High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: How to Balance Work and the Holidays

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• How to Balance Work and the Holidays: "Check if your company offers an employee assistance program. If you need to take time off to just recalibrate, that is perfectly okay."

• 10 Commitments to Live a Truly Accountable Life: "If you develop a strong personal belief in the importance of these commitments, and if you begin acting on those beliefs, you will benefit from them."

• 11 Ways to Be More Productive: "The restaurant business can be unrelenting, especially when you’re shuttling between five of them. Nonetheless, the chef, restaurant owner, and cookbook author says that the experience has an upside: It makes you an excellent problem solver."

• 7 Tips for Successful Delegating: "View it as a means to free up valuable time -- more hours you can use to act on your big ideas, grow your business and achieve greater success."
• 5 Steps to Turn Experience (and Failure) Into Wisdom:"They recognize that by knowing what they did to produce a great outcome, they can repeat the actions and duplicate the result. That’s wisdom too."

Daily Leap Career Video of the Week: How to Improve the Odds of Reaching Your Goals

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career and life development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

The video below from The Art of Improvement describes how accountability can help us be more successful in reaching our goals. Check out the video for more.

5 Steps to Deal with Work or Career Anxiety

Many people experience anxiety or fears related to their work or job situation. For some, there is a generalized anxiety about facing the day, dealing with unexpected occurrences, or communicating with colleagues. Others who are unemployed may find it increasingly difficult to take the necessary steps toward getting a job.

Here a five ways that you can deal with work or career-related anxiety and fears.

1. Acknowledge the anxiety. Recognize that the anxiety and fear is there and is not unique to you. Understand that your anxiety does not have to control and define you and that you can take steps to minimize the impact on your career and job happiness.

2. Meditate. Simply taking 5 minutes in the morning to sit and meditate can bring significant benefits. Meditation has been shown to reduce anxiety and depression and many successful entrepreneurs laud its impact on their success.

3. Set one simple goal. Achieving one goal, even a simple one, can have a ripple effect and enable you to move forward more effectively. Apply for one job, call one friend, attend one networking event, make one proposal, ask one question. It only takes one. And you must do one before you can do two.

4. Accountability. Let at least one other person know about your fears and anxiety and let that person know about the one goal you set. Ask them to hold you accountable and support you in achieving the goal and developing other strategies and plans to help ease your anxieties.

5. Celebrate. It does not matter how simple the goal or how small the achievement. Reward yourself with a celebration for taking a step forward and there will be many more opportunities to celebrate as you move forward and deal with your anxieties and fears. Be sure to include your support person in your celebration!

A final note: If necessary, seek out professional assistance. Many therapists or career counselors can assist with helping to recognize the causes of anxiety and develop effective strategies to help work through the fears.

Daily Leap Career Video of the Week: The New Rules for Career Success

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

In this video author Dan Schawbel presents 5 new rules for career success, starting with "You are accountable for your own career."

Learn more by watching the video below:

Pushing Your Career Muscles to the Limit

The only way to grow muscle when strength training is to lift to a point of exhaustion…then go a little beyond that point. It makes sense, if you think about it, because of the body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the physical stress presented upon it. More stress makes the body grow; less stress keeps it the same.

Have you looked at your career in the same way? What pressure have you put on yourself to create a career that is rewarding, fulfilling, and makes a difference in the world? Think about these three areas of your work life and the focus questions after each.

Work performance: You begin a job not knowing how to “do” it, gradually moving to level of competence that becomes second nature. This is a good thing because it demonstrates competence and productivity, but there’s a temptation to hit a “peak” and not progress from there. Going beyond that peak-challenging and questioning your status quo and the organization’s status quo-leads to more personal engagement and fulfillment.

• Have I mastered what I currently do?


• Are there improvements that I can make in the procedures or processes of my current position?

Challenging projects: Challenging projects-beyond what you are doing now-will help your career grow through giving you new skills, putting these skills (and your current ones) to test in new environments, and allow you to show your versatility.

• Do I proactively seek out new projects that will allow me to do so?


• What projects do I currently know of would benefit from my involvement?


• How would these projects help grow me professionally?

Relationships: There are relationships that you naturally cultivate at work-such as ones with your supervisor and coworkers-but going further to grow relationships with those outside your immediate work unit is indispensible in creating a network of peers that can attest to your great work performance.

• What relationships do I need to cultivate to position myself for the next step in my career?


• Who have I tried to get to know outside my work unit?


• What reputation do I want to cultivate with those outside my work unit?

Career improvement is a journey; not a destination. Fight complacency by challenging yourself to go beyond the normal and what’s comfortable. Your career muscles will thank you for it.

Feel Free to Make your Own Choices, but Take Responsibility for Them

It is great that we live in a free country, where we are free – for the most part – to live our lives the way we choose. However, I find it disturbing how many times people are not willing to hold themselves accountable for the choices they make.

I have been a member of a networking group that meets on Saturdays for the last 6 years. The group has met on Saturdays for longer than I have been a member. As much as I wish these meetings were on a weekday, I knew when I joined the group that if I wanted to attend meetings, I would have to give up one Saturday a month. Recently, a new member has been very vocally and passionately lobbying to change the meeting day because of a conflict with her religious beliefs.

I respect this new member’s religious beliefs and understand her frustration. However, I feel as though the meeting times were very clearly stated when she joined, and now she expects the entire group to change in order to accommodate the choices that she has made. This is the perfect example of not taking responsibility for the choices you have made.

In order to be successful, and ultimately happy and fulfilled, you must acknowledge and accept that your life is your responsibility. You are in charge. No matter how much you try to blame others for the events that take place in your life, each choice you make will either positively or negatively impact that life. Of course, there are things that happen to us that are out of our control. However, we can still control how we react to them. Here are some tips to take charge of your own destiny:

• Change the tune of the voice in your head. Do you find yourself constantly blaming others or making excuses for yourself? Own up to your mistakes and learn from them. Look inside and see how you could have handled a negative situation differently.

• Listen to what you say to others. Do you blame your parents, your social status or your boss’ leadership style for your failures? What role did you play in creating a bad situation, missing a deadline or producing work that was not up to standards? How can you change to ensure it does not happen again for the same reasons?

• Change your patterns. Listen to that voice in your head and how you talk to others. Take control of the excuses and stop blaming other people or events. When you start to take accountability, you realize that you really have more control than you originally thought was possible.

• Don’t get defensive. Accept constructive criticism with an open mind. Evaluate other people’s opinions and objectively identify if you can change your approach to improve your future outcome. The only way to truly improve and get better is to accept feedback and make positive changes. You will not always agree with the feedback you receive. However, take the time to analyze the feedback and see if it will help you grow; don’t just dismiss it outright.