{Career counseling is another way of helping to define our unique gifts and new career directions. Counseling services are available at most community colleges, adult education centers, and human resource development units within organizations.

Study the Future

A favorite saying among futurists is that the future will never be the same. The past, at least the historical job market, is no longer prologue to the future. So, you might ask, why concern yourself with such a nebulous endeavor into uncertainty? Becoming knowledgeable about the future is important for two reasons: first, it's where you'll be spending the rest of your life; second, it's also the only time frame you can control.

While the future is uncertain, your future is not unpredictable! In career development, you can create your future. The caveat is that it must be done within the context of informed reason. If we limit our future scope to the next five to ten years (a reasonable career planning time frame), we can make some intelligent speculations about the world in which we will be working.

Start by familiarizing yourself with forces that are shaping the future. These include evolving trends in science and technology, educational reform, corporate re-engineering, global economics and politics, pollution control efforts, medical research, health insurance and poverty reforms, spiritual renewal, new management paradigms, demographic shifts, and space-age communications and transportation.

Next, identify those forces that are particularly interesting to you. Then, imagine how your talents and personal passions might play a key role in world of tomorrow.

Generate A Realistic Ten Year Vision

Mind power is becoming the key to successful living and working. Every human creation began in the minds of people--as a vision of what might be. Your passion-based future bubbles up from a powerful personal vision. That vision puts you in touch with heartfelt aspirations, connects inner passions with outer world possibilities, and generates and directs strong motivation.

A useful strategy here is to envision your new career directions in a ten-year time frame that matches accurate information about yourself with future trends. While there is no formula for how to best generate a clear vision for your career future, the process is facilitated by relaxation.

Generating vision, like making fine wine, takes some brewing and careful attention. Preparation involves assembling your prized ingredients--answers to questions like what do I want more and less of in my future, what are my strengths and how can I capitalize on them, what produces a sense of self-satisfaction. Then you need undisturbed quiet to let things ferment.

Ideas will pop into mind mysteriously and rarely on command. Because vision emanates from the unconscious, your thoughts and images may be fleeting. Don't forget to have pen and paper available to keep them from evaporating!

Make It Happen

"I feel like the globe is shrinking," says, Beth who is the Export Manager for Pemiquid Canoe company. "Recently I was at a major trade show in Munich, Germany," she continues, "when five of my business associates from Finland, Germany, Holland, England and Yugoslavia all showed up at the same time. I didn't know whether to say guten Tag, bonjour, hello, or dobry den."

Beth has been with Pemiquid Canoe company for five years and export manager for the past four. During this period the company's export business has expanded so dramatically that it now accounts for a significant portion of its business. This amazing growth has come about in no small measure through the company's good sense in appointing this dynamic 46-year-old woman as their export manager.

Beth joined the company as an administrative assistant to the sales manager. In her first year on the job her boss left. Since no one was performing his functions, Beth decided to assist in any way that she could. One day, going through the mail piling up on the sales manager's desk, she came across a letter from a man in Finland who indicated he wanted to sell Pemiquid canoes.

On her own initiative, Beth elected to write him back, on her own initiative, indicating the company's interest. This response produced an opportunity that was to completely transform her own career and, in the process, transport Pemiquid into the global economy.

Beth agreed to help her new contact create a distribution outlet to sell Pemiquid canoes in Finland. She did so even though that wasn't her job, she had no authority to negotiate such a deal, and she hadn't any knowledge of how to go about setting up such a venture.

In reminiscing about this she recalls that "the company was delighted to learn about my agreement. The problem was that neither I nor anyone else at the company knew anything about establishing an overseas franchise." Fortunately, luck stepped in. She came across a brochure advertising a three-day conference on how to establish an export business. "I showed this to the right people," she says, "and ended up going to the event."

Following the conference, Beth helped create Pemiquid's first overseas business venture, starting with her contact in Finland. That was so successful that the company created a new job just for her: Export Manager. Two years later Pemiquid's overseas business had tripled with expansion of sales in Europe and the Middle-East.

Recently Beth has begun nurturing new contacts in places like Singapore, China, and South Africa. To keep pace with this growth and to enhance her global sales expertise, Beth constantly upgrades her skills by attending foreign trade programs and by studying other languages.

Beth attributes her success to a combination of fortuitous circumstances and her willingness to take risks, assume greater responsibility, and learn new things. These may well be three of the primary ingredients needed for taking charge of our own careers and capitalizing on the opportunities that new circumstances and changing conditions present.

Conclusion

In 20 years of career counseling experience, I've observed a positive relationship between career rejuvenation and quality of life. It's no coincidence that Quincy and Beth are happier and more energized since making effective changes.

Both Quincy and Beth make no bones about the fact that achieving renewed vigor through career change did not come easily. One of the most difficult aspects of their transitions was in letting go of old, familiar structures, visualizing and taking advantage of new opportunities. Quincy admits he could not have done it without a very supportive, working wife. Beth is convinced that mental attitude makes all the difference in what one does, or does not do, with opportunities.