What are some of your daily delicious habits?  I’d love to hear.  Comment below.

If you would like more information on the book “Tap Into Action:  Discover Your Passionate Work” go to http://www.amazingmondays.com/products/tia-work.html The book is on sale until June 15th!

Dance with Joy,

Leanna Fredrich, Life Coach

Leanna@AmazingMondays.com

Find out  how to tap away your blocks with the book  Tap Into Action:  Discovering Your Passionate Work. For more information go to http://www.amazingmondays.com/products/tia-work.html

Part 2 of this interview series is all about the blocks that stop us from even taking the time to find our passion-filled work and what to do about it.  I hope you enjoy it!

Dance with Joy,

Leanna Fredrich

Life Coach

“The great tragedy of life is not death, but what dies inside of us while we live.”
— Norman Cousins

“And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful then the risk it took to blossom.”
— Anais Nin

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild
and precious life?”
– Mary Oliver

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” Alan Cohen

Thinking it Through…

Have you ever noticed how often people over forty talk about old age? When I really started listening, old-age conversations were everywhere! For example, I was at my son’s Taekwondo school talking to one of the mom’s. She told me that she had always wanted to take Taekwando but now she was too old. Had she ever noticed the couple attending the same school , in their 70′s, enthusiastically earning their black-belts? She had not, because her beliefs about what you can and can’t do after age forty were blinding her. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that someone was too old to start a business or a new career I would be a very rich woman. I was completely shocked as I had a conversation with a healthy, 40ish woman who said that although she would love to travel she was too old to take those kinds of risks! I’ve heard all kinds of “too old” beliefs… I’m too old to fall in love, enjoy amusement parks, learn a new sport, exercise, go back to school… the list goes on. How sad. It is like dieing before you’re dead!

The truth is as a generation we are living longer. Many of us will live to be well into our 90′s. Do we really want to start playing it small and safe when we have fifty more years of life to go?! The way some people are headed by the time they are in their 60′s they won’t leave their houses. I think it is past time to take a look at our beliefs about aging and get clear on how we wish to use the next 50 years. It is so sad to see people shrink and play it safe at the very time when their lives are full of such potential. Usually during the second half of our lives we have more freedom. Our families are almost raised and on their own, we have a wealth of life experience, we know more about ourselves and the world. This is the time to really come into our own and play big. We need to have adventures, take risks that are meaningful to us, and grow, grow, grow. Live while you’re alive!

Challenge:

1. Where in your life are you playing small?

2. What are your beliefs about getting older?

3. Are your beliefs growing or shrinking you?

4. What new beliefs do you need to adopt in order to live a big, meaningful life ?

Dance with Joy,
Leanna Fredrich
Life Coach

Job-seekers want to know: How do I price myself in this erratic job market? If I set my sights too high in the compensation department, I’ll lose out on opportunities. If I price myself too modestly, I could leave money on the table—and worse, I could lose credibility with employers who won’t value my skills any more highly than I value them myself.

The most common mistake job-seekers make is to price their skills based on their current or most recent comp level. If you’re in a high-paying industry or company, your past or current salary could be the perfect measure of what you’re worth in the market. But if you’re not—if you’ve come from or are still working in one of the many companies paying below-market salaries—you’d be shooting yourself in the foot by relying on your past employer’s assessment of your value. You can do a better job of pricing yourself, than that.

Homeowners use the Web site Zillow.com to gain intelligence about their house’s value. Zillow uses tax records and home-sale data to arrive at house-by-house pricing estimates (called “Zestimates”) that help homeowners make a value argument when nearby comparables are hard to come by. What’s great about Zillow is that the longer the database continues to be populated with new datapoints, the more accurate it becomes.
Where to Look

Job-seekers need a Zillow of their own, to price their skills against the market and leave behind the tired “what my last company paid me” measure. Here are few tools to help the comp-befuddled get a sturdy comp number to guide them in their job-search travels:

• GLASSDOOR.COM is something like Zillow for working people. It uses real-person input to arrive at salary estimates for various jobs as well as reviews of specific employers.

• PAYSCALE.COM is another terrific source for job-by-job salary information, factoring into details such as your location, the school you graduated from, and how long you’ve been on the job. To receive your free report, you’ll have to wade through a spammy page or two hawking online degree programs, but the information is good to have, whether you’re job-seeking or just checking your market rate.

• SALARY.COM is the hoariest of the online salary-data sites, with good information based on Zip Code and job title.

To supplement the online pay-level data you collect, it’s a great idea to check in with a local headhunter or two to make sure your numbers fit the market and those of other candidates with similar backgrounds to yours.

Once you’ve got a number you are comfortable with, you can start to talk confidently with employers about your salary expectations. And you must: Don’t plow through the interview process without having a brass-tacks compensation chat by the end of your second interview round. You’ve got something to sell, and you’ve got to share its cost, the same way your Realtor posts the listing price of your home on the multiple listing service. When you’re selling a house, you can’t take a buyer through the place, chat about the neighborhood, and then ask “What do you think it’s worth?” You’ve got to name your price up front. It’s the same way in a job search—coyness about compensation is not part of the deal.

Often, caught up in the “they like me!” vortex of a fast-moving interview stream, candidates think this way: “I really like what I’m learning about the job; I just hope it pays enough. I won’t bring it up until they do, so that I don’t seem too greedy.” This is a bad way to proceed, because it sets you up to take a job that doesn’t pay your rate. Once you’ve invested time and emotional energy in the selection process, you’re at risk of making a bad decision rather than walking away. That’s bad for your long-term earnings as well as your credibility.
Don’t Play Cat-and-Mouse

Since you’ve taken the time to determine your market value, you’ve to state it—proclaim it, in fact—when you and a potential employer begin to discuss a job offer in earnest.

Some job-seekers play hard-to-get with their salary expectations, waiting for an employer to name its target pay range for a position. They do this so that in case their target pay requirement is $110K and the company has budgeted $115K for the position, once the company lays out its pay scale the candidate can position himself to collect every dime of it—forestalling the risk that the “extra” $5K will be left on the table.

In my view as a former HR exec, this is silly. The odds that your well-researched salary level is far off the mark are low, and the odds that it’s off the mark on the low side are even lower. And besides, if you ask for $110K and get it, what’s to be unhappy about? If your employer is the sort that values talent, all the better for you—there should be promotions and bonuses in your future. Rather than play cat-and-mouse with an employer over the issue of “who speaks first,” I’d advise a job-seeker to say, at the second interview or the phone call inviting him to the second interview, “Shall we talk about comp ranges now? I’d hate to waste your time or mine if we’re not in the ballpark with respect to the salary level.”

With that entree, ninety-nine and a half out of 100 company reps will ask you, “So, how much are you looking for?” You’ll name your number, and let the recruiter or hiring manager react. If you’ve done your homework, you shouldn’t be far out of line from the company’s own expectations. And if you’re too rich for their blood, you wouldn’t want to work there anyway.

Liz Ryan is an expert on the new-millennium workplace and a former Fortune 500 HR executive. www.lizryan.com

“The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.” Ben Stein

“Decide upon your major definite purpose in life and then organize all your activities around it.” Brian Tracy

Thinking it Through…

We hear a lot about the need for having a balanced life. “If I only had more “life balance” it would be better.” Give it up! We will never have a balanced life nor would we probably want one. What most of us want is a life full of doing what is meaningful to us and what we are passionate about. Think about someone who is passionate about their life. Is it balanced or are they spending huge amounts of time doing exactly what they value? Often we talk about needing more balance when what we really mean is that we are spending a lot of our life doing things that we don’t care about. That’s when our lives feel unbalanced. It is when we are spending our lives on “shoulds” that we start feeling futile. (For example the day I had last week full of running errands. Ugh!) So instead of worrying that your life is not balanced ask yourself how much joy and passion is in your life? Perhaps having a life full of passion will require spending a entire day painting, hiking or researching a topic of interest. Is that balanced? No, but it is fulfilling and purposeful. So my challenge for you this month is to discover the joys of an “unbalanced” life. Load your days up with activities that are meaningful and enjoyable to you.

Challenge:

1. What do you wish to fill your life with?.

2. What are the “shoulds” in your life that you want to let go?

3. What percentage of your day is filled with activities you love?

4. Take steps today to increase the percentage of time spent on those things you are passionate about.

Dance with Joy,
Leanna Fredrich
Life Coach
Leanna@AmazingMondays.com