels like you’re under a microscope or being judged during the interview process?
Listen to Amy Cuddy’s TED talk where she provides a quick 2-minute technique that can actually change the outcome of your next job interview. Just like athletes achieve peak performance with practice, you too can become more confident and less stress reactive by practicing power posing as demonstrated below.
Remember, if you need more support to guide you through preparing for your next significant interview or presentation; be sure to seek out the services of an expert interview coach who has a whole toolbox of techniques to make it easy and effortless.
Are you listening to everyone but yourself about what path you should take in your career? Are you just staying in your current role or taking the next position because that’s what’s expected from you?
This year marks the 72nd anniversary of the movie, The Wizard of Oz.
In the movie, Dorothy is repeatedly told to follow the yellow brick road by everyone she meets and she blindly listens. Are you just following the yellow brick road in your career? Have you been just listening to everybody else and now finding that you are either dissatisfied, not completely fulfilled, unemployed, or just stuck about what to do next? Every day, just like advertising, we are bombarded with new stories of individuals who have defied the odds and achieved unexpected success. Everywhere you turn people are looking for the secret formula, the yellow brick road that will just lead them there, if they just follow and not ask questions.
However, in my experience working with clients from all walks of life, unless you choose your path, you will never truly be happy. Whether you choose to stay exactly where you are, or transition to another career, the key is that you choose. One clue to help you uncover if you’re in the right spot is to review the last time you had a peak experience at work. Take a moment to reflect when you were last on top of your game, when everything was flowing smoothly and you were motivated and enjoying your work. How long has it been? Have you ever had a peak experience at work? If you are feeling unmotivated and struggling to either go to work, look for a job, or drum up new business it might be because you’re not really clear that you want to continue what you’ve been doing over and over. You see unless you have chosen this path for yourself, you will naturally resist, even if it’s unconscious. This resistance will make it harder to move forward on your goals and will hold you back.
Yet, with more choices and advanced speed in communication, there are more resources available than ever before. The Internet has changed our world and this is the first time we have ever connected to each other in this way. From Linked In, to Facebook, to Twitter, our people connections are growing exponentially. Yet, with all of this external stimulation, there is little time to focus internally and reflect. Therefore, if you find yourself just reacting and riding the assembly line of life without pausing to figure out where you’re going, you will end up on the nowhere road and wonder how you got there. Just like Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz, everyone told her to follow the yellow brick road.
So, what does this all mean? Let’s look at the bigger picture to understand some of the influences exerting pressure on us. In our generation, in America, we have witnessed more life defining moments and fundamental shifts in how the world and business operates. Since 9/11, there has been a lot of pressure to find our true passion or our life purpose. Seven years later, in November 2008, the housing crisis fundamentally changed the playing field. Everything we believed and were told to follow has fundamentally shifted.
How can you find your road map for success in career, relationships, and life when the world has turned upside down? One way to start is to frame our shared experience.
It feels like we have all stepped onto a “Rotor-ride” or more currently known as the Gravitron ride where the world has been spinning and our floor has dropped out. However, the ride hasn’t stopped, most of us are still spinning. Yet, we can’t operate in the same way. As you are becoming aware, it’s not business as usual anymore. The floor or foundation disappeared when the economy and marketplace shifted and historic business structures tumbled down the rabbit hole.
Yes, just like global warming, the job and business climate has changed. However, crisis breeds opportunity if you know how to use it.
The very next action step to take is to decide if you want to choose what happens next in your career. If you’re ready to step off the yellow brick road, define where you’re going and develop your strategic road map, then it might be helpful to work with a career coach to jump-start this process and make it easier.
Try a free coaching consultation with Wanda Ropa, your success coach, to get you started and get clear about where you’re going with your career, or with your life so you can develop a strategic plan that really works for you. With clarity, success becomes a natural outcome.
The world has shifted. All the old paradigms of success are being tested and put on trial as we watch in disbelief. As individuals and a society, we are now faced with redefining how we will thrive in these new and ever-changing times. In the last fifty years, we have seen a social and economic revolution. As our culture changed, so did the music. The Beatles started the musical revolution and ushered in a new era that expanded our connections to the world. Step into yesterday as the Beatles whisk you back to 1966 and take a moment to reflect on what the world was like in that era.
In the 60’s, the world was clearly defined. During the Industrial age, people usually went to work for one employer and remained there until retirement. As we experienced the Information Age and everything moved faster and faster, the world of work started to change.
Fifteen years ago, Daniel Goleman talked about the new rules for work as he wrote about emotional intelligence. According to his findings, it was no longer enough to have intellectual ability and technical know-how to do our jobs; it was now about personal qualities, such as initiative, empathy, adaptability, and persuasiveness. Ten years later, Daniel Pink cited further evidence of change, in A Whole New Mind, when he acknowledged that we moved from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. With globalization and shareholders demanding more ROI, large corporations, small business owners and employees alike are experiencing uncertain economic times. Only one thing is certain, increasing your marketability increases your chances of thriving in this current economy.
So, how is the new economy working in your favor? Because now you get to be in the driver’s seat by creating your personal brand and leveraging it in the marketplace to get the results you want.
You can easily do this by radically differentiating from your competition by translating your natural talents, skills, and experience into your unique value proposition: your personal brand. Being in the driver’s seat with your career means that you treat your career as if you were running a business. The first place to start is to have clarity about where you’re going. If you’re not clear about your vision or where you’re headed, you end up on the nowhere road. In the story, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy was advised to follow the yellow brick road. This was not a path she chose on her own. She didn’t have all the facts. As a result, her long journey ended with a wizard in Emerald City who had no answers and couldn’t help her reach her goals. She just wanted to get home.
When we create our personal brand, we come home to ourselves. We step into who we are and finally get comfortable in our own skin. Think about individuals you may know that stand out from the crowd. Do they have exceptional talent or have they discovered how to leverage what they have and translate it to the world? Career coaching can easily help you identify and package yourself to fundamentally improve your career advantage so you increase your marketability and your market worth.
It’s about how others perceive your value. The public’s gut feelings about the company, their products and services impact the best business brands. It is not enough to have emotional intelligence and just understand yourself. In today’s market, you need to understand how you impact the world at large or how marketable you really are. Many of my career coaching and business coaching clients start working with me to get promoted, transition to a better career, be successful in their job search, start or develop their businesses. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, climbing the corporate ladder, or just trying to land a higher paying job, the first place to begin is to examine your state of mind. Are you clear about your vision? Do you have clarity about where you’re going? Once you have clarity, the decisions are easy with the right tools and resources. If you aren’t clear or need support discovering the right tools and resources that fit you, try a free career coaching or business coaching consultation to explore if coaching is right for you.
Try a free coaching consultation with Wanda Ropa, your success coach, to get you started and get clear about where you’re going with your career, or with your life so you can develop a strategic plan to become more marketable that really works for you. With clarity, success becomes a natural outcome.
“Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become. But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
when you're ready!
