New Year's Resolutions

This is the time of year when most of us make our New Year Resolutions. Will you be making a resolution? Maybe you want to lose weight or get fitter? Perhaps you're going to take up exercising at least 3 times a week? Some people in midlife (and elsewhere) will have serious decisions to make - for example:

• Where will I find my new job? 
• I must be honest with everyone and move on from my relationship
• I'm going to 'come out' this year and tell that world that I'm proud to be gay
• This is the year that I'm going to really sort my finances

Whatever resolutions you make, will you be able to stick to them? This is the key to success, whether it's getter fitter, losing weight or ending your unhappy relationship.

All take dedication, hard work, guts in many cases and a determination to succeed.

We can all do it, but do we all have the guts and willpower to see it through?

That, folks, is the difference between those who do, and those who want to do. We all know this too, don't we. So why aren't we all successful?

What is your New Year's Resolution?

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

10 Ways to Secure your Midlife Career

Are you worried about losing your job? Many people have this fear and in the coming months, more and more people will be asking themselves the same question. If you are in this position, what should you do?
Firstly, ask yourself if this is a real fear or an unjustified reaction to the current economic climate. Most jobs, in fact, will not disappear and most people will remain in their current employment. You may be worrying unnecessarily. 
If your job security fears are grounded in reality, here are 10 ways that can help you to come out on top:

• Make yourself indispensable
• Do a SWOT on yourself – your Strengths and Weaknesses. What are the Threats to you and what are your Opportunities?
• Take a Personality Test – understand what makes YOU tick
• Research the market for your talents
• Network 
• Upskill
• Understand your rights
• Discuss the situation with your partner
• Review your finances
• Think what you really want to do with the rest of your life

Being made redundant in midlife is not the end of the world. It really can be the kick that you have needed to make the move and do what you really want to do with the rest of your life. You will never have a better opportunity to take the leap and give it a try. You don’t want to be going to your grave regretting that you wasted the best opportunity that you had!

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

Understand your Personality

It is self evident that we all have different personalities and if you are in midlife and looking for a new job or promotion, you need to be acutely aware of and understand your own characteristics. There are a number of online personality tests and techniques available to identify your own strengths and weaknesses.  Two of the most popular are Belbin and DISC.

Belbin will help you to identify your team roles – how you work within a team and the character traits that you display.  Are you a Leader or a Shaper, an Implementer or a Specialist? There are several other categorisations within the Belbin analysis. You can complete the online form yourself and receive a 5 page analysis of your character type. You can also ask friends and work colleagues to complete a different version of the form and this will give you a 360 degree view – how you see yourself and how others view you.

There is a small cost to use the Belbin analysis and details can be found here

DISC will help you to identify your own personality type.  The DISC profiling produces 3 graphs that highlight the following key information:

• How you appear to other people
• How you cope under pressure
• How you see yourself
• How does it work?

The profile is in the form of an online questionnaire that takes around 10 minutes to complete. The answers are then analysed and your personality profile is constructed and the output is turned into a 7-8 page report. 

If you complete these questionnaires and read the resultant analyses you will have a basic idea of your own character type. Some of this will be no surprise to you. Parts of it may lead you to question your own self-image. Regardless of your own characteristics, you must understand where you fit in. Leaders will always lead. If you are not a Leader type, will you ever be the boss? Realistically, if you are not a natural leader you are unlikely to rise right to the top. However, you can most certainly aspire to a senior role in an organisation, though you will need to work on those areas that require development.

Where are you most comfortable? Truly successful people move out of their comfort zone as a matter of course. They will push and stretch themselves to ensure that their character types are as rounded as they can be.

Your character type may surprise you. Can you change? Maybe, maybe not. The choice is yours and the experience may not be a smooth ride. If you are a Leader type, you may need to develop your ‘softer’ side in order to manage your teams as you progress through the organisation.

If you are not a Leader, you can change your character and become more authoritative, more directive and more persuasive. This will not be easy and certainly in the initial phase, you will feel as if you are not only outside of your comfort zone but that you have lost sight of it! But this is exactly what you must do to move forward. The great explorers who first charted the land masses of the world set sail and disappeared over the horizon at a time when the prevailing wisdom counseled that the Earth was flat and ships that sailed too far would fall off of the edge. These explorers were prepared to take the risk to find out the truth. In your own way, if you are determined to reach the top, you will also have to sail over the horizon from time to time to explore uncharted waters. Taking risks and being responsible for the outcome will seem daunting initially but once you have your first successes, moving forward will seem easier.

Certain character types are more suited to particular roles and departments than others. Frequently, departments are defined by this. For example, a typical Finance or IT department will contain fewer Leader types and Resource Investigators. They will contain more Team Workers and Completer Finishers than a typical Sales or Marketing department, where Leader types will compete for dominance.

Individuals who stand out are those that are comfortable and confident in their surroundings but who also have the exceptional extra characteristic. A Leader type will stand out in a Finance environment and a confident Completer Finisher will similarly shine in a Sales department. They will be confident, rounded individuals who can do their jobs and deputise for their boss when required. They have that something extra, which those who are less successful don’t exhibit.

If you haven’t completed a personality test previously, it will be a worthwhile investment for you to understand yourself in a more structured way and see how your are perceived by others.

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

Freedom of Expression

Freedom of expression is one of the basics of a democratic society. Today, more than ever before, the individual is able to express their views and opinions and broadcast their thoughts to a global audience. Social media enables all of us to air our views and ping them off to anyone and everyone who has an interest. So far, so good.

Moving the argument along a little, if we have this new found freedom to broadcast to the world, we also have a responsibility to think about what we are saying and doing. Whilst some extreme views or actions can be discounted, others may have far reaching consequences which we had never imagined.

A campaign on Twitter against an organisation or an individual may make us feel better, but what are the longer term consequences?

We might agree that Wikileaks has the moral right to broadcast secret government documents because the government shouldn’t be acting in such a covert manner. Really? Do the guys at Wilikeaks really understand what they are doing? Clearly they don’t. Being motivated by a need to expose people/governments may seem altruistic and desirable but they have completely overlooked The Law of Unintended Consequences (LUC).

In any society we have to have some order. We have to have people who lead and people who are led. We may not like or respect our leaders and we may wish to demonstrate against them but there has to be a limit to this.

Social media has allowed the individual to cross this line and the dangers are clearly visible. When launching a campaign or exposé we must ask WHY we are doing this. We must also ask ourselves WHAT we expect to happen as a result and we must never forget LUC.

We must take responsibility for our actions and understand the consequences. The alternative is anarchy and throughout history, anarchy has always ended in disaster …

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

The Mid Life Guide

Are you interested in contributing to The Mid Life Opportunity and developing an ongoing passive income source for yourself? Yes? No?

Do you have a specific interest, skill or expertise in a particular area that would be of interest to people in midlife? Can you write 5,000 - 10,000 words of rich, insightful copy?

We are developing The Mid Life Guide, with a number of sections which will be contributed by experts in their own areas. These areas include:

• Living your Second Half
• Fitness without Pain
• Healthy Eating
• Relationships
• Finding a new Job
• Starting on Online Business
• Starting an Affiliate Business
• Looking towards Retirement
• Being Positive
• Overcoming Adversity
• Your Health in Midlife
• Money Making Opportunities for Midlifers
• Others?

Several of the sections of the Guide are already taken and we can't accept competing copy. We are also happy to hear from you if you have something which you think will fit in with The Mid Life Guide but which isn't in the original list of sections. We're open to your suggestions :)

If you would like to contribute, please let us know by commenting below. Together, we can change the world - well, the midlife world ...

www.MidLifeOp.com

Midlife Careers

The number if people without jobs in the UK fell last month. This surprised pretty much everyone in the media and the city. The value of Sterling rose, as a result.

Every day we read and hear doom and gloom in the media – public sector jobs disappearing, the private sector can’t create enough jobs to make up the difference, the West is in decline, etc , etc.
This may all be true – the point is, though, that the media don’t seem to be getting the reality of the new economy. Jobs for life have gone. Generous pensions are a thing of the past. Retiring early is not an option for most of us. But the same ‘most of us’ are still surviving; many of us are doing very well. Virtually all of the doom and gloom mongers in the media are, themselves, doing very well. Plenty of companies are reporting increased profits (though, of course, there are plenty more companies who are struggling).

The negativity in the media is relentless, but totally overblown. How many people do you know who are really struggling to keep their heads above water? They might have cut back through fears of redundancy, they might be earning a bit less than they were but how many are really struggling?

The world of work is changing. More and more people have ‘portfolio careers’ – more than one part time job. Many midlifers, in particular, are following this career path, sometimes by necessity rather than design. Many of these are doing very well for themselves. They have more flexibility and can choose to work for 7 days in the week or take some time off.

These roles may be office based or home based. Increasingly they will involve the internet in some form. The www has provided unimaginable opportunities for people to build their own business and midlifers in particular have an opportunity to start the next phase of their careers building an online business.
This is the future, I have no doubt.

We all need to take more control over our own lives. Midlifers, with their mix of life experiences, wisdom and adaptability are uniquely placed to cash in on their past and start an interest based business to safeguard their future. To find out more - Mid Life Career

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

10 Reasons Why We Underachieve in Midlife

Are you in Midlife – over 35 maybe (perhaps well over 35) with lots left to offer to the world? You’re keen to make your mark and leave something behind for future generations?

Many people in midlife genuinely want to do something great but most don’t manage to do it. Why is that? What holds them back?

 

Here are 10 reasons why midlifers might underachieve (feel free to add more below):

• Fear of failure 
• Lack of money 
• Not wanting to step outside of their comfort zone 
• Concern about feeling foolish 
• Not sure about their idea 
• Underestimating their own abilities 
• Don’t know where to start 
• Don’t know where to go for help 
• Fear of starting but not finishing 
• Not having enough time

Each of these reasons is a perfectly valid reason for our midlifer to stay where they are and carry on with their usual routine. They may be perfectly happy, but they will get to the end of their lives and wonder ‘what if?’

 

As Henry Ford said, ‘If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.’ (my favourite saying)

 

So what's holding you back? Write down your list of reasons why you are not making your mark. Start with the list above and add/subtract your own reasons until you have your own list.

 

Take each one ask WHY this is a problem. Write down the answer(s). Then ask WHY again to get more detail. Continue doing this until you really understand the reason for your underachievement. Repeat this for each of your reasons.

 

Once you have done this, you will be in a much better position to understand your motivations and have some concrete data to work with to plot your course for a more successful future. Try it, what have you got to lose?

 

You've got it in you, I'm sure!

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here