Ground of Your Own Choosing

Preface*

Several years ago, I did a workshop for a group of Bentley College alumni. Right after we finished lunch, just before we started back again, someone expressed frustration with the inefficiency and wastefulness of traditional job-search practices, and I made the offhand remark, “If I had my way, people would throw out their resumes and stop networking.” [more]

Chapter I, Ground of Your Own Choosing

Virtually the entire Gettysburg battlefield is now a national park. My husband and I toured it first by car guided by an audiotape, and then we decided to revisit some of the sites by bicycle to get a closer look. [more]

Chapter II, Everything Has Changed

Forty percent or more of the workers in the U.S. are caught up in what economists and others who follow business trends call job churn, the movement of people into and out of the labor market. [more]

Chapter III, Jobthink

Even before jobs started falling into the chasm created by the workquake, job-search practices were challenging. Now, however, with the odds against success steadily increasing, the jobthinker who relies on them is very likely to get caught up in an internal monologue that goes something like, “I want a job, I need a job, I deserve a job.” [more]

Chapter IV, Throw Out Your Resume and Stop Networking

The jobthinker directs all his attention at a single form of documentation, a resume. He overlooks alternative ways of communicating his value in his quest to make the resume as perfect as possible. This obsession is unfortunate not only because it means he is putting all his eggs in one rather fragile basket, but also because he is likely to lose sight of the “forest” (what he has to offer) for the “trees” (wording, layout, font, format, stock, etc.) [more]

Chapter V, Beyond Jobthink

Before we can come up with innovative ways to get across the chasm created by the workquake to more secure ground, we must first end jobthink, the number one obstacle to reinventing ourselves. [more]

Chapter VI, Authenticity

You have reached the Ground of Your Own Choosing the moment you know deep inside yourself, “I am the person to do this work.” The path to this discovery runs through the fertile land of the creative space of transition, and if you follow it you will emerge with a better alignment between who you are and what you do. [more]

Chapter VII, Work the Problem

Self-leadership is critical for the work-seeker today because is he dealing with transition on two fronts, one personal, and the other global. The world of work he is part of has experienced its own change event, the workquake, thus he is in transition on both a micro and a macro level. [more]

Chapter VIII, Your Inner Entrepreneur

Shifting the responsibly for creating work from “them” to “you” is not a simple change. It requires effort, learning, and patience, but with the decision to make your career security dependent on yourself also comes the potential for greater professional freedom and enjoyment. [more]

Chapter IX, Selling Yourself

Before the workquake, it didn’t matter if you’d rather hang by your thumbs than sell. Today, however, changes in the workplace mean that sales will be a part of your professional life whether you like it or not. [more]

Chapter X, Professional Self-Care

The decision to take your stand on the Ground of Your Own Choosing and say with self-assurance, “I am the person to do this work,” is a courageous one, and like any act of bravery, it will naturally be accompanied by feelings of vulnerability and fear. [more]

*About the Illustrator

The delightful drawings which grace the excerpt pages were done by my good friend, Eloise Morley, a writing consultant who lives in Denver, Colorado, and teaches a workshop called Full Compass Creativity. It is impossible for me to overstate my indebtedness to Eloise for her images which again and again encapsulate perfectly an idea which I am struggling to express in the text.