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mid-life

No Coincidence At All

February 28, 2016 By Michele Woodward Leave a Comment

 

 

Rolling the dice concept for business risk, chance, good luck or

Carolyn is a lot like you. Sometimes she’s not sure that she’s doing the right thing.

See, after many years with the same employer, there was a “reorganization” and Carolyn lost her job. And as a woman in her mid-50s, she was worried about her job prospects.

You might go so far as to say she was slightly panicked.

OK, more than slightly.

When you haven’t done a job search in some time, the whole deal can feel overwhelming. Do you work with a recruiter? What do recruiters do, anyway?

What happened to classified ads? How do you sort through all the websites?

Do you still even apply for jobs?

She was spinning, spinning, spinning and getting more and more panicked.

Fortunately, though, Carolyn found me. 🙂

And in our work together, she identified a company she’d long admired where she’d love to work.

Since you all know I’m all about The Connector Strategy – activating your network to help you – Carolyn got busy identifying people she knew at the Ideal Company. By going to her network with a strong ask, she actually landed a phone call with an executive there!

“Yay,” you listlessly mutter. “That’s what’s supposed to happen.” Sheesh.

But there’s more.

The day before that phone call, Carolyn went to a charity lunch and sat at one of those big round tables charity lunch organizers around the planet have agreed to use. Big tables of eight or ten with drooping tablecloths and not enough bread baskets.

You’ve got the vision in your mind, I know you have.

There our heroine Carolyn sits. Tomorrow’s the big call with the networked friend-of-a-friend! She’s running over her key points in her mind, turning them over and over…

And two people sit down at the same table.

Carolyn introduces herself.

Small talk ensues.

And guess what?

Guess where these two people work?

Guess what department one of the heads?

Yes! Carolyn finds herself sitting next to the Senior Vice President Of Exactly What Carolyn Wants To Do from the Ideal Company Carolyn would love to work for!

Can you imagine?

And the rest of the charity lunch went well and I assume there were air kisses upon departure and Carolyn was over the moon.

Three great, strong connections within Ideal Company!

Now, the doubt started. Now, Carolyn began to worry if she’d done the right thing.

Should she have had the phone call with Friend-of-Friend first? Should she not have mentioned Friend-of-Friend to the Senior Vice President? Or was that good?

How do you follow-up in the right way? Was she being too forward? Oh, gawd, what if she’d already blown it?

Fortunately, Carolyn has me.

And I write this now for all of you who begin to orbit the building in worry and anxiety when you’re not sure of the right thing to do. Here’s my advice: “Worrying is a waste of time. All you need to do is to get honest.”

If you want to say to the Senior Vice President, “It was so great to meet you. I’d love to work on your team!” – then say it.

There may not be a job there now, but leaders appreciate honest enthusiasm – especially when it’s expressed about the work the leaders do – and when an opening does come up, guess who’ll be at the top of the list?

Your old views of what’s proper may look like this: One must be reserved. One must follow protocol. One must wait to be asked.

Well, those old views – are they helping you get what you want?

If you find yourself in a happy coincidence (which some might say was No Coincidence at All) where what you want seems to show up like magic, and you ask: “What do I say now? What’s the right thing to do?”

I suggest you say, in whatever words you want to use, the equivalent of: “This is great! I’d like some more of this, please.”

Did Carolyn land a job at the Ideal Company, working in the Department Of Exactly What She Wants To Do for the Senior Vice President she met at lunch?

Don’t know yet. But what we do know is that when Carolyn stopped worrying and started getting specific about what she wanted – stuff started happening.

Which is the only thing you and I need to remember.

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, Career Coaching, Clarity, Getting Unstuck, Uncategorized Tagged With: Connector Strategy, Finding a new job, job interivews, job search, mid-life, mid-life j, networking

The Heroine’s Journey

January 27, 2014 By Michele Woodward 4 Comments

Katniss Everdeen

 

There’s a scene in the first Hunger Games movie that sticks with me. It’s near the end of the film – Katniss and Peeta have just had an epic fight on top of the Cornucopia with their adversary, Cato. After a tense stand-off, Cato has fallen to the ground and is being attacked by fierce dog-like things, called Mutts. You can hear the Mutts gnawing at Cato, and his agonized cries. He’s being chewed to death.

Now, if this film had been made when I was a girl, the rest of the scene would have gone this way:

Katniss: Peeta! This is horrible! What are we going to do?

Peeta: Katniss, give me the bow and an arrow. I’ll take care of it.

Katniss (holding the back of her hand to her mouth, tears streaming down her face): Oh, Peeta!

Peeta (shoots Cato through the heart): He was a worthy adversary.

[She throws her arms around him, sobbing. He comforts her. The scene ends with a passionate embrace. Fade to black.]

Instead, here’s how the scene went down:

Katniss and Peeta observe Cato being eaten alive. Without a word, and without a glance toward Peeta, Katniss slips an arrow from her quiver, nocks it, and lets it fly – performing a mercy killing for her biggest foe. Peeta says nothing. She says nothing. They move on.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a new kind of female hero. And I’ve been thinking about it so much that I went back to review Joseph Campbell’s idea of the Hero’s Journey.

Do you know Campbell’s concept? In a nutshell, it’s that throughout time a monomyth has been established across cultures to describe how a hero is made. [It will be fine if you want to take a minute and read the link – just come back lickety-split.]

What struck me is that the monomyth Campbell outlines is all about a man’s journey. Women only feature in the monomyth twice – as a goddess and as a temptress. While I like to think of myself as often as possible as the former and from time to time the latter, Campbell’s work doesn’t reflect me and my own life experience. Nor does it speak to the journeys of the women I’ve worked with and been friends with over the years.

No, the Female Hero’s Journey is markedly different from a that undertaken by a man.

Let’s face it – many of us women were raised to be “good girls”. That’s shorthand for kind, quiet, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, obedient and predictable. Oh, and to always ask for permission before we do something.

To me, the heroine’s journey is one of moving away from these external pressures toward permission to act on our own authority and to live in harmony with our own strengths, the way Katniss did. You might say, “Hey, Katniss is supposed to be 16 years old in that story – certainly she’s not completed her life’s journey.” And I would remind you that the character of Katniss was created by woman born in 1962. Perhaps author Suzanne Collins has made her own hero’s journey and reflected that knowledge and understanding in Katniss.

Because Katniss certainly is a hero. And, fortunately, Peeta loves that about her.

Why is this important? Why is knowing that a woman is on a heroine’s journey relevant?

Because there is going to be that moment at which you, or someone you love, has to take a deep breath and make the female hero’s journey. She’s going to have to decide who she wants to be.

Not who others prefer her to be, or give her permission to be – but who she knows she needs to be so she can be fully herself.

If she senses that one choice, or a series of small choices, can put her further down the hero’s path then maybe – just maybe – making those choices will be easier for her.

Maybe if she can acknowledge that she’s on a hero’s path then she can do the hard or scary thing. The thing that takes her even deeper into herself, so she can emerge stronger, wiser, and better able to be a force for good in the world.

Maybe, just maybe, in that moment when she gets to choose, she’ll pull out the equivalent of her own arrow. She’ll nock it, aim, and let it fly.

And you’ll be right there at her side, safe in the knowledge that she’s strong enough to do what’s right.

[photo: Murray Close/Lion’s Gate Entertainment]

Filed Under: Authenticity, Blog, Clarity, Getting Unstuck, Uncategorized, WiseWork Tagged With: hero, heroine's journey, Joseph Campbell, Katniss, mid-life, monomyth

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