Skills

Being a chaplain requires certain credentials, skills, training and experience. I possessed those things in the spring of 2003.

Consequently I took a job as a hospice chaplain. I was assigned a group of patients already on service to provide spiritual care. As more patients came on I provided care to them as well. In the course of my duties I was asked to conduct worship services, funerals, weddings, baptisms and various other tasks of the clergy. It was a job I had spent years developing the skills necessary to conduct.

I did not have to think about drumming up business, finding customers or selling people on my offering. When I took the job more than enough opportunity was given to me. As I continued to work and became known in the community the ancillary requests increased as well.

I stopped working as a chaplain In the fall of 2009. I longed for adventure and competition. Two things being a chaplain did not provide. I went into sales.

In sales the goal was specifically to drum up business, increase market share and find new customers. I am not sure how good I was at sales. However, I did possess a skill for getting sales jobs.

I was good at applying, getting interviews, being offered positions and moving up in salary and rank. From the time I left being a chaplain to the spring of 2017 I had tripled my salary and held executive leadership positions.

Now I scribble blog posts and advocate for objective focused growth. I was paid a salary as a chaplain and as a sales leader. I made money because my skills were seen as valuable. I was paid a regular salary in exchange for my loyalty to the company and cause.

How to I survive doing this?

I am an introverted person. My writing is personal and reflective. Does it appeal to anyone else? How do I consistently share it in a way that is mutually beneficial to the writer and reader?

Protecting my ego

Sometimes I lose focus when I exercise.

I begin full of enthusiasm but as I tire I think about quitting or easing up.

I fixate on the time I have left. I ask myself why am I training so hard? I think I should pace myself or quit early.

The same is true with my career objectives. I start full of enthusiasm but when it becomes difficult I begin to pull back.

My mind wanders. I day dream about winning the lottery, catalog excuses for failure or wonder if I should look for a new job.

The fear I can’t achieve my objective, initially or consistently makes me fall back on my default objective, protecting my ego. It is seductively easy to accept failure and find an excuse. Staying focused and on task is not simple or immediate. It is a choice made every day, every minute, often multiple times a day.

“It can’t be done”

The market is too saturated we don’t have the right features, I wasn’t trained. If you have worked in sales you know all the excuses for failure.

I know. I have managed many sales people. I have heard all the excuses. I have also been a sales person. I have used the excuses.

In the end there were only the jobs I hit my objective and was rewarded and jobs I missed my objective and was dismissed. I have been fired many times. I haven’t to use a baseball teen batted 1.000.

In sports the objective is clearer. You can say the defense was too hard or you didn’t have a good scheme but in the end you still didn’t score or win the game. Emotionally we naturally gravitate to excuses because they relieve the tension.

Even as you are reading this you are thinking he is a hard ass, he is too narrow focused I don’t like this all or nothing attitude. You are going back to the squares and seeing what is easiest to see and accept. And if you do what you have always done you get what you always got.

Don’t look at life as an emotional have and have not. Identify your objective, strive for it, achieve it or not then set the next objective. In your career and business life you will be much more focused and stress free.

In Defense of Growing

Yesterday I asked the question am I just futilely spinning my wheels or am I on a journey of growth.
Today I posit that I am growing. In the late 2000’s and early 2010’s I was working on creating representation for unaffiliated religious people. By the time I had put as much effort as possible into it I had put together a compilation book and self-published it on Amazon. The book itself is not very good and I think I only officially sold one copy (maybe two) but the effort was there and I had something to show for it.
The same is true of thirtydayjobcleanse.com. I put the effort fort and felt like I was really close. Again perhaps the material was not good but it was a valiant effort that I believe was on the cusp of producing revenue from my marketing efforts. I just couldn’t quite pull it all together. In fact this blog is morphing into the actual Thirty Day Job Cleanse so I am not even sure it is dead yet.
Whatever the case I believe I am growing and becoming. I need to keep walking even when it seems like it will never end.

Objective mechanism

Objective = $200,000 annual

The objective could be ANYTHING but without a mechanism I cannot achieve it.

I have drive and focus.

I discovered them working to achieve a sales quota at a job I am working.

But the position I am in will not deliver the objective.

Or will it?

I could exceed my quota. Move up in the company, continue to be successful, move up until I run the company. That would achieve the objective.

Reason for Change

I left my job because I thought I could do better, achieve more.

But is that the real reason?

I am not in the habit of giving up +$3000 paychecks simply because I thought I could do better.

The travel was oppressive, the people uninspiring and the work was stagnating.

The catalyst to change was not the desire to pursue growth but to remove myself from a toxic situation.

My Objective

At my last corporate job my salary was $140,000 a year. I had a company car. I had a company credit card. I traveled six days a week. Other than the fixed costs of housing and utilities I had few expenses.
I quit that job to do better, to achieve more.
What is better? What is more?
My objective is to reach annual income of $200,000.

Motivation for Change

Actions, thoughts, reactions are like the paths of a river, forged deep with time. To change habits is to do major excavation.
Change is constant. Change is evolving. It is not a onetime event. Change is letting go. Even though chewing was a nasty habit I still loved the feeling of nicotine, of packing a can, of putting in a dip of periodically spitting. But those comforts were no longer worth the cost of my overall health.
I quit my job and gave up the company car, the six figure salary and the company credit card because I no longer wanted to do work I did not like or be away from my daughter. The feeling that I was basically signing my life over was no longer worth the paycheck and the perks.
But that wasn’t my only motivation for change. I believed I could reach the next level. I had the company car the title. For me the next level was $200,000 a year income. After that I wanted to double my income and then double it again.

You don’t get to choose

You don’t get to choose what changes. Something good will come from change and something will be sacrificed. Change does not automatically mean better, it means different. The positive side of change is if a situation feels stagnate and painful the possibility of something new is mostly positive. I made the decision about my job. I spent a lot of money and ended up with different problems because of the change. But when I look back at it I am glad I made the change. I feel better and more alive dealing with the latter rather than the former.