Career

Weekly Challenge – Mirror, Mirror

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Here's your weekly challenge.  We're going to get a bit psychological.

I want you to ask yourself, what your complete opposite is like. What's the "you" from the Mirror Universe, Bizarro World, whatever fictional opposite-land you prefer as a metaphor.  Who is this other you? what motivates them? What do they do – and what don't they do? What is their daily life like?

Once you have a good image of this UnYou, ask yourself a few questions:

  • What is it that they do that you wish you did or should?
  • What is it that you do they don't that you're proud of?
  • Is this alternate you happier or sadder than you?  Why?
  • What do they do for a living, and does it work?
  • What do they do for fun, and why?  Does it make them happy?
  • What can you learn from them and what can they learn from you?

This week, take a look in the mirror and find out what you learn.

(Though I won't go into much detail on my experience with this exercise, I realized I was much happier than my opposite.)

– Steven Savage

Convention Idea – Presentations on Certifications

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The roundup of convention ideas is here.

So what certifications are the pro-fans at your con interested in?

People who want careers based around their interests and obsessions have many steps to follow – education, employment, portfolio building, etc.  Missing from this list in all too many cases are professional certifications, except, perhaps in the IT field (and even then they can get overlooked).  Even though certifications can make a difference in a job search (as I have seen firsthand), they do get forgotten all too easily.

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Visualization: The Beacon and the Television

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Visualizing your goals and dreams is a part of succeeding in your life and career that you can't avoid.  I am a big advocate of having a vision for your life with as much detail as possible.  I want you to not just see, but be able to taste, hear, smell, and feel the vision you have, as big and bold as possible.

Yet, if you know me and read this blog, you know that I also decry a lot of the "visualization" exercises and self-help approaches out there.  I despise "The Secret" and it's offspring and it's siblings; the idea that if you visualize it it will happen, the dream-and-be-positive exercises, and all the rest.  Yes, I advocate visualization while decrying some visualization methods and exercises.

There's a reason for what seems to be inconsistency.  This reason is not visualization itself, but the attitude taken towards in the various exercises people promote. I'm all for having big dreams, as visceral as possible – but its what those visualizations mean to you that changes what they can do for you.

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