The Stuck Blog

And the #1 secret is to finding work you love is…

Have some fun with just being YOU!!

That’s it. It really is that simple.

Think about that simple statement for a minute and what it means. Do you have fun just being YOU, even when you’re at work? Are you the same person at work as you are at home? Which one is the real you, the one at home or the one at work? Do you really know who “you” is? And how do you make a living by having fun just being you? …

Despite what others may try to tell you, you can make a fantastic living having fun just being you. Work doesn’t have to be “labor” to make great money. It doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, those who make the best money consistently love what they do not because of the money, but because it fits them down to the core.

Just how is it that you find a career where you can have some fun with just being YOU? There are five simple steps that are proven to lead you to work you love, where you will have some fun just being YOU.

The five steps are:

Step #1 – Know the “real you”.
Step #2 – Embrace the “real you”.
Step #3 – Understand how being the real you will help solve the problems of others.
Step #4 – Find somewhere that will embrace the “real you” (where you don’t have to hide it).
Step #5 – Set an action plan to get from here to there.

In the next few blogs, I’ll discuss in detail each one of these steps. If you’d like to know more about our techniques, visit our website at www.stuckinarut.com . Now on to the first step….

STEP #1 - Know the real you. This sounds simple, but is it really?

In today’s world, people identify so much with their job title and place of employment that they lose their sense of who they are… or maybe they never really knew. If you don’t know who you are, how are you supposed to get into a career that fits the real you? Try these tests to see if you know the real you…

Here’s a test. Can you describe yourself without mentioning your job title?

Here’s a tougher test. Can you describe yourself without mentioning skills? (A skill is something you’ve learned since the age of ten.)

And here’s an even tougher test. Can you describe yourself in terms of unique core characteristics? Can you describe yourself so well that if your best friend found this description on a piece of paper laying on the street (without your name on it), he or she would instantly know it’s you?

If you struggle with this, join the crowd. I did, too. It wasn’t until I went through an iterative questioning process over about eight years that I discovered how to describe the real me.

Here’s what I did, and you can try it, too. It’ll bring interesting results. Finish this statement…

Keep filling in that blank over and over again, each time giving a different answer. Keep going until you run out of things with which to complete that sentence. Come back and revisit it later. If you give it a little thought each time, you’ll go deeper and deeper into who you REALLY are. If you get to a point that describes you and only you, then you’ve got it. That’s the real you!!

We’ve found a really cool way to uncover the real you in a process we call The Clarifier . The Clarifier uncovers your Given Talent in about 90 minutes. Your Given Talent is the very core of you. It’s the way you uniquely process information that is so energizing that you are compelled by it. You can’t get enough of it, and you’re REALLY good at it.

If you’d like to see how much you’re using your Given Talent at work and at home, try our free Reality Check by clicking here. You can even sign up for a free test drive there. It’s a great start to finding out about the real you.

Until next time, have some fun with just being YOU!!!

Dave Dutton - Founder of Dave Dutton - Founder of stuckinarut.com - “Answering the question for all ages, “What do I want to be when I grow up.”

Choosing a major is a defining moment in a student’s life. A major determines not only the course of study, but it also has a huge influence over the student’s career track.

This is no small decision. To put this into perspective, the current average cost for a four year degree at a public university is about $89,000. And the average student spends almost 5000 hours of their life attending university classes and doing homework. There’s a lot on the line, especially when most students only hope they’ve chosen the right major.

Do you know a student or student to be? If they’re using one of these nine flawed strategies to choose a major and get into a job, chances are they have an uphill battle ahead of them. Share this and my next blog post with them to see if it applies to them.

Flawed Strategy #1 - Choosing Your Major Based Upon Which Classes You Excel In

At first blush, this seems to be a good way to choose a major, and occasionally it does lead to a fitting major and in turn a rewarding career. However, just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy doing it the rest of your life. That’s the flaw with skills based career counseling and choosing a major this way.

A better methodology is to get into something that you’re not only naturally good at, but that energizes you completely. Otherwise, a life of competent boredom may be ahead.

Flawed Strategy #2 – Choosing Your Major Based Upon What Your Parents Do

Choosing a major based upon what your parents do is often the default way. You choose to follow the path of your parents, often because of money, the prestige or maybe even heritage. Even though you are genetically connected to your parents, common DNA doesn’t necessarily mean you would be happy being in the same occupation. And remember, 86% of parents don’t love what they do for a living anyway.

Ten years from now your parents won’t be sitting inside that cubicle with you. If you don’t love what you do, you’re the only one who has to suffer. Common DNA doesn’t mean common interests.

Flawed Strategy #3 - Choosing Your Major Based Upon Your Dreams

Many say this is the best way to choose a major because after all, you are following your dreams. Sometimes dreaming is a good way to discover what you love, but only if your dreams are realistic and achievable based upon who you are. More often than not, dreams are just that… dreams.

Even though the desire is there, dreams also need to be supported by natural ability. Dreams are not the best way to choose your major. Not everybody can be the next Tiger Woods.

Flawed Strategy #4 – Choosing Your Major Because A Friend Said To

Those who know you well may suggest you consider a particular occupation or major. You’ve probably heard something like, “Have you ever thought of being a doctor / writer / architect / psychiatrist?” Brainstorming with others is actually a very good way to choose a major and career, but there is a wrong way and a right way. The wrong way is to consider entering a career only because others think you’d be good at it, even though you don’t know what energizes you at the core. Make sure that it energizes YOU, and will for quite some time.

Flawed Strategy #5 – Choosing Your Major Based on Aptitude and Personality Tests
Aptitude and personality testing is fast becoming popular for both high school and college students. These tests are interesting, but not necessarily the best way to find an energizing career. They measure your hand/eye coordination, “tweezer” dexterity, thumb dexterity, aptitude, personality type, spatial recognition, verbal abilities and visual and reading skills. Then the magic black box spits out careers you’d be good at and the work environment you would enjoy.

These tests tend to box you in to one of a half dozen careers you’d be good at. Once again, just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you’ll love doing it full time. Regardless of how nice the office is, if what you’re doing doesn’t energize you, you’re signing up to join the 86% group who don’t love their job.

A better way is to know what you do naturally well and what totally energizes you. Relying on canned personality and aptitude testing to choose your career will box you in.

I’ll tell you the other four flawed methods in my next post. Until then…

Have some fun with just being YOU!!

We hear many great stories when we take our clients through The Clarifier to uncover their Given Talent, and this is one of the best.

This was one of the more intense clients we’ve ever had the pleasure of helping. It’s a story Dan (not his real name) and his experience disabling IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices) in Iraq.

Dan contacted us from San Diego when he was on home leave from his military service. Dan spent the first half of his career as a Navy Seal. When he called us, he was in the Marines as an IED Tech in Iraq.

Dan was considered the best IED Tech in all of Iraq for the two years he was there, but he desperately wanted something different. Dan had enough of that job for obvious reasons. He wanted our help in finding a new career. The only life he could see was one in the military or something similar afterward.

When we take clients through The Clarifier interview, we ask them to remember a day or two when the time flew by. Most people describe a vacation day, or a play day, or an isolated day at work. In Dan’s case, he remembered two days. One was his very first day in Fallujah, and the other was when he was a teenager engaged in a martial arts session.

Dan began by telling us about his day in Fallujah. Five minutes after he arrived in the city, he was called out to disable three IEDs (bombs) in a local neighborhood. When he arrived, not only was he disabling bombs, but he was also dodging bullets and grenades being sent his way by the local insurgents. This would not be an energizing day to most of us, but it was to Dan.

Dan was surrounded by swarms and swarms of Should Bees on that day. “I should stay low. I should trust nobody. I should make sure I know my ingress and egress.” Even though Dan’s Given Talent was evident on that day, it was buried underneath layers and layers of Should Bees which made seeing his Given Talent a bit more difficult (but not impossible). We decided to explore his other energizing day.

So off we went, taking Dan through another energizing day when he was doing martial arts as a teenager. He recollected a day he sparred an opponent who was bigger and more trained than him. As we dug further and further into how he was thinking on that day, Dan’s Given Talent became crystal clear and it was fascinating (as they all are).

It turns out Dan is fascinated with motion, especially human motion, because he believes it is a glimpse into how the other person is thinking. The sequence of motions of others is like his roadmap into their mind. As he watches how others physically move, he is able to (with uncanny accuracy) predict what is going through the other person’s mind. That whole process happens within Dan in nanno-seconds. He’s been doing it since he was a kid, he did it as a soldier, and he’ll even do it in retirement. He can’t help but do it because after all, that is him.

That’s why he was able to defeat much larger and more skilled martial arts opponents. That’s why he was so successful disabling IED’s in Iraq. In effect, when he disabled a bomb, he wasn’t disabling the bomb…he was actually disabling the bomb maker by knowing exactly what they were thinking when they were putting that bomb together.

That is why Dan was alive when some of his friends were not.
When we pointed Dan’s Given Talent out to him, he didn’t think it was any big deal. He said, “Doesn’t everybody think that way?” (Yeah, right!! That actually is a very common thing that happens with our clients. When their Given Talent is uncovered, they discount it because it’s so much a part of them.) We knew differently. Our job was merely to point his Given Talent out to him and help him see the great things that happen as the result of it.

Dan went back to finish his tour of Iraq, and he used this knowledge to know exactly how to become an even more effective IED Tech. But that isn’t the end of the story…

When his tour ended, Dan immediately enrolled in law school. Today, he is whizzing through law school to become a litigating attorney. It’s easy to see how Dan’s ability to get into the mind of his opponent will serve him well in his newfound career. He is excelling and loving his new sense of direction.

Dan is an example of someone who is blossoming, even though he lived through more tough times and Should Bees than most of us can imagine. He found out what energized him at his core, and found that he had tons of ways he could use that core way of thinking. He’ll be a natural litigator.

I hope this story provides a spark within you. There are lots of great things happening out there today, and many of them are happening within you without you even knowing about it.

Have some fun with just being YOU!!

Dave

I was at a Mothers’ Day celebration last month where some of these wise kids were in rare form. A group of ten preschool kids were asked to come to the front of the room and talk about what they did for their moms for Mother’s Day.

One girl said she made waffles for her mom in bed. Another girl said she picked some flowers for her mom. Yet another went to church with her mom. It was then that a stroke of wisdom emerged from the mouth of one of the five year olds, just when I least expected it.

It started when the man who was leading the conversation (his name is Kim) said we should be thankful for mothers. “After all, being a mother is usually pure joy, but it can also be stressful. That’s why moms sometimes get gray hair.”

He said being a dad can be stressful too, which is why dads get gray hair, too. Then he said, “Even though I’m a dad, my hair isn’t gray. But I’d be OK if I had gray hair. I’m glad to have hair of any color just as long as it doesn’t fall out.” (Kim’s hair is a wispy brown).

Out of the blue, one of the five year old boys asked a question only a five year old can ask, “Do you dye your hair?”

The crowd erupted. Why? It was a question much of the crowd was thinking, but they didn’t think it was a question that “should be” asked. When that little boy asked that innocent question completely void of Should Bees, it was like a breath of fresh air fanning the crowd.

That five year old could care less about what “should be”. Just hang around young kids for a while and watch how totally spontaneous and genuine they are. They know exactly who they are. Five year old kids have virtually no “Should Bees”.

Because kids have no Should Bees, they are refreshing to be around. They embrace everything that confronts them. They aren’t caught up in what they should or shouldn’t do. They just react to the moment. That’s why they are so happy.

Ask a five year old what they want to be when they grow up. They’ll instantly say a doctor, or a nurse, or a teacher, or an astronaut, or a firefighter. They’ll say it with such certainty and without apology.

Ask someone in mid-career what they want to be when they grow up. You’ll usually get a deer in the headlights look. Instead of the completely unrehearsed response of a five year old, you’ll hear Should Bees.

- “I should be using my college education.”
- “I should have an 8-5 job like everybody else.”
- “I should be more organized.”
- “I should be more artistic.”
- “I should be more focused.”

Often they say simply, “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.” Living through Should Bees is what keeps the real you from coming out. Should Bees fog the wonderful you that’s hidden beneath.

So, who is the “real you”? Quite simply, it’s the “you” that’s there when your Should Bees are gone. It’s the ten year old in you that’s begging to come out and have fun. It’s what we call your Given Talent.

What is a Given Talent? A Given Talent is the innate part of you that makes you totally unique. You’ve had your Given Talent since you were in grade school, and you are an expert at it. Everybody has a Given Talent, and they are all amazing in their own rights.

I’ll talk a lot more about the concept of Given Talent in my next blog. If you want to get a sneak preview of what a Given Talent is and how to find yours, go to www.stuckinarut.com. I’ll give you a hint… every single activity you love to do (work or play) is linked together through your Given Talent.

Until then, have some fun with just being YOU!!!

In my previous post, I introduced you to the Great Pretender Game. Let’s talk more about how the game is played.

If you feel the need to be someone other than who you really are just to keep your job, you’re playing the Great Pretender Game. If your personality stays on the curb on the way to work, you’re playing the Great Pretender Game. If the person staring at you through the mirror of work is completely different than the one you let out at home… there’s your sign.

It’s extremely easy to get caught in The Great Pretender Game. In fact, society teaches it in many ways. I’m sure you’ve heard the advice to make your resume look like exactly the person they are seeking. Or maybe you’ve been told to keep your resume businesslike and keep your personality out of the resume. Hmmm… sounds like a recipe for The Great Pretender.

I’ve seen the game played hundreds of times. It’s the artist at heart who pretends to be the filing clerk, or the straight-laced accountant who moonlights in the rock band, or the professional who refuses to put on a tie elsewhere.

So, how do you know if you’re playing The Great Pretender Game? Here’s how. You’re probably a player in the game if you accepted a job primarily because of:
• the pay, or
• the reputation of the company, or
• your friends who already work there, or
• the company’s products or services, or
• the location of the office, or
• someone else told you to take the job.

The only way to keep from playing the Great Pretender Game is that you took the job primarily because the duties of the job fit the real you.

If you’re playing the Great Pretender Game, it’s just a matter of time before one of these two predictable outcomes happen…

Predictable Outcome #1 - You become a truly great pretender, and live one life at work and another at home. You put a brick wall up between work and home to keep the two identities separate. You have to remember to check your personality at the curb on the way to work for fear the real you will be found out. This outcome sometimes leads to short-term success, but it almost always leads to long-term discontentment. When you’re living two lives, you count down the days until you can retire so you can go back to being yourself full time.

Predictable Outcome #2 - You turn out to be a lousy pretender and eventually your cover is blown. Your employer finds out you’re actually somebody very different from the person they thought they hired. You get fired, decide to leave or are forced to resign gracefully.

To join the 14% who love their job, it’s absolutely crucial to be the “real you” in your resume and interview. This all starts with knowing the real you. Sadly, most people don’t have a clue who the “real you” is because they are so identified with their job title. What you’ve done has absolutely nothing to do with who you are.

Just how do you find who you are… the real you? That’s a great question that I’m sure many of you have asked yourself. That’s what The Clarifier is all about. It answers the question, “What do I want to be when I grow up.”

Have some fun with just being YOU!!

Dave

Let’s follow Fred Flintstone in a job search to see how not to do it. As most of us remember, Fred worked in the rock pit at The Slate Rock and Gravel Company. Let’s imagine for a moment Fred lives in modern times, and he is one of the 86% who don’t love their job. He wants something better.

Fred hears about an attractive job as a salesman for Bedrock Counters. The pay is good, the company is stable, and the other employees seem to love it there. He’s really excited because if he gets the job, he won’t have to peddle his car very far to work every day. He tells Wilma (his wife) he is going to apply for the new job.

As luck would have it, Wilma has a friend who works at Bedrock. Wilma talks to her friend and learns Bedrock’s main customer base is women. Bedrock is looking for the kind, sensitive, understanding type to relate to their customer.

Fred does his homework and follows the job strategy others taught him. Fred produces a beautiful, professionally customized resume that matches his past to the requirements of the job. He highlights times in his past where he was the kind, sensitive person. He uses a frilly font on his resume to soften the look. He even puts a positive spin on his past experience, calling himself “Team Leader” instead of Rock Pit Foreman.

His resume works, and Fred is called in for an interview. He arrives at Bedrock expecting to talk to Mr. Bedrock. To his surprise, he is actually interviewed by Mrs. Bedrock, the Chairperson of the Board.

During the interview, Fred has to make sure he acts the part of the kind sensitive soul. He consciously talks to Mrs. Bedrock in the most diminutive voice he can muster. He politely crosses his legs and leans forward to listen like someone who’s actually kind and sensitive. He chitchats with Mrs. Bedrock just like women do when they get together. Fred is convinced he’s going to get the job, because he played the part to perfection.

And Fred is right. Bedrock loves what they see and they hire Fred. That’s the good news. The bad news is Fred is doomed to become one of the 86% who don’t love their job. He just played The Great Pretender Game.

Because Fred won the game, now he gets the spoils. And spoil is the right word. It’s just a matter of time before the real Fred Flintstone shows up. As we all know, Fred is far from the kind, sensitive, understanding type. Fred is actually somebody who is socially clumsy. His clumsiness is a part of his charm. That’s what we love about Fred.

Fred didn’t bill himself as that clumsy doofus in the interview. If he had, Bedrock might have placed him into a job that really did fit him. Instead, he pretended to be the kind, sensitive and understanding type that they described in their advertisement.

Fred fit himself to the job, instead of letting the job fit to him. Bedrock is about to find out they hired someone they don’t really know. They hired a Great Pretender.

Even though Fred is a mythical character from Stone Age days, his story represents many of you today. How do you know if you’re playing The Great Pretender Game along with Fred? How do you get a job just by being you? I’ll talk about that more in next week’s post.

Have some fun with just being YOU!!

Dave

OK, OK. I’ll fess up. I’m a contrarian-aholic. Ask my wife of 33 years and she’ll tell you it’s true. When everybody else goes one way, I go exactly the opposite direction just to see whether the crowd is right or wrong.

I question pretty much everything, even when things don’t beg a question. That is a part of my Given Talent (as we call it at Stuck in a Rut - www.stuckinarut.com). I’ve been that way since I was a kid and I’ll be that until the day I die. That’s why I’m so fascinated with Albert Einstein, whom I consider the Rock Star Contrarian. (Einstein’s discoveries came largely from him questioning the obvious, such as gravity and light).

I’ve been around the job market for about thirty years, most of it as an executive for some fairly large companies. For the past five years, I’ve been immersed in the career field helping hundreds of clients through a process we call The Clarifier at Stuck in a Rut.

About a decade ago, I began to question the job system itself because I saw signs it wasn’t working very well. I had some nagging questions that begged answers, and nobody seemed to be asking those questions.

“Why is it that so many people end up in jobs they don’t love?”

“Why is it so difficult to change occupations once you’re established?”

“Why do jobs tend to start out fun but get boring once you’re settled in?”

These questions haunted me. They applied both to blue collar workers and to highly paid executives. No matter what their background or pay level was, most people couldn’t wait until they didn’t have to work anymore. If they won the lottery today, they’d quit their job tomorrow. Why, why, why?

I found statistics that encouraged more questions. The Conference Board found in 2005 (and again in 2007) that 86% of people don’t love their job. This figure remains relatively constant regardless of the level of education or pay.

We’ve got a problem, Houston! The job system is broken. What else would explain why six out of seven of us are in jobs we don’t love? Even worse, why is it people blindly follow this broken system like a bunch of lemmings marching lockstep toward a cliff.

What are the answers to these questions? The obvious first answer is to stop thinking like lemmings and start asking questions like intelligent humans. Ask questions that beg answers even though nobody else seems to be asking them. Ask questions like:

- Why does everybody do resumes the same basic two ways even though the purpose of the resume is to stand out from the crowd? Wouldn’t it make sense to try a different way?

- Why are we taught to keep our personalities out of our resume, when what we want is a job that fits our personality? Wouldn’t it make sense to bring our personality out in the resume?

- Why are we intent on identifying ourselves by our job title, when that very act is why people brand us by our occupation? Wouldn’t it make sense to identify ourselves by who we truly are, and to make really sure we know who we are?

- Why do companies insist on hiring only those with past experience, when statistics show 86% of people don’t love what they do (and the other 14% aren’t interviewing). Wouldn’t it make sense to hire people whose natural born abilities make them a perfect fit regardless of their past?

Ask the questions. Seek the answers. Being a lemming doesn’t pay off. Just because it’s the “norm” doesn’t make it right. It just means everybody else is doing it that way. That’s all. Isn’t that reason enough to try a different way?

If you want to get into something that fits you, the real you, it takes a different way of thinking. Stop thinking like a lemming and start thinking like a human. Start now!!

Have some fun with just being YOU!!

Dave Dutton - Founder of stuckinarut.com -

We’ll be posting advice, quotes, thoughts and ramblings to this page. Keep in touch through here and we’ll take care of tickling your mind. Quick facts: 86% of people are stuck in a job they don’t love 50% would change jobs if given the chance Now our question to you is if 86% of people don’t love what they do, why would only 50% change? What about the other 36%? Resigned to be unhappy?

We’re here to help those that 86% of people take action! Get off your rump and start on your journey.