Career and life transitions are difficult for many people. For some — downright scary. People feel they can no longer be who they are nor are they sure of what their life will become.

So what happens? They resist career and life changes. Wrong move for sure. There’s an easier way to transition to your new career and life goals. Need a little inspiration and guidance for the impending changes and transition?

Here’s one of my two minute motivators including music. It inspires and teaches lessons learned from my three career changes and even more transitions.  Change really doesn’t have to be so hard!

Remember, people change when the fear/risk of changing is less than the fear of staying the same. So take inspiration from this two minute motivator and replace your fear with the easier way.

After you watch this two minute motivator,  add your insights and transition stories in the comments field below.  I also welcome your questions.  I am here to help as a coach or as the speaker at your next event.

~Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

By: Trickybits, Flickr

Business owners seem to inherently know the value of a customer.  If not, they generally go out of business.  As businesses grow and hire more people, the employees don’t inherently know the value of the customer.

As part of National Customer Service week, I wrote this Customer Value Creed for organizations of all sizes to use as ongoing inspiration for quality customer care.

This creed includes the two winning entries from the customer value contest held back in July-August.  Congratulations and thanks to Kalin Bracken and Joan Koerber-Walker for their winning entries (#12 and #13 below).

The Value of Customers

1. Customers spark innovation through their demands. Embrace your innovators.
2. Customers give you an advanced education about people. Respect your “teachers”.
3. Customers pay for your performance.  Give your best show.
4. Customers keep your company alive. Feed your blood.
5. Customers blow your horn. Herald your trumpeters.
6. Customers are your future Wikipedia. Make many entries.
7. Customers are your tweeps on Twitter.  Tweet them right.
8. Customers are your reputation. Protect it.
9. Customers are gold. Mine for it.
10. Customers are your greatness. Cherish and nurture it.
11. Customers are human. Help humankind.
12. Customers are your muse. Be inspired. ~Kalin Bracken
13. Customers share their remarks with others. Be remarkable. ~Joan Koerber-Walker

Still time to contribute: Although the contest has ended, I invite you to share this creed with your entire organization.  Brainstorm additions to this creed and send your best ideas to me in the form of  two short sentences.  I will feature many entries with the author’s names in an updated blog post by the end of November 2009.

As you share this with others, please credit me as the author and the URL, (http://katenasser.com).

Many thanks and I welcome your comments and entries in the comments field below.
~Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

It is my pleasure to introduce my first guest blogger, Pattie Roberts. She is a freelance writer specializing in marketing. Yet in this article she reveals an insight on people-skills and technology that I just had to feature here.  Pattie and I welcome your comments below and directly to email.  Kate Nasser

When I was ten I realized that many people were not telepathic and it broke my heart.  In that one moment of epiphany I knew that I, like most of this planet, would live and die in profound isolation.  I would never really know anyone else’s thoughts or feelings, nor would they know mine.   This sober knowledge informed and drove everything I did from that moment on.  Which is why, amid all of the lamentation about how technology is killing personal interaction, I say bring it on. 

Two functionalities in particular – Twitter and texting – have been incredibly valuable in expressing grief.  Twitter and texting are so valuable to knowing others and being known in times of grief that it is almost too sad to recall old pain experienced without these tools.

We all know the studies claiming the number one fear, worldwide, is public speaking.   People would rather die than be embarrassed.   Showing weakness can be embarrassing.  Expressing a deep sense of desolation at the loss of someone dear can also be seen as weakness.  Can’t have that!   When I lost my mother, then my daughter, then my father, I “held up.” We all do it.  Be strong for others; cry alone.  For me, all that big grief was contained in a small circle of family and friends until this past January when everything changed.  Twitter and texting entered my world.

One of my dearest friends, Lezlie, a sister of the heart, lost her father on January 27.  His name was C. Berry Carter. We all called him Daddy Bear and he was my surrogate father for more than 20 years after my own parents died.  Daddy Bear started not feeling right at Thanksgiving of 2008 and by January he was gravely ill with liver cancer.  Lezlie was understandably frantic with worry and close to despair.  I had been through this many times but she, never.  I felt both her pain and my own. 

You wonder how you can feel that much pain and still live.  And it doesn’t keep convenient hours.  At 3:00 am I was still awake, too tired from weeping to sleep and so was she.  It all felt horribly familiar except this time, I had the next best thing to ESP with my friend.  I had Twitter and texting. 

U awake?  Yes.  Crying?  Yes.  Me too.

It was so strange and so comforting.  We could be together at any hour, from any location, without actually speaking.  Short bursts of instantaneous thought and feeling without the constraints of normal conversation were a godsend.  You can cry while you are texting without having to “hold up.” The soft ping of a tweet or a text doesn’t intrude like the screech of a phone ring.

I texted her funny quotes and photos of my dogs doing goofy dog things.   We were in closer contact than we ever could have been had we driven to each other’s houses or called and left messages.  We kept right on with the demands of our separate lives and saw each other whenever we could.  But with Twitter and texting, we never left each other’s side. 

After the service, I wanted to shout to the world that a great man had passed.  I wasn’t able to do this when my own dear ones left.  There were obituaries, of course, but traditional media are limited in scope and reach.  But now, cold, impersonal technology made the comfort of strangers possible.  I tweeted my sorrow and loss out to the Twitterverse.  I have no idea how many people may have read it but I felt connected to billions and it was a comfort unlike any I had known before. 

This past weekend I saw a post on LinkedIn by a man who had just buried his mother.  He wanted to salute her since it was so near Mother’s Day.  I felt for him — still not ESP, but the next best thing.

About the Author

Pattie Roberts is a freelance writer and researcher specializing in marketing-related writing.  Her analytic side loves to do the research to market your business.  Her expressive side comes out in the marketing plans, briefings, and presentations she writes for you.  She is currently writing grant applications for non-profits and is taking on new customers.   Pattie lives in Annapolis, MD, with her husband, the musician Hugh Feeley, and their two rescue Yorkies.   When she is not working on research for your business,  Pattie fusses over her roses, writes loooong letters to her stepdaughter in the Marines  stationed in Japan (ooh rah!), and thinks of faster ways to finish projects around the house and tweet those ideas.  You can Tweet her at http://twitter.com/pavroberts or email her at pavroberts@comcast.net.

When I was a senior in high school, my father told me to take typing “because all girls should know how to type.”  WHAT, I screamed.  As I raged on about this remark and swore never to take typing, my mother offered another view. “You are going to college next year right?” Yes, I shot back.  “Well how will you do your papers if you can’t type?  It has nothing to do with being a girl.”

Despite my father’s attitude which made me scream, I did take typing as a graduating senior and my fingers still scream the keyboard at 90 words a minute.  I typed all my papers quickly in college while many pulled all-nighters. Moreover, I made money typing others’ papers from their handwritten drafts. 

After college I took a job as a computer programmer. My fingers screamed the keyboard at 90 words a minute.  As other programmers hunted and pecked their code, I took a longer lunch.  After my IT jobs, I started my own training/consulting practice where once again my fingers screamed the keyboard typing reports, email, and now for tweets on Twitter and discussions on LinkedIn.

Thankfully, I had seen the wisdom in my mother’s perspective.  Moreover, I learned something far more important than typing.  On your life’s journey, what sounds like bad advice isn’t always bad.  How you hear it makes the difference. You owe it to yourself to consider ideas before you make a choice.  This will affect your personal relationships, your team efforts at work, the customer experiences you deliver, the sales you make, and most importantly your life choices.

What colors your ability to listen, assess, and find a hidden pearl of wisdom?

• Dislike for the messenger’s attitude and other views
• Your map that doesn’t allow for a detour
• Internal noise – your thoughts saying no instead of hmm … what if
• Baggage and bad memories
• Fear
• Short-sighted view of life

How many people (older than Gen Y) imagined this online life at the keyboard?  How many including Gen Y imagined this terrible economic crisis?  Yet can you remember your grandparents saying save for a rainy day?  Did you dismiss it as old-fashioned and irrelevant?

Have you ever heard the expression: It’s amazing how wise your parents become as you get older?  That isn’t to say you should cling to the past.  Rather as you live in the present, improving how you hear things can open your life to new horizons.  You may discover an idea that will change your life.  

When I was unhappy with my IT jobs and struggling to create a happy life, a career counselor assessed my picture and told me that I wanted to be self-employed.  I was baffled and thought she’s crazy.  Then I thought, hmm …what if? 

I explored it, researched it, planned it and did it!  That was 20 years ago and I never looked back. She was right and it changed my life.  Thank you, Paulette Zimmerman, for that pearl of wisdom and I thank myself for thinking hmm… what if?

What advice would you give graduating seniors from high school, tech. school, and college?

I’ll start the list and ask that you add your advice below in the comments field.

• Learn as much as you can — everywhere you can. You never know what will become a pearl!
• Build fun and responsibility into your life starting today.
• Associate with people of all ages – your age, older, and younger. Pearls of wisdom are hidden in others’ experiences.
• Create your life with vision, persistence, patience, and the disciplined action to get there.

Now it’s on to my next hmm… what if? 

Update on this post: A couple of days after I wrote this article, I found an article in USA Today by Alan Webber, entitled “Hey, Grads, It’s Time to Write New Rules”.   He straight out says never stop learning.   He has published a book with many more rules called Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Yourself. 

Parents, the book might be a great family read and discussion to mentor your teens and college grads into adult life! 

If you wish to share this info on other blogs and websites, please credit this URL.  I welcome your additions to the advice list in the comments field below and welcome your tweets at http://twitter.com/KateNasser.

Happy Mother’s Day Mom.

Many thanks for your pearls,

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

This is a new ongoing blog post to collect and share great practical tips on starting the week off with a positive pop!! Here are just a few starting tips.  Please add your comments below so we can get this rolling.  

If you are on Twitter, chat (tweet) on Motivate Mondays with # so others can find it.  If you are not on Twitter, join up and follow me (@katenasser) and @Help_NewTweeps to get going more quickly.

Motivate Mondays: Tips to inspire a great start of the week:

• Sunday, have fun during the day, get organized in the evening, and sleep happy at night.
• Plant a big smile on your face as you go to work.  Let your actions control your feelings not the reverse.
• Do something different at work on Monday morning.  It will change the entire week.
• Ask your teams and colleagues: What will we learn this week?  Because you change how you start the week, your week will take a new and different path.

Inspiring yourself and others has great rewards.  It changes your thinking.  It changes your outlook.  It changes what happens around you because of your actions to try something different and change.

Please contribute a Motivate Mondays tip below.  We grow and change by listening and learning from others.

Kate Nasser

http://katenasser.com