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ReArchitecting: Preview Back Cover & Index

Here's a preview of the Back Cover & Index from ReArchitecting:  One Business Woman's Mid-Career Learning Sabbatical – Download Cover and Index.pdf

You can buy the book itself on my business web site:  jallé Leadership Communications & Learning

Book Details - Limited First Edition, November 2005. Soft Cover Book.  55 Pages. Copyright © 2005 by Jill E. Allemang.  ISBN 0-9771481-0-6.

Note - Online purchase by credit card only.

ReArchitecting: Preview Introduction

Here is the first page of the Introduction to ReArchitecting:  One Business Woman's Learning Sabbatical:  Download book_introduction.jpg

The book itself can be purchased on my business web site jallé Leadership Communications & Learning

Book Details - Limited First Edition, November 2005. Soft Cover.  55 Pages. Copyright © 2005 by Jill E. Allemang. ISBN 0-9771481-0-6

Note - Online purchase by credit card only.

Essay 8: Confidence, Humility & Courage

Excerpt from

ReArchitecting:  One Business Woman's Mid-Career Learning Sabbatical. 

Limited First Edition, November 2005. Pages 41 – 43.

Over the months after I left my job, I began to receive a trickle and then a wider stream of phone calls from former colleagues and even current classmates.  How had I managed to make the decision and then take the action to leave my employer after 15 years and think I could completely change industries?  “Bold,” some called it, and “courageous.”

                                                            

It wasn’t like that to me.  Consider that I’d joined a manufacturing company 15 years earlier armed with a master’s degree in journalism, zero corporate work experience, and no friends, relatives, or even acquaintances in the town to which I moved.  I further had essentially no company knowledge except what I had read through media headlines, that it had a VP of public affairs, and that in the mid-80’s it appeared frequently on lists of top companies to work for.  Two years later, I accepted a job selling products through the company’s New York sales office having never been on a sales call.  Ever.

                                                                                      

Maybe it was bold.  More likely, it was naive.  Primarily, it was within my comfort zone.  I believed if the environment was supportive of letting me try new things and make a few mistakes, I could learn new jobs.  I had confidence in my ability to learn and adapt – and brought with me a passionate desire to do so.  Perhaps this is the most constant thread of my entire life.

                                 

The company’s culture proved healthy and a great fit for learning.  With just one noteworthy exception – a department in which competitive politics often detracted from the pleasure I normally gained from pursuing a business challenge together – the company was marvelous at letting me grow and contribute to the best of my abilities.  I am grateful for that experience.

                                          

The real courage test for me came a few months after I left.  Those months required the strength of will not to rehash and question my decisions while I was in school when it was too early to begin to seek the next job position.  When, frankly, I was most uncomfortable in my new place, even though I was fully committed to being there.  And probably, I was mourning the parts of what I left behind that I had valued.

                                                                  

The change in my immediate success scorecard – my paycheck – was the first, most difficult adjustment.  I had a financial plan and believed it would work.  I’d reviewed it even with a financial advisor.  I was surprised how entrenched that monthly income reinforced that I was in some way valuable and had ingrained itself as part of my worth.  I didn’t consider myself a person who measured her success by the amount of stuff she could buy, but the adjustment to not being able to flagrantly use my spending power dented my sense of accomplishment.  I never fully got used to not having an income that I was earning.  It impacted my lifestyle, as I lived on a closer budget, but also my sense of freedom and, more than I like to admit, status.  I learned to live with a certain tension about money for the larger goal and now put its role in my life better in perspective for what it is.

                                       

During these months, I came to view persistence as the legs of courage.  Just to stand with the decisions solidly while waters swirled around my ankles required a new maturity.  I was wading across a river, not so wide.  I could see the other shore in the distance, but needed to concentrate on my current footing and could not look too far forward or backwards.

                                                                 

The economy was horrible.  I watched the first anniversary of 9/11 on TV all day because I didn’t have classes.  My mother was still strongly grieving Dad’s death, as were all of us.  We experienced every first holiday without him.  The USA went to war with Iraq.

                                                

Would I finally bend under the stress? 

Copyright © 2005 by Jill E. Allemang.  ISBN 0-9771481-0-6

Dani's Juice Market - Zurich

Dani's Juice-Market
Augustinergasse 42 /44
8001 Zürich

Telefon

044 211 69 33

Freshly-squeezed, original juice combinations.  A home-made soup-of-the-day.  Sandwiches.  Salads.  Not the cheapest, but warm, busy and friendly. 

I started coming here 10 years ago because it fit perfectly on a Saturday shopping day.  Get in-and-out quickly yet great quality and casual.  Not big...and sometimes chaotic.  The owner Dani's own story and voice is worth hearing.  He has built a business and a life.  He encourages me to try a new juice...and smiles if I go back to my old favorites.  Perfect!

My Change Principle #1: It Takes Time

So by now you know I took a sabbatical year to stay off of airplanes for a while.  During those months, I realized how my experience with the corporate world had skewed my sense of time as a human being.  In business, we measure time as hours of meetings, minutes to catch a flight, and seconds to send an e-mail.  Yet the fundamentals have not changed.  Healing takes time.  Learning takes time.  I no longer measure my personal timeline  -- to create a change, to really learn something new, or to rest when I've stretched near my physical limit -- in days and weeks, but in months and years.  And knowing this, I am more aware of the life pace with which I can remain at my best and do the most:  slower than the speed at which the internet world would have us believe.

What would you say? -- How realistic is it to think people can slow down their pace and still be successful?  Maybe I just don't want to work hard enough?  I set my priorities differently now, but it still feels like jumping into the dark water when I say no to the long 14 hour working days or weekends...  any ideas?

Taking a sabbatical

I took a sabbatical year from mid-2002 to mid-2003.  I had started my career in the corporate world and through 15 years achieved some success.  But that success took me to a place that looked different than I expected.

So I began a sorting-out process that eventually led me to take a year off...well, a year out of the corporate world anyway.

A number of people, especially women, called me during that time with questions:  How did you decide to do it?  Why?  Do you really think you can entirely change industries after 15 years?  Where do you find courage to make such a change?

I wrote my thoughts about many of these questions -- as well as about how I learned to deal with change -- in a series of essays that I collected into this book.  I titled it ReArchitecting to reflect my conclusion that I needed to review the foundation and structure of my choices to be sure that I was living a life that was authentic to me and communicated my beliefs clearly to others.

What I want most to happen with this book (and my blog, and now my new career choice) is to inspire others to consider their lives from several perspectives and encourage them to explore and use their own voices with others.  Try something new.  Consider an option not previously thought possible.  And align what you do and say with what you really believe...not just complacently play the game.

It's not like I plan to get rich with this little collection.  My great hope is that people will find something greater in themselves -- courage, a sense of not being alone in their stress, a new idea, support for an idea they already have -- by using this quick-reading book as a springboard to talk with others, seek role models, and practice using their own voices.

Note:  The book can be purchased via my business web site at jallé Leadership Communications & Learning.

Using a Journal to Find Your Voice

In my book ReArchitecting, I refer to the example of a journal as a tool for exploring your perspectives and your voice. I am often asked what is the point of keeping a journal and how to do it.  It seems that many people find the idea unappealing – perhaps they don’t like to write or think it will be a burden to keep it up.

      

I will share here why I think a journal can be valuable as a tool to find your voice, plus suggest ideas to help make journaling fit your style more easily. There is no right way to keep a journal.  Any approach that works for you is a good one.  My way of journaling has evolved through trial and error, as I journaled in some way since I was a child.  Your way will evolve, as well.  Trust it.

A Purpose for Journaling

My journal helps me find and clarify my voice.  It serves as a place to gather my thoughts and as a tool to sort through them to identify what is meaningful to me.  I find my voice through a journal through two steps:

1.     I create a holding place for my ideas and emotions by capturing them as I have the time or feel a need to express thoughts or experiences every few days or weeks. 

2.     My journal becomes a tool to create my voice when I read back through it and highlight the ideas and phrases that strike me as most meaningful.  Then I can see the themes and trends.  It’s that accumulation of my most meaningful thoughts that builds the momentum to shape my actions.  And so, I find my voice.

    

Starting and Keeping Your Journal

If you haven’t tried using a journal, it can at first seem a bit mysterious and difficult to get started.  Perhaps these specific suggestions will help:

Make it easy and open 

Think of a journal as a flow of your ideas which do not need to be connected.  I consider a journal different than a diary in which a person might record the details of every day as my grandfather did faithfully each morning of his retirement.  I keep my journal hand-written in a flat notebook that I can easily carry with me. My journaling instrument of choice is a pen.  When I feel like it, I take out my journal and write a few notes or a paragraph or more.  I might be at home, in a coffee shop, sitting at my desk in the office, or on an airplane.  I might spend 5 minutes with it. I rarely spend more than 30 minutes at once.
 

When you see that first blank, white, empty page in front of you, it often helps to get started by writing something easy as a warm-up.  I usually note the date, the time, where I am and a sentence or two about what I see around me.  Then I move on and ask myself a question such as “what has been on my mind today or lately?”  And I answer the question in free-flow form with whatever comes to my pen.  Whether three sentences or three pages later, when I feel little more to say, I simply stop.

       

Perhaps promise yourself to write once a week on Fridays.  Or some people recommend writing something every day for a while; I never could keep quite that regular a schedule.  My ideas come when they feel like it!  I usually write something about three times a week, but I still have weeks during which I do not write anything at all.  No worries.  I just keep the journal handy and pick it up when I am ready.

What should I put in my journal? 

Journals require no rules.  They take on their own lives and characters over time.  You can always write in them.  I sometimes draw little (absolutely unartistic) sketches to remind myself of an idea or something I saw.  You might clip pictures from magazines that strike you as relevant to things you’ve been thinking – even if you don’t at the moment know why it strikes you that way. Sometimes I record a quote I like (and note the source in case I want to use it later).  Occasionally, I’ve been in a period of venting emotions.  Sometimes I make lists of things I’ve learned.

       

Most of the time, I simply try to notice what has been on my mind.

      

Whatever feels right to you will work.  I’ve seen excellent web sites built for journaling.  It remains my own style to keep my journal in a form that I feel is intimate – via pen and paper – and always quick to access.

       

I take very little care about my hand writing form or accuracy from day-to-day.  Sometimes my writing appears neat and orderly.  Sometimes, I’ve scribbled so fast it is difficult even for me to read.  Once or twice, I’ve simply scrawled a frustrated word or two on one page with a trail of exclamation points!!!!!!!  Seeing your penmanship in hindsight can prove very interesting.   One friend who receives a letter from her father every week says that sometimes his handwriting tells her more about how his life is going than the words themselves.

Then what? 

Let’s say that you’ve kept your journal for a month or two.   What might you do now?  Just stack them on a shelf?  No!  Now is the time to turn your journal into a tool to find your voice.  Reflect and highlight.  About every month, I go back through the last pages with a highlighter pen and emphasize the ideas, thoughts or phrases that strike me as particularly relevant and clear in a way that matters to me.  This is not to say that the writing is good or intended for others to read.  The purpose is to note those thoughts that are meaningful in your view for your own reasons.

       

And then, I step back even further and simply read through a few months of highlights.  How did my thoughts and feelings evolve over time?  What has changed?  What has not changed?  Often, I note any conclusions or observations in my next journal entry.  Sometimes I also find it interesting to look at my day “about one month ago” when I finish a current journal entry. Just for fun.

      

I only occasionally go back to read previous years.  My typical journal notebook fills in three months; so, my reflection look-back period is about 6 months as the new and old notebooks are both fairly handy to find. I will sometimes look quickly over a year of journals as I consider a new year of goals or to compare what I was thinking and feeling at a specific point in time that is on my mind.  But that’s not a discipline; it is an instinct to compare situations from a distance once in a while.

Your Journal; Your Friend

As I expressed in ReArchitecting, a journal can become a tool and a friend to help you step back and see the key points that matter to you from above a fog of activity and emotion.  Your way of journaling should fit who you are.  And over time you can trust yourself to draw helpful conclusions from it in your own way.

 

I find it rewarding when – once in a while – a thought in my journal comes through my lips in discussion.  Then I know I am speaking from the perspective of someone who knows me very well:
 

With my own, meaningful voice.

A voice on the web

I have already perilously written a book in a first-person testimonial style to my great stress as a normally very private person.  Yet now I find myself in a new format again, again writing in first-person.  A blog!  Who would have thought this technology-laggard would do such a thing within 9 months of quitting her job (again), founding a business (first adventure), and deciding to stay long-term in place renowned more for its chocolate than for its entreprenuerialism.  Go figure.  One never knows where life will lead when one follows her inner voice.  I'm sure I'm about to learn something...valuable...I just sometimes wish it would be less of a surprise!