On Becoming a JobLife Architect

Most of us aren’t sure what we want to be when we grow up and even those who are, often change their minds – I was sure that I wanted to be a doctor or teacher but never pursued an MD or teaching certificate.  While we may find a suitable vocation, it may take a lifetime of evolution and self-awareness to find one’s true calling – How would I know? I’m on my 4th successful life reinvention:

1. Healthcare: Jeanne of all (medical) trades & master of none (8 years)

• Medical Assistant,  Audiometry Tech, EMT/Medic, Med Laboratory Technologist

2. Biopharmaceutical Industry (11 years)

• Specialty & Institutional Sales, Training Director, Product Manager and then some!

3. Entrepreneur: CEO/President of Training Company  (13 years)

• Emp-Higher Performance Development, Inc. www.emphigher.com

Think you can’t do it?  I’m nobody special, in fact, each of these major reinventions would be considered highly successful, especially for a blue-collar kid from Pittsburgh who has lived an upper-middle class adulthood but who also knew childhood poverty as a result of a divorce that left her unskilled mother on welfare.  Between each of the career and economic reinventions lies a lot of hard-learned lessons and grizzled wisdom.  I’m actively working to become more transparent about my story because don’t want to regurgitate book wisdom but to integrate theory with reality in a way that will inspire and serve others.  The common thread of my careers has been a desire to help, serve, heal, and teach.  A few years ago, while very happy in my job, I began to feel restless about the need to get back to my primary value of directly helping others – so, my vocations and life experience as a healer, educator, and survivor have helped me prepare for what I’ve come to believe is my life’s calling:

4.  JobLife Architect: Unoffically began in 1993 when I was shaken awake by my brother’s sudden death – it was a wake-up call that radically changed my life.  Over the nights and months that followed, I would be literally be awakened by epiphanies  (forcing me to keep a dictaphone by my bed) that seemed to pour out of me about how our choices in life had created worldly success for me but death for my brother. They became a seminar called, “Your Lot in Life – Choosing to Park or Build on It”.

My goal is not to talk about my war stories or what I would do in your situation but rather to use my lessons as a springboard for helping you to discover your own answers.  You won’t find  sugar-coated solutions here because every reinvention was accomplished without any outside help. So the battle scars that I am now willing to show and decades of coaching and training experience may help me to ask the right questions or provide helpful insight but make no mistake…becoming a JobLife Architect is not for sissies or for those that think they have “arrived” or “made it”.  Like cleaning out the basement, you can’t really pay someone to do it for you – it requires a willingness to get over yourself and do the work.

Are you willing to ask yourself the kind of tough questions that will wake you up or prevent you from sleep-walking through life?

If your answer to this first tough question is “yes”…

roll up your sleeves, put on your JobLife Architect’s hard hat and let’s get to work!