noun e·mo·tion·al in·tel·li·gence
the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.
Emotion psychology defines EQ:
Working remotely has it’s perks (can you say “zero commute?”) But when your home is also your office, separating your work life and your personal life can be a challenge. And without that separation, work can start spreading throughout your home and invading the rest of your life. Not to mention the psychological effect, making it hard to disengage, and spend time on other things that are just as important (like your self-care, family, friends, and hobbies.)
Keeping your work life from infringing on your personal life is a must if you want to feel like you’re thriving, healthy, and balanced. But how exactly do you do that? Here are a few tips from the Ignite Your Potential award-winning coaches.
Work Parallel Schedules
When you work from home—and do so around the clock—it can feel like you and your family are ships passing in the night. The best way to combat this? Keep similar schedules. “I work on my business while my husband is at work. That gives me 10 hours to do my thing,” says Anna Kat Napier, founder of Boss Girl Launch Pad. “I need to be able to stop my work when he gets home so that we can catch up with each other and spend dinnertime together.” Scheduling parallel hours (for example, doing work while the kids are at school or during the hours your spouse is at work) will allow you to get things done but still have time to connect.
Set a Firm Stopping Point
It’s easy to tell yourself “just five more minutes” or “just one more email.” But working crazy hours can throw your body out of whack. “Your body is used to operating on a schedule,” says Kim Perkins, organizational psychologist and chief behavioral scientist at work and culture consulting firm NOBL. “Kids get up at the same time, they go to school at the same time, and this builds rhythms and habits—and it’s very easy to know what you’re supposed to be doing and when you’re supposed to be doing it. Even as adults, we need that for a sense of consistency—because otherwise it just takes too long to figure out where we are and what we’re supposed to be doing.” Setting a firm stopping point every day—and sticking to it—will help you keep from overworking.
Shut the Office Door
Ever heard of the saying “out of sight, out of mind?” Well, that also applies to your workspace.
“One of the tricks I use to separate my personal from professional life while I work from home is to shut my office door during weekends,” says Angela Zade, digital marketing manager for travel software company Trondent Development Corp. It’s her way of communicating to herself: “The Office Is Closed!” If you use a dedicated room as your home office, step away at the end of the day, and leave all your work gear, like your laptop and work phone behind. In other words, literally and figuratively, shut the door on work so that you can pursue personal projects, family time, or just good, old-fashioned relaxing without feeling the pull of the office.
When you work from home, it’s so easy to be tuned into work 24/7. But remember, your home is your home first—and your office second. And if you want the work-life balance you desperately crave, you need to treat it that way.
We hope these tips help you navigate your home and work life with ease. Our award-winning coaches at the Ignite Your Potential Centers offer a complimentary 25-minute phone session to help you find ways to find a balance between working and relaxing. We are the #1 career coaches in San Francisco and Los Angeles, let us show you how we earned that praise.
Do you sometimes feel uncertain about your career path, yet find the idea of making a change daunting? The time, energy, and strategy required to transition into the right career path may cause hesitation, but this shouldn’t stop you from pursuing a path that engages you. Before you begin a career transition, ask yourself the following questions:
Am I Developing a Competitive Advantage?
In The Start-up of You, authors Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha teach that we’re all entrepreneurs of our own careers. They argue that to become competitive in today’s global market, it’s critical to understand your assets, your aspirations, and the industry realities.
It’s important to think of these three aspects as puzzle pieces. Having only one or two is not enough. You need all three to develop a competitive advantage. You’ve likely heard the axiom, “Find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” This may be true for some, but blindly following passion can lead to an unsustainable career. Know your assets, aspirations, and realities—then pursue a path that exemplifies all three.
How Often Do I Think About Work Outside of Work?
This question is best illustrated through a story. Henry Eyring, a former business professor at Stanford University, tells how he ended up choosing his path. His father, a renowned scientist, and professor hoped his son would follow in his footsteps. In Eyring’s words: “My father was [teaching physics] at a blackboard we kept in the basement…Suddenly he stopped. ‘Hal,’ he said, ‘we were working the same kind of problem a week ago. You don’t seem to understand it any better now than you did then. Haven’t you been working on it?’” Eyring admitted he had not. His father then said: “When you walk down the street when you’re in the shower when you don’t have to be thinking about anything else, isn’t this what you think about?” “When I told him no,” Eyring concludes, “my father paused…then said, ‘Hal, I think you’d better get out of physics. You ought to find something that you love so much that when you don’t have to think about anything, that’s what you think about.’”
To be successful you don’t need to obsess about your job 24/7, but if you’re only thinking about your job during the hours of 9 to 5, it may be a sign you’re on the wrong path.
“Where Will This Career Path Take Me 10 Years Down the Line?”
A long-term view of your career is critical because many jobs change as you advance in your field. If you don’t know what your current path looks like, schedule a 25-minute phone session with one of the Ignite Your Potential coaches. These sessions are a great way to find out what you can expect in the future.
Your answers to these questions will help you understand whether you should double your efforts in your current job or start figuring out your next move. Our award-winning coaches at the Ignite Your Potential Centers offer a complimentary 25-minute phone session that will help you find your perfect career path. We are the #1 career coaches in San Francisco and Los Angeles, let us show you how we earned that praise.
Just because you don’t want a total career change doesn’t mean you have to toil away in misery without getting closer to what is a good fit for you. Your Ignite Your Potential career coaches have curated three options that aren’t major career changes, but can provide an up level for your career.
A smart strategy when you want to change careers is to start by pivoting either your role (what you do) or your industry (the field you work in,) rather than trying to do both at the same time. For example, if you hate your job in pharmaceutical sales, could you put your selling skills to work in a completely different field. Yes, it takes effort to network your way into a new industry and convince hiring managers you’re worth the opportunity—but it is easier than starting from scratch.
2. Make a Move Within Your Company
If you work for a large company, look around. Are there other roles that seem more appealing than the one you are currently in? If so, start talking to these people. Learn the ins and outs of their jobs, understand the skills required to do their work, and ask for advice on breaking into their world. Ask to lend a hand on upcoming projects. This may not work everywhere, but if you show that you are interested in a different type of work and start building the transferable skills required, your employer may be willing to help you make the transition.
3. Negotiate
If you are unhappy there may be a chance that you can figure out how to tweak a few things about your responsibilities, the projects you work on, the people you work with the most, etc. If you can figure out what you need in a role to really thrive, which is something we help clients with all the time, then there is a chance you can pitch these changes to your boss or influence these changes over time on your own. Sometimes it’s possible to make the changes you need within the role you’re currently in.
4. Reconsider These Options
OK, this isn’t an alternative to changing careers, but you do owe it to yourself to revisit this topic and make sure your “I really can’t change careers” stance is still valid. Maybe the answer will stay the same. But what if you find that one day, this changes to a maybe. And when that day comes, you can start considering the options above or talk to an Ignite Your Potential coach to help make your dream a reality.
Consider giving career coaching a try, we have a hunch you’ll be pleasantly surprised. And remember, all of the award-winning coaches at Ignite Your Potential Centers off a complimentary 25-minute phone session to help you meet your life goals and career goals. We are the #1 career coaches in San Francisco and Los Angeles, let us show you how we earned that praise.
Here at Ignite Your Potential, we understand some peoples’ hesitation in using a career coach. But do you know what makes career coaching so valuable? Read on to learn 3 things that anybody can gain from spending some time working with a skillful coach.
1.You Get Personalized Advice
There is plenty of career advice out there on the web. But while there is a myriad of general advice on how to develop your personal brand, you’d be hard-pressed to find an article on, “How to Succinctly Explain Your Diverse Writing and Communication Skills While Also Sharing Your Accomplishments and Mentioning Your Love of Sports” (or whatever your situation may be). General career advice will only get you so far. With career coaches, you have someone listening to your situation and giving you expert opinions on how to handle it.
2. Allotted Time to Make Progress
One of our clients’ favorite aspect of our coaching sessions is that it forces them to put everything else aside and spend time defining and vocalizing their challenges. Having set sessions gives you the accountability needed to sit down and actually make progress. It’s your own personal project manager whose main project is the achievement of your goals.
3. You Get to Experiment and Improve
Working with an Ignite Your Potential career coach is a refined, low-stress way to experiment with different ideas for your future. The time spent with a career coach allows you to get an outside perspective on new ideas, without any actual repercussions. That means you have more space to experiment, and then get real-time feedback and strategies from your coach on how to improve.
Consider giving career coaching a try, we have a hunch you’ll be pleasantly surprised. And remember, all of the award-winning coaches at Ignite Your Potential Centers off a complimentary 25-minute phone session to help you meet your life goals and career goals. We are the #1 career coaches in San Francisco and Los Angeles, let us show you how we earned that praise.
Having a Coach has become a common practice for the goal-oriented business professional. Just like a professional athlete has a coach to reach their highest potential, in today’s world a coach can help you achieve your most coveted life and career goals. Here are the top reasons you need a coach now:
If you’re at all looking to build upon the above within yourself, a coach can help. Contact one of our amazing coaches today.
Having a career coach is like having a confidante, an advisor, and your own personal and professional growth mentor rolled into one. A person on your side with years of experience helping people improve their career and become a better person. Our career coaches at Ignite Your Potential have helped hundreds of people activate their greatest career potential from the inside-out. So what does it really mean to become better person? It means, among other things, changing habits, taking some risks, and thinking differently as you go forward and meet your goals.
Below are the top three ways your career coach will make you a better person:
Having a dedicated space where every other week you can talk with your trusted career coach about a variety of scenarios at work and be understood. The feeling of validation that comes when someone truly gets where you’re coming from and empathizes with your struggles is not only a relief but begins to create a sense of hope that things can and will change. Sharing with someone who has years of experience listening to and comprehending career challenges will give you a sense of recognition and affirmation that comes from being witnessed in a caring way. Our coaches offer a space to unpack your career woes and experience quality acknowledgment, and in this way, a productive process begins.
You know yourself. You’ve done work in the realm of personal observation. Working with an Ignite Your Potential career coach will further expand your knowledge of your strengths and help you articulate your talents no matter what level of career you are at. This builds confidence and is a catalyst for insights related to changes you can make, and other types of goal setting. It will also help you release or reframe any false-perceptions that do not serve you or your goals.
Every time you meet with an Ignite Your Potential career coach you have a dedicated place to work on your goals with a collaborative partner that will help you formulate a customized, strategic action plan. This is how you turn your career dreams into reality. It’s one thing to know where you want to go. Maybe you want to have more influence on your team or maybe you want to become more masterful at managing up. Whatever your goals your strategic action plan is how, day to day, you’re going to make this happen.
At Ignite Your Potential we know that making career changes is about both the high level, big picture goals, but just as important are the concrete steps that get you there. We will help you identify the strengths to leverage and the best routes to meet your most important goals.
We all want to be better people, make improvements, and know we are having a positive effect on the people around us. Working with an Ignite Your Potential Coach is a way you can make that happen.
I remember as a child, an adult saying to me: “You’re not supposed to like your work. It’s what you do to pay the bills.” This statement is the antithesis of what we know to be true at Ignite Your Potential. If your career and role fits you, to a positive degree, you will be energized by your work. Every one of us can have a career that fits our greatest strengths and personality patterns… which is the truest recipe for engagement and career fulfillment. To be clear, this doesn’t mean once we know what the right fit is, we are finished. There is always next-level moves, calculated compromises, and professional development. Think of the “right fit” as a recipe that makes up the foundation of your career. The rest is built upon it.
We all have blindspots. Areas that we don’t notice, or are so used to, that we don’t see the bigger picture of what is actually going on. It is our core mission at Ignite Your Potential to look deeper, to view your personality, strengths, and values. We pay attention to the patterns in your work life and career choices, and weave together a career pathway that aligns with the key tasks and responsibilities that energize you the most. Here are the ways we can turn your bland, draining, or potentially burn out inducing career into a path where you get real fulfillment and reward.
Everyone has personality and strength patterns that are actually a reflection of how we are wired neurologically. At Ignite Your Potential, we take an inventory of your personality and strengths combination. We call this your Career Criteria. Whether you are analytical, strategic, a problem solver, focused on objectivity and efficiency, empathetic, create good synergy on teams, well organized, good at creating systems, etc… whatever your offerings… the more you know, the more you can succeed at work. We use scientifically normed assessments to compile your Career Criteria (personal inventory) and then go through a structured process to determine the best career match.
You and your Ignite Your Potential career coach will form a partnership and a process that transforms your individulaized Career Criteria into:
Working toward a career that fulfills you rather than drains you requires setting specific and detailed goals. Ignite Your Potential has perfected a structured process and will help you get to lasting career fulfillment.
Our thoughtfully developed materials guide you through a brainstorming process so you can begin to list all your potential pivot points. Some of these pivot points may be easy to get to from where you currently are, whereas others may be significant career changes. Once this process is complete you will use your Career Criteria to vet these ideas and in this way narrow down your list until you’ve decided the next right career move. At that point, you and your coach collaborate on the strategic action plan to bring you through the pivot to your next career that is aligned with the areas you naturally excel in.
Your Ignite Your Potential career coach is dedicated to seeing you through this entire project. Beginning with turning your focus inward to inventory your personality and strengths and compiling this into your Career Criteria, then brainstorming to list all your potential pivots, finally creating a strategic action plan to make the next right career move. Once you begin to activate your plan, your career coach will support your accountability and motivation as you complete the transition to the other side. We consider it a success when you have made the pivot and achieved a more fulfilled career life.
There are many life coaches and career coaches who may help clients with one aspect of this but are unable to support this entire career pivot project. At Ignite Your Potential, we have the experience, education, past performance, and extensive materials we’ve developed, to support your process, beginning, middle, and completion. All of the coaches at Ignite Your Potential are not only extremely well educated in their field, but they continue to educate themselves, work on their own professional growth, and believe that their own continuous development feeds into the mastery of the craft of career coaching and life coaching.
In addition, years of positive and mutually beneficial relationship building with their clients has made them some of the most empathetic, kind, and caring people you’ll ever have the pleasure of working with. We pride ourselves on how much we care about our amazing clients.
Ignite Your Potential is more than just a helpful hand in your job search. Ignite Your Potential is a team of positive, smart people who’ve dedicated their lives to matching people’s set of unique skills and offerings with a career that gives them the fulfillment they deserve.
Here at Ignite Your Potential we know there’s so much more to your next job search than just finding a job. Ideally, that job hunt process starts with high-quality coaching that encourages you to look inward at your personality, strengths, and values, as a means of finding true satisfaction in the realm of your career. The kind of fulfillment that is about you being in the right place, with the right people, making the money you deserve, and having the impact that helps you sleep at night.
If you’re feeling job hunt frustration, it could be a lack of critical tools, that will help you develop a concrete idea of the elements you need in place, that help you thrive. Think of it this way, you need to find the next right job not just because you’re jobless, or unhappy at your current job, but also because you’re ready to discover the essential requirements that create your next right opportunity.
Here are the top 7 reasons Ignite Your Potential’s Career Coaching services can help save you from job hunt frustration.
At Ignite Your Potential, we begin by looking at who you are. We know now, through research at UCLA, that personality is neurological…in other words, how you are hard-wired. By looking at your personality and considering what this means regarding career, we can tell quite a lot about the complex recipe that makes a job path one that you as an individual can thrive in. This is the beginning of understanding your own personal list of ingredients that make up your ideal next right career move.
Every person has a unique set of strengths and a special way they activate that arrangement of talents. Ignite Your Potential understands that the more you know about yourself and your strengths the more you can succeed in the workforce. Not only that… you will then mindfully put yourself in scenarios that best use your set of talents rather than being in a space where these characteristics could work against you. Your career coach will help you identify your strengths, then the two of you will reframe them as your key selling points. In this way, you can highlight what makes you a desirable employee, understand how to capitalize on these strengths, and show why you’re a good hire so you can stand out from other hopeful candidates.
Your Ignite Your Potential career coach goes beyond just helping you land a job for the here and now. They’ll assist you in identifying your future career aspirations so that you can find positions that will help gradually move toward “North Star” goals.
Setting specific and detailed goals are vital in helping you work toward your ideal future. At Ignite Your Potential, we’ll help you identify what you want to work toward, what you want to achieve, and will help you brainstorm an action plan with specific benchmarks so you can get there.
The career coaches at Ignite Your Potential have connections in many different industries and can provide you with access to a diverse network of partners. When we can, we’ll help you form valuable relationships with industry leaders to create new and unique opportunities.
Working on your own resume and LinkedIn, adding details, updating, and hoping it looks good enough to blast to multiple companies with job openings can be a daunting process. Ignite Your Potential resume writers have years of experience and are producing the most modern, compelling resumes out there that get people interviews. They know the keywords that need to be used for your industry and they know how to get past the software programs used by recruiters to troll through thousands of resumes that come through. Do you know the simple mistakes you could be making that causes these software programs to throw out your resume? We do and will make sure this doesn’t happen to you. Our resume writers will work with you to make sure your resumé truly exhibits your personality and strengths, your experience, and your firm understanding of the role you are pointing yourself toward. We craft, what is essentially your marketing materials, in a way that pops and consistently gets interviews.
Ignite Your Potential’s unique system for career success, wherever you’re at in your career trajectory, is designed to give you, or build on, the skills necessary to plot your course to your best future. However, the materials you will develop while working with us will give you a customized blueprint that you will use over and over again as you go through your career. And the career insights you’ll have with us will build over time, increasing your momentum, and allowing you to make more informed choices as you go forward.
Ignite Your Potential will save you job hunt frustrations by re-wiring your job search. We help you be who you were meant to be: more aligned with who you truly are.
Contact us today to sign up for a free 25-minute phone session with any of our coaches. It’s time for the year of your career!
At the start of a new year there’s often a refreshed outlook and a sense of renewal. Part of this process involves career. As the year begins though, do you find yourself going back to work after holiday vacation feeling a sense of dread as though you are about to endure another year in your career? Or are you stoked to get back to the contribution you’re a part of? What is your sentiment as you begin again?
Whatever your perspective or attitude, this time of year can be a fantastic time to refresh your career, your career outlook, or refine your career goals. Our team of career coaches at Ignite Your Potential can help you do this, and we’ve started this process for you, by sharing ways you can freshen your career for the New Year.
Clean Up Your Work Tools 
The first way to freshen your career is to clean up the tools you use most each and every day. Having unanswered emails, a crowded inbox, a messy desk, or unused apps on your phone is clutter in the workflow that slows us down. Here are tasks to clean your work tools:
Refresh Your Career Documents
Whether you’re interested in potentially changing career paths, or see no career change on your horizon, updating your resumé and revamping your cover letter is a great way to prepare yourself for what opportunities could lie in the year ahead. You may be up for a promotion, you could be scouted, or one day you may have the urge to see what’s out there.
Ignite Your Potential features a team of expert career coaches who can help you update and improve your resumé, write or revise a cover letter, set your New Year career goals, or simply offer you the career advice you didn’t know you needed. Contact us today for a career boost!
Set a Clear Vision and Actionable Goals 
Moving into the New Year, you probably have some old items on your to-do list that you weren’t able to get done. You may have some career goals you didn’t reach or your vision for your career changed. All of these are fine, they are part of what happens for all of us, and not any reason to beat yourself up. In fact, the New Year offers an opportunity to reset our goals and create a new vision. We can think in an actionable way about what’s next. It’s time to set fresh objectives informed by what you’ve experienced in 2018 to make a stronger plan that doesn’t fizzle out. Maybe 2019 is the year you get a new planner.
Streamline Areas of Your Life to Impact Your Career
Think about your daily routine throughout this past year. Really deep dive into your day to day processes, duties, personal workflow, etc. Think strategically about ways you can make certain tasks or processes easier for you. For example, if you pack your lunch every day and take home the dirty container to add to your dishes later that night, try washing them at work instead so that you can just bring them home and reuse them for the next day. Find yourself carrying a briefcase or heavy purse every day full of things you don’t necessarily use or need to tote around? Try paying attention to the different items in your purse or briefcase you use on the regular, and if you discover unnecessary items, put them in their rightful place. If you think about your routine, the patterns that make up every day, you will discover strategies to create a more efficient personal workflow.
Get Inspired
One of the best parts of the New Year is that it’s a time that offers us the opportunity to purge ourselves from the tribulations of the past year, take all of our lessons, and apply them to the year ahead. Every year reveals aspects of your career and life that no longer suits you, teaches you things you needed to know, and equips you with tools for your future. It’s time to let go of baggage you no longer need. Though setting “resolutions” in your career, or in general, may seem cliché to some, and are often abandoned shortly after, it doesn’t have to be this way. Making positive change happens incrementally, and seeing it this way, helps you keep the momentum to work toward your goals. Don’t make tons of changes all at once. Start by making little tweaks to your habits so that staying aligned with your goals is sustainable for you.
Ready to Freshen Your Career in a Big Way?
Ignite Your Potential can help you discover and build your career vision, assist you to find your passion, and help create a plan that stimulates exciting and empowering change in your career and life. If you’re ready to make 2019: the year of your career, contact us by filling out the form below:
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