Finding Solutions

I’ve never been a big nonfiction book reader. While I enjoy learning helpful concepts, the act of digesting the information, most often written without a compelling plot and characters, feels like torture. This was the case until my husband made a helpful suggestion, which came at an ideal time given other things going on in my world.

Almost a year ago I made some big changes in my professional life: I moved from the sweet office I’d occupied into a home workspace. I also began taking the first of many steps to shift the focus of my business from individual career services to corporate career development software tools and support.

While I’ve coached many individuals on how to execute a career change, it had been over 20 years since I’d done one myself. I’ll admit it’s been a tough, though productive, experience, moving from work that I know well, to a specialty with a steep learning curve. It’s also provided a critical reminder of what my career-change clients experience as they make their transitions.

But back to my husband’s idea: working from home eliminated my need to bike to work, which had provided an hour of daily exercise. In its place I started walking a lovely trail nearby, but compared to cycling, it felt boring. So to jazz things up in the exercise department and help with my new-business learning curve, hubby suggested that I listen to, rather than read, business books while walking.

Eureka! I’m now absorbing pearls of wisdom spoken to me by the authors themselves, typically with passion and inflection, which has turned out to be a great improvement over slogging through pages of dry material. In the last two months I’ve gleaned helpful information from books such as Eric Reis’, The Lean Startup; Simon Sinek’s, Start with Why; and on days when I need extra encouragement, Gabrielle Bernstein’s, The Universe Has Your Back.

But the big learning for me hasn’t been the content in the books. It’s been the reminder that the answers to the problems we’re facing exist, we just need to find them.

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