Tag Archives: Meaningful Mindsets

Apr 03 2013

Focusing On What You Want – Guest Post By Julia

You might remember Julia Ng from a post I wrote last year that described the amazeballs Soul Reading session I had with her. Well, Julia is a current client and Spectacular Sponsor o’ mine, and I’m thrilled that she’s sharing today how she worked through a terrifying start o’ her biz and how she pro-actively created a shift for it to be soul-fulfilling work for her. Amen and hallelujah!

In Tokyo, one of the easiest jobs for an English-speaking foreigner to get, is teaching English. I’d never thought of myself as a teacher, and being rather introverted, the idea of meeting new people every day… terrifying! BUT it was the best part-time pay for someone on a student visa, and all I seemed to need was a black suit and the ability to smile a lot. Besides, it was just something to tide me over till I found something better.

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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!

Mar 14 2013

Spark: A Change of Plans (and a Chat)

I don’t have the bestest of news, but I do have a way to deliver it in the most honest of ways. Because of low sign-ups, the co-founders of Spark (which I was going to speak at) decided to cancel the April retreat. They posted this to break the news, and I’m just so proud of them (and to be associated with them) that I had to repost it here (with their permission, of course). Want more honesty, more vulnerability, and more integrity on the Internet? Here you are.

It is with agonizing reluctance that we are announcing that we are cancelling Spark 2013.

We can’t call it anything other than disappointing, and we three met this weekend to talk everything through. We had feedback: Spark, this year, was too expensive, too long, and focused in too many directions. We crunched and re-crunched numbers, imagining different scenarios where we might be able to lower the registration fees.

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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 19 2013

What I Wish For You

When I Grow Up Print by Stephanie Corfee

I used to be an optimistic pessimist/pessimistic optimist, hoping for the best but expecting the worse (thanks, theater background!). Now, because of what I’ve experienced personally and what I’ve worked on with my clients over the past 5-ish years (!), I believe…

… that it’s not a matter of “can” – but a matter of “how” (my clients + I have never not found the “how” after we’ve discovered the “what”).

…that “your tribe” – people that not only support you, but understand you – is out there, ready to be found (psssst…they’re waiting for you with open arms).

…that the main roadblock between you and your passionate, grown-up career is the belief that you can actually make it happen. (Once you can see that it really is possible, the walls start crumbling down – guaranteed)

…that one foot in front of the other, little by little, day by day builds a near-unbreakable foundation (challenge: commit to 15 minutes/day on your work and see what happens after 2 weeks.

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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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Jan 22 2013

How to Have a Creative Career (in 3 Easy Steps!)

I’m here today to talk about how to have a creative career in 3 easy steps. While the steps will be easy to articulate and understand, I have to warn you that they’re all much easier said than done. So listen to them, absorb them, let them marinate and know that the only ways to start believing them is to do the work towards them. These are all mind-shift-y sort of things (while still being practical).

How’s that for a build-up? Click Play below to make your creative career dreams a reality (And apologies again  for the points where the sound doesn’t sync to the video very well. iMovie is so not my BFF right now).

Can’t see the video? Click here to watch it on YouTube.
Prefer to listen? Click here to get the MP3.

Things I mention:

• The Renaissance Soul
• my Clubhouse
• Meetup

———-

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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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