Vol 1 Iss 10

Thank you to everyone who mailed back their Personal Challenge. I heard about everything from finishing a term paper to a recurrance of cancer. Everyone faces challenge in their own unique way and my heart and support are with each of you. Thank you again for including me in the important parts of your life.

I realized my column about scanners last week touched on an important issue for my readers. One person simply e-mailed back "thanks!" as though something real and significant had been noticed and said out loud. Validating the truth is a powerful way to move forward!

To continue the idea of "scanning," this issue's topic is about harnessing the power of chance events. Imagine: career by circumstance. What could be more obvious?

On the home front, I just returned from a Dance Benefit/Art Auction thrown by my daugher and her sweetie to raise funds for their trip to Taiwan. They topped off the day by taking me and his mom to dinner for Mother's Day. It was lovely. I'm very proud that she has surrounded herself with such loving and supportive friends.

P.S. In honor of our WWII vets that stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6 1944, I will be publishing a link to an exerpt from my Aunt Polly's diary in my next issue. She was a nurse that landed in Normandy and tells an amazing story. Makes me proud of my heritage! Stay tuned!

We are blessed (cursed?) to live in a culture that rewards those who decide quickly. There does not seem to be room for someone who is not Focused! On Target! or In Control! These people are called wishy washy, or easily swayed. You're still "finding yourself."

But what if undecided means you simply don't have all the data yet? You don't want to be bound by a plan that is obsolete before it's even fully formulated.

The truth is, all career decidiosn are ultimately based on happenstance. From one perspective, it was happenstance that landed you in your family, that gave you your ethnic or social heritage, that trained you in your primary language and created your early education. Every single one of these factors has immense bearing on the kind of career you choose and your potential for success.

So you see, it is normal, desirable and inevitable for unplanned events to influence your career. They've been doing it all along.

Look at your own history. Sometime in your life you were in the right place at the right time, a time when random luck impacted your life. For me, it was when I was working at the Dept. of Labor and Employment in the Customer Service area of the Division of Worker's Compensation. A complete mismatch. An administrative position came open in Staff Development and I transferred over. It completely changed my career direction. If it were not for my time there, learning the skills of workshop design and presentation through osmosis, I could not possibly have the career I have now. Who knows where I'd be?

There are two lessons to be learned here. First, exploration generates chance opportunities. I learned about that job because I kept my eyes open. If you're not asking questions and being curious, you'll never happen along onto something that will be interesting enough to attract you to ask questions. And second, learning and practicing these skills will help you seize opportunities:

~ Curiosity - explore, explore, explore. You will create learning opportunites.

~ Persistance - nothing is ever accomplished without repeated effort, especially when you're

faced with setbacks.

~ Flexibility - as the old saying goes "Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out

of shape!" The more rigid you are in your thinking, the less opportunity will appear.

~ Optimism - look at all possibilites as do-able and attainable. They are!

~ Risk taking - as Ray Bradbury said, "sometimes you have to jump off the cliff and grow your

wings on the way down." You may not have to jump, but it's important to be willing.

Start looking into your past to see where dumb luck served you. The trick is to put yourself in a position where dumb luck can find you again. See the Career Tip below for a three-step process to help it along.

As a Career Coach, I can be your partner through this process. Please contact me at debra@forwardmomentum.com for more information!

The first goal is to see the thing itself

in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly

No symbolism, please.

The second goal is to see each individual thing

as unified, as one, with all the other

ten thousand things.

In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and the second goals,

to see the universal and the particular,

Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

So here are the three steps:

1. Develop your curiosity (have you heard this before?) Ask yourself these questions:

~ What is a chance event that you want to happen? Sometimes it's important to

decide what you DONT want to happen first, then work backward from there.

~ How would your life change if you acted on it?/How would your life change if

you did nothing? It's important to be very curious about the impact of what you wish for.

2. Transform curiosity into opportunites for learning and exploration. Ask:

~ How can you act now to increase the likelihood of that happening?

~ What do you need to know in order to create your chance event?

~ How will you find out?

3. Actively look for chance opportunities. If you're not looking actively, you won't see it.

~ What am I not seeing?

~ Where am I not looking?

Let me know how it goes for you!

You, or someone you know, are looking at retirement in a few years. You're fretting your money situation and thinking this is how to plan ahead. Yet, you have this nagging feeling that there's more. Well there is. You can have a retirement that is fulfilling and meaningful, but you have to plan for it.

I have partnered with a financial planner, Evonne Ryan, from Life Transition Planners, Inc. to present a highly interactive workshop for those who are approaching retirement.

We are inviting only our clients and their referrals in order to test our dynamic process for planning a life with meaning after you retire. Please let me know if you are interested.

There will be two seminars presented in the Denver/Boulder area in May. To download a flier with the details, click here. or call 303-933-6226. Hope to see you there!

You are free to use material from Moving Forward! in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including a live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear. The attribution should read:

"By Debra DeVilbiss, CPCC, of Forward Momentum, LLC. Please visit Debra's website at http://www.ForwardMomentum.com for additional articles and resources on creating your right livelihood."

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