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Created: Wednesday, 12 March 2014 15:46

Career Coaching

To Rewild is to restore something to its natural uncultivated state. George Monbiot popularised the term during a TED talk where he shared the striking example of 30 wolves being reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park almost a century after they had been exterminated.

What resulted was the entire ecosystem transforming due to a natural balance being reinstated.

Covid has demonstrated this principle on a global level in a short space of time.

With industry slowing to a crawl and car traffic doing the same, the reduction in smog has meant that many people have been able to see the stars for the first time.

As polluted canals in Venice have started to clear, fish and dolphins have returned.

Watching the earth from above has shown the air quality above China clean up faster than ever before in living memory.

Environmental changes are just one area being revived. The career sector is another.

Read more: Rewilding To Find Your True Vocation

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Created: Wednesday, 12 March 2014 15:54

Career Guidance

It is hard to accept that 8 out of 10 people don’t feel passionate about how they spend their work lives (which is most of their day) in this, ‘one wild and precious life.’

Do you?

Even among the minority who are passionate about their work, few of them feel they are following their North Star, aligning what they love doing with earning a living and making a contribution to others.

It is no wonder Oscar Wilde said:

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

When we settle, exist, or opt-out, we resign ourselves to lives which Clarissa Estés called the mangled, muffled, mediocre middle.

Read more: Outliers - Join Those Living On The Edge

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Created: Thursday, 09 June 2016 22:51

Career Change

The big factor in career change over the last couple of decades has been having to accept that the days of a job for life are well and truly over.

As technology becomes ubiquitous and the pace of life quickens, we’re having to become more nimble and dynamic than ever before.

First, we had the GFC and now Covid.

External shockwaves like these can completely upend a person. Entire industries such as tourism, airlines, entertainment, restaurants and countless others have collapsed or contracted out of sight.

Radical change can hit personally, too. An injury or health complication, becoming a parent or having to care for parents… so many events can flip our career on its head.

Consider the situation of a woman I spoke to yesterday.

Career Change at 50

Pre Covid her mainstay career was working as a musician. Post Covid, her work completely dried up.

Each year she had some seasonal work where she took school photos part way into the school year. But with schools shutting down, so did that supplementary income.

Over the last few years, she also had sporadic work offering team building events.

Not this year.

Career Change Jobs

The last piece of this woman’s portfolio career involves offering hypnotherapy, something she has recently become quite capable at. With her other work in hibernation, she has been channelling all her focus into this avenue. Before Covid it was very much a fringe part of her life. As she has poured energy into it, the work is coming in and proving to be highly satisfying.

Read more: Leaving What is Safe and Familiar

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Created: Thursday, 16 June 2016 01:22

Career Advisor

In The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Alain de Botton wrote about his experiences spending time with people working in a range of professions. While shadowing a career advisor at a career fair, he witnessed how infrequently the man’s advice was sought out by students:

“He spoke of how few people were willing to invest in his services, and how few of those engaged him for more than a single introductory session… Most people were resigned to spending their entire adult lives working at jobs chosen for them by their unthinking sixteen-year-old selves… A few passers-by picked up leaflets as they brushed past the stand, but most moved on in a hurry, headed for a defence contractor and a supermarket chain across the way.”

Alain concluded with a reflection on how indifferently our society perceives a career adviser:

Read more: Dying Slowly Or Unfurling Gracefully?