The two most common circumstances in which it may be right for you to take a so-so job are when you need the income and the dream job is not available or doesn’t pay enough, and when you need to build your resume or network in order to get your dream job.

The Pays-the-Bills Job. We all need to keep a roof over our heads and food in our bellies, and many of us support families as well. This takes money, and unless you have an independent source of income, you may need to take a job that pays the bills but doesn’t satisfy your career yearnings. There is no shame in this — in fact, it is quite honorable. And it need not derail your dreams permanently. You may be able to pursue your passion outside of working hours as an avocation or as a volunteer (which may lead eventually to being able to earn a living at it). Even if you never earn a living doing what you love, staying engaged in your passion allows you to continue to grow and develop personally. Continuing to work toward your dream can also help you to keep the ups and downs of a humdrum job in perspective. What you do for a living need not define you; instead, choose to define yourself in terms of your passion. One famous example is Wallace Stevens, who had a day job in the insurance business and wrote some of the 20th century’s most beautiful, challenging, and influential poetry.

The Stepping-Stone or Bridge Job.  If you don’t yet have the skills, experience, or contacts to get your dream job, you may need to take one or more intermediate steps to get from here to there. The classic example of the stepping stone job is working your way up from the mailroom. In this scenario an inexperienced but ambitious youth takes an entry-level job in order to learn and grow and move up the ranks to his or her dream job. However, and increasingly common tactic is the bridge job: when someone who is established in a career wishes to change careers and may need to build a bridge from one industry to another or from one role to another, or both. If the career transition is a big leap, you may be better off making changes incrementally, thus building the resume and contacts you need to move into the new industry or new role. (For example, a corporate lawyer who wants to be a literary agent may take a transitional job working as in-house counsel at a publishing house.) In either case, whether you are starting out at entry level or transitioning later in your career, you may find yourself in a job that doesn’t thrill you in order to build the resume that will get you the job you really want. Focus on how to make the most of the job you have: learn everything you can, develop a strong resume, and actively build your network.  And keep your eyes on the prize — the job you really want.

Choosing a job for pragmatic reasons doesn’t have to mean you are “settling” in the negative sense. Rather, it may signal a mature and longer-term understanding of what it takes to pursue your dream. One caveat: beware the fear-based decision. Before you take a job that doesn’t inspire you, consider whether the decision is motivated by a realistic assessment of your current and long-term financial and career prospects or whether it is driven by fear — of failure, of the what people might think, or of the unknown. Sometimes fear dresses up like rationality, and it is hard to achieve your dreams if you are basing your choices in fear.

In the bad old low-tech days, we used to submit resumes and cover letters (on bond paper!) by mail. Even with mail-merge programs, it was fairly labor-intensive and not to be done on a whim. Our resumes were then reviewed by hand with all the other resumes, and we typically got a letter or phone call in response. (I can still remember those form rejection letters “your qualifications do not match our needs at this time…..”) Now the ease and speed of submission has vastly increased the number of job seekers for any posted position. Their resumes are frequently electronically reviewed for key words, with only a small fraction ever being seen by human eyeballs. As a result, simply submitting an application without a personal referral has an extremely low likelihood of success — maybe as low as 4% of jobs are found that way (down from 30% or so previously). There is simply such a vast quantity of applicants that unless they have an inside connection, qualified candidates are unlikely to rise to the to top of the heap.

In this environment, job seekers must invest more time in making personal connections — networking — and they must clearly differentiate themselves from other candidates — develop their own “brand.”

Making personal connections — face-to-face, on the phone and yes, online — is essential to a successful search. The majority of professional positions are filled by personal referral of some sort. Thus, you must cultivate and activate you personal network at every opportunity. this means everything from simply letting people know you are looking (be as specific as possible so they know how to refer you) to arranging more formal networking interviews with people connected to the field or organization in which you wish to find work. Cast your net as wide as possible, as you significantly increase your odds of finding a job the more extended your network. Remember that your network extends beyond people you know to the people they know. And always make sure you know what your are offering and what your are asking for.

Also thanks to the volume of applicants, differentiating yourself from the general herd will make the difference between getting the job and being an also-ran. Forgive me if this sounds crass, but a job search is really a marketing campaign — with you as the product. so take time to identify your brand. What value do you provide? What is your “special sauce” that sets you apart from the competition? What are a small handful of attributes or accomplishments that exemplify who you are and what you can do for a potential employer? This is your brand, and it should infuse your resume and cover letter and is the basis for your elevator pitch. Write several and try them out on your friends. It may feel weird or unnatural at first, and you will want to practice.

So don’t spend (waste) all your job search time and energy on Monster or other job postings. Instead, invest in these two important tools — network and brand. Yes, the effort is greater, but so is the pay-off — a job!

This body-mind connection suggests some physical ways to help you the next time you feel stuck or confined in your thinking. Each of the following actions produces a physical experience that just might facilitate more creative and innovative thought:

• Take a hike, or walk. Better to walk freely than in a confined corridor.
• Embody open, spacious thinking. Leave your office, cubicle, or desk and go to a more open space.
• Take an agile, active stance. Even if you can’t leave your office, get up and move. Standing can help. (You can do this on a conference call.)
• Assume an upright, strong posture. If you can’t get up, sit up straight, roll your shoulders back, and take a deep breath that fills your lungs. (You can do this in a meeting.)
• Get away from your screen. Your computer monitor is also a box. Turn it off. Take a pad or white board and jot down your thoughts longhand.
• Shed new light on the situation — go to the window, open the drapes or shades. Open the window if possible.

See if your mind takes a cue from your body. You may notice any opening in your thinking or shift in your perspective. Consider what other literal or metaphorical boxes you might be in. How might you move outside them?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get outside this particular box …..

In the post-romantic era, romance and sex are available outside of marriage. Thus, people often get married and stay married for purely practical reasons (procreation and property — much the same reasons that people got married for centuries before the romantic era). Yet, despite the many changes in the social and economic environment, traditional marital expectations of lifelong monogamy haven’t changed. This disconnect between romantic expectations and pragmatic reality gives rise to the semi-happy marriage. Or, if you are a glass-half-empty kind of person, semi-unhappy marriage.

Haag suggests that the environment and choices we make compound this marital dissatisfaction:

• Our upward mobility (defining a rising standard of living according to wealth) drives both spouses to work long hours and pursue separate paths so that they don’t connect to one another and their relationship suffers.
• Modern living environments (isolated/suburban) prevent us from forming social bonds with other adults and leave us entirely emotionally dependent on our spouse to meet all our needs, which is simply unrealistic for most couples.
• Current trends in child-rearing which place historically unprecedented emphasis on the centrality of children and the primacy of their needs may lead spouses to neglect one another and their relationship.
• The expectation of sexual monogamy all too frequently leads to a marriage that is either monogamous and sexually unsatisfactory to one or both partners or a marriage in which one or both partners cheat.

All of the above might lead to a semi-happy or downright unhappy marriage, but how might a re-imagination of marriage lead to more happiness? Haag anecdotally explores some possible alternatives: (1) embrace downward mobility and choose to work less and spend more time together having fun, (2) choose a less isolated, urban, or communal living environment, (3) make the kids less primary and focus more on each other, or (4) re-write the marital sexual contract. The first three options merit some consideration, though they hardly represent a re-invention of marriage, but Haag gives them pretty short shrift. Instead, she devotes the entire second half of the book to discussing monogamy, infidelity, and non-monogamous alternatives to traditional marriage, including swinging and “open marriage.” Here is where the book really goes south for me. The author, clearly titillated by the topic, conducts her own first-person research (with her husband’s permission). As she chronicles her own experience placing personal ads and searching for swingers parties, the book takes on all-too-personal overtones but fails to deliver real intimacy. (She hints that she is unexcited by her husband but is too chicken to cheat. Throughout, I kept wondering how her hubby felt about all this.) Ultimately, Marriage Confidential can’t decide whether it is a research-based exploration of marriage or a personal memoir, and it falls between the chairs. It is neither thoroughly enough researched to provided grounded answers to the provocative questions it raises, nor is it personal enough to enlighten or satisfy the reader that we really know the author or learn anything of consequence about her marriage.  I applaud Haag for having identified a disconnect between the romantic marital ideal and frequent post-romantic reality. But she fails to provide a more than superficial and anecdotal treatment of the subject,  and offers little in the way of insight, imagination, or guidance for the path forward.

A typical individual coaching client comes to me wanting to do something (it could be anything – find a job, write a book, earn a promotion, get in shape) and looking for my help. Very likely by the time he comes to me, he has been thinking about it for a while. He probably feels stuck and unable to close the gap between what is and what he wants it to be. The temptation for some of these clients is to delve into explaining to me why  they have not done what they say they want. Reasons range from the practical (it’s hard, they don’t have time, they don’t know how) to the psychological (fear of failure, fear of success, anxiety, self-doubt). But as tempting as it is to wander with them down the path of “why-nalysis,” it often leads to a dead end. Most times, the narrative of why things are the way they are only serves to support the status quo. And when people come for coaching, the status quo is not what they’re after. So if you are feeling stuck and wondering why, here are some good reasons change your questions.

Asking why can serve to reinforce the stuck-ness. They story of why it’s hard for you to change is not likely to help you change. Instead, I suggest that clients look at their successful changes in the past and see how they surmounted the challenges they faced, as well as looking at what has not worked in the past in order to identify pitfalls to avoid. This inquiry helps clients identify their strengths and weaknesses and may offer a model for future change.

Dwelling on why is backward-looking rather than forward-thinking. The great hockey player Wayne Gretzky said “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” If you’re spending all your energy on figuring out why haven’t done something, you’ll never get around to taking the small steps and big leaps of change. Better to invest your energy in creating a vision of change and figuring out what actions will lead to that change.

Analyzing why can become a way to rationalize inaction or avoid taking responsibility. Yes, change can be hard, often because of circumstances beyond our control. But if change is possible, it can only happen if we feel empowered enough to make a difference, and blaming circumstances or others won’t get us there. Alternatively, getting stuck in  can lead to guilt, self-criticism, and judgment, which is also not a very resourceful perspective. Focus instead on identifying the things you can change — starting with your own behavior.

“Why” is not as concrete or useful “what” and “how.” What do I want? And how do I get there? What steps must I take? What is getting in my way? And how do I get around, over, or through these barriers? What are my options? “Why” can lead to a spiral into navel-gazing and analysis paralysis. “What” and “How” are action-oriented.

Don’t get me wrong. “Why” can be a great question — it drives much of scientific inquiry and can lead to great insight. And I believe in the value of therapy and psychoanalysis, having spent some time on the couch myself. But I am not a therapist. I am a coach. So when my clients veer into telling me why it is hard for them to change, I empathize with them and acknowledge the reality of their experience. And then I re-direct them toward questions that are more likely to empower them and to lead to action and learning. Together, we set out on the path to change.

It seems that built into the whole idea of New Years resolutions is that they are short-lived. Resolvers start out full of energy and hope – they go on a diet or join a gym. But at some point, say late January or mid-February, most people taper off and find themselves no better off than they started. You can almost hear it in the often sheepish tone in people’s voices when they admit to having made a resolution – as if they are predicting their own failure. What gives?

Change theorists Chip and Dan Heath tell us that making a change is like trying to get an elephant to change course: to be successful, we need to have both the rider (our rational self) and the elephant (our emotional self) on board. The rider provides the reason, plan, and direction, but if the powerful elephant is fearful or resistant, they will go nowhere.

So now it’s two weeks into January. If you made a resolution, how’s it going? If your zeal is waning, here are a few tips to help you stick to your resolution.

• Keep your eyes on the prize. Visualizing the outcome you desire will help keep you inspired and moving forward.
• Be mindful of your reasons for change. Remembering why you are doing what you are doing will also help with motivation. One client tucked a picture of his daughter inside the wrapper of his pack of cigarettes to remind him why he needed to quit.
• Monitor and adapt. Every few weeks or so, take time to assess your performance and adjust your resolution as needed. If you resolved to speed walk three times a week at lunch but have only managed once a week because of meetings, try going in the morning or after work instead.
• Refine your goal. Sometimes our goals turn out to be either not sufficiently specific or unrealistic, making it hard to evaluate your progress or to feel successful. If your resolution was to be a better parent or spouse, try re-framing the resolution to focus on the behaviors rather than the outcome, like spending a specific amount of time together or not shouting.
• If you slip, don’t give up. So you missed a few days at the gym or you overindulged at a party. Don’t beat yourself up or give up. Just get back on the path.
• Acknowledge and reward your successes. The path to your goal may be long and winding, so it will help if you acknowledge milestones on the way. This could be giving yourself a pat on the back or something concrete. One caution, however: do not reward yourself with something that undermines your goal. e.g. don’t reward dieting with food treats, instead do something more aligned with your goal (make a new exercise mix cd, get a massage or pedicure).

Following the above guidelines will help you give your rider the tools to help direct the elephant and will keep your elephant motivated to follow the rider’s guidance. Here’s to a fun ride!

Case in point: a project manager friend of mine just got back from her annual offsite feeling, in her words, “pissed off.” She and her team just completed a multi-million dollar project and have been stretched too thin and called upon to do more with less for so long that many of them are suffering from burnout. But instead of receiving any recognition for their work or acknowledgment of the difficult conditions, they were subjected to a several cookie-cutter workshops on “customer service” and the like. Late in the proceedings, the facilitator finally got around to asking the employees “what’s working and what’s not.” But when one brave soul said that the workload was excessive, she was immediately shut down by her tin-eared manager and no one else stood up with her. At the end of the retreat, she returned home discouraged and determined to put less effort in at work — the opposite of the intended result.

Undoubtedly, management had good intentions in holding the offsite. They wanted to build camaraderie, improve performance, and enhance team alignment behind company goals. They hired facilitators and tried to make it a useful experience. But they missed badly, squandering their opportunity and leaving many employees feeling angry and frustrated — worse than before.

The key to a positive and productive offsite is that it be tailored to meet both leadership’s objectives and employees’ needs. If your company or organization is investing the time and money of holding an offsite, here are some tips to getting results:

• Clarify your goal for the offsite — don’t just do it because it is expected.If your aim is team building — what are the qualities of a strong team ? If you are culture-building — what is the culture you wish to foster and what are the attitudes and behaviors that exemplify that culture? Do you want to rally the troops for a major change — how do you want to involve them in the change?
• Do your homework. Investigate the team’s problem areas and strengths and use this information to develop activities that will leverage their strengths to address their challenges.
• Listen. Provide a safe environment for airing differences and allow for venting, and have a plan for channeling the discussion toward solutions. A good facilitator will help here.
• Mix it up! Don’t rely on lecture format — include break-out sessions, and have participants interact in cross-departmental or cross-rank groups.
• Build in time for experiential learning. For example, if giving and receiving actionable feedback is an area of weakness, offer specific training and practice.
• Ensure that you have good follow-up. If you emerge from the offsite with action items, establish accountability and follow through. You don’t want to find yourself at next year’s offsite talking about exactly the same issues.
• Say thank you. Acknowledge your team and all the work they do.

Learning your type is not just self-knowledge for its own sake; it has a real practical application (that’s why so many Fortune 500 companies use it). Knowing type will likely provide you with insight into your preferred ways of learning, communicating, thinking and interacting with the world. It will also alert you to potential blind spots you may have, and it can help you better understand and communicate with others whose type differs from yours. This in itself is interesting and useful, but when it gets really powerful is when you begin to put this insight to work.

Here’s a personal example: I am an ENFJ. The “N” signifies that I prefer Intuition over Sensing — that is, I like to take in and process information conceptually, I rely more on the big picture than on facts and figures, and I am oriented toward future possibilities more than past experience. However, the majority of my potential corporate clients have an “S” where I have that “N” which means that they prefer the concrete over the abstract. My “F” (Feeling) means that I base my decision-making on personal values and  impacts on people. However, many of my business colleagues have a “T” (Thinking), which means that they base their decisions more on logic and reason. So when I am preparing PowerPoint slides for potential clients, I must recognize that my preferred mode — idea and values driven — may not speak to their needs. Therefore, I need to make sure that I have the data to support my presentation, and that I present the logical case for hiring me because no matter how excited I am about the concept, my audience needs the concrete facts and analysis. (Does this sound like any marriages you know?) Luckily, as a former lawyer I am pretty well-versed in reasoned analysis, so I can speak that language fairly fluently, even if it is not my preference.

In the above example, knowing my type and knowing my audience’s probable type helped me identify some potential blind spots and make sure that I communicated my message effectively. MBTI can also be tremendously useful to teams, whose members can use their enhanced self-knowledge and greater understanding of their colleagues to improve communications, develop decision-making protocols, and increase appreciation of one another’s strengths, and to leaders, who can learn how to communicate their vision to their teams and how to support them in doing their best work. The folks at Myers Briggs have helpfully compiled tremendous resources to help clients use their results in may contexts — leadership, team-building, career development, relationships and more.

If you’re curious, give me a call. I’d be delighted to help you explore your own type and put it to immediate practical use.

For the first half hour of our family outing I skated slowly, holding hands and guiding each of my children as they found their balance and gained confidence. Then I handed my youngest off to my husband and did a few circuits solo. It was bliss to whizz around the ice, weaving in and out of teens, couples, and families in an arena echoing with laughter and barely recognizable classic rock. And that’s when it happened: I slowed down and tuned into the present moment. I saw the colors and lights, heard the scraping of blades on ice, felt and smelled the cool air. My eyes sought and found my two daughters arm-in-arm with their friend and my husband helping my son get up smiling from a fall. At this moment, I was filled with gratitude and felt poignantly aware and utterly alive.

Like many California forty-somethings I have been trying to be more present, both as a parent and as a human being. As physician and author of “Mindfulness for Beginners” Jon Kabat-Zinn reminds us, the present moment is the only time you are ever alive. So I have been trying to put aside the smart phone and connect to and appreciate my life. But as I savored the here and now at the rink, I was struck by the fact that its sweetness was heightened by things outside the present moment. My experience had more meaning because I knew that someday in the future my children will grow up and leave, and even sooner than that they will stop holding my hand. It also had more meaning as I recalled the wordless yearnings of my teen-aged self in the ice arenas and roller rinks of my adolescence. This blast from the past and vision of the future made the present all the more precious.

Children are often touted as exemplars of living in the present moment — they are alive to their senses and don’t worry about schedules or taxes or death. While I agree that we can learn from watching children, I am coming to realize that mindfulness is more than just being in the moment. For it is awareness of the transient nature of everything — pleasure, pain, joy, life itself — that helps me to treasure and appreciate the blessings of my life and helps me to get through the difficulties.

Perhaps it is fitting that I should have this experience at Christmas time. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, I was visited by past and future and learned once again to count my blessings.

While at first it might sound nice to be in a conflict-free environment, it is actually uncomfortable, because what it means is that people are stifling themselves. Here’s what it looks like: boring meetings where the participants are so disengaged that they don’t bother debating the issues or considering alternatives; ineffectual meetings where nothing gets done and everyone is too nice; office environments in which disagreements are not voiced openly, but indirectly and often in the form of gossip. In each case, the participants avoid the discomfort and risk of open disagreement or conflict. The result: work product suffers, because strategies and plans are not adequately vetted and alternatives not seriously engaged.

At the root of conflict avoidance is lack of trust (Lencioni’s first dysfunction). If you don’t trust your team, leadership, or the organization, you won’t feel confident that you can speak your mind and receive a respectful hearing.  Disagreeing with leadership, a manager, or a co-worker involves going out on a limb and taking a risk. Members of a trusting team know they will not be punished for having a different view from that of their colleagues. They are confident that their team is robust enough to withstand disagreement and they trust the decision-making process. If, after full debate, their view does not prevail, they also are more likely to support the plan because they have had the opportunity to fully explore the alternatives.

And here’s a bonus: if well-managed disagreement is an indicator of trust, it is also a way to build trust. Teams who have weathered conflicts  come out the other side to find their relationships stronger and more trusting. So the next time a disagreement arises — welcome it as an opportunity to strengthen your team and improve your results.