Tag Archives: Kick in the Knickers

Apr 02 2013

Is Follow Your Passion Bad Career Advice?

Live Your Passion By Bit O Whimsey

In my travels through the Interwebs, I keep noticing sites quoting that Follow Your Passion is bad career advice. It happened once, it happened twice, and then when I noticed it again last week, I decided to go to a trusty Google search, type in “Is follow your passion bad advice?” and stood back while I got “about 2,360,000 results.”

Wait – that wasn’t dramatic enough.

Typing in “Is follow your passion bad advice?” to a Google search bar results in two MILLION, three hundred sixty THOUSAND results. {insert bumbumBUM music here}

Just a cursory glance at some of the articles that show up in the first few pages of that Google search touch on the same type of thing: Passion isn’t enough.

Well, duh.

Obviously, you can’t just take what you’re passionate about, snap your fingers, and find/create a successful career around it.

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Mar 26 2013

8 Ways to Get Through Your Day Job Without Shooting Yourself in the Face (Rerun)

OK OK, my Entrepreneuriversary was last week, but I send clients to this post I wrote in ’11 so often that I wanted to put it back up here and now. All the points still stand in a major way. Hope it’s helpful!

What Fresh Hell is This? By Raw Art Letter Press

If it’s between the hours of 9a-5p and you’re reading this from your day job, keep reading. Wait, let me revise that. If you’re reading this at any point during the day or night where you’re somewhere to solely pay the bills, with the time before/after being reserved for working on your Dream Career, and you’re wondering how you can possibly do this day after day until you’re ready/ willing/ able/ comfortable/ confident in leaving without shooting yourself in the face, then keep reading.

I’ve gotten this question a lot.

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Mar 25 2013

The Five Rules I’m Trying to Live By

Ohmygosh you guys, I so heart this post by Stacy Kathryn, a former client o’ mine who is just so honest and truthful and transparent in sharing her journey. I have a feeling lots of you can relate – working a day job + running your creative biz “on the side” (doesn’t that kind of belittle all the work you’re doing? It’s hardly “on the side” when you’re most likely devoting enough time/effort/work to it that it’s become a part-time job!) – and I just love what she’s realizing, owning and claiming below. You can read Stacy’s previous guest posts for me here and here. Genius, all!

Feb 21 2013

Discover Your Life Purpose In 3 Simple-ish Steps

I just loooooove the fact that the guest posts coming in right now are ones that make me think to myself, “Yup – I wish I wrote that. That belongs here. That’s gonna speak to My People (aka you).” And this one from Becca Tracey is no exception. Prepare yourself for a big a-ha moment and then some.

Notice I didn’t say “3 Simple Steps”. C’mon – Life Purpose is a BIG topic, right?

And if were THAT simple, the world would be free of people who are still searching for their purpose in life. And we all know that hasn’t happened (yet).

We all want to feel like we’re here for something greater. But often, we’re so stuck in our daily lives that we can barely see past how we’re going to make the rent, let alone change the world.

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Feb 18 2013

Changed Your Mind About What You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

For serious, Kat McBride is just one of my favorite people. Not only is she an amazeballs artist (no, she doesn’t “just” do portraits – she does “superhero portraits” & “mermaid portraits“!) that made my family cry happy-tears when I gifted them with her work, not only is she an amazeballs teacher (if you think you can’t draw, she’ll prove you otherwise), but now she wrote this. So proud you’re reading it here first!

Original picture by Kat

You thought you had it all figured out, the passion, the drive, the energy, and plan after plan. 5 year plans, Effective Escapes, business plans, fiscal plans; you’ve got ‘em. Then it hits you – you want to be something else. You want to be a this AND… There is a piece missing — something you didn’t account for in your planning.

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Jan 23 2013

3 Things Your Parents Taught You About Work That Aren’t True

As someone who heard my Dad say, over and over again, “It’s called work because it’s not play” in response to “How was your day?”, I want to marry this post. So many thanks to Heather for writing this all down and speaking the absolute truth.

Be Brave, Say Yes by Jessica Swift

My parents taught me that no one loves their job and that I should never expect to. They taught me that only artists and musicians love what they do and that’s why they don’t mind being poor forever. They taught me that the best possible scenario was to choose a career that paid well and that I “didn’t mind” so that I could then have the cash to go do the things I loved ‘later on’. Sound familiar?

My parents taught me that I need to choose a respectable career and that if my job becomes hard or mundane, well that’s just part of the territory.

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Dec 17 2012

Happily Ever After… It’s a Work in Progress

Linda Tieu is another sweet ‘n creative Clubhouser o’ mine (and yes, the doors are still open, in case you’re wonderin’), and I just loved reading about what she’s been through and the journey she’s still on to create a business based in passion, experience, lessons and love. Yup – all that goodness is below!

The Fairytale

When I tell people about how a Californian girl like me ended up living in the Tuscan hills of Italy, I invariably get the oos and ahhs of envy. What a fairytale story!

The love of my life just happens to come from a place that everyone wished they lived in. When the stars aligned, I was able to quit my corporate job – arrivederci to the Man! I moved to Italy, got married and skipped happily and willingly into a tranquil country living lifestyle.

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Dec 06 2012

The Exceptions to The Rules

Ruled by Passions by 3 Lamb Illustrations

I’ve had it up to here, I tell ya! Up to HERE (yes, I am putting my hand way above my head, which without that visual you’d have no idea about where I am in the up-to-here scale) with “But I’m supposed to be doing X” and “So-and-so does Y so I need to, too” and “I know I should be doing Z, but…”. It enrages me each and every time, so please don’t mind the enpassioned (that’s not a word, but I don’t care) lady as she steps on her soapbox to bring home the point that there is no right (or wrong!) when it comes to working on or in your creative business. For every Rule, there’s at least (at least!) one exception. There’s totally more exceptions, but honestly, I worked on this post for something like 3 hours and I just can’t bring myself to find and link to any more people.

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Dec 03 2012

7 Steps for Writing a Bio that Pops

Colleen Barrett is a former client and current Clubhouser o’ mine who just opened shop at Words Into Hype. A “a personal copywriter, idea shaper, and jargon interpreter” (don’t you love that?), she’s not only giving away free bios to the first five people to sign up (if the link ain’t active, it means the spots have been filled – but you can still get a punched-up, 50-word bio for $50 ($100 value)!), she’s sharing the steps so you can make a good bio into a great pitch.

I’m Kind of a Big Deal(…)Pencil by Earmark

A good bio doesn’t start at the beginning. It starts at the good part. It answers the questions Who are you? What can you do for me? Why are you awesome? And it does it without giving the reader one beat to lose interest.

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Nov 27 2012

What’s Holding You Back from Learning

Emma Wallace is a Clubhouse-er of mine, and her music is so swoony-dreamy-right that I dare you to listen to this and not want to press Repeat right away and live in that song forever. Here, though, she talks about the difference between learning as a child and learning as an adult - and gives us a challenge so us grown-ups can expand the way we usually learn.

I used to teach piano/voice/songwriting at a music studio.  At one point, I had over seventy students on my schedule.  Most of them, as you could guess, were children, but I did have a pretty sizable amount of adults.

Every time I had that first lesson with an adult, it was the same thing: they’d come in, kind of embarrassed, almost like they were apologizing for not being 20 or 50 years younger.  But here’s the thing: while Mozart gets all the press, I had several adult students that progressed and learned faster than most children.  Adults do have advantages, you know, they have stronger, bigger fingers, they understand that one-eighth plus one-eighth equals one quarter and they don’t have to sing the alphabet song to figure out what comes after ‘C.’

But there are two big things that stand in the way of adult students.  One is the whole time/scheduling thing, of course.  Kids are used to having homework and practicing and they don’t have to worry about getting dinner on the table or taking care of sick relatives or anything like that.

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Know Who I Follow

BLOG BADGE to BESTOW onto your BEAUTIFUL BLOG

Creative Commons

Basically, what this means is that everything I write is my own property (duh), but you can use it on your blog or in your newsletter or as skywriting as long as you don't change nothin' & you add the following : "Michelle Ward, aka The When I Grow Up Coach, helps creative people devise the career they think they can't have - or discover it to begin with! A certified life coach by the International Coach Academy, a musical theater actress with her BFA from NYU/Tisch, and a Corporate America escapee, Michelle has served as an expert source and contributor for such outlets as Newsweek, Forbes, and Psychology Today, as well as leading workshops and seminars at SXSW 2011 and the sold-out Etsy Success Symposium. She could be found coachin', bloggin' & givin' away free stuff at whenigrowupcoach.com."

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