Job Schmob

Job Schmob This article originally appeared in the 5th edition of the When I Grow Up newsletter. If ya didnt get your copy hand-delivered in your Inbox, along with a donut some coffee, then click here to subscribe. Please note youll need to provide your own donut coffee. As a Twitter addict (yes, my hubby refers to Twitter as my boyfriend), I have a saved search that lets me know anytime anyone mentions career coach on Twitter. While I set it up to find prospective clients, its lead me more often to fellow career coaches peddling their wares. Recently, I saw a tweet from a coach that made me give my computer a dirty look. The tweet said: Need a new job? Consider a career coach! Now, theres nothing technically wrong with that tweet. Nothing offensive to any race, gender, or religion but it was offensive to me. I was mad at that career coach for representing herself as a job-finder. I dont want to help people find jobs. Jobs suck. Jobs are the places you go to die a slow death, to kill time, to live for the weekend and curse the 5 (5!) days in between. Jobs are chores for grown-ups. I dont want to get my clients jobs. I want to get them lives. Passionate, fulfilling, exciting, kick-ass lives that could be loved from the time they wake up in the morning until the time they go to bed at night. I dont want them to be bored, or to struggle, or to feel time slipping away. But I dont want to wave fairy dust get them out of their chains, either. I want them to work for it. I want to work with them. I want to be there while they climb out of the hole start scaling the mountain, so they can enjoy the view from the top that much more. I want them to open their eyes in the morning think, This day is going to be awesome, because the life that I created for myself is awesome. People with jobs wake up in the morning think, This day is gonna suck, because my job sucks. Ever think of how you can fast forward the next 10 hours until you can come home again to your life? I have. So yes, Im a life coach. And yes, Im a career coach. I think theyre one and the same. Your career should be part of your life, not part of your death. And thats why Im drawn to creatives people that are open to living an extraordinary life, to coloring outside the lines, to knit me hats for thanks. If youre an accountant who wants to keep crunching numbers in a new place, and you need some resume clean-up and a plan to get hired elsewhere, then hire a career coach. But if youre an accountant who dreams of building websites or singing with a band or knitting hats, then I can help. If youre an engineer who wants to find something passionate to do to pay the bills while youre going to school for holistic healing life coaching, then I can help. If youre an actor (but havent been on an audition in months) whos stuck waiting tables and you know youre meant for something more, then I can help. If youre a freelance writer who wants to become more focused organized while figuring out his balance between passion revenue, then I can help. Ive worked with all of these people: with the engineer cum life coach/holistic healer deciding to become a teacher until she feels comfortable striking out on her own, with the actor finding her passion in real estate becoming a training agent in her company in a years time (she was even featured in a cover story in New York magazine), with the freelance writer getting started on his second book while landing a full-time writing gig with a major local news site. If youre a Tiko, or a Jacki, or a Mark, I can help you. Thats my passionate, fulfilling, exciting, kick-ass life. Whats yours?