When we say that a person has had a great career, what do we mean? That he or she made a lot of money? Moved spectacularly up the corporate ladder? Became famous or renowned in their profession?

And what about you? Are you looking forward to a great career? Would you describe your current career as “great”?

How do you create a great career for yourself? Can you have a great career and still have a great life at the same time, keeping the things you love – family, friends, work, and play – all in balance? 

The answer is, “It depends.”  It depends on how you want to contribute and how you define balance.   

Based on content featured in the soon to be released book Great Work, Great Career, by Dr. Stephen R. Covey and Jennifer Colosimo, in this webcast Jennifer will share critical, insightful principles and practices to help you discover your great career by discovering what your contribution will be and how you will make it.

 Specifically in this free webcast you will learn:

• How to begin identify your strengths, as summed up by your talents, passion, and conscience.
• Tips on how to craft a Contribution Statement.
• How to use your resourcefulness and initiative to get the job you want and overcome obstacles to making your contribution.
• How to create a network of supporters, both co-workers and clients—who can help you achieve your career goals.

 When: Friday, November 20, 2009
Time: 1:00 p.m. ET/12:00 p.m. CT/11:00 a.m. MT/10:00 a.m. PT
Cost: Complimentary

Register at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/198135273

Source Code: GCCB

Please join us, we would love to have you attend.

Embracing change begins with desire. Without the desire to change it is inevitable that change will not occur. Desire is the first step in the 7 rules for positive change (more about the remaining rules to come.)  This desire needs to spring up from you and you alone-no one can do it for you.  It lies deep with in the recesses of your own heart and soul.

I have found that desire can come from:

1. A bold vision of a better future

2. You’re unhappy with where you are right now (emotional pain)

3. Learning from your behavior and evaluating the results (trying to get better)

Let’s explore each of these.

A bold vision of a better future:

What will be your life long contribution be?  What talents do you have?  Where are your passions in life? What opportunities are within your grasp? What do you love to do?  How can you leverage your talent, passion and market opportunities to make money and thrive in your life?  

Spending time deeply thinking about these questions will eventually give you the “the long view” or the vision you need in order to change.

Remember, you and you alone have certain skills and talents you can develop to reach your full potential and make amazing contributions in life, regardless of your race, economic status, or interest.

Your vision should be strong enough to ignite your desire to change and do things differently.

You’re unhappy with where you are right now:

Pain, over time can numb the senses and cause great sorrow and a loss of direction.  Wanting something different than you have right now can be a great motivator to change.

This can lead to important self-evaluation or pinpointing your exact location in life.  Every journey to change has a beginning, middle and end.  With a clear starting point and a vision of where you want to go, putting together a plan to change can start to work.

Transform your pain into something productive by evaluating where you are at now and explore possible long-term opportunities or ways to overcome your trials or obstacles.  Take an inventory of your life right now of where you are. Consider your current status: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

Learning from your behavior and evaluating the results:

We tend to be perfectly aligned to the results we are getting in our life.  If we are not happy with our life results we need to change our behavior.  Want new results, well it requires new and better behavior.

We have the choice to learn from life’s experiences or to ignore them.  In the mist of troubling times we can “call out” what is happening to us, label it, and then choose how we act because of it and what we will learn from it.

Everyone has challenges, suffers and makes mistakes. However, not everyone learns from their mistakes.

Make learning a life long journey.  The greater your learning the greater your awareness and the greater freedom you have to choose and ultimately change.

How have you learned to create a vision? What helps you when evaluating your current state and motivating yourself to change? What have you learned from your life experiences?

I would love to hear your insights.

Take care and  engage.

Author: Sam Bracken, Global Director of Product Management Marketing, FranklinCovey

I felt like I really needed to freshen up my mission statement before I could teach and advise others to write theirs. It was several years ago when I first attended a 7 Habits workshop (and trust me, it was several years ago). It was at Sundance in the summer and a beautiful place to enjoy nature and discover my passion through writing my first personal mission statement. Since that time, I’ve had another child, put two daughters through college, celebrated many more wedding anniversaries, and advanced my career to my dream job. A lot has happened since that first mission statement was written and my paradigm on life has matured.

So, in a hurry I thought I’d try out the Mission Statement Builder tool on the FranklinCovey website. I thought I’ll get this done in a hurry, it can’t be that difficult, I’ll do it while I’m listening in to this conference call-you know how we multi-task while the phone’s on mute, admit it you do it too. 

But surprisingly I really got into the process. The tool is easy to use, asks the right questions in the right order, and pulls it together in a final format. When you’re done you say “Wow! That was cool and look at what I can do!”

I thoroughly enjoyed going through the process again. I loved getting in touch with my voice, my passion, and recognizing some of my achievements thus far in life.

Next step is to decide which of the products I want to put my mission statement on-do I want a poster? What picture should I put on it? I’m not really good at journaling so maybe my mission statement on a journal would encourage me to do more. Decisions, decisions.

But now I’m ready to go out and inspire others and I’ll definitely encourage these teens to go home and do their own mission statement builder after camp.

I’ll keep you posted on which product I choose-I’ll blog about it when I get back (if I survive!).

You can build your mission statement or revamp your current mission statement at: www.franklincovey.com/msb

Author:  Annie Oswald

Vanity is one of my core values and with that comes an aversion to alluding to my age. Suffice it to say that I have been conducting live, classroom training for a really long time.   (Okay, Okay! I have been in the people development biz since 1985!)  So, what happened when this Baby Boomer (close to Gen Xer, though!)  was given the opportunity/privilege to develop and deliver training via FranklinCovey’s brand of LiveClicks Webinars?   (Resolving Generational Conflict)

I wasn’t sure if I was the right person to be doing these.  After all, I am used to face-to-face interaction with participants in workshops.  I found learning the technology intimidating and a little frustrating.  I ran scared for awhile then relied on what I know to be true for me, something I learned eons ago:  Perfect Practice Makes Perfect.  I practiced like crazy in my office, online for hours, (with only Sparky the dog as my audience), going through the layouts and getting the presentation just so.  I attended many other Webinars to determine what made them effective; I made sure that my technical systems were running perfectly.  By doing these things, my energy during the session was focused on the participants’ verbal responses and chat offerings.

Here’s some additional advice:  keep your voice strong; blend yourself a protein shake to sip on during the session.  Become great at delivering Webinars folks; great for you, for learners and the planet.

Attention fellow facilitators – it’s a whole new world out there and this blog is to let you know that, with passion and sweat equity, you too can become an effective facilitator in this new, important way to deliver training.

Vanity is one of my core values and with that comes an aversion to alluding to my age. Suffice it to say that I have been conducting live, classroom training for a really long time.   (Okay, Okay! I have been in the people development biz since 1985!)  So, what happened when this Baby Boomer (close to Gen Xer, tho!)  was given the opportunity/privilege to develop and deliver training via FranklinCovey’s brand of LiveClicks Webinars?    (Resolving Generational Conflict)

I wasn’t sure if I was the right person to be doing these.  After all, I am used to face-to-face interaction with participants in workshops.  I found learning the technology intimidating and a little frustrating.  I ran scared for awhile then relied on what I know to be true for me, something I learned eons ago:  Perfect Practice Makes Perfect.  I practiced like crazy in my office, online for hours, (with only Sparky the dog as my audience), going through the layouts and getting the presentation just so.  I attended many other Webinars to determine what made them effective; I made sure that my technical systems were running perfectly.  By doing these things, my energy during the session was focused on the participants’ verbal responses and chat offerings.

Here’s some additional advice:  keep your voice strong; blend yourself a protein shake to sip on during the session.  Become great at delivering Webinars folks; great for you, for learners and the planet.

 Author: Renee Tomlinson