Work, life and things in between – Day 56 – The old patterns!
I had another career transition class to attend that day. When I registered the day before, I was excited at the thought of that class. However, on that morning, 7 am, when it was pouring rain and cold outside: not so excited.
It was one of those mornings when you feel like your life is a series of patterns that keep repeating themselves. You don’t quite know what you want, but for sure, you don’t want to keep drawing the same old patterns. You want new stuff. Exciting, energizing, maybe scary, certainly challenging and hopefully fun!
Is it so much to ask for? well, hindsight is 20/20 and I should have stayed home.
2 hours of techniques on how to create your own branding. Sounded good initially, even sounded creative until one understands that branding comes from a cohesive, consistent and robust integration of your resume consisting of a summary, a job statement, listing of hard and soft skills, accomplishments, introductory letter, bio, 30 seconds commercial and I am sure I am missing a few.
The facilitator kept telling us : “You need to stand out, be unique, create a punch line, jump out of the page” la la la….How about “I was born in the dead of winter with a perfect timing so that my Mom was able to get to the hospital and back in between her 2 favorite TV shows so many years ago that I don’t even want to tell you how long ago that was”. How unique is that for you?
Do you sense a touch of frustrations here?
Remember Houdini’s trick where he was in a strait jacket, handcuffed, in a trunk, underwater and he had to get out? Well, I ain’t no Houdini but I sure could associate with how he must have felt. I hate cookie cutters approach.
As an HR Executive, I know about branding and this did not come as a novelty to me. However, in all cases, I much prefer the intuitive approach to what I do than the rhetorical approach. If all candidates had come in for a job interview with a cookie cutter profile, then I would have never hired them. Gee Whiz, is it me or what?
For most, guidelines are a lot easier to deal with of course. I will admit. Some people do follow the recipe, line by line. I, however, never did…a little bit of this, a little bit of that, skip this herb, trade it for that one…end result? My cookies never tasted the same, no matter how many times I baked them, and granted, they were not always the best, but Haha! sometimes they were absolutely d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s! You gotta live a little!
So, for me, these classes of “how to” were a challenge. A serious one. If you ever tried to put a cat in a tub full of water, then you know what I mean.
I suffered through that one but did not retain much. I was just not in the right frame of mind. Why I did not simply sit back, take it in and see if any of this would help instead of fighting it all the way? Not sure. Maybe an “attitude” got in the way. Maybe the choice of words, maybe the time of day, who knows? I was just tired of analyzing everything.
Like it? yes!, like it? No. Voila! that’s it. that was pretty much the frame of mind I was in. Sounds like a mindset slightly on edge…one that would have been better off blowing bubbles!
Oh well. Moving right along… To day 57.