Category Archives: Career Change

Do Cherry Blossoms Change Career?

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For the first time ever in Japan, I went to view the cherry blossoms at a famous spot with some Japanese relatives. We took a bus and several trains (this is Tokyo, so public transport usually works as planned), stopped for some delicious okonomiyaki in Ikebukuro, and eventually joined the large crowds at Chidorigafuchi.

Sakura Blossom

This was an evening visit (the photo above is from near our house a few years ago) and there were marshals with megaphones politely urging the crowds along. The trees were floodlit and so their white blossoms contrasted brilliantly with the night sky and the greenery around the imposing moat.

I dislike being in the midst of large crowds but, fortified by a nice meal and a few beers, I was able to enjoy the experience. (In years past, we had a number of family ‘o-hanami’ parties at my in-laws; where delicious home-made food, pleasantly warm weather, and a private view into the cherry blossoms of an adjoining Japanese cemetery, made for some magical afternoons.)

Throughout Tokyo, this past week has been perfect for viewing the ‘sakura’ trees. However, such splendor is short-lived and already the ground is being covered by a white carpet of petals. ‘Hanami matsuri’ is a special time of year for many Japanese; not just because Spring has now visibly arrived, but also because most companies and schools start their new year in April.

There is a sense of both beginning anew and yet continuing as before. And in the Sakura’s passing moments (and they are literally that) we can see life’s rhythm of birth and death in just a few, short days.

Now that I think of it, anticipation of exactly when the trees will be in full bloom in each part of Japan is part of the fun. Even the weather forecasters play their part – by earnestly predicting when the ‘cherry blossom’ front will makes its way from south to north of the long Japanese archipelago.

Viewed from a self-coaching perspective, the cherry blossom helps me understand how the desire to change careers is often counter-balanced by a need to stay rooted.

What if career change is made but success is short-lived?

What if it’s not really career change they want but just variety to the spice of life?

Questions, so many questions.
Do cherry blossoms change career?

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15af – Video 01 – Introduction

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Here’s the first YouTube video in the ’15 and forgiveness’ series mentioned in the ‘15af for career changers‘ post.

‘Just5Rules‘ is my YouTube channel for personal growth and career change material.
By clicking the YouTube ‘Like’ button you increase the chances that the video content will be seen by others.

Part One: 15 And Forgiveness – Introduction

Below is the embedded video, and underneath is the transcript.
Enjoy! (And please remember to tweet this post to help get the message out.)

15af – Introduction – Edited Transcript

Hello and welcome to markmccluretoday.com.

This is Mark McClure and I’ve got a special treat for you.

It’s an interview I did with Al Secunda, the author of ‘The 15-Second Principle‘.

I’ve called it ‘15 and forgiveness.’ (15af)

And when you download and listen to it, I think you’ll find out why.

But just before we start the interview, I’d like to introduce you to Al and his work,
and why it had such a big effect on me.

And how I think it can help career changers and people with major life changes, in
fact, make progress towards their dream goal or vision.

Some people dream of making big changes for the better in their life or career, yet create only ‘castles in the
air‘. Others set specific goals but avoid ever taking action.

One man who has faced all the above in his own life and finally decided to do something
about it, is motivational speaker, workshop leader coach, and author of ‘The 15-Second Principle’, Al Secunda.
(Al’s wonderful book is available on Amazon.com and really helped me keep going when I began my mid-life career change journey some years ago (2005).)

In fact, I found his approach so helpful in moving forward that I finally plucked up the courage
and asked him to do a telephone interview, my first; so you can imagine I was a little nervous.

(The interview’s) all about using the 15-second principle.

In just under two hours, Al Secunda shared freely from his experiences and knowledge, and we covered a lot of topics, and had a bit of fun too. I’m going to read out just five highlights from the first thirty minutes:

    • 1) Connecting fifteen and forgiveness with your dream goals.
      (This is probably the crux of the whole interview really.)
    • 2) The Zen-like answer to, “what can you do in fifteen seconds?”
    • 3) Why pleasure before precision helps learn a new skill.
    • 4) Discover how ‘faithing’ and ‘taking action’ go hand-in-hand.
    • (5), Getting comfortable with discomfort; what he calls the ‘inclusion factor’.

Now, there’s a whole lot more in the remaining hour or so, so you should (probably) get a pencil and a note pad out, if you’re wise, and take some notes.

(Because) It’s really valuable information.

As far as downloading the interview is concerned, I recommend if you have a cable broadband or faster internet connection, you should be able to download it no problem.

It’s a twenty five (25) megabyte file and it took me about five minutes to download the same (file) sitting here in Japan, with the file on a server in the US. So, if I can do it over (under?!) the Pacific, I think you should be able to do it with a cable broadband connection, if it’s reasonably reliable.

Now, before you start listening, I recommend that to get the very best from the interview, you first think of a big goal or dream you’ve been putting off starting for ages.

So, typically for career changers, it is in fact making progress on figuring out what they can change their career to, or moving on to something different.

Apply Al’s 15 and Forgiveness Approach Today

Have that in mind – what’s holding you up, what that dream is, then listen to the interview, and then right after it, as soon as the interview is finished, NOT the next day, not two hours later, but right away, apply Al’s 15 and forgiveness approach, and see what happens.

And if you want some support, or you want to let others know how you are getting on, just drop by my blog, at markmccluretoday dot com, and let me know. Leave a comment in one of the posts, the latest post, and i’ll see it. And if you’ve got something useful to share, I’ll make sure everybody else knows about it too.

Okay, let’s start the interview now. Enjoy.

- Mark McClure

PS: The Original 2 Hour MP3 Interview with Al Secunda

The original ‘15 and forgiveness‘ audio interview is available here:
http://www.markmccluretoday.com/fifteen-and-forgiveness.html

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15af for Career Changers

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This is the opening post in a series designed to highlight the wisdom and experience of motivational author, Al Secunda. I first wrote about Al over four years ago in this post titled, “15 and Forgiveness in Action“. His book, ‘The 15-Second Principle“, is one of my favorite personal growth books, partly because he’s been up close and personal with very successful A-list Hollywood stars, as their some time tennis coach.

Al’s counterintuitive approach to goal setting has as its premise a seeming contradiction.
I’m roughly paraphrasing here but “either you don’t really want this goal OR you’re scared to death of it.”

Career Change Faint Heart

There’s a lot of nonsense talked by so-called gurus and coaches who trumpet the “do what you love” mantra to often unhappy people looking for direction in their choice of vocation.

It’s nonsense because it appeals to people who dream of career change but would run a mile if they actually had to engage critical thinking skills, and then do it. Alas, some of them get caught in subtle co-dependency marketing webs spun by ‘teachers’ whose primary aim is to build their own streams of income, usually at their clients’ expense.

Far, far better for these “castles in the air” dreamers to discover by themselves, and mostly for free, that career change is probably NOT for them.

Al’s book is a guide to helping you ditch goals you thought you (or often, someone else in your life) wanted to achieve before much harm is done, or time and money ‘wasted’…

… leaving you freer and happier to pursue those goals that really DO scare you to death!

15 and Forgiveness now on YouTube

Although the original two-hour mp3 audio interview still gets downloaded, I want to present the content to a much bigger audience than this blog. I also want to add a transcript for people to skim through.

I will therefore be adding the interview to YouTube as a multi-media series with a link to each transcript on this site.

I encourage you to share these YouTube videos with your friends and followers using social media tools such as FaceBook, Twitter, Google Plus and others.

15af – Video 01 – Introduction

This video introduces Al Secunda and his book, The 15-Second Principle, setting the scene for the interview itself.
The video is 4m 47s and the transcript is around 700 words.
Click ‘15af – Video 01 – Introduction‘ to watch this video and read the transcript.

The Original 2 Hour MP3 Interview with Al Secunda

The original ‘15 and forgiveness‘ audio interview is available here:

http://www.markmccluretoday.com/fifteen-and-forgiveness.html

- Mark ‘scared-to-death goal setter‘ McClure

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Rediscovering Willpower, and the 63/37 Rule

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I came across the UK Guardian’s review of ‘Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength, by Roy F Baumeister and John Tierney‘ and thought, “oh dear, here we go again. A new book just in time for those readers now wavering on New Year’s resolutions but a month old.”

Having read only the review, but not the book, what I have to say here concerns the building of (good) habits.

In my life, I’m sure that willpower had something to do with ingraining habitual behavior but I doubt it was the primary motivator.

Exercising The Willpower Muscle

That’s because the willpower muscle often wilts without a regular dose of ‘mental willagra’ (my new drug of choice!).

Fortunately, this is easy to administer…just set a goal that’s achieved almost imperceptibly.

For example, say you want to be able to do 50 push ups daily but can only manage 30 without collapsing in a crumpled heap.
What you do is start with 25 (say) in the morning, followed by another 25 at night.

There you go. You’re doing 50 per day, just not all at once.

Do that for one week, taking a day off to recover. (That would be Friday for me. When I was an active athlete we had Friday’s off and it really did add meaning to the ‘TGIF’ moniker.)

Week two would add just one rep to the morning set and reduce one rep from the evening set. That’s 26 before breakfast and 24 before sleep.

Week two would see a 27 / 23 split between morning and evening.

In just 23 weeks you’ll reach 50 in the morning and be rewarded with none at night!
And what’s next? Well, how about aiming for 60 by starting with a 30/30 split?

100 Push Ups a Day

Some months ago I started with a 50/50 split and a goal of 100 push ups.
I’m now at the 63/37 mark and pleased to say that this activity is gradually becoming habitual.

So much so, that I find it odd when I don’t do the exercise because of illness, late night socializing etc.

Willpower’s taking a back seat on this goal.

- Mark McClure

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First Book: Self-Coaching For Career Change And Personal Growth

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In 2008 I had an information product idea called, “Self Coaching For Career And Life Change“.
Alas, this went nowhere because of two career-related changes I made, and one that Nature imposed quite suddenly:

  1. I started a freelance writing business.
  2. I stopped coaching clients directly and decided to let my words here be my ‘coaching voice’.
  3. The earthquake and tsunami disaster in North-Eastern Japan on 3/11, last year

Almost four years on from that post and I’ve been thinking about writing a book – a real one, not an eBook. Despite the rise of tablet computers and eBook readers, there is still a very large market for physical books.

The Effortless Authorship System – What?

What convinced me to start writing a book was an email from my good friend James Brown, a successful Internet Marketing consultant, and also based in Japan. He had been working on his own book (due out in 2012) with an experienced business ghostwriter, Michael Levin. Of course, being the consummate marketer that he is, not only did he create a book with Mr. Levin’s assistance, but he also partnered with him to promote Michael’s effortless authorship system for ‘writing’ and self-publishing books.

The Effortless Authorship System is designed to get rookie authors past the roadblocks (both physical and psychological) that often frustrate writers and destroy their publishing dreams. I purchased the course during an ‘early-bird’ marketing launch and also signed up for the monthly mentoring option to see what I can learn about writing and self-publishing books ‘behind the scenes.’

Which Book should I write?

I’ve been thinking about the theme of my first book for a few weeks now and it’s clear that there are two possibilities.

Book choice #1 is centered on the topic of (mid) career change and personal growth; something this blog has focused on for over four years.
Having been through two career changes so far (in my mid-20s and again in mid-life), I have learned a lot and would like to pass on that knowledge to others.

By ‘others’, I mean people who want to make changes in their life or career (the two are often inter-linked, in my experience) but hesitate to put plans into action, or falter on following through.

Of course, I could compile a top 20 list of posts from this blog and use them to publish an e-book. These posts might even be sufficient to publish a 100+ page book. However, I’ve been selective in what I’ve shared here, while the blog itself has changed direction as my plans have changed e.g. from offering coaching products and services, through to describing my transition from coaching to freelance writing and teaching.

While I hope ‘markmccluretoday‘ is still interesting to readers, I don’t think it’s the only ‘communications vehicle’ to get this message into the world. I believe that a book, well-planned and researched, is also able to reach a wide audience.

Book choice #2 is focused on how to get the best from content marketing assets in the Asia-Pacific region; a topic that fits well into my freelance technology writer’s blog.
The ideal reader is a marketing manager for an Information Technology vendor or reseller; someone who is based in the Asia-Pacific region, and charged with providing marketing content (e.g. white papers, case studies, blogs and  social media conversations) that prospects and customers can identify with.

And The Winner Is…

From the post’s title you might have guessed that book choice #1 is going to be my first (self-) published book. The core ‘self-coaching’ message strongly appeals because I aim at living it every day. And I’ve had many conversations with friends (online and offline) and coaches who say they’d like to know more about self-coaching as a strategy for dealing with career and life change.

So, ‘Self-coaching for career change and personal growth‘ it shall be. That’s a working title and good enough for now.

What I will probably do is blog here about topics connected with the book’s theme, and post on justfiverules.com about the project of creating and publishing the physical book.

Book #2 Waiting for CSMA/CD Clearance

While my focus is on writing the self-coaching book, not much is going to happen publicly with the “content marketing in Asia-Pacific” book. I’m already planning at least one lead generation report for samuraiwriter.com. And there’s also a monthly newsletter launch to attend to.

Your Questions and feedback on book #1 are very welcome.

Mark ‘self-coaching book’ McClure

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