Photo by Joshua Hoffman

By Tara Sophia Mohr

There I was, sitting in the conference room at one of my former jobs. It was what I call a “B+ job”—a good but not great job; a perfectly nice, challenging, job that fell far short of being meaningful, exciting, of feeling like my right work.

The company was holding a professional development day, during which all employees took a personality test. The idea, of course, was that through the test results, we’d better understand our strengths and weaknesses and those of our colleagues, and that we’d be able to work together more effectively. The usual.

The test was called “True Colors” and categorized people into four personality styles, each named with a color. I was a blue. Let me restate that: I was an off-the-charts blue – scoring almost the maximum number of “blueness” points.

The blue personality type resonated with me so much that my energy level went through the roof just from listening to the facilitator read the description of the blue type, which seemed to include all of favorite things: authenticity, aesthetics, calm, self-expression, harmony, creativity—I could go on.

A few minutes later, after all the descriptions had been read, my colleague Todd grinned at me and said, “I know what you are – you are a gold!”

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This entry is filed under: Career - 23 Comments »

Photo by Jesse Kruger

By Ali Hale

A lot of us try – and try hard – to make changes in our lives. We’re keen, we’re motivated, we may even have a step-by-step plan.

For a while, it works. Maybe we successfully start eating more healthily, or take up an exercise routine. Maybe we manage to leave work at 5pm every day. Maybe we take a big step – like starting a family or quitting a job – and hope that this solves problems, like our struggles with time-management or our tendency to procrastinate.

Being inspired to change is great. But it’s hard to ignore the reality that lots of us want to change – and lots of us do start making changes – only to end up backsliding.

So why does this happen?

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This entry is filed under: Change - 22 Comments »

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By Christine Scivicque

The decision to make a major career change can trigger all kinds of nasty anxiety and ruthless paranoia. What if I fail? What if it’s nothing like what I’m expecting? What if I regret leaving my current gig? But, as we all know, you can’t live a fulfilling life if you waste your time and energy focusing on the “what ifs”. The more effective course of action is to focus on taking productive steps to minimize the fear that inevitably comes with any major career shift.

1. Self-Analyze

Take steps to understand your motivation for making this career shift. What about this new career appeals to you? What makes it feel like a smart move? How does this new career align with your values and long-term life goals? Spend some time thinking about the overall vision you have for your life and see where this new career falls into it. When you know that this career move is in line with your life as a whole, you’ll feel more secure in your decision.

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This entry is filed under: Career - 15 Comments »

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By Melinda Elliott

There’s a lot of information out there about how to achieve your goals. About how to stay motivated, how to focus on your dreams and not be distracted by failure and set backs. But that all assumes that you know what you want out of life, that you already have goals you’re eager to achieve. Recently, in response to a comment I made about pursuing one’s goals on The Change Blog, I got a poignant reply that asked "But what if you haven’t found anything worth doing, any goal worth pursuing?"

Great question – focus is wonderful, but if we aren’t looking at the right things how useful is it? Sure we can learn from failure, but what do we do with those lessons if we’re not really doing anything? How can we find out where we should be looking for our satisfaction in life?

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This entry is filed under: Meaning & Purpose - 17 Comments »

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By Stacey Porto, CC

“Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.” ~Aristotle

Moral excellence, as Aristotle says, is a result of habit. Like anything else we want to master, to become morally excellent or more virtuous takes practice. Typically, we don’t go through our day thinking about whether we need to practice more kindness or more commitment or even more love. Morals or virtues are usually ingrained in us and come naturally, right? Yes, but if we became more mindful of the difference that the practice of virtues can make in daily life, we will undoubtedly lead a more fulfilling and happy life. Mainly because we are striving for excellence; our personal best based in virtues such as love, kindness, gratefulness, courage, and integrity.

By practicing the following six virtues, your life can radically improve in the form of better relationships, peaked performance, and fulfillment of your dreams.

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This entry is filed under: Life - 11 Comments »

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By Srinivas Rao

Several months back I interviewed a blogger named Jenny Blake who runs a successful blog called Life After College, and has actually just signed her first book deal. As I was going back through my chat with her about the process of writing a book, she said one thing that really stood out to me. She said that far too many people are victims of all or nothing thinking when it comes to the seemingly daunting task of writing a book.  Most people don’t even start because they think that it has to be all or nothing: write the entire book or don’t write it all. When you think about goals in general that’s not at all how they are accomplished.

Let’s take a look at how we can overcome all or nothing thinking and actually accomplish our goals.

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This entry is filed under: Goals - 12 Comments »