Are you doing work that you love? If not, why not?

While it’s true that many of us are doing what we’re doing out of necessity — we gotta pay the bills, right? — creating a meaningful career can often be rooted in actually planning for it.

Where do you want to be in 10 years? And what steps do you need to take to get there — today, tomorrow, next month, next year, and so on?

Even if you’re not doing work that you love right now, charting out your career plan can bring a new dimension and meaning to your present situation. It will not only help you establish the path to your ideal professional reality, it will show you what you can do right now to help you achieve it.

Some of the elements of a career development plan include:

• Short-term goals
• Long-term goals
• Timeline
• Action steps
• Opportunities
• Potential barriers
• Re-evaluation intervals

1. Being vague about goals, timeline and actions
2. Not building in and taking time to re-evaluate and adjust their plan

Some people treat a career development plan like a New Year’s resolution: They have an aspiration (summit a mountain,) but don’t set out a timeline with specific actions to prepare and motivate them to reach their target.

When things come up during the year that get in the way, they lose momentum and give up. The same thing happens with career development plans.

Guest Post by Life and Career Coach Julie Morris

Many of us have heard that maintaining a work-life balance is important, but not everyone understands why.

In today’s world, with technological advances happening every day, it is getting easier and easier to stay connected to your job, even when you’re at home or on vacation.

There are often expectations to answer that email within the hour, or do a favor for your boss which extends to weekends or evenings when you’re ‘off the clock.’

The increase in working hours is putting your brain in overdrive, and as a result, your stress levels are skyrocketing with little downtime to recover.

Here’s a little more information on the importance of maintaining a good work-life balance and a few tips on how to achieve it.

Finding the right balance between work and play is possible, it just may take a few lifestyle adjustments.

Here are a few ways you can be more balanced in your day-to-day life:

Communication

Anytime your home life demands your attention, tell your higher ups that you’re dealing with personal issues.

Negotiate Your Workspace

Research your company’s policy about flexible hours for things like doctor appointments, and inquire about working from home. If you could telecommute a few days a week, it would allow you to dedicate a few hours for uninterrupted, hard work. Then you can use the extra time you have for yourself.

Unplug

Sometimes that device glued to your hand can hurt your quality personal time. It makes life easier, but turn it off when you’re hanging out with the family or enjoying some peace and quiet.

Don’t Be a Yes-Man

Don’t feel guilty when you don’t commit to something. It is impossible to please everyone, so invest your time in activities that interest you and bring you joy.

Get Messy

Don’t worry about keeping everything squeaky clean. That time you’ve dedicated to scrubbing the toilet can go toward work or taking a nature walk. That said, it is helpful to make sure your home is optimized to reduce stress.

There is a great deal of research on the positive impact that meditation can have on your overall wellness. Some of those include:

• Reduced stress
• Reduced anxiety
• Lower blood pressure
• Better pain management
• Improved immune system
• Higher levels of empathy
• Better recall and organization of information
• Prevention of age-related pre-frontal cortex (brain) shrinking
• Possible help with depression

One of the great things about meditation is that everyone can do it, you only need to find a practice that’s right for you.

Here are Kelli’s tips on how to establish your own meditation practice.

While it’s a great idea to attend a class or group for meditation, you can definitely start meditation on your own; here’s a simple approach:

• Start small — begin with 5 minutes and build from there
• Ideally meditate in the same place, at the same time, every day. This gives your body and brain the signal that it is time to stop and breathe
• Set a timer so you can relax into the experience
• Sit in an upright, comfortable position
• Gently close your eyes
• Focus on the breath, breathing in and out slowly
• Do your best to get three breaths together in a row before your mind goes sideways and you have to pull it back to ‘breathing in and breathing out’
• End with a kind word to yourself or others

As you get more comfortable you can (or not) increase the amount of time you meditate.

Some practices recommend a specific amount of time, although the science is still out on just how long a meditation session should be to reap the most benefit. Find what works best for you.

Meditation is meant to be an enhancement to your life. It is not meant to keep you isolated from the rest of your world, spending the majority of your day alone, and separate. And while some days might be easier than others, most people report feeling better after meditating.

Remember that meditation is a practice: The more you do it, the easier it gets. You are training your brain, so be patient with yourself.

Would you like more information on meditation, or the weekly group that Kelli facilitates? Please feel free to contact her.

The brain processes an enormous amount of information every second of the day, and is very adept in filtering out that which it doesn’t deem ‘important.’ This is an essential function, and it enables us to prioritize information that we believe will have an immediate impact on our lives.

But this same function can, for better or for worse, lead us to filter out and ignore stimuli that is not considered essential to our survival. Quite literally — and often — we can only hear what we want to hear.

One of the results of this process can be cognitive bias, which may in turn form the basis for how we relate to others. Through our own lived experiences, we create a shorthand that we use to interpret what other people say, using a lens that has been developed over time to make sense of the words and actions of others.

Relying solely on this shorthand can introduce conflict between people who are interpreting things from a completely different perspective. It can also inhibit effective collaboration if people aren’t willing to take a step back from their ideas and be open to others.

One way to break through our own perceptions is to engage in Active Listening. Some of the elements of this process include:

• Try to understand before trying to be understood: In practice, this means that you stay focused on the speaker, truly listening to what they say, instead of half-listening in order to prepare your response. Ask yourself to hear not only what they’re saying, but what it means for them.
• Be non-judgmental: Before you bring your ideas to the conversation and make a judgment about what the speaker has said, you should hear their own judgment of the topic or idea. This allows for empathetic listening, and gives you an opportunity to further understand their perspective.
• Stay focused: Give the speaker your full attention so that you’re able to truly hear what they’re saying. Keeping eye contact and exhibiting positive body language shows the speaker that you are engaged and present.
• Give space: It’s important to know when to speak, and when to allow the speaker the space to reveal what they are really thinking. If at all possible, don’t interrupt the speaker. How they reveal their perspective is just as important as the information they’re sharing.

Now, how can we learn and practice these skills so that we’re able to use them in our personal and professional lives? One method is through the art of improvisation.