Larkland Morley’s Professional Blog

The last post even though I think very good was a little too general from what I had in mind to write, so let me try to be a little more specific in this one.

The general mid-career professional could be in different fields but mostly find themselves in technical areas. This could be accountant, engineer, nurse or whatever similar titles. At this point you are thinking of whether you should move into corporate management or become the main technical guru in the company.

In each company there are limits in terms of either management or very senior technical positions. While you can have tons of top performers they cannot all become VPs or Architects, so you have to bear that in mind. There is always an option to move on to other companies with openings.

Now what if you feel stuck? Before you start focusing on getting your resume out there, go back again to that whole thing about goals. Get that clarified first as you may just end up in a circle between jobs.

What options do you have to move forward? discuss this with your manager in terms of what the company has to offer relative to your goals. Sometimes people get afraid to discuss with their managers as they feel that if the goal is too far off what they have it may back fire on them. Another option is to seek out a mentor and get some ideas from them.

Look into joining professional bodies in your field. This gives you opportunities to network as well as they have information on options in your field. Attend the local meetings and participate in whatever way you can.

Based on the option you selected going forward which could be very technical or management, you should look at some formal training or certification to build your case. For example in Management an MBA would be seen as a serious commitment. If you do not want an MBA then you could look at the Certified Manager or PMP certifications as one means. There are several accredited MBA programs below $10,000.00 with reasonable quality.

In terms of technical growth, it all depends on your current background. If you already have a Masters, you may just need to start looking at ways to get more responsible experience on projects. Create your own project such as writing white papers or try to publish in technical journals. These will give you a better feel and confidence to step up to the challenges out there.

If you don’t have a masters, you could look at taking one locally or by distance learning. As a mid career professional this gives you an advantage as you can pick the courses that will really serve you long term. Again, Certifications are all over the place so pick the most respected one in your field as well.

What I have found is that ability is not the issue in most cases. The biggest issue for people is to have that goal to focus on then to have confidence in achieving it. I really think a good mentor is one take away from this post that will help you get some sanity in your path forward in your career.

Hope you like it. Please share.

Today, I want to rant about where you are on the success path and things you can think of to get back on it. This is mainly aimed at mid-career people but applies at any point in life.

The first thing to clarify is the whole issue of your Goals. What is your main goal in life? are you moving along towards that goal? Success does not need to be measured in economic terms although most people hold that view in some ways. Anyone that achieve their goal of whatever form is successful. This does not count goals achieved through unethical or criminal means.

Lets assume you are a little frustrated with life and trying to understand your purpose and calling, lets discuss how you could find that path forward. Here are the basic points.

1. Identify a goal or target. Think of something that you would feel really happy about doing everyday and that could add some value to society. This could be anything that makes you happy with good reason. I have read cases where people leave good corporate job to become chefs and really did well at it to the point where they had more fame and success. Think outside the box but focus on passion.

2. Examine where you are against that goal. Generally, this is called a gap analysis. Do you need more experience or education in a specific area? List out all the things your ideal goal requires and then list what you have relative to those attributes. A good tool here is the SWOT analysis.

3. Develop a plan for how you will approach this goal. There is no issue to use a project management software tool to even develop this. The key is to come up with realistic ideas and put timelines around them. Never forget the risk with each step and be willing to look at alternatives.

4. One important thing for any career advancement or change is to get a mentor or mentors. Find someone that has some level of achievement that you can be candid with about your plans and get this feedback to fine tune things. This could be done through paid programs as well but there plenty of people out there that love the importance of giving advice.

5. Execute and track progress. We are all guilty of over planning about life so its good to take action to achieve your next step towards your goal. Never allow your comfort zone to hold you back. To Ensure that you make progress, make it a point of duty to review your progress every month. Basically, try to see what is really moving forward or holding you back.

Success can be had once we have the confidence to know we can achieve it. That is basically the barrier to most success, that lack of confidence in reaching that big goal. Work on this and keep telling yourself that you deserve it, despite all the negative things that could happen along the way.

Hope you enjoyed.. Feel free to share this as you see fit.

The term law of Attraction is all over the place and I think in general while its a very good concept once you understand it. However, I do not believe its well communicated in terms of reality. It basically mean whatever you believe will come to you. Now if you leave it that way, then you have to wonder how does things get manifested.

To use some biblical language in this, it comes down to the context of faith which is defined in Hebrews 11:1. Please note that faith can be positive or negative depending which way you apply. The next important element not fully mentioned in the buzz has to do with action and before we go into details, we look at James 2:14-20, which basically says that you need action with your belief or faith.

Lets get back to more secular language for clarify. What law of attraction really is saying is that whatever your mind is focus on will happen in your life and this is very true. This means you will act based on that thinking. This means if you want to check yourself real quick in terms of your mindset, just look at what you do most of the time.

Now, what can you make of this? I think the first thing that’s most important is to understand yourself. I don’t think abundance means having a lot of material things actually. In fact many times you see people and it seem that their Car and Houses are worth more than they do. It makes sense to find yourself first in terms of being comfortable with you as you are and then let things play out.

Now to finish off, the word attraction is good as it means that you kind of attract the way life works out for you by your actions. If you live a dangerous life with the wrong company and peers, then chances are you will meet those things that happen because of that choice. In the end its what motivates you to act or not. If you are not taking any action in your life then you will obviously have the results of that in itself.

Once you feel that you need to change something in your life, the most logical thing is to come up with a logical plan. For example, lets say you want to tour the world without worries, then you need some degree of money to do this. Now you may not have anything in that regards now but it means you need to take some incremental actions to get to that point. The total amount you want won’t manifest itself because you just considered it. What it means is that you take action and by do such, things will converge. Yes, you may get help from others much faster but I do think the bulk of it comes from you taking some action or the other.

The whole concept is great but I think the most important thing to attract to yourself is the feeling of peacefulness.

I always believe in the concept of seek and you shall find. This post will be short as I do not want to do injustice to the concept. But we always talk about success which in itself is good, but somethings we don’t seem to have a very good reason be successful except to compete with others for attention or recognition. To change that paradigm, Don Miguel  Ruiz presents a book called “The four Agreements”. The central theme of this book is self-love which every one will say; whats the big deal? I love myself. No, its deeper than that. For example, if you put on some very good clothes, well groomed and walk down the street and several persons look at you and say you are so ugly etc. Most people would get so disturbed and either retaliate or feel bad inside. In this book, he is saying that you should not even think about it. Of course it will take time to get to that point but think of it really. Why should someone else expectation or standard dictate how you act or see yourself? We do this every day..

This does not mean you will not need to achieve things but you would do it for the right reason. One of the agreements is to do your best at all times. This is where action comes in as no manifestation can happen without action. The other side to this is that you can  focus on what really brings out the best in you. Who knows you could be the best singer around but because of self doubt you did not explore further.

Too often we focus on success in the context of material possessions, we should look at success in terms of mastering ourselves and achieving true happiness from within.

Anyway, the book can be found on amazon.com but check out their website at Don Miguel Ruiz Site for more details.

This is really great stuff.

Having studied the motivational seminar market over the last few years, I have to share my view of these and the chances they have of really helping people. I tend to break these down into basically Motivational and Action strategies Camps. Some of them does try to blend the two but for this post, I will look at the strategies mostly as separate.

Motivational Strategies

The majority of training and seminars out there that speaks about success generally falls into the arena of motivational at least for me. The big names such as Tony Robbins and the likes tries to speak about how you can do better. On the one hand, it may be hard to hold a motivational speaker to anything as in the end, its always dependent on you. This is why most presenters focus on this side things for legal and long term business point of view.

What can you get from this motivational phase? generally this is where you get the zest for life to be more positive about things, to think that you can be anything that you want in life. In fact if you don’t get this aspects right, the other stage may not go well for you.  The next important lesson at this stage is how to look at failures. Most times people approach this thing as smooth ride but not prepared for setbacks especially related to failures etc. They need to see failure as feedback. There is something that will work but you have to be willing to take action and learn from the actions.

In the end, motivation should get you to think big. To put some of my religious belief into this argument, I believe God made us to be God ourselves. This means we can get the whole universe if we do what is right in our lives. Notice that CEOs and executives are not pound for pound the brightest people in any organization but they had the confidence to step up to the plate.

Action Strategies

These programs are focused on specific strategies to generate wealth. A good example would be Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki with their focus on Real Estate strategies. This one is harder to pin down for each individual as its the stage where you should focus on what you really love.

The main thing to get out of these programs is how to go about starting a venture and managing it. The key is to learn leveraging. The bigger you want to get,  the more leverage you need to have. This leverage is in terms of skill people and capital.

You can approach action strategies in two ways. The first is in the context of you being actively involved in a venture to bring it to realization and it becomes part of your everyday life. Example of this is when you decide you want to be CEO of a company, you need to do things that will allow you to make strides within the company or the industry. The second approach is where your general interest does not make money itself but you need some means to generate an income. This is basically approaching ventures as an investor so to speak.

Summary:

In the end, the key to get from all of these is that you have a great potential which means you should change for the worrisome and can’t do attitude to a world of possibilities. Now this possibility could take time to happen based on your circumstances but you need to realize that moving in a certain direction is critical.

All of this needs to be done in a moral context. Don’t try to sell ice to Eskimos as something else or trade illegal drugs etc.  Do all you want to do above broad and in fact you will feel much better spiritually with your success.

The one generic thing you can get from these is the discipline to succeed and develop habits that leads in that direction. lets be fair, sometimes success is just to feel good about yourself regardless of where you are in life.

Found this great motivational video on how you could easily become an expert by sparing one hour per day. Check it out – One hour a Day. This means with this approach you would become an expert in 5 years maximum

Well, hope that helps to get you started.

This could have been titled, changing your profession without a pay cut which means be ready to hit the ground running.  I am no expert on this topic but I can give some pointers from experience and observations of best practices. This whole issue of career transitioning could be very important for lots of people at this point in time due to the economic situation that we are in.

The first step about transitioning is the whole issue of passion for what you have in mind. Now, people may pursue a new career because it pays well but that may not mean its their passion and that can be a long term time bomb. The focus of my post will be mostly on mechanics. There are many books and guides on issue of discussing passion and strengths.

There are three basic areas that I would recommend for career transition at the moment. They are Mentoring, Reading and Research. I will use the field of computer engineering for examples but it can be applied to both related fields or any other profession.

Targeting

Before I get into the mechanics of the three areas, its important to look at what you want in terms of the targeted position or profession. My simple advice is to go on the most recognized job sites and take a few job description and try to understand what are the basic skill requirements. Then you can use this as a guide for your plan.

Mentoring

This is a big one for either just starting out or transitioning in general. I am not talking about overly formalized mentoring arrangements but mostly on someone who is mature in the field and also with good hands on experience as well. You can pay someone to help with this at least to give you some pointers in the right direction but I do think its best to get someone is almost like a friend to interact and get feedback on steps along the way. This means you will need to buy coffee, dinner and lunch quiet often.

Reading

I chose the term reading as oppose to take a direct class purposefully. Classes are good especially if the transition is very radical but I do think reading the right materials can be good for someone with five or more years of experience.

There is reading of basic text books but I would say try to find the most recognized book in the field with real focused approach to solving problems and getting things done. White papers and some blogs are also good reading materials as well.

Research

This could seem like an overlap with reading but lets assume it means practice. The word research here is to do with applying the knowledge and would mean when you read and have some knowledge put it to the test. This means to experiment and correct things as you go along. In the field of software engineering for example, one big  boost is the presence of open source code for practically any field. With this in mind, setup a simple lab environment at home and focus on implementing one good challenging project.

Summary

Overall, I would say with good discipline you could be ready in six months to get positions based on your studies and guidance, the mentoring could pay a good role in getting this done really fast. You can also test your theoretical knowledge with many online resources out there such as brainbench.com and many others.

How do you advertise your new knowledge? one thing in mind, is to take on a project and complete it and add to your resume, of course you could mention the relevant keywords related to your profession. Some professions will do better with Certification or an advanced degree. An example are project management with the PMP or Business consulting with an MBA. I do think in most cases with good background experience, whats more important is your passion, mastery of the subject and ability to demonstrate your competence. The one thing I like and would recommend strongly is to start a blog on the subject and discuss your opinion on issues in the field.

Bonus Tip: If you have had patchy employment in the last few years or out of a job for awhile, I would recommend to register a business name and mention your professional research work as an employee of this business – For example if you did some relevant short term consulting, develop software, generate white papers etc. Add it to your Resume to cover the gaps.

Here is one great book to check out on the subject – Harvey Mackay

One of those quick blog but this can be a serious topic. There are many seminar providers out there including big names that keep saying you need to get rid of your job to be totally free to do what you want. I find this approach to be non-sensical. In fact to the point where I am seeing people who were once business people refusing to get a job to provide for basic living expenses. what’s the point if you have no money?

On the other hand, you may not be doing the right thing of approaching work blindly either. You can definitely make a good living from work once you plan your course accordingly. Remember making $300K or more a year in a job would come without the issues of managing or worry about a business. That’s one side to it.

If your goal is to stop working at some point before the typical retirement years, then maybe you would approach it in terms of how you could invest your savings or time in a way to realize that outcome. Basically, people would call this approach passive income generation. This could be done in many ways which could take several blog posts.

You only need to change what you are doing if you feel dissatisfied with the current situation. Don’t tell people they are stupid for not wanting to pursue some weird business building venture which most time is just an extension of those Gurus Ego.

The bottom line is that setting goals in life is important regardless of how you want to achieve them. Now in terms of performing at your peak, its important to find out what you really like to do and then work would not be a burden as it can be. This could mean trying different positions or changing companies etc.. Try not to get into a situation where you are only working because you have to pay the bills. This can be a lose-lose situation as you are not really into what you are doing but wanting to make sure you have an income.

You need to have some burning desires in life and that should drive what you decide to do.

Look out for an updated blog post on Peak performance coming soon..

Here is a great presentation by Jim Rohn of development

Another bonus video on the same topic by Brian Tracy

How you enjoy this video. More coming soon

This may sound like some big words and very sophisticated and the likes but we all do have a strategic vision. Whether we planned this out or not, that is the case.

To put my view on this in simple terms, whatever you are focused on, forms the core of your strategic vision. This means that if you are stuck in life and unhappy about your career, it means the strategic vision that you have now is leading you to that point.

On the flip side, when you have a specific plan to achieve some goals, then either you were wrong to set those goals in the first place  and thats making you happy or you really are focused on the long term achievement and taking all the steps to doing so. Of course it will not be smooth sailing all the time but there is a difference to having setbacks and just stuck without real direction.

Take an audit of your actions and see if its getting you anywhere and that would be a good start to moving where you want to go.

What I find is that if you are really convicted about something, you will not just achieve it, you will get this done much faster depending on the energy you focus on it.

Posted via email from lmorley’s posterous