Which Disney Character Are You? by Jennifer Manlowe

I've always loved Disney's Little Mermaid!

I’ve been doing a fair amount of reflecting on the role of social media in the lives of mid-life adults—the age group of my coaching clients. Though there are multiple online networking sites, the two biggest ones being Facebook and MySpace, I’m focusing on Facebook because “older people” are the fastest growing users of this particular social medium, whereas MySpace continues to be dominated by teens.

According to online journal, ITbusiness, in the first few months of 2009, “Facebook gained more Gen Xers and Baby Boomers to its membership ranks with working aged adults (26-59) seeing the biggest age demographic boost of any in North America….” And, according to Paul Briand of The National Examiner, even more staggering is that since the first of the year, “the 35-44 category grew by 51 percent and 45-54 grew by 47 percent.” Wasn’t this medium something that teens lived on like we use to live on the telephone? What could adults possibly want from this vehicle? Do we use it to monitor what our kids are doing or to make sure none of their Facebook “friends” look older than 16?

A complaint issued to me by email from one of my coaching clients was this, she writes, “My friends never share themselves on Facebook, they simply take those inane quizzes and invite me to do the same. I mean, don’t they have lives anymore, don’t they have something to share with me that’s relevant or at least personal?”

Taking these inane Facebook Quizzes – some created by FB members themselves – may be nothing more than a search for identity in a way that’s more fun than some traditional personality profiler like The Meyers-Briggs or the 1930’s mental health test The MMPI. From my experience, there’s nothing a midlifer wants more than a combination of more fun and more clarity about what’s to come in this next phase of life. It’s no wonder Facebook has so many people taking these quizzes; many of us are as unclear about what’s next as we were when we were teenagers.

The difference is that now we have so many more experiences to draw upon when deciding “what we might be when we grow up.”

If my hunch is right, these quizzes may not just be a fun way to “share” yourself on FB, they may be an impish way of inventing who you might be in a free-for-all forum where nobody gets hurt.

What I’ve discovered is that re-inventing yourself in a playful way has great appeal after a loss of some kind, i.e., the kids have left you with an empty nest, you’ve been asked for a divorce, were fired or are in desperate need for a different kind of work.

I’ve found there are at least seven key things that help you uncover “what’s next” in the second half of life and goofy Facebook quizzes can be an off-beat way to let your soulfulness guide you.

Lesson #1: Listen to Your Inner Guide. Take the quiz: “What are your five favorite ways to relax when you’re alone?”

My experiment with meditation began just after my husband left me, a doctoral student living in Princeton, in his newfound commitment to “find himself” on the other coast. I kept hearing this little voice inside my head say, “slow down and listen to what you really want.” Like most people, I ignored this seemingly impractical request. After all, I had five jobs and was trying to graduate with my doctorate by May—just four months away.

As that voice grew louder, it became clear that I was feeling depleted of having anything creative to say and I didn’t know how I was going to pull off my commitments with integrity. I eventually became willing to take a free introductory course in Mindfulness Meditation—a Buddhist practice that simply fosters insight and compassion for self and others.

Lesson #2: Put Your Wildest Desires Out There. Take the quiz: “If I could switch lives with any famous person, I’d pick these top five.”

Some people know what they’d love to do with their lives when in midlife transition but many more of us are afraid we’ll be a laughing stock if we share this with loved ones and friends. This may be hard to believe but the biggest naysayers in are lives are often those closest to us. They don’t even have to be jealous or mean spirited, they just have to care for us in an unhelpful way, the way that conveys, “I just don’t want you to humiliate yourself and then live a life of regret.”

When you take these little quizzes on Facebook, they can be one way, a harmless way, to “get out there.” As Opera Diva Beverly Sills warns us, “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.”

Lesson #3: Be Selective When Sharing Your Desires. Take the quiz: “If I could ask advice of famous experts, I’d pick these top five.”

Picking people who will join you in seeing your greatness can be tricky. As I said above, don’t look to your inner circle—they’re way too close to you and your own self-doubt and may even have contributed to it, indirectly, due to their desires for security.

Take my ex-husband (please!): a superbly brilliant professor of International Relations, speaks four languages, publishes about a book a year, but tends to avoid risks that might make him “look foolish”—any sport, dancing or other form of playing in public or alone. When I told him that I wanted a to be an inspirational columnist and life coach like Martha Beck, a monthly essayist for Oprah Magazine, he said, “Oh my God, Jenn, you have got to be kidding me! You will never get another job in academia if you do that!”

Your experiences may be much different than mine—and I hope they are—but if not, reach for a mentor or life direction coach (like myself) if you want to really hear and follow your desires. Go to those who see your essence and believe in your ability to try, fail, try, fail and get up and try again. As the Japanese phrase nanakorobiyaoki says, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”

Lesson #4: Have Faith or Find Someone Who Does. Take the quiz: “Among the super powers in Marvel Comic Books, which one are you?”

Henry Ford once said, “If you think you can, or if you think you can’t, you’re right.” I believe you can, of course, but if you don’t believe this, please find someone who does and borrow their faith in your capacity for self-invention. My mentors, authors Valerie Young, Barbara Winter and Barbara Sher, all believe that isolation is a dream killer.

Barbara Sher in her recent book, Refuse to Choose!, believes we can simply guess what we want to be and feel it out in practice. She says, be an investigator. Dream of at least 10 possible ways of earning a living, gather more information at a library, volunteer, check out any profession by interviewing others.

Sher was speaking at a workshop recently and saying how deep down inside we all know what we want. “When someone says they don’t know what they want,” she said, “what they really mean is they don’t think that what they want is possible.” We all need allies who believe in us.

Lesson #5: Never Give Up! Take the Quiz: “Which Greek Mythical Hero/Heroine Would You Be?”

Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent book, Outliers, speaks of people who by a crystallization of circumstances became movers and shakers during their particular moment in history—people like Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Rosa Parks, Yo Yo Ma, and Tiger Woods. One thing these people have in common is their passion for mastery and, according to Gladwell’s findings, have given their particular love at least 10,000 hours of attention before they became famously proficient.

So where would you rather be, in your rut or onto what’s next? To step into the unknown it requires that you step outside your comfort zone. As my friend Patrick Snow says, “If you want what others have, you must do what others have done to get where they are.” Praying or believing in the “Law of Attraction” is fine but action is also necessary. If you are willing to take small steps, even try a new behavior that challenges you by just one degree, you’ll be building up what you want to see complete some day. I say, “Do things the way ants do things, one small gesture at a time.” Which leads us to our next lesson…

Lesson #6: Start Where You Are. Take the quiz: “What Does Your Birth Date and Time Say About You?”

My favorite teacher and Buddhist Abbess Pema Chodron wrote a book about 15 years ago called, Start Where You Are. After raising her kids, she felt bereft of purpose and confused by her husband’s newfound hobbies that often took him away from home. On one weekend, she came home only to find him in bed with a female friend of theirs. In shock and full of rage, Chodron threw a very expensive 14th-century Ming vase on the floor.

Within a few months she started studying with a Tibetan Lama Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He gave her techniques for cultivating compassion for herself and for her (now former) mate. He told her, “There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, nowhere to hide. Simply start where you are.” She responded by saying, “I just can’t wait for this transition period to pass!” He said with authority, “My dear, all life is transition.”

All compassion-centered meditation begins with the present—we breathe in that very thing we wish were not so. Befriending ourselves and actually feeling our emotions, versus just analyzing them, is the way through. Difficult or delightful emotions are always passing through us.

Finally, and perhaps said another way…

Lesson #7: Receive the Gift of the Present. Take the quiz: “If the end of the world were near, which five things would you appreciate the most?”

In 2005, when I was in between jobs and without the label of “professor” or “psychologist,” I was bereft of purpose and felt like an oyster without a shell. I had no idea just how reliant I was on my “white collar” title until I was without it. I suffered many sleepless nights worsened by isolation and self-pity. One night, I sat straight up around 2:00 a.m. with the gift of this particular awareness: “Jennifer, unless you can be grateful for the first half of life, the second half will not be an improvement.”

Sometimes gratitude is difficult to feel, but the good news is, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to feel grateful, you just need to practice appreciating what you have: life, friends, family, a working body, a roof and daily nourishment, etc. Gratitude is the gift that keeps on giving. Tallying up the gifts within your present experience will make any future success all the more profound.

These seven habits are core practices I use myself and share with others. If you have ones you’d like to share with readers, pass them along to me through this blog.

About the Author

Jennifer Manlowe is a speaker and an award winning author of seven helpful books—all available on her website. She is also a life direction counselor and certified book publishing coach working with individuals and groups online and in person. Become her fan on Facebook or follow her on Twitter!

To read more articles about how to find work that you love, go to Manlowe’s website.

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Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life No Matter What by Martha Beck

You may have heard of best-selling author Martha Beck through her advice column in Oprah Magazine or through her many books: Expecting Adam, The Joy Diet, Leaving the Saints, Finding Your North Star, or Four Day Win–all available at my favorite independent bookstore Powell’s Books. Psychology Today, NPR and USA Today consider Martha “the best known Life Coach in America.” Beck is a very straightforward writer who believes each person has an “inner-compass” and has available to them “limitless possibilities” to help them locate their “just right” lives.   

I have envied Martha Beck for a long time and was motivated to choose the profession of “Life Design Coach” because of her own courage to do so. At present, she now calls herself a “personal trainer” saying, “I work with healthy people to help them achieve maximum fitness–that is, well-being and quality of life.” After being professors, both Martha and I chose to forego the prestige of upper-crust academia as well as to abandon our restrictive and misogynous religions’-of-origin.

Both of us have conducted research in China and–in our advice giving–we tend to use the three great Chinese philosophies of Daoism, Buddhism and, Confucianism (with a feminist slant). Just like Beck, I received my graduate degree from an Ivy League School in the early 1990s and published research that was focused on women, social-psychology and religion.

It seems that we were “separated at birth” because of our pasts, because we both like to write helpful books, and because we each regularly publish essays offering personal and practical advice. But enough about our common threads in the great garment of life. It is more important to convey the unique messages of her latest book, Steering by Starlight.

Steering by Starlight, according to its introduction, is about “finding and following the life you were meant to live: your highest and happiest possible destiny.” The theory that Beck uses is much like the multitude of helpful books on business and self-help shelves. She assumes, along with much Ancient Greek and Indian Philosophy, that there exists a fundamental purpose to everyone’s life and believes that we all have a  particular dharma (in an Indian-philosophical sense). If we ignore this elemental calling (or dharma) we will be thwarted.

When I say “thwarted” I mean we will feel “ill at ease” until we honor our “true selves” or our “innate destiny”–something that will forever follow us, haunt us, and hunt us down until we honor its mandates.

I can see why Beck left behind her position as a sociology instructor at Harvard University because her hope-filled theories would be critically eviscerated at any academic conference.

Why? Because Beck’s fundamental beliefs would be considered totalizing, essentialist, simplistic and a typical example of the naively Western grand narrative in a Postmodern (“pomo”) sense.

The great 20th-century French sociologist/philosopher–Michel Foucault–would shame Beck for mimicking the homogenizing, colonizing and mono-mythic paradigms of the uniquely-American project called the “Human Potential Movement” (HPM).

To wit:  HPM was a superbly optimistic movement that arose out of the social and intellectual milieu of the 1960s and was formed around the concept that humans could cultivate their “extraordinary potential.”  Its advocates believed that this buried treasure lay largely untapped in most people. The movement took as its premise that in discovering, developing and releasing one’s inner potential she/he could experience an exceptional quality of life filled with simplicity, happiness, creativity and abundant fulfillment. 

Why would Foucault reject such an optimistic theory? In brief, (and if he were alive), he would accuse Beck for proffering “a reductionistic fantasy” that assumes humans could be hygienic individuals who live unaffected by their surroundings. He would mock the romantic idea that people, by muscular will alone, would be able to “throw off” the multiple cultural influences operating within and all around them. If readers are interested in learning more about Foucauldian frameworks, I’ll offer these in another book review (I promise)!

But, if you must read an alternative to this common (reductionistic) mistake in career-advice literature, read my very favorite business book this year called Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career by a very plain-speaking French sociologist and philosopher named Herminia Ibarra. 

Like Foucault, Ibarra does not subscribe to the fashionable belief in pop-psychology, i.e., that there is a singular treasure (or self) within all of us that will point us to the work we were meant to do. Rather, she urges readers to experiment and even play with their identities–which she says, are always multiple and naturally morphing according to whatever social-context or in which ever job they find themselves.  

For Ibarra, such multiplicity need not be “read” pathologically nor must it cause a baffling crisis of identity. Rather, if accepted, this fluidity of “self” can be freeing, relationally-responsive, dynamic, intimate and spontaneously-inventive.

Even though Martha has abandoned her “pomo” philosophies, I find her work unique and quite forward-thinking when she turns to the latest research in psychiatry, neurology and related fields for the ruts we can return to and the ways we might change these phenomena.

Too, Beck writes in a way that will speak to anyone with a ninth-grade education–the target audience, in terms of literacy, of the average person who buys self-help books. For instance, she keeps her writing teacherly and repetitive; she identifies and reiterates three simple stages along the vocational path to recapturing a satisfying life that include:

* “the stargazer” a metaphor that helps readers understand why it’s so easy to lose themselves in an endless quest for self-knowledge; she offers strategies for sighting their “North Star” (a trope of her earliest career book and career workbook called, Finding Your North Star);

* “the mapmaker” simile used to evaluate one’s unbearable situation in order to plot a different course for the future;

* “the pathfinder” which explores the “adventures” or trials that may be encountered as one travels along their ever-challenging, new life course.

Whether one is seeking better relationships, more focused career direction, physical fitness or to create a more harmonious lifestyle, Steering by Starlight’s stories, experiential references and up-to-date, neuro-scientific evidence will guide HPM believers to “actualize their human potential,” uncover their own “inner compass,” and perhaps, find their way in the world.

Note: Even though I may sound a little sarcastic in this review, I appreciate the courage, humor, and Beck’s approachable framework; I use her framework often as a creative career consultant, in my own Life Design Publishing business as well as in my writing.

What do you think about your own potential? Are you cynical about change or are you hopeful about releasing possibilities for vocational transformation? P.S. You might want to order another helpful book for those seeking wisdom for those “in transition” called:  Polishing the Mirror: 90 Days to Vocational Clarity  Order Now.