The Reinvention Coach

Software to increase your reinvention productivity

Reinventing your career requires you to juggle lots of information.  You'll have to keep track of multiple conversations, gather lots of research and data from different sources, and remember to follow up on opportunities.  When managing the rest of life's demands, it's easy for details to fall through the cracks.  Here are a few interesting software programs that can help you increase your reinvention productivity:

Xobni:  Always searching for the last email you sent to a contact?  Constantly scanning your 'sent' folder to find a document you emailed to someone?  Xobni ('inbox' spelled backwards) is an Outlook plug-in that  creates a sidebar profile for each of your email contacts.  See all your previous email conversations along with the attachments you've sent (time-saving benefit: you can launch the files directly from Xobni).  Plus Xobni includes search, so your days of sifting through your inbox are over!

Evernote:  Do you have endless lists of bookmarked pages or a million bits of paper with  ideas jotted down?  Evernote is a utility (PC & Mac!) that allows you to capture and organize information from different sources.  Gather data in multiple ways such as typing a note in the program, taking a picture using your camera phone, scanning back-of-the-napkin scribbles or clipping data directly from webpages.  You can even email notes or record audio notes!    Evernote runs everything through recognition technology and allows you to categorize and tag the notes, making it much easier to search for and access data from disparate sources.

ClearContext:  Ever forget to respond to someone important?  If urgent activities are getting lost, ClearContext can help by scanning your inbox and highlighting-- by color-- all tasks, appointments and emails according to subject and how frequently you correspond with the sender.  This means that you can immediately identify your key contacts or assign a priority to new ones.  ClearContext also reminds you to follow up on unanswered emails from important contacts-- a godsend, when juggling reinvention opportunities!

What software utilities do you use to help manage your reinvention?  Post on the blog and let us know!

Class Wednesday: Funding Your Career Reinvention!

When it comes to money there are many barriers, both emotional and practical, that can trip us up.  Sometimes it's our attitudes ('It'll be too hard to pull together the money' or 'I'm stuck; the pay is too good here'), sometimes our fears (usually of poverty or lack), sometimes it's the practical logistics ('I need to take a $5000 certification course to pursue my dream career; where do I come up with the money?').  They all may 'seem' serious, but none have to block you from pursuing your reinvention (read the story of Bart and Nina Murphy for inspiration).

If you'd like tools that will help you create your own financial game plan for reinvention, clear your calendar this Wednesday night and take our teleclass, Career Reinvention 101: What About the Money?   If you can't make the call, sign up anyway and you'll receive the MP3 recording of the class and the companion workbook containing the 'Reinvention Budget Worksheet' .

At only $29, it's a low-cost investment that will pay big returns in your reinvention!  Details and registration here; space is limited, so sign up quickly and save your spot!

Five hard truths about reinvention...

A few days ago I received an email from one of my clients.  In the initial stages of reinventing herself, she was in the thick of the paralyzing, stressful and panicky feelings that often accompany the process.  Her vision wasn't yet fully formed, people in her life were objecting to the new steps she was taking, and she needed to earn cash-- fast.  Her question to me: how could she reinvent herself when she was feeling this way?

It is a myth that reinventing yourself is some lovely, exciting process that feels good all the time.  Reinvention is hard work; it requires a lot of ditch-digging, soul-searching, staying strong in the face of opposition and challenge.  It is a testing of everything we know, all that we thought true about ourselves and others.  I wrote to her the following hard truths about reinvention; she has graciously allowed me to share them with you:

1. People will be freaked out by your changes. When we reinvent ourselves, our desire to follow our truth can be very threatening to those around us.  You can expect that some people will be resentful and try to block you or shut you down.  Sometimes it's those who are closest to us who do this, because they have the most to lose if we change.  Although you can't let yourself be driven by other people's fear, it's important that you acknowledge its validity and accept it.  We must grant others the freedom to have their feelings about our reinvention while not letting it stop us from moving forward.
2. There will be fallout.  There are consequences to pursuing reinvention: people get angry with us, we have to downsize or restructure our lifestyles; we have less time for hobbies, friends or ourselves.  This doesn't mean that we drop our quest, but we give up the myth that there won't be significant downsides to the choices we make.  Part of reinventing ourselves is taking responsibility for the results of our decisions while fulfilling the needs of our lives-- often a difficult balancing act.
3. You must learn to coexist with your fear. Oftentimes the reason we fight so violently against those who are freaking out about our choices is because they're voicing the fears we'd rather not acknowledge.  Martha Beck's wonderful new book, Steering by Starlight, calls those fears 'the inner lizard'.  We can't ever fully get rid of the lizard; we must learn to coexist with it and manage it.
4. You don't stop your life to reinvent yourself. Get over the fantasy of having all the time in the world to devote to this process.  If there are circumstances that cause most of your time to temporarily be diverted (i.e. a work project or a family trip), don't waste time or energy resenting or resisting them.  Just go with it.  Even in the midst of busyness it's still possible to take 30 minutes a day to keep yourself centered on your future, whether it's a phone call, research, or inspirational reading.
5. Getting a 'job for now' to earn cash IS reinventing yourself.  Reinvention means doing what it takes to make our dreams happen and, oftentimes, this means taking a 'B' job (as I did when I temped for several months).  Taking a 'job for now' doesn't mean giving up reinvention; in the larger context of life, interim steps are often valuable stepping stones.

My client is once again moving forward.  She will encounter other hurdles on her road to reinvention, but keeping these truths in mind will help her clear them and reach her goal.

What is your 'Declaration of Independence?'

Tomorrow is Independence Day in the United States.  In the midst of enjoying hot dogs, fireworks and a long vacation weekend, take a moment to celebrate the deeper meaning of what happened that day back in 1776.  In writing The Declaration of Independence, the U.S. founding fathers declared their philosophical independence in spite of their situation-- a young country with little manpower and cash, dependent upon one of the strongest superpowers of that era.  Though at the moment of writing they were still bound by the constraints of their situation, by holding to the big vision of what they wanted their freedom eventually moved from a goal to reality.

When pursuing our reinvention dreams, the first step is to declare what we want despite the circumstances of our lives.  The action steps and the battles that it will take to achieve that dream will inevitably show up, but the statement-- and the faith-- must come first.

What will your 'declaration of independence' be this holiday?