What’s on your holiday wish list this year?  Are you still looking for the right relationship, enough money in the bank, the perfect job or maybe a raise?  Are you grateful for what you have or are you still searching for a reason to get up in the morning?  Have you been deservedly naughty or particularly nice and just waiting for a bounty of beautiful gifts to descend upon you?  Whatever your lot in life you are in a unique position to hit the reset button and start over as the New Year approaches.

Like the popular Gallagher family on Showtime’s “Shameless,” do you ever ask yourself what lengths you would go to get and keep the job you want?  It’s a scary thought but with the way the world is rolling these days, despite the decrease in unemployment, how you get and keep the job you want is becoming like a game show challenge with one contestant trying to beat out the other under the most extreme and at times obscene circumstances.

When it comes to job search creativity in this day and age is key.  For some of us, this comes easy.  For others, we might need a little more fairy dust.  It’s tough these days to get noticed and sometimes it’s even harder to find the energy to promote yourself.  This is when it’s time to think creatively and create your own personal Jobisode to highlight and promote your career.

Finding a job is hard enough when the economy is booming let alone when the job market resembles a pit bull fight.  Having the where-with-all to stick it out is a challenge enough to make a grown man, or your pit bull cry.  The fears you face whether you are currently employed or desperately seeking a new position, need to be embraced and you need to boldly stare down your enemy for who and what it is. Identifying and coping with your job fear factors are a way for you to kick fear in the teeth before it takes a bite out of your ambition and your self-confidence.

As you know if you have been reading my blogs, I don’t typically write about myself. It’s that time of year for reflection I guess and I thought to share of my own personal background and experience. As we ponder our career choices in life, we usually are faced with making decisions about our life’s path as we graduate college and enter the work force or sometimes opportunities present themselves even earlier in life.  I faced my career choice at the age of 12.  I had been taking piano lessons since age 6 and my teacher, who was the first violinist for the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, noticed that I had a talent for song.  She suggested to my mother, a former opera singer herself, that I should audition for the children’s choir at The Met. My mother, somewhat cautiously asked me whether I would be interested in that, and I said, “Sure, why not?  What do I have to do again?”

Maybe you are afraid to commit?  Maybe you like the feeling that you can test the merchandise before you buy?  Or maybe, you are like one of my friends whose theory about finding the right one goes, “It’s just like waiting for a bus, another one will always come along.”  Your career can start to resemble the dating field, a little uncertain, a little frustrating and sometimes, full of surprises. Not knowing what you are looking for in your next career move is okay.  No one said you have to get it right out of the gate.  Interviewing until you know what is right for you can resemble dating, but at least at the end of the process you won’t need to worry about who is going to pick up the tab.

One of the most under valued skills during the interview process is the ability to LISTEN!  This applies whether you are the job seeker or the interviewer for that matter.  What is that?  Yeah, I said it, “Listen Up!”  Talking, multi-tasking, distractions, or moving too fast forces you to derail quicker than any express train traveling through downtown.  The more you listen the more you learn.  When you listen you do so for non-verbal queues as well.  While some of you are natural listeners, other folks may need to be interrupted, or physically gagged in order to get a word in.  Which one are you?

When you think of what you have versus what you do not have, it may make you feel grateful or depressed. Holding onto a job you can’t stand for fear you’ll never find one that you will love, is like staying in a bad relationship because you are afraid to be alone. When you face the fear that holds you back, you have a fighting chance to rise above the chaos surrounding your career and find what you truly desire.

Like anything you own, occupy or truly possess, you career needs to be treasured like a sacred piece of land.  You just don’t stumble into your career these days, you need to claim it, seize it and by all means retain it if you want to get ahead. Staking your career claim is like venturing into uncharted terrain looking for the last piece of unclaimed land like the Land Rush of the 1800’s.  You are competing against many other hungry and at times desperate folks who are searching for the same thing and are running against the wind to beat you to the finish line.  Your career search may have you looking over your shoulder wondering who might be picking up their pace, closing in behind you.

When you are in doubt, despair, or you just plain can’t do it anymore like the song says, “There will be an answer, Let it be.”  Sometimes you just don’t know where the answer will come from but chances are, when you are at your most concerned, the answer will appear if you just “let it be.”