The Career Clinic Blog

‘Tis the season for filling out forms.

I’ve been the midwife, at Katie’s request, for still another round of it in preparation for her big move this fall. The final piece was for some local scholarship money, and she was in that humble mode I have difficulty shaking her out of sometimes.

I reassured her it’s one of the things I love most about her. Then I said, “You’ll have lots of opportunities throughout your life to tone down your wonderfulness. This isn’t one of them.”

She laughed.

I continued.

“The people who give you money want you to be on fire with the vision you have for the world and your place in it.”

Not bad advice, eh?

Yours truly should take it more often.

Stay tuned!

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“All a man wants,” a colleague told me many years ago, “is someone sitting across the table from him, hanging on his every word.”

To which one of my editors, Darrell--God love him--has this to say: “He’s full of it.” Oh, right. A man also wants someone who’s careful with money, good with the child, ahem.

You have to admit, though. That was a great pickup line to use on someone like me. It didn’t work (long story). But it gave me something to shoot for, romantically--to find someone whose every word was worth hanging on.

The psychic Tiffany Johnson, who’s an ordained minister, often marries people she knows won’t make it. How does she reconcile that? Not by saying, as Darrell jokes, “Oh, well. It’s your funeral. I mean wedding!” No. Tiffany just remembers it’s their path, not hers. There’s something this relationship has come to teach.

It reminds me how much I’ve learned from people I would’ve been happy never to have known. I bet you’ve had the same experience. You look back on your life and all the supposed wrong turns, only to realize they got you here.

If you love it here, why so much wincing at the route you took?

Why not offer a figurative bouquet of roses to the people who rubbed you the wrong way--but left you more polished?

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“I was passing the test, approaching life as an adventure and surrendering to the unknown. Not that I had a choice. The unknown’s kind of in charge that way.”

Those are a few lines from my upcoming book. If I was reading them in someone else’s blog he’d probably follow them up with the suggestion you “click to tweet.”

Maybe it’s just me, but that’s disorienting. One minute I’m floating on a cloud of inspiration. The next minute I’m being yelled at, figuratively speaking: “Do you like this? Really? Do you? Prove it! Tell your friends!”

I get it. It’s a scramble for attention out there. And the person I’m thinking of has quite a following, so he's doing what works--for him.

I’m only keeping score to the extent my handlers insist, and for the most part it’s for them to worry about and me to ignore.

I want to express myself so precisely a chord is struck in your soul. What happens next is none of my business.

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Once upon a time I called the office of my elementary school to find out what my IQ was. I knew we’d been tested, and I’d always wondered. I figured enough time had gone by that whoever was working wouldn’t have the slightest idea who I was.

Wrong.

To my dismay, the woman who answered and looked up my score was…my former piano teacher! And yes, she remembered me. Oh did she remember me. “You’re the only person I can think of,” she said, “who would want to know.”

And no, I’m not going to tell you what my IQ is. You might be able to guess, though, when I say it’s high enough I feel really good about myself--but not so high I have to beat myself up for not having cured cancer.

This is a question worth asking yourself on a regular basis: "Am I delivering on my potential?" You don't want to get to the end of your life with unused minutes, so to speak. Do you?

The other day Darrell interviewed a guy who’s been working since he was six. That’s when he started renting out his toys to earn money to help end the famine in Ethiopia!

Maybe it's time to toss my outdated yardstick.

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Girls State is a wonderful experience that gives young women in high school a chance to see what it would be like to be in politics. Boys State does the same for young men.

I went, and I’m struck by how much I looked forward to it given how little interest I had in working for the government. But sure enough, one week in the life of a pretend politician took care of that itch for the next several lifetimes.

When Katie went to Girls State last summer I half expected her to return home wanting to run for office. She’s her own woman, after all--and I was sure this was another way we were different.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Consider a small sample of her recap…

“I was eager for it to be over so I could look back on it fondly.”

“If everything about it was different, it would’ve been great.”

She ran for state auditor, but she lost because she didn’t have a slogan. I guessed she set that goal because she’s so good at math. “No,” she said. “A counselor pulled me aside and said, ‘Nobody ever runs for this.’”

“Breakfast was usually something you could put syrup on.”

There was at least one presentation that moved her to tears--even in this recap--and at least one delegate elected she thought would be “some stuck-up (person)” but was “amazing.”

And finally, “Out of all the people who didn’t enjoy it, I probably enjoyed it the most.”

My dad is a veteran, and I have only respect for people who serve this country in whatever capacity. So just because Katie decided she has no interest in politics as a result of Girls State doesn’t mean it wasn’t a win--for everyone. If she isn’t into whatever it is, she’ll serve no one. That’s another reason career consultants think experiences like this are so important. It’s just as critical you learn what you don’t want to do with your life. Choosing a path is infinitely easier if you can narrow those choices down.

What I learned from Katie’s experience? How much she loves waking up to my kisses on her forehead as opposed to an alarm. How many seventeen-year-olds would admit that? It doesn’t hurt I’ve tucked her in the night before, come to think of it, after the usual giggle fit.

There are sweet dreams all around, of another fun day and a really fun life--not lived in the public sector!

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You will forget how hard you worked, how much you accomplished, and how desperately people clung to you for sunlight in their otherwise dreary days.

So jot it down, save the thank-you notes, and bask in the warmth of knowing you matter.

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To inspire people to find work they love, and live without regret.

I used to think that was the goal of my talk show. And it is, but there’s something more basic going on.

The goal of my talk show is to learn something. The more focused I am on that, the more interesting the discussion--and the more likely you are to learn something, too.

That’s one reason I’m eager to talk with people like Rich Gallagher. Rich is an expert on customer service but he’s also a marriage and family therapist, a popular public speaker, a bestselling author--and a good friend.

The last time we recorded an interview I admitted to torching two days of an otherwise dreamy two-week vacation because I was so hurt by something Katie had said.

Rich commended me on what, finally, had snapped me out of it. I stopped beating myself up for feeling bad long enough to wonder why it had hurt. “That’s so interesting!” I almost said out loud. “What’s going on?”

The minute--and I mean, the minute--I did that, I stopped hurting. I realized how important certain things are to me, and how much of my identity is wrapped up in them. I forgave myself immediately--these are things I’m proud of, after all--and I apologized to Darrell and Kate for trying to get them to understand something I obviously didn’t have a handle on myself.

Rich thought that was great. We both think by showing more compassion toward ourselves we’ll be better equipped to offer it to people we love. Hence the suggestion to don our own oxygen masks first.

The thing Rich said that stopped me cold, though, was this: “I don’t think it’s a character flaw that it stung for two days.”

You’re kidding.

No. He wasn’t.

And with that, he wiped away a lifetime of guilt I’ve felt for being “too” sensitive. “Too” sensitive? Yeah? According to whom?

People who aren’t as sensitive! And what makes them the arbiters of sensitive? May I make a joke? Being too judgmental.

I am really sensitive. That’s one reason I’m a good mom, I was able to write Left for Dead: A Second Life after Vietnam, and I internalize mean comments in an attempt to learn something instead of firing them back where they probably belong--on the source.

It isn’t an easy way to go through life, but nobody signed up for easy on the day he was born.

It’s grist, and I doubt if I’ll be running out of things to blog about any time soon.

Thanks for finding it interesting enough to visit us here. I hope you’re learning a fraction of what I am by showing up.

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“Everyone is a storyteller dying for lack of an audience.”

Of anything I learned from Dick Bolles, that’s come in the most handy.

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but it took me a few weeks to ask Darrell about Band of Brothers--the television miniseries he finally got around to watching on DVD. I learned a lot, and Darrell loved sharing it.

It reminded me that just because you’re inches away from someone pretty much around the clock, there’s so much you don’t know.

Remembering how much people love an audience helps no matter what job you have or what role you play. If you keep in mind what "audience" means, that is.

If you work in customer service and you have an unhappy customer across the counter, being a good audience doesn’t mean arguing with her complaint. You may not be able to fix her problem right away, but you’ll create a different problem if you give the impression the problem is her.

If you’re the unhappy customer, you have an audience in the person who’s helping you. Ignore at your own risk the look in his eyes from being dressed down by the previous unhappy customer. Show a little empathy, on the other hand--and get some back so fast you might not believe it.

If you’re a parent, watch your child’s eyes glaze over when you try to teach her a lesson by talking. Better to let her watch you and your husband work through a problem, in a blanket of respect with a few belly laughs thrown in. She might actually look forward to growing up if she learns by your example the fun is only just beginning.

You can also let her learn by example the power of this statement: “Please, tell me more.”

Is there a sweeter request in all the world?

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Once upon a time I had a dream I left my turn signal on.

I know what you’re thinking: “Excitement, thy name is Maureen.”

But seriously. I was at a career planning workshop, and this reminded me those plans weren’t safe with just anyone. I stopped sharing my dreams with people who, with past behavior, had promised to make fun of them.

Which changed everything.

Which is why--even now--I’m selective about the people I confide in. I’m not so evolved I can’t be spooked, and the energy it takes to defend myself against the naysayers isn’t worth what I’d get in return. Which is, of course, more naysaying.

I can have a dandy conversation with the worst of them about everything from politics to religion.

But veer off into something a little closer to home?

Look! A squirrel!

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Once upon a time I heard a news story that went something like, “A family went to sleep while the dryer was still running. The automatic shutoff malfunctioned, the dryer overheated and caught fire, the house blew up, and everyone died.”

To that I say, “Good luck making yourself believe the dryer’s off!”

For real.

I’ve always sort of dreaded laundry day because when I was finished it was time to walk away from the washer and dryer--and I could never quite convince myself the dryer was off. Isn’t that silly?

What’s more amazing, to me, is how long it took (don’t ask) to find the workaround. The dryer won’t work if the door’s open, so now when I finish the laundry I don’t close the dryer door all the way.

Problem solved.

Well, unless we had pets. Then I think I’d worry one of them would crawl into the dryer, I’d forget to check it before I started another load, and that would be the end of our cat or whatever it was. The Far Side comes to mind. Do you remember the one where the dog’s hiding next to the dryer? He’s saying to himself, “Oh please…” The cat’s peering into the open dryer after reading signs--complete with arrows--that say, “Cat Fud.”

But you know what I’m saying. Sometimes all you have to do is remember why you’re afraid of something and the problem goes away. Sometimes you can find a way to work around it.

More likely you won’t remember the source of your problem--like the toddler who hears the phone ringing at the same time she hears a crack of thunder, thinks the two are connected, and as she grows up is always anxious when the phone rings but has long forgotten why.

Career consultants are fond of saying we know as children what would bring us the most joy as adults, but we forget that as we grow up--and we start internalizing the expectations and the fears of people we love.

I think part of the task of growing up is remembering what frightened us as children, healing that, and sharing what we learn.

Because really, isn’t that the point of being here--besides having fun? To learn a lot, and share it?

Have fun, and learn a lot. If there’s a better philosophy of life I hope you’ll let me know.

Otherwise I’m going with that one.

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