NO ONE IS LOOKING OUT FOR YOUR CAREER ANYMORE
So what are you going to do about it?
Pam Slim, best-selling author and world-renowned career coach, shows us the way. Her new book Body of Work: Finding the Thread That Ties Your Story Together is powerful, practical and jam-packed with inspiring stories that will help you build upon everything you’ve done so you can take your career and life to the next stage.
This book literally took my breath away. I had the privilege of receiving an advance copy and am honored to share my thoughts about it with you. This book is not a one-time read. It’s a guide that I will refer back to again and again to develop my career. I promise you that spending the tiny amount of change it takes to buy this book will reward you many times over. Get it here. It comes out today (December 31, 2013).
TIE YOUR STORY TOGETHER
My copy of the book has almost every page marked or folded over as I learned how to tie my own story together to build up for my next big adventure. I pretty much got obsessed with underlining and taking notes on this one. Body of Work complements The Power of Starting Something Stupid as well as Resumes Are Dead and What to Do About It so well that I found myself literally jumping with excitement and almost cheering Pam on as I read lines like these:
“No one is looking out for your career anymore. You must find meaning, locate opportunities, sell yourself, and plan for failure, calamity, and unexpected disasters. You must develop a set of skills that makes you able to earn an income in as many ways as possible.”
“Your body of work is everything you create, contribute, affect, and impact. For individuals, it is the legacy you leave at the end of your life, including all the tangible and intangible things you have created. Individuals who structure their careers around autonomy, mastery, and purpose will have a powerful body of work.”
“The reality is that in order to create your body of work you must rely on all of your ingredients, even those that you might not consider relevant to your professional career.”
“We are all self-employed.”
“In the new world of work, our ability to create a powerful body of work is what will determine our ongoing employability.”
“Your creative work will tell your story.”
“One of the most wonderful, and terrifying, things about life is that we have no idea how it is going to turn out.”
“Fear is an essential part of the creative process. Work with it, and you will create a powerful, full-color, full-contact body of work.”
“The quality of your life is directly related to the quality of your stories.”
This book navigates you through finding your roots, choosing your work mode, creating and innovating, surfing fear, forming a team, defining success and (my favorite part) selling your story.
If you want to learn how to really take advantage of all your opportunities (seen and yet-to-be-seen) and learn how to launch (or relaunch) your personal brand, then read this book.
Watch the book trailer here.
P.S. One of the parts of the book that really got me thinking was when Pam tells a story about her mixed martial arts Master. He had her do an exercise where she and three other opponents had to wrestle each other for control of two training pads on the mat. (You need to read the story to get the full effect.) At the end of the exercise, the Master said, “Some of you are holding back on your training…You need to realize you are playing to win. When you are faced with a real-life situation when someone has your back on the ground, you will be fighting for your life. Are you going to fight halfway then?…You have to learn to flip on your winner switch.”
Boom! That last line hit me like lightning. You have to flip on your winner switch!
Are you holding back? Fighting halfway? Or are you playing to win?
