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Career Zingers #30: Your Career is Never a Solo Endeavour

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Picturing Your Career – The Double Ensō and The Venn Diagram

I don’t believe that life is linear. I think of it as circles – concentric circles that connect. ~ Michelle Williams

While working at my desk today my ice water glass created a double ensō as it rested upon a piece of paper beside my computer. Ensō means circular form and may symbolize elegance and strength as well as the void. Rather than career as a linear progression or feeling we are “going around in hopeless circles at work” we can embrace the circular nature of our career.

If you have a mathematical mind you might see the same image as a Venn diagram, named after John Venn, with two overlapping circles indicating where items share something in common.

To be successful, view your career as circles of relationship. How well do you overlap what you love to do with what you need to do? How successful are you in joining your work contribution with what your organization or client needs? How united are you with others at work? And what other circles do you need to join to be successful at work?

When two circles merge into one we experience perfect engagement. This may be a fleeting career ideal but it can draw us forward to a greater feeling of belonging at work.

 

Career Zingers #20: Tilt and Flip

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In the game called your career, what puts you on tilt and how do you flip out of being tilted?

To play pinball well we must know just how much we can shake the machine to alter the ball’s path in our favour without tilting the machine and ending the game, and we also want to keep flipping the ball back into the game area where we can score points. If you imagine your career as a game of pinball, what puts you on tilt and how do you flip out of it?

Tilt. Do you know who or what puts you on tilt, shutting you down, and leaving you feeling “out of the game.” Do you have common triggers and habitual ways of responding to being tilted? Once tilted, how long, in minutes, hours, or days, does your emotional and mental tilt leave you shut down.

Flip. After you have been tilted how do you flip your career ending tilt around? Do you have a specific routine, person, or mental perspective that renews or rejuvenates your career quest?

Career Zingers #17: Be Ignorant

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Ignorance is essential for authentic career development

Bench and Pier at Hilton Head (David Zinger 2018)

Ignorance means not knowing. Stupidity is thinking you know when you don’t.

Often in career development we seek out experts, coaches, authors, and counsellors to tell us what we should be doing. We can learn from others but deep and authentic learning can occur if we are willing  to sit in ignorance and wonder about ourselves and our future without having to find a quick and easy ready-made answer.

Just because we start with ignorance doesn’t mean we need to stay there. When it comes to careers it is okay to be ignorant, just don’t be stupid about it.