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Book Review: 48 Days to the Work You Love

48days-hardback

About three years ago, after hearing Dave Ramsey talk about how wonderful Dan Miller’s book 48 Days to the Work You Love is if you are going through a job change or career crisis, I knew I had to read it. Problem was, I’m cheap and busy. I had a lot of books on my “to read” list, and didn’t want to pay full price (price vs. value is another discussion for later this month!).

Providence smiled on me one day at a local fire sale store…I found 48 Days for about $4. A perfectly good book recommended by a trusted adviser and outrageously cheap…I bought two!

What makes 48 Days so good is that it’s not just another resume and interview tips book. Dan spends the first half of the book forcing you to probe deep within yourself. What are your motivations? What are your dreams? What are your passions? Discover those things and realize that when you love what you do for a living it’s hardly work at all.

At Dan’s core is the mantra of finding how your “talents, skills and abilities match your values, dreams and passions”. He dissects the differences between a job, a career and a vocation. And he advocates a balanced approach in living your whole life, not just the time you spend working.

The second half of the book addresses the fundamental job hunting techniques…job searches, resumes, interviews, appearance, etc. But there are two distinctions to his approach. First, he’s already led you on a journey of self awareness, so you’re more comfortable and confident. Then he approaches these often mundane job hunting tasks in new and fresh ways. Ways that make you stand out to potential employers. Ways that get you interviews and job offers.

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of meeting Dan and becoming a Certified 48 Days Facilitator. He is as real and as genuine as my father and has no pretense of celebrity. His family is just as real and only enhances my image of him. He’s coached me and answered my questions many times since, and I’m honored to call him a friend.

James Woosley and Dan Miller
Dan Miller presenting my 48 Days certificate at his home office (The Sanctuary) in Franklin, TN.


noMoreMondaysCoverIf you want to learn how to find the work that you love, or perhaps even start your own business, I cannot recommend anyone without first recommending Dan Miller. Read 48 Days to the Work You Love. Then read his follow-up text on self-employement, No More Mondays. Visit 48Days.com to signup for his newsletter and listen to his podcast. If you invest just a little time reading and listening to Dan and following his advice, your perspective on work and life will be forever changed!

Have you read the book or had any experience with Dan Miller? Post a comment and let me know what you think!

Want to dig deeper than the book?
The 48 Days Workshops are the best way move into work you love!

Classes will start in December 2009.
Email me or sign up for the newsletter to be among the first to know all the details!

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I’m Going to Save the World!

My kids are great at teaching me lessons that they don’t even know yet. For example, my son Ian is on a superhero kick. Everything is about good guys and bad guys. He takes off his shirt to show off his muscles and “flys” around the house saying he’s going to save the world.

Ian
Ian cheesing the camera in his Halloween costume (as a racecar driver instead of super hero this time!).

I pat him on the head and being pragmatic, tell him he needs to start one person at a time and see how it goes from there. He doesn’t hear me anyway, and I’m honestly happy that he doesn’t in this case. Who am I to stunt the growth of his ambition?

But there is a serious lesson there for us grown ups. We can have the biggest dreams and ambitions, but if we spend all of our time thinking of how to “do it all” or “do it right”, we rarely get started in the first place.

I do the same thing all the time. I want to be one of the most successful coaches in the country, with books and radio/tv shows and people lining up for an hour of my time. But I can’t start there. I can’t save the world until I’ve helped one person, then two, then three and so on. Eventually, maybe I can impact the whole world. It’s good to dream! But a dream without action is never going to come true.

In order to help myself help others, I’m declaring November as Jobs and Careers month on my blog. I’ll be posting articles related to job searches, resources, self-employment and other topics within the theme all month long. I may even have a special announcement somewhere in there. Plans for December are all I’m going to say today.

So what are you going to do today to impact someone’s life? Be that kind of hero!

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Is Your Future Sabatoging Your Career?

Who is to blame for your failures? Are they a result of the decisions you’ve made? External forces beyond your control? Or could it be a future so afraid of your success destroying the universe that it comes back to stop you from succeeding?

Scientists are blaming their failures on the Large Hadron Collider project on the “future” according to an article in the New York Times by Dennis Overbye:

“More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.

Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.”


Impossible science courtesy of Hollywood’s Marty McFly (Back to the Future) and John Connor (Terminator)!

I’m a bit of a nerd and think it’s a pretty interesting experiment (though the notion of a “God particle” is ridiculous). And while these scientists have bigger brains for than I do, I have to wonder if they’re setting a dangerous precedent.

If you’ve lost your job and are struggling to find one in our current economic client, is that a function of the future? Has time somehow worked its way backwards to sabotage your career?

Imagine you’re in a job interview and asked why you were let go from your last job. Your answer: “The future sabotaged that job just so you could hire me for this one.” I don’t recommend that approach!

There are lots of possibilities, but I think if I were you I’d take a more traditional approach. Maybe you should look at your past and see what you can learn from your prior successes and failures. Maybe you should look at your present and determine what you need to be doing right now to get the results you want.

Can your future determine your present? Normally we’d say no. But I’m wondering if perhaps it can. Do you have a vision of the future you would like to create? If you don’t you can only get there by accident.

So go build yourself a time machine. Get to the future you desire by working hard today–with goals in hand–to get to where you want to be tomorrow.

Particle physics aside, that’s the only way to get there!

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I Can’t Help You

It’s my job, my mission to help people with their careers and finances. I enjoy it and I’m good at it. But that doesn’t mean I can help you.

The simple fact is that some people are beyond help.

It’s not that their situations are beyond repair. I’ve seen some pretty bad situations while coaching, but there are paths forward for all of them. The problem is that some people simply want a magic pill to solve all of their problems. They have blinded themselves to the reality of their situations and don’t want help…or won’t admit they need it.

So, if you simply need a friend to pat you on the back and let you wallow in the pit you’re in, I’m not the coach for you. But if you’re sick of where you’re at…if you hate your job or aren’t reaching your financial goals…let’s talk. If you’re ready to make changes and work hard, let me know.

I can help you.

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