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Building mental job toughness is like building muscle, you have to work at it in order to make it stronger. Take care of yourself, mentally and physically, during the process. Focus on what you want to occur, rather than on the things that went wrong. The more interviews you attend, the better you will become at interviewing which will only increase the likelihood of receiving a job offer. Connaughton, D. What is this thing called mental toughness? An Investigation of Elite Sport Performers. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 14 3 , Yukelson, D.
Mary E. Ghilani, M.
Cheryl Delaney, a year-old caregiver, echoed the belief that young people can learn a lot from older generations. Now we have to re-define ourselves and begin to believe it deeply inside us. Have you ever had your best-laid career plans derailed? Former TV producer Elaine Purchase is working at a nonprofit, having made a career change after hearing a small voice calling her to help the most vulnerable—drug-exposed and medically fragile infants. Is a Career Coach Worth the Investment? Thanks, Laird, finding a job in this economy just takes a long time.
Printer-Friendly Version. Thank you, Mary Ghilani, for this very helpful summary of these concepts. I find myself saying these kinds of things on a daily basis - esp. I sent it to 2 counselor networks in MN. Mary, I loved the article and never thought of it this way but it is a great concept. Am in private practice and appreciated the article. Thanks, Laird, finding a job in this economy just takes a long time. Key is to last longer than the proces. Home Contact Login. Menu Latest Issue. Reprint Policy. Reviewed Content. Sale Title. Features 19 self-reflective career exercises and worksheets 13 vignettes of successful career changers Examples of work skills, job descriptions, and self-marketing scripts Samples of resumes, cover letters, a follow-up call script, an acceptance letter, and an offer-decline letter Summaries of studies and surveys from the Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons AARP , the National Association of Colleges and Employers NACE , Bankrate, Inc, the U.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, human resources, civic ventures, and Amy Wrzesniewski A resource guide to 78 career, job-search, and educational websites Highlights Offers a complete guide to changing one's career, written for anyone contemplating a career change, especially those in midlife, regardless of professional level or occupation Provides practical advice, examples, and job-search strategies to help career changers gain a competitive edge, even against younger competition Includes descriptions of sustainable, change-friendly career fields appropriate for second careers Discusses the myths of aging and how to sell your value to an employer.
Author Info Mary E. Can executives improve through deeper understanding of themselves? Can leaders and entrepreneurs learn to unlock their highest potential? Is it really possible to coach yourself? According to Dr. George Watts, the answer to all these questions is a resounding yes. In fact, recent studies show that green career growth is outpacing traditional job growth.
As further proof that the field has come of age, the book contains specific references to numerous green career websites and job boards in the renewable energy industry. The key is that they stay open to the range of possibilities their experience has actually qualified them for—but remain realistic about what they can achieve. The ideas that midlife marks the onset of decline, and that acceptance of growing limitations is the only mature way to deal with aging, are still generally accepted as good common sense.
Common sense, however, may be overrated. Midlife is exciting because it is a time when people have the opportunity to reexamine even their most basic assumptions. There is the inevitable question of how aging citizens will maintain the standard of living most of them are used to without full-time corporate employment.
Furthermore, people at midlife face more physical limitations. Health becomes a pervasive concern.
Some readers will no doubt feel that despite the potential advantages, making drastic changes in midlife is simply too risky. First, it may seem dangerous to forgo pension benefits. Second, particularly in the U. Given the high cost of private health insurance, it might seem preferable to stick to the protective environment of the corporate world. Those fears are certainly understandable. The generation currently in midlife was born into a world in which corporations inspired trust and made workers feel secure. But increasing life expectancy, the rising costs of health care, and global competition have made it much harder for companies to meet their health care and pension obligations.
Remember when GM was the largest company in the world and seemed unassailable? The company could collapse under this weight. The facts no longer support the strategy of sitting tight within a large organization. Psychologically, we all prefer the status quo when it feels secure.
But staking the future on corporate safety is a bet, not a no-risk strategy. People need to take their destinies into their own hands by thinking in terms not of safety nets but of active risk management. Such a shift in mind-set has serious implications. Many people know quite early in midlife that there may be good reasons for a career change. Some may be in danger of losing their jobs; others may realize that their hearts are no longer in what they do.
Hanging on for dear life is usually the wrong strategy. In terms of long-term risk management, it might be much better to start a new career at a relatively young age. Many people need to start thinking about alternatives that suit their abilities and personalities when they still have two or three productive decades ahead of them.
In this way, they can discover the possibilities that will allow them to work much longer and thus ensure their financial well-being. Our point is that while those problems have become the focus of endless discussion, the advantages that many people gain in midlife have hardly been mentioned.
By middle age, most executives have gone through protracted crises that seemed insurmountable at the time; through these crises, they have discovered their strengths. One strength that tends to increase with age is the ability to put emerging problems into perspective, which helps executives deal with the issues at hand much more calmly and with much greater self-assurance. By midlife, most executives have also had at least two decades of professional experience. They have been in many situations that taught them a lot, not only about the business but about themselves.
Most executives have learned that they really enjoy motivating people, for instance, or that the opposite is true: They enjoy working on their own and find working with others a drain of energy. We argue that for a growing number of people, the midlife years can be a period of unprecedented opportunity for inner growth. At best midlife can be a time when people move from what psychologist Abraham Maslow called deficiency motivations to growth motivations. Deficiency motivations are fed by lack. People who have no food, for example, will be consumed by the need to find nourishment.
Those who lack self-esteem will be driven to prove their worth. By contrast, growth motivations are fed not by a deficiency but by the human need to realize our full potential. Motivated in this way, we may try listening to ourselves in order to discover who we are and what we want. For all those reasons, we believe that individuals have more freedom at midlife than they do at any other time. The most deeply seated source of such resistance is the widespread belief that freedom is the absence of limitations and the presence of almost unlimited possibilities.
According to this definition, midlife looks less than appealing. The notion, however, that possibilities slip away with age is based on a false premise. The young do not have endless possibilities—that is an illusion, created by our limited knowledge of ourselves and the world when we are young. Early on, we make decisions on the basis of scant evidence of our true abilities; after all, in our late teens and early twenties, we know little about what we are good at and what we enjoy.
The illusion of the freedom of youth is also based on a retroactive idealization. We forget the pressures we faced: We had to get into a good school, get high grades, land a great first job, arrive at such-and-such a position by age 30, and so on. And in the middle of those demands, we had to shape our identities, develop our abilities, and establish our self-esteem.
By midlife, for many people, the pressures have lost much of their urgency. No longer riddled by the anxiety that they may not be good at anything, or by the need to prove that they are good at everything, they have the freedom that only self-knowledge can impart. They are also generally in less of a hurry. Most executives considering career changes do not need to act immediately. They have the time to listen to themselves, map their possibilities in the world, and create their new lives with care.
The journey can take odd twists and turns before they end up in a satisfying place. Consider Judith, an Israeli woman in her mid-fifties. She had done well for herself by most measures: She was a partner in one of the largest international accounting firms; she had a nice house; the youngest of her three children was about to graduate from a prestigious college.
But there was one big problem: For the past year, Judith had found it increasingly difficult to go to work in the morning. She dreaded getting through her list of things to do; every time the phone rang, she was overcome by the temptation to tell her assistant to inform the caller that she was in a meeting. Judith was going through a midlife crisis. Judith had lived her life along well-defined lines. She had married early; by becoming an accountant she had made a choice her family could accept easily; and she had suffered no major disruptions in the execution of her life plan.