NOTE:  This post first appeared in the March 2010 edition of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter Put Old on Hold.

Every so often, a new guru advocates “Do what you love.”  It’s the best career advice ever, whether you’re just starting your work years or getting ready to throttle back for retirement. 

But what if you’re already doing something you don‘t love?  Most of us can’t afford to just implode what’s paying the bills.  How do you get from what you are doing now—which you may literally hate—to what you really want to do without totally starting over?

• It doesn’t have to be a jump over the cliff.   We tend to think either/or on this.  Keep doing what you’re making money at now or take a massive, scary leap into the unknown.  You can do a lot on your current job to prepare for that better work life.  Think remodel rather than demolition. 

• Get real about what you want to do.   Flesh out your dream job right now so you know what you’re getting into.  If you fantasize rather than taking a serious look, you see only the minuses of your current job and only the pluses of your dream job.  Be honest about that new work and thorough with the details. You’ll either be creating momentum for the day when you can make the transition or learning that your “dream job” isn’t all that much better—or maybe even different—than what you’re doing. 

• Become a virtuoso at what you can now.   Many of the skills you need for your “perfect work” can be developed in any job.  Follow-through, time management, writing, speaking, and critical thinking skills are all transferable. Patience, tolerance, and persistence are attributes that are golden anywhere.  Work at becoming a superstar at these kinds of things right now.

• Find the center of the sweet spot.  What’s most important about your dream job?  Sometimes the crux of what you yearn for can be part of what you are already doing.  If you can’t find a way to put it in your current work, give yourself that special thing in a hobby or with group involvement.  Doing so will whet you appetite for more and create the motivation to take bigger steps eventually.

• Educate yourself in small doses.  The word “educate” conjures up expensive, time-intensive options—college degrees or formal training for accreditation of some sort.  That thinking makes the dream unachievable because the “entry fee” is more than you can handle either in time or money or both. 

Get your education in smaller doses.  Read books.  Surf the Net.  Make friends with people who do what you want to do.  Join groups involved in that profession or interest area. You can learn a lot in doable steps if you get rid of the  idea that learning has to be in some kind of formal setting.  Plus as people in the field get to know you, you develop a network that you’ll need later. 

• Don’t wait.  Staying in a job you hate indefinitely is self-inflicted slavery.  Anything you can do to help yourself move toward something better is healthier emotionally.  

Getting your feet wet has lots of benefits.  People in that field get to know you and start to appreciate you.  Your focus becomes sharper as you get more depth.  And if you do eventually decide to seek that formal credential, the coursework will be easier because you are already familiar with the terminology and the concepts.

Anybody can say “I hate my job.”  And any job is going to be awful on occasion.  But if you really need something different to make your heart sing, the only one stopping you is you.

You can change that.

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  Her passion is in capitalizing on the potential of those over 50.  For more, please visit her website http://www.mining-silver.com.  She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com.

The Superbowl ads may have been yawners this year, but the ads during the Olympics are getting me excited.  As in they are making me just plain angry.   Who ever decided that it was honest to suggest that a product was the way to access a positive emotion?

There are two main offenders that particularly attract my ire.  First, a look at BMW.  Come on, guys, you spent millions to develop the ads for these slots and you signed off on  “We make joy” ?

Unless you are talking about the dish soap or the candy bar, you are a big fat liar.  You make CARS.   Sell the car, not some trumped up idea that it will replace what we can only do for ourselves.    You disrespect the entire human race with that kind of garbage.  

Do you really  have the arrogance to think that a car is the source of joy?  A child’s hug, a glorious sunrise, laying in your sweetheart’s arms, yes, but a car?  Get over yourselves (and fire your ad agency).

And MacDonald’s, you aren’t far behind.  You’re claiming to be the source of happiness.  It’s bad enough that you call the childs’ version of your not-so-nurtirious offerings a “happy meal.”  You can have that one.  But to announce that a fast food meal at one of your gazillion outlets is happiness itself is a downright lie. 

Fast food does not generate happiness.  Maybe some people are happy when they are there, but it’s because of what they are doing with their lives, not the stuff you sold them to eat.

We tolerate this kind of dishonest drivel in advertising way too often.  What would happen if everyone who was trying to sell something had to pass a lie detector test with every word they put into each mass marketing campaign?  It might be a good solid step toward curing childhood obesity and the credit crisis in one fell swoop.  

Freedom of speech comes at a price.  You’re supposed to tell the truth.  These ads don’t and it makes me really mad that they run again and again and again.  We deserve better.

Steve Juetten graciously invited me to write a piece for his blog for the Seattle Examiner.  He posted it this morning.   He’s a financial planner who”gets it” about the need to mesh financial planning with non-fiancial planning to have “retirement” be satisfying.   I’m hoping Steve will do a guest piece here, but in the meantime, check out my guest post as well as the rest of his blog.

Imagine a healthcare system where everyone knows what everyone else is doing on your behalf.  Where they really want you to get well and don’t feel the need to do test after test to cover their butts.  Where the doctors and other healthcare professionals are on salary and all part of the same effort.

Imagine they have the whole thing set up online, so you get the results of lab tests, xrays, etc. as soon as they are available (as opposed to “never’ which is typically the case).  Imagine that you can confer with your doctor via an e-mail instead of a $140 office visit and an hour waiting in the company of sick people.

And imagine that this utopic system is via a health insurance set-up that costs less than the bloated, “silo mentality”  mess you are dealing with now.  

It exists–at least in Washington State.  I finally got mad enough to look for something better and it had been there all along.  For the first time in fifteen years, I actually believe my medical resources are something more than a drain on my wallet. 

If this country wants to figure out how to fix our horrendous healthcare mess with its astronomical costs and second-rate results, look at Group Health Cooperative and others like it. 

Quality health care is never going to come from anything that’s focused on a profit.  That rules out the big pharmaceutical companies, many hospitals, and all the doctors who are part of “professional corporations.”  It rules out anybody who’s “in it for the money.”  It rules in the professionals who care about keeping people well.

We can do this, but the fat cats and the big outfits are not going to like it.  So what?

This article originally appeared in the February 2010 issue of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter Put Old on Hold.

Are you delaying all the fun so you can get all the work done?  That’s one of the saddest characteristics of today’s busy lives.  We scramble to get everything that “needs to be done” accomplished and have no time left for the activities that bring us joy. 

Our approach to retirement is even more that way.  We give excessive amounts of time to a job so that we can “get retirement” once we reach a certain age.  I am a strong proponent of work.  I think we need to do it for our entire lives.  But it’s got to be in balance.  All work now for all play later is just plain dumb.  You need to play now.  (And you need to work at something once you retire, even if it’s not for pay.)

I hear your groans.  I’ve been in your shoes.  It really is hard to find two seconds to catch your breath much less an entire hour to take a yoga class—or a hike in the hills–sometimes.  But there’s a life skill we aren’t learning with the way we are doing this and maybe it’s time to circle back and pick that one up.  We need to learn to balance.

Notice I did not say “juggle.”  Most of us are doing too much of that, keeping more and more balls in the air.   No, I said balance. That’s about adding and taking away.  To achieve balance, you put a little more on one side of the scale or take a little off of the other.  For most of us, we need to take away some of the minutes we put on work and add some for play—or at least leisure.  But how?

An interesting thing happens when you only have a certain amount of time to get something done.  You work faster.  Things come together more easily.  You’re more focused.  The end result when you “don’t have enough time” is often better than what you do on a regular basis.  Why?

I suspect it’s because we don’t let ourselves get distracted as easily.  We don’t buy in on other people’s problems when they walk into your cube dressed as friends.  We don’t let ourselves waste one minute on non-essential stuff.  We are “on task.”

What would happen if we used that strategy at work all the time to make room for play?  And then guarded our play time like a mama bear? 

The obvious problem on the work side is the potential for being assigned more work.  This is not about working three hours and then taking a two hour lunch every day.  This is about not staying ridiculously late or bringing work home.  This is about adding time for yourself in the part of your day that’s supposed to be yours.

What if you’re retired?  In my experience, the advice is every bit as valid.  We do the laundry, clean the gutters, repair the back screen, and take a load to the recycling center before we get out the sketch book or grab the camera and head to the wildlife refuge.  We do the work first.  At least if we ever subscribed to the notion of being “good workers.”

This “do the work first” mantra screws up the scales of balance. When “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today” applies only to the work part of our days, that’s all we end up doing.   We need to spread that idea between work and play. 

Find a balance scale and put away your juggling balls.  Repeat after me:  “Fun is an essential part of daily life.  Fun is good.  I will have fun today.”

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  Her passion is in capitalizing on the potential of those over 50.  For more, please visit her website http://www.mining-silver.com.  She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com.

Steve Juetten, who’s a financial planner, does a nice job taking retirement planning beyond the investment portfolio .  His Seattle Examiner blog post this morning talked about relationships.  Check it out.

This article originally appeared in the January 2010 issue of Barbara Morris’s newsletter Put Old on Hold.

Here we are again, at the beginning of another year.  And this year, we have a zero at the end of it, which means it’s a big deal year for many of us–a year to do “great things.” 

“I resolve to be a better person in 2010.”  Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah.

New Year’s resolutions don’t get us very far. All those newbies at the gym Jan. 2 are usually back on the couch watching TV in a couple of weeks.  Why?  Because those resolutions are typically based on seeing something wrong with ourselves.  It’s no fun to be flawed.  Much as we’d like to do better in certain ways, when the motivation to do so is mired in negativity, it’s hard to stay at it. 

Plus we tend to be rather global in how we phrase them.  “I’m going to find my dream job.”  Or “Be a better parent.”  That’s a lot to do with very little specific direction for doing it.

The start of a new year is a great time to stop and assess where you are and where you want to be.  It’s a great “landmark of time” to help us remember to take stock.  But the kind of planning common to New Year’s Day (or somewhere near it), tends to come across as inalterable.  That’s another reason New Year’s resolutions don’t work.

You don’t need “New Year’s resolutions,” you need goals if you want to make change really happen.  Goals are based on what you want rather than what’s wrong with you.  Plus, you can construct goals out of Spandex instead of January 1 cement.  As you work toward a goal, you learn more about what’s realistic and you modify the goal accordingly.  Sometimes that’s a case of reaching higher; sometimes it’s a U-turn from where you thought you needed to go.  Goals can flex.

So what does a good goal look like?

It states specific action.    A goal is about action; resolutions are about good intentions.  A goal defines how you are going to make the change.  For example “I will take a two-mile walk at least four times a week” rather than “I’m going to get in shape.” 

It’s measurable.    One of the keys to staying at something is being able to see progress.  When the change you are trying to make has milestones to it, you get an extra boost to keep going every time you pass one—sort of like mile markers in a race.  When you set a goal to lose ten pounds, losing that first pound makes you believe you can lose the second one, and so on.  Yes/no is a measurement, too.  Did you write that query letter?  Stop having lunch with the toxic gossip at work?   Get home from work by 6:00 four out of five nights a week?

Part of your measurement is a deadline for when you are going to have the goal accomplished.  You may need to modify the deadline, but don’t leave it off.  Goals without deadlines are much harder to make happen. 

It’s achievable.  Being realistic is another key to successful goal setting.  Commit to things that you can reasonably make happen in the time frame you set.  Telling yourself you are going to lose 50 pounds before Valentine’s Day is unworkable.  Set yourself up for success by establishing a pace for what you want to do that’s reasonable to accomplish.  If you get things going faster than you expected, you c an always change the goal to reflect the faster pace.

It’s relevant.  It’s got to be important to you for you to stay with it.  If you goal is to please a certain person (e.g. boss or spouse) including things they want instead to what makes your heart sing may work, but you will find much stronger motivation in laying it out according to your own value system.  Maybe “your health” isn’t so important, but your ability to continue to play your favorite sport is.  If so, cloak your health goals in what you need for your sport.

Find goals that excite and energize you—that make you want to start right now.  Resolutions just make you feel bad when you forget about them.  Goals have power.  Now’s a great time to set some.

Happy 2010!  May it be meaningful, satisfying, and full of joy.

Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  Her passion is in capitalizing on the potential of those over 50.  For more, please visit her website http://www.mining-silver.com.  She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com.

With the current economic challenges, having a job is a big plus and keeping it is a must.   But sometimes, the wrong job can be even more emotionally destructive than having no job.   What do you do then?

Those of us who can at least see retirement on the horizon are legitimately even more skitterish.  When an older worker loses a job, it takes longer to find a new one.  Plus, once you are on the sidelines for a while, being older means being more vulnerable to losing confidence in yourself and letting go of work by default.  So we hunker down and keep the job we hate. 

We need to get smart about finding that next thing instead of remaining a victim of the lousy economy and horrid work situation.

The first step in a good job transition is knowing where you want to go.  If you need to find something else, be sure you are clear about why you need to change things.  Assuming that the reason work is bad is the boss or the company, when you hate that kind of work altogether is a ticket to a repeat of the job angst.  Take some time to think about what doesn’t work about this job and what’s behind that.  You may think your boss is the Ultimate Bossilla until you listen to what you friends and peers are saying about their bosses. 

Learn all you can about yourself so you have some certainty about what would be a great job for you.  Also be sure you’ve gotten to the actual core of why the current situation isn’t working.  If it’s just that the economy has slowed things down, planning an exit is a case of “out of the frying pan and into the fire.”  But if you have lost interest in the work you are now doing, maybe you need a new direction to get your mojo back.  Check this stuff out–and don’t just make a bunch of assumptions without getting real information.

The next step is to identify realistic options for working elsewhere.  Be forewarned, if you need to jump ship, you might end up starting a whole lot farther down the ladder with the new outfit.  This may be the best thing you ever did, but take the time to think about it.  Also think in terms of where you might be able to move within  your current company if it’s really a matter of bad boss or co-worker chemistry.   

This step has an unexpected and immediate benefit.  Sometimes when you take a close look at what else you could realistically do, the job you are doing becomes a whole lot more appealing.

Then figure out how to be really good at doing what you want to do next.  This may be by taking classes on your own.  It may be by talking with people who are already doing that kind of work.  It may be by applying yourself on your current job more diligently so that you develop skills needed for the next job.  As Thomas Edison said, “When opportunity arrives, many people miss it because it’s wearing overalls and looks like work.”  Do the work to get good enough to be valuable in the new arena. 

Build your network to include people with that interest and expertise.    Networking is not about collecting business cards from people you don’t know.  It’s about getting to know people–as friends–who are doing what you want to do.   You don’t have to like them personally or have the same politics to become good business buddies. 

The smartest thing anyone can do in a down economy is to be helpful in the business context.  If you see an article that someone else would appreciate, send them the link.  If you note a problem developing that a business friend needs to know about, give them the heads up (unless it involves a conflict of interest to do so).  Being kind is always in vogue, regardess of what the Wall Street stereotype is played like in the movies.

As a strategic capstone, keep doing your current job to the very best of your ability.  That is called integrity.  It doens’t make any difference if the whole rest of the world has lost it (which it hasn’t), operating to the best of your ability will keep you saner, happier, and more appealing as an employee–and a person

No matter how old you are, if you want to work, you can find work.  The best way to set yourself up so that you call the shots with that is to do what you love and be good at it.  So if your current job doesn’t give you that, you may need to change long term.  If you do, doing these things can make a big difference.

We’re holding our collective breath as Congress wrangles with what to do about the burgeoning disaster we call “health care.”  It looks like we are at the mercy of the politicians in terms of what we see in the news. 

But there’s is one basic step that has absolutely nothing to do with the government and everything to do with getting this right.  Each of us individually needs to be sure our own mindset is not contributing to the problem.

In a nutshell, is this a “health care” problem?  Or a “health I don’t care” problem?  The health care system is huge and growing.  How much of that is because we use it so often and so indiscriminately?   When we fail to pay attention to our own health, we are much more likely to end up in the system.  Once you are in, it’s hard to get out. 

Here’s an example.  Let’s say you’re experiencing a lot of stress at work.  That’s creating digestive problems, sleeping problems, and maybe you’re starting to notice a lot of pain in your neck.  You finally make the time to go to the doctor.   We all want to believe that “Doc” will know exactly what’s wrong and will prescribe medication that solves the problem.  Simple fix.

That’s not what usually happens though.   The more typical scenario is something like this…  After a quick glance at your chart and a minute’s worth of questions, he or she will say “We need to run some tests.”  So you go to the lab.  Then you wait for a call about the test results–until you finally call them.  “Everythings’s normal.”

Now what?  Often, the next step is to “try” some kind of prescription medicine to see if it helps.  Maybe it does a little.  So you keep taking the drug.  But it has an unpleasant side effect you need to deal with.  So the doctor prescribes something for that.  And then that has a side effect.  So you keep adding more drugs to your system to “fix” the original problem.

But the whole process is missing the first step.  What did you do to eliminate the stress on the job?  This is the part of health care that we are particularly bad at.  We aren’t very good at taking care of ourselves wisely so we can avoid needing this kind of  ”health care.”

There’s a national mindset that someone is supposed to “take care” of us when we are sick.  What would happen if we did more to keep ourselves from getting sick?  How about walking to reduce that stress?  Walking doesn’t require a trip to the doctor–or a prescription.  There are no negative side effects–and some great positive ones.  You may start walking to reduce your stress, but you’ll also end up losing weight, gaining energy and enjoying your neighborhood more.

Yes, our health care system badly needs an overhaul.  Yes, the costs once you get sucked into the system are horrendous.  Yes, many of us are oblivious of those costs because we don’t pay for them directly.  (Rest assured, as a nation, we do pay for them!)  Yes, there is abuse that warrants stronger penalties and more diligent policing.

But the very first step to accomplishing real health care reform is to step up to the responsibility of maintaining our own health.  We need to stop thinking that it’s up to the system to “make us well” and start doing all we can for ourselves to not get sick in the first place.

It’s so easy to say what “they” should do differently.  But the solution lies in what we do differently.  We need to become a lot more proactive about taking care of ourselves so we can avoid the system a lot more of the time.

Yikes!  “The Holidays” are here.  It doesn’t make any difference whether you equate that with Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Winter Solstice, or even Festivus; this time of year has something for everyone to celebrate.  And that “something” usually brings with it a massive dose of stress.  Why?  Because “the holidays” represent a perfect emotional storm—the nexus of inviolate tradition, unplanned change, and great expectations.

To get to where you can actually have fun with “the Holidays,” you have to appreciate the force of that storm and realize you are in it.  It’s not as simple as just saying “This is complicated.”  But it doesn’t require taking a leave of absence from your entire life for the last two weeks of the year either (though this is my favorite fantasy).

So let’s look at these three “forces of nature.”

Inviolate Tradition:
The longer we live, the more traditions we have the chance to establish.  When you couple, you mesh your family traditions with his (or her) family traditions.  Even if you don’t stay a couple, quite often you end up keeping at least some of the traditions you added with the partner.  You see something on TV or in a book that looks like fun.  You add that.  You think of something fun for “this year” and then end up doing it every year.  There’s more and more and more that “we always do” at this time of year.

But traditions are like closet space.  Unless you weed things out every once in a while, you get a lot jammed together in a tight space.  And then you can’t enjoy any of it because it’s wedged in so tightly it’s hard to even get to it.  

•   Not every tradition deserves to be honored forever.  Which  ones do you really appreciate?  Which ones are you doing because you think you “have” to?  Who would notice if you let some of the latter go?  Maybe it’s time to find out.

Unplanned Change
This year has brought a mega-dose of unplanned change for many of us.  Lost jobs, reduced work hours, and lost business have affected how much we have to spend.  Heavy workloads for those who do have jobs make holiday tasks even harder to get done.  Wherever there is change, there is stress.  Most of us were already stressed before we got to “the Holidays” this year.

There’s only one good way to handle change—accept what is going on now and run with that.  This year, it’s fashionable to admit you have to change how you handle the season.   What an unexpected blessing!  It’s the perfect chance make changes you’ve been wanting to make, regardless of whether you are still be able to pull off the old routine. 

There’s another kind of change that’s more subtle.  What’s changed with your loved ones?  Maybe one of your kids moved away for a job.  Maybe your sister has married a man with seven kids and his own traditions.  It’s not fair to insist everyone else still do all the things “we’ve always done for the holidays” if they aren’t in the same place with their lives.   But letting go of traditions you cherish can be hard.  

•   Are you insisting everything stay the same because it suits you–even if it’s more difficult for other participants than it used to be?  Are you being honest about others’ needs with your holiday extravaganza?  Are things different for you this year?  Respect and accommodate changes.

Great Expectations
Let’s face it.  We’re all still kids when it comes to this time of year.  Maybe we aren’t waiting for the pony or the new bike anymore, but we do want “the Holidays” to be magical, perfect, and totally satisfying.

That’s just not realistic.  Things go wrong in life–often at the worst possible moment.  People who are already stressed about 100 other things over-react more easily.  Grand plans with a lot to get done become overwhelming at the last minute.  It’s just a holiday season—not the sum total of your life’s accomplishments.  Throttle back for heaven’s sake!

•   How can you streamline things so there’s more room to enjoy what’s going on?  Do what you can comfortably and be joyful with those results.

That’s the bottom line on this particular time of the year—JOY.  Usually, things are so hectic we never feel it.   Maybe a look at these three things can help you bring it back. 

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  Her passion is in capitalizing on the potential of those over 50.  For more, please visit her website http://www.mining-silver.com.  She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com.