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Dominique Sachse
Jewish Journal
“Aspire Higher Especially during the COVID coaster”
The choices that you make can profoundly change your life! The state of your life, your feelings of self-worth and self-esteem, your self-image and your confidence that you can truly effect positive change in your life are direct reflections of the positive and beneficial or the negative and/or self-sabotaging choices that you have made. Think of it this way: Choices are like train tracks. Trains go where the tracks take them and the path of your life goes according to the positive or poor life choices that you make. The FANTASTIC NEWS is that starting today, no matter where you are in your life, you can jump-start it and elevate your feelings of self-esteem and self-worth, your self-image, and your optimism by making positive and constructive life choices each and every chance that you get!
As an ardent student of decision-making since college and having counseled thousands of individuals over the past 38 years to make tens of thousands of positive life and career choices, I have time-and-time-again observed the following: 1. Your positive life choices can make you feel good/or great about yourself and your life; they can inspire and instill empowering feelings within you of confidence, mastery, and healthy self-love, and at some point, when you have a sufficient amount of these potent feelings, they can trigger your desire to respect, have compassion and empathy for, and sincerely care about and support others. The underlying concept here is that if you feel really good or great about who you are, how you conduct your life, and how well your life is going, these highly potent, positive feelings will organically lead you to want to elevate the lives of others by helping, enhancing, and supporting them. And, the beautiful by-product of elevating others, is that your life, your happiness, and your fulfillment, along with your feelings of self-esteem and your self-image will be elevated as well.
2. There are things in life you can’t control, but you can control your choices, emotions, responses, and actions. Taking constructive control of the things that you can control through your positive life choice-making is confidence-building, masterful, empowering, and elating. All of these are nurturing and wonderful feelings, assets, and blessings.
3A. Your constructive, wise, and beneficial life choices will positively reinforce and lead you to make more and more positive life choices in the future because you truly enjoy the sweet fruits of successfully elevating your life, your well-being, your self-image, and your confidence that you can effect tangible, positive change in your life. Every time you make a positive life choice and enjoy its beneficial results, you are motivated to make more positive life choices, because you love the empowering feeling of being able to make your life far better than it was. Essentially, the success and positive feelings derived from making great choices organically create a hunger within you to experience more success and the empowering and elating feelings that sustained success brings, by making more positive life choices whenever you have the opportunity. 3B. Your negative, self-defeating, and/or self-sabotaging life choices will make you feel badly about yourself as you see the quality of your life start/continue to spiral downward with each poor choice that you make. You also begin to lose confidence that you can make any positive life choices that will elevate you and the state of your life. As a result, you feel great anxiety, demoralized, and hopeless about your lot in life, as well as emotionally and psychologically mired in a debilitating life-funk with no apparent means to escape. And the more you, your feelings of self-esteem, your confidence, and your hope to enjoy a better life spiral downward, the less you feel that you can have or deserve a better life through the choices that you make. So a virulent, vicious cycle is started as you continue to make more and more poor/self-destructive life choices.
Additionally, the “negativity bias,” which is our proclivity to see and be effected by negative things much more than positive ones, which looms in all of us to varying degrees, will exacerbate an already negative frame of mind and feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness.
3C. What you can glean from the above is that making positive, enhancing, and psyche- and life-elevating choices positively reinforce and naturally lead you to make more life-enhancing choices; whereas negative and self-defeating life choices make you feel badly about yourself and that you’re a “loser” or a “victim“ who is impotent to raise the quality of your choice-making and incapable of ever being their best self and attaining their most treasured goals and dreams. As a result, you continue make bad decisions and self-sabotaging choices, as you lack the core-confidence that you can raise the quality of your life. 4. In my book, “ASPIRE HIGHER”, I discuss the all-important concept of being a “solutionary.” What this means is that when you’re faced with finding a constructive solution to a problem or challenge, you not only find a solution that benefits you, but one that also enhances others. When you make life choices and decisions that elevate others as well as yourself, this process continues to raise your feelings of self-esteem and self-worth, along with your self-image and confidence that you can do amazing things for others—such as endeavoring to understand where they’re coming from, who they truly are, and why they act as they do. Doing this can gift you and the world with beautiful fruits such as mutual respect, compassion, and empathy for others, as well as civility and peace among all people, groups, religions, and countries. It is these positive, caring, and loving life choices that will elevate your life and the lives of others, as well as radiantly illuminate our golden path to world peace.
5. With all of the rampant violence, negativity, distrust, division, racism, vitriol, and Covid-related challenges and losses in the world, debilitating feelings of fear, anxiety, depression, alienation, and feeling emotionally and psychologically “stuck” are pervasive. We all at times feel as if we need to turn to a more positive, uplifting, and inspiring page in our life’s book, and with great optimism and fervor for enjoying far brighter days ahead, jump-start our lives. Additionally, many of us perceive that we are forever shackled to our past, our lot in life, and to an unappealing or demoralizing future. I CAN TELL YOU THAT THIS IS NOT THE CASE! Or put in another, more poetic way, “Be tired, mired, and so uninspired—no more!”
STARTING TODAY, make each and every choice that you are blessed to be presented with—-be it big or small— a positive, constructive, and beneficial one. Baby-step, by baby-step, positive choice, by positive choice, your confidence, spirit, optimism, feelings of self-esteem and self-worth, and your self-image will begin to elevate. All of which will give you the highly empowering motivation to continue to make positive life choices for yourself, for those you love, and for others—whether you know them or not, without any expected payback to you, karmic or otherwise. Making the conscious choice to perform unconditional kind, supportive, and/or loving acts is pure, soul-nourishing “Altruistic Love.” It is the highest of all loves and the most heart and soul nourishing, empowering, and elevating love. It is an everybody-wins-big-time love to be embraced and practiced.
**************************** You can immediately jump-start and begin to dramatically improve your life, your self-image, and your ability to live your very best and highest life, by beginning today to zestfully seize each and every opportunity to make a choice or decision that you’re presented with, and make it a positive, constructive, and enhancing one for you, those you love, and for others. These choices will light-up your life, heart, and soul, as well as the lives, hearts, and souls of those you love and others whom you elevate by your thoughtfulness, kindness, caring, and love. Thank you for taking the time to read my essay. I’m deeply grateful, and may all of your choices be positive and loving ones.
Do you want to Choreograph your Career by Consistently implementing Conscious, Constructive, success-evoking Choices, made with Cognitive Clarity? Learn more about Ken Lindner’s book, Career Choreography: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Finding the Right Job and Achieving Huge Success and Happiness in my article for Thrive Global: “Prepare Your Pandemic Pivot with Ken Lindner’s 8C’s“
https://wesaidgotravel.com/prepare-your-pandemic-pivot-with-ken-lindners-8cs/
Ken Lindner graduated Harvard University, Magna Cum Laude, and from Cornell Law School. Ken’s college honors thesis was devoted to decision-making and he has been an ardent student of the dynamics of the positive life choice since then. Besides “ASPIRE HIGHER”, he has written 5 other books. To learn more, please go to positivelifechoicepsychology.com
In A Career Slump? Author Ken Lindner Knows Exactly How To Snag A Job That Will ‘Make Your Heart Sing’
My name is Ken Lindner, and for the past 35 years I have been strategically and successfully choreographing careers. My new book, Career Choreography: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Finding the Right Job and Achieving Huge Success and Happiness, has, at its foundation, the process of Career Choreography, which I define as that “certain set of logical steps that any individual can take to put the percentages squarely in their favor,” so they can:
- Identify a job or position that takes maximum advantage of their skill-sets, what they love/like to do, their education and work experience, and the like;
- Secure that job or position; and,
- Shine in it.
Career Choreography is a term that I trademarked 25 years ago, and its steps and strategies have enabled my clients from a myriad of professional areas and fields to thrive and derive great job satisfaction and fulfillment.
I have had the privilege over the past 35 years to choreograph and develop the careers of some of the most talented, well-respected and well-liked female television broadcasters in America. I’m very proud to say that along with a few others, I have been at the forefront of bringing women of color to prominent positions in both network and local TV news. One of the reasons why I’m so proud to be in the TV broadcasting industry is that females can aspire to and achieve the greatest heights in our business.
There is no glass ceiling! At the networks and at many local TV stations, females earn more than their male counterparts. It is a true meritocracy. I’ve also been blessed to have a very smart and accomplished wife, and the same can be said about my mom, so I’ve been surrounded by hugely talented and productive women. As a result, I’m committed to equipping, enabling, and empowering women to attain their professional goals and live their professional dreams.
As an artful Career Choreographer, you want to identify potential jobs, positions, and professions that:
- you believe in;
- excite you to go to work everyday;
- take great advantage of and showcase your particular skill-sets, gifts, education and prior work experience;
- allow you to do the things that you love or very much like to do; and,
- require you to do the things that you’re good at.
If you can find a position that meets all or many of the above criteria, you put yourself in the very best position to love what you do, be highly successful and fulfilled, be a strong and valued team member and leader and enjoy great longevity. You spend so much of your lifetime working; you will be exceedingly well-served to find a position, profession, or career that makes your heart sing!
I wish you every success and happiness in your professional endeavors.
If you need a new job, if you’re stuck in an unsatisfying profession, entering the workforce for the first time, or aspiring to enjoy enormous success in your current position, be sure to order your copy of Career Choreography on Amazon or Barnes & Noble today!
The Best Way To Get A Job After Being Laid Off During COVID
While the worst part of the pandemic was the lives that were tragically cut short, the second-worst part, the economic impact, is something that has yet to play out. All of the business closures, cutbacks, and loss of revenue due to social distancing protocols led to almost unprecedented levels of job losses – according to the Pew Research Center’s Fact Tank, unemployment jumped from 3.8 percent in February of 2020 to 14.4 percent in April of that year, and says that just 3 months of the COVID outbreak took a greater toll on the economy than did the 2-year Great Recession (2007 – 2009).
While the economy has rebounded to a certain extent, it’s likely it will be a long time before we return to 2019 levels of prosperity. It took the better part of a decade for unemployment rates to come back down after the Great Recession, and we’d better be prepared for more of the same this time around. That doesn’t mean we need to start panicking, though, but rather, that it’s time to get proactive and figure out how to solve our own personal unemployment crises, whether we’re currently out of a job or just want to future-proof ourselves. In order to get some tips from an expert, The List spoke with career developer Ken Lindner, author of Career Choreography™: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Finding the Right Job and Achieving Huge Success and Happiness
Stay On Top Of Your Game
Lindner agrees that the pandemic has made this “an extremely challenging job market.” He adds that the situation can be even more difficult for anyone 45 years old or over since that brings up the question, “who will invest in someone who is more ‘mature’?” Sill, he says, it’s not impossible to find new employment at any age. He gives the example of his own dad, who was laid off from one company at age 66, then hired by another one 3 years later – a company he continued to work for until he was 99 years old! Holy Betty White, Batman, how is that even possible?
Lindner says it was because his dad kept himself in top shape both physically and mentally. He stayed optimistic and kept himself current on all of the latest trends in his industry. Rather than sitting around watching TV or playing golf, his dad “remained relevant and disciplined for those 3 hiatus years,” so when he finally got the opportunity to return to work, he was able to step right back into the swing of things without having to make up for any lost (or wasted) time.
Start Making Lists
Okay, so you’re working out, eating right, and spending time every day reading professional blogs and journals. Good for you, you’re on the right track! Now it’s time to narrow down your focus a bit, and it starts with making two lists. The first one is all about you – what are you interested in? What do you want to do? What are you good at doing? What skills and qualifications do you have? This list may help you decide where to direct your efforts so you can point yourself in the direction of a career you’ll actually want, rather than a job that’s more of a chore or a bore.
The second list is one of names: everyone you’ve had a positive work relationship with and who is aware of your talents and your work ethic. In his book Career Choreography, Lindner tells the story of a woman in her late 50s who was laid off at the height of the Great Recession and who followed this strategy of listing all of the people who knew what a great worker she was. She contacted each one of those people and asked if they knew of any job openings, and wound up with not one, but two excellent job offers.
Do Your Homework
Once you finally land that interview, what do you do? Faint from shock? Okay, but once you regain consciousness, it’s time to get to work. Prepare for that interview like your future depends on it – although bear in mind that each job opening is likely to have numerous applicants and there can be only one chosen one. If at first, you don’t succeed, take a page from the Ariana Grande songbook and say (or sing) “Thank u, next.” Still, there will come a day when that chosen one will be you (after all, even Ariana finally found her Mr. Right), and in order to leverage things in your favor, you’ll need to study up on the job, the company, and the interviewer.
Lindner says when it comes to the actual interview, whether in-person or Zoom call, you should “dress for success,” since “how you dress sends major signals to a prospective employer that you have pride in yourself and in your appearance.” In addition to showing up for the interview nicely dressed and well-informed, Lindner says your main goal should be to “effectively and compellingly explain to the prospective employer why you are an excellent fit for a position that they may have or one which they would create for you.” Anyone able to follow all these steps and stay positive, Lindner tells us, will “put the percentages strongly in their favor that they will attain their professional goals and live their professional dreams.”