Advance Your Career & Avoid Sleepless Nights

How often do you find yourself staring at the clock, tossing and turning because you can't stop thinking about work? The feeling of dread is looming over you like a thick cloud. Whether it is a situation, meeting, or perhaps the changes coming with a reorganization your mind is running wild? I have spent many sleepless nights worrying about a challenging situation. When you begin to notice you're having more sleepless nights or avoiding challenging situations, find out what is going. What is it about the situation that is causing you stress? It is often helpful to take a step back and look at the whole picture from afar. What are your top 3 concerns? Do you know a manager who handles this type of situation particularly well? Think about how they would address the issue? What skills and abilities helped them to effectively resolve? How would you scale your own level of expertise with those same skills from 1-10 (1 non-existent, 10 highly effective)? How did you rate your level of effectiveness?

The sleepless nights and feeling of dread may be signs that you'd benefit from exploring development opportunities to strengthen your skill-set and confidence. What I have found over the years is that to grow personally and professionally you need to add something . . . just like a plant needs sunlight, water and fertilizer to grow you need learning opportunities to grow. There are so many ways to develop new skills and abilities. I am always searching for new opportunities from books, seminars, blogs, websites. In fact this past weekend I found a site called Open2Study that offers free specialized short courses and professional training (virtual classes). I have signed up for 2 month long courses, Conflict & Negotiation and Human Resources development. I am looking forward to digging into these topics and will be reporting on my experience. My hope is that this will be an affordable development option for us all to advance our careers and avoid sleepless nights.

Karen Wise
Helping New Managers
Eliminate Overwhelm & Double Productivity

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