Giving it your all, calling in the shots, focusing, following, listening and playing your A-Game.  When you’ve given it your best shot in your job efforts and have shown up to deliver your best, it’s now time for the hard part, to sit back, trust and yes, wait.  Finding the resolve to release control over the job process when you know in your heart of hearts that you’ve showed up and delivered your best is not always easy.  Playing the waiting game, replaying the meetings, interview, follow-up over again in your head thinking maybe you could do something differently is not going to help the process move any quicker for you.

Spring is the time to get rid of the old to make way for the new.  Flowers do it.  Birds do it.  So why don’t you do it?  It’s okay to take stock of what’s not working in your life.  But do you ever focus on what is working in your life and do you take it for granted?  Purging the past to make way for the new doesn’t mean just going through your closet to see what does or does not fit.  Accepting what does not work and heralding what does work makes your career cleanse an easy process.

Most of us when asked, “What do you do?” feel compelled to respond to this seemingly innocuous question in creative and profound terms.  “Oh, I’m a writer” or “I am a division President,” “I am an artist, animator, director, entrepreneur” as opposed to “I work from home.”  It’s not about what you do that defines who you are as a person although I think our society and how we are programmed culturally often portrays a different image.  And so it might seem that the “larger than life” your response is to the question “What you do for a living” may further the  perception that you are as big as your title and your paycheck.

By Lisa Kaye

You've done the interviews, references have been checked, and your recruiter called and said they've prepared an offer. You wait and wait and then wait some more and two weeks pass and nothing. When your job world has gone stone cold silent and you are ready to sign it off, there are a few more things you can do to stir the proverbial job pot before throwing in the towel!

There is a fine line between holding onto false hope and living in a perpetual state of denial. Here is where I’d like to introduce you to acceptance. Here is where I’d like to introduce you to acceptance. Acceptance means that you can’t alter how events play out in your life or the way people will behave towards you in any given situation, but you do have a choice in how you will react to those situations.

You can create career chaos whether you do it intentionally or not. Whether you are attracted towards situations steaming with drama, or you tend to find yourself in the middle of some conflict of some kind, your career chaos is one way you thrive or dive in your attempt to further your goals.

Knowing what motivates you in terms of your ambition and your career goals is something most career coaches focus on when helping someone manage their careers.  But when you decide to deep dive into the subconscious, there are subtle nuances that drive even the most established of executives when it comes to creating the work environment most conducive towards success or failure.  Career chaos can be best defined as unnecessary distractions or conflicts that cause you to lose focus on yourself and become consumed in the drama of your surroundings.  If you find yourself defending your actions or those of the folks around you, you are definitely in the career chaos arena.

...or so it seems.  Timing, timing and more timing.  Like the old biological clock that ticks for some and tocks for others, your job search like the waxing and the waning of the moon, is subject to timing, divine or otherwise.  Knowing that patience is the name of the game when it comes to waiting for the right opportunity to come along does not always make the wait any easier or any faster.  For some of us, waiting for the right job is as they say like watching paint dry, for the rest, it can be as quick as someone running the course through a speed dating session.  Your job search does not have to be an ordeal, 127 hours of waiting for help that never comes….

During this holiday season and sometimes throughout the year, we need to be reminded that it’s ok to give, share and spread the wealth especially in a crowded job market.  Even when it seems like there are hundreds of job seekers applying to just one job like there are holiday shoppers rushing to the stores on Black Friday to grab up the last of the sale items, we need to remind ourselves there’s room at the Inn for all of us if we just slow down and step back and be willing to help.  You may feel the need to rush to get through your “Job Seeker To Do List” wondering how many more resumes you can send out or how many job interviews you can line up before the new year. When you think you’ve done enough for yourself and you are not sure what gifts you can share, think of those who are still struggling this year who have not been as successful as you and next time you hear of a job you are not interested in or perhaps is just not right for you, remember you can easily jus, pass it on.

When it comes to finding and ACCEPTING a job offer we all have our lists.  It may be that your list contains what you would and would not want from your next job much like a list you’d create if you were picking the perfect mate.  But we all have our limits of what we would accept from a job regardless of how great it all sounds.  Even if you’ve been at this for a while, you still have standards, whether you choose to lower them or not is entirely a different matter. I’m not judging you by any means.  Let’s face it as we get older we seem less inclined to be as picky about certain things as when we were eager beavers graduating school wanting to take the world by it’s job-balls!

It’s important to find out what makes you tick, but realizing that there are some fundamental outliers at play helps you to manage your expectations and come to the table ready to be present and make the most of what you have to offer.  If you are tired of being pushed and pulled and feel like a leaf in the wind blowing from one vacant lot to another, try applying the “Four C” principles to your career and see if you it provides you with a foundation on which to build your career castle.