Page 83 - Talane Miedaner - Coach Yourself to a New Career_ 7 Steps to Reinventing Your Professional Life (2010)

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ood. Now that you have perfected
your present job (even if it is the
temp position you’ve taken to make
Gends meet while you look for the
real career you want) and figured out your priorities and personal
requirements, you are in a much better place to attract new and
better professional opportunities. This brings up the question
of what it is you really want to do. Maybe you already know the
answer, or maybe you have no clue. In any case, whether you are
starting your own business or looking for another career, the next
step is to design your ideal life. Where do you want to live? What
sort of people or community do you favor? How would you like
to spend your time? Your first order here is to let go of media-
inspired visions of success. You won’t need the big house, fancy
car, or expensive clothes if your ideal career is to teach English to
children in Africa.
As a coach, I can cite several excellent examples of colleagues
who modeled putting one’s life ahead of a fancy lifestyle. They
made sure that their careers supported their ideal lives brilliantly.
Thomas Leonard, the founder of Coach U, bought a big RV and
traveled all over the United States while coaching from phone and
computer—truly the first portable coach! And Jeffery Raim, one
of the first presidents of the International Coach Federation, used
to coach on Mondays and take the rest of the week off to ski. Most
people do it the other way around: they get a fancy lifestyle and
then have to work at a job they don’t particularly enjoy to support
that lifestyle. You may need to ditch the lifestyle to get the life you
really want.
While most of my clients are more prosperous after they ori-
ent their lives around their natural abilities, strengths, values, and
passions, a few people choose careers that are personally reward-
ing but are not necessarily financially rewarding. I wouldn’t say
that it is always true that if you do what you love, the money will
follow—van Gogh is a case in point. More often than not, though,
my clients end up making more money than when they were slog-
ging it out doing something they didn’t really enjoy—sometimes