Unconventional Life – Podcast, Blog, Live Events

Author: Jules Schroeder

  • Ep60: Millennials, This Is Why You’re Searching For a New Job

    Ep60: Millennials, This Is Why You’re Searching For a New Job

    It’s no secret that Millennials are drifters when it comes to the workplace.

    42% of Millennials change jobs every one to three years, while 60% perpetually remain open to new job opportunities. The dawn of a New Year is an especially active time for job switches, with over 50% thinking of making a career change.

    If you’ve got job hopping on your mind right now, you’re in good company.

    But the real question is, why are Millennials switching jobs so frequently?

    Identifying why you’re not satisfied and what you’re truly looking for is essential in helping you align with a job you’ll love for the long-run.

    One advisor sheds some light on the most common areas of work Millennials aren’t satisfied with.

    Meet Tayo Rockson, a cross-cultural advisor to companies about employee retention and bottom line strategies. He’s also an internationally-recognized speaker who has presented at the United Nations, and the host of “As Told By Nomads,” ranked the #2 Business Podcast by Entrepreneur.

    This week on Unconventional Life, Rockson shares wisdom about what makes Millennials feel unfulfilled in the workplace. If this is you, take comfort in knowing you’ll soon be equipped to find a job that provides what’s really important to you.

    You Don’t Feel Valued

    According to the BLS, only 29% of workers feel valued in their jobs. This is especially true for Millennials, who often feel like they’re replaceable.

    Does your current job provide an environment where you feel safe to speak up? If you’re hesitating to speak your mind or are feeling like your voice doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, it might be why you’re looking for a new place to work.

    Your job should be a place where your perspective is welcomed and valued. “In order to stay, Millennials need to feel included,” says Rockson.

    You Want More Flexibility

    Millennial workers say what’s most important to them is flexibility. In fact, 45% of Millennials would choose a job that paid less if it offered more flexibility.

    Are things like travel, an open schedule, and more time to spend with loved ones important to you? If your current job requires a rigid schedule and a physical location, you might want to consider looking for a job that offers more flexibility.

    Many new companies are taking cue from Millennials and creating jobs that accommodate a flexible lifestyle. Rigor, an Atlanta-based startup, won the 2014 Best Places to Work in Atlanta award with its “work from anywhere, anytime” policy.

    You Don’t Feel Like You Fit In

    Feeling like you fit in at work is key to enjoying your job. Seek to find an environment that includes a broad range of individuals from different backgrounds and you will feel more accepted and welcomed to express yourself.

    “Is your employer hiring from different backgrounds?” says Rockson. “That, at the very baseline is a functioning team.”

    A lack of diversity can create a hostile environment within the workplace, reducing collaboration and creating tension. 57% of Millennial workers feel their company should be doing more to increase diversity.

    You Don’t Feel Like You’re Growing

    The number one reason Millennials are likely to leave their current job is because of their boss.

    It’s important you find a boss who supports you in your growth and evolution both professionally and as a human being. Find someone who cares about you and the overall quality of your life. Your boss should be less a supervisor and more a mentor if you are to feel supported long-term.

    Better yet, become your own boss. 66% of Millennials say they want to start their own business—if you’re feeling boxed in by management, it may be time to take your own initiative. Online summits are a great resource to gain tools to jumpstart your entrepreneurial journey.

    Enjoyed this post? Check out more of my tools to create a life by your own design.

    This article originally appeared on Forbes.com.

  • Ep59: Millennials, Here’s How To Stick To Your New Year’s Resolution This Year

    Ep59: Millennials, Here’s How To Stick To Your New Year’s Resolution This Year

    With 2017 right around the corner, the buzz about New Year’s Resolutions is just beginning to sound in.

    Maybe you’ve already started sketching out a weight loss plan, complete with a pilates membership and a monthly food delivery subscription.

    Or… maybe you’re feeling somewhat resigned about the whole thing altogether. If you’re anything like the average American, you’ve probably made more resolutions than you can count that didn’t last more than a few weeks or months past January 1st.

    The unfortunate truth is that only 8% of people achieve their New Year’s Resolutions. The rest fall off due to lack of motivation, stress, and resistance to change.

    If you want to be successful, you’ll need a fuel source far more powerful than sheer willpower or discipline alone.

    One Millennial goal-slasher has a formula to help you stick to your resolution all-year-round.

    Meet S. Brian Smith, a serial entrepreneur and world-class leadership coach with an impressive track record. Smith has coached 700+ entrepreneurs, worked with hundreds of small businesses, raised millions in capital, and led several multi-million dollar projects. He’s also a member of the Young Entrepreneur Council, an invite-only group hailed as “America’s Most Elite Entrepreneur Organization.”

    This week on The Unconventional Life Podcast, Smith takes us under the hood of his exceptional goal-setting strategy to help you secure your spot in the 8% and achieve the results you desire for 2017.

    Focus on the Big Picture

    Instead of just honing in on one area of your life to improve, zoom out and take a big-picture approach to complete wellness. This will ensure you’re not hyper-focused on one area of your life while other areas suffer.

    If we’re being honest with ourselves, the main reason we pursue goals is to feel happier and more fulfilled in our lives. While setting the goal of earning more money may be one component to feeling happier, it certainly isn’t a standalone solution. The last thing you want to be is more wealthy yet exhausted with poor health.

    Smith says that true fulfillment arises from a foundation of physical, mental, interpersonal, and financial health. By focusing on each pillar in conjunction with the others, we can be certain we’re nurturing the full scope of our personal well-being.

    Establish a Baseline

    Within each pillar, define a baseline level of wellness that you’ll be able to commit to and sustain over the course of your lifetime. This might look like knowing you’re healthy and feeling comfortable in your own body, or having relationships that support you to grow as a person. Notice the improvement in how you feel with wellness-based goals like these versus vanity-based ones like “weighing 175 pounds” or “becoming more popular.”

    “When you create a baseline that you’re willing to accept for those pillars and then maintain it, that gives you the stability that you don’t ever lean on any one pillar as a crutch for the others. You guarantee a minimum level of wellness in every area of your life,” Smith says.

    Align With Your Values

    “There’s a bodily response we feel when our values are in conflict,” says Smith.

    Make sure the goals you’re setting out to achieve are in alignment with your core values. For example, is your goal to lose 10 pounds in alignment with your core value to be healthy? If the way in which you’re going about losing weight is unhealthy, you will feel in conflict and likely be unsuccessful in your weight loss efforts. To reconcile this, you can design a weight loss plan that feels nourishing and respectful to your body so you don’t feel any part of you in resistance to losing weight.

    It’s nearly impossible to reach a goal if you feel like you’re fighting with or dishonoring yourself along the way. By aligning with your values, you can streamline your efforts to achieve success much more easily.

    Create Accountability

    It can be challenging to make your goals a reality without the support of others. By enrolling others in your goals, you can create an accountability network that uplifts you when you need it most. You might need to have conversations with the people close to you to get them on board with the new direction you’re taking your life. If you feel like they won’t approve of what you want to do, this can be a huge reason for you to remain in inaction and not achieve what you really want.

    “Are you willing to endure that job for the next 5 years or are you willing to have conversations with the people close to you that may last 30 minutes but once they’re over you can live your own life? Too many of us just sit there and want to use someone else as our excuse for not taking action, and we’re just playing the victim,” says Smith.

    Enjoyed this post? Check out more of my tools to create a life by your own design.

    This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

  • Ep49: ‘Un-Networking’: The Art Of Leading With Yourself, Not Your Business Card

    Ep49: ‘Un-Networking’: The Art Of Leading With Yourself, Not Your Business Card

    We live in an age where you have just a few seconds to impress someone with your website, tagline, or bio.

    We have become masters at engineering the “perfect” profiles to hook others in and the right pitches to land the job or career advancements we want. If you can outperform your competition, or your business has 100,000 likes on Facebook, by today’s standards, you should feel accomplished.

    But the truth is, most of us are still starving for something more.

    We’re tired of having to impress all the time and are sick of the superficial, transaction-based relationships. We want to be seen for something deeper than our LinkedIn profiles or our ability to add zeroes to a spreadsheet. We want to be seen for who we are.

    That’s why two millennials are taking a stand for a deeper kind of business connection based on depth and substance. No more leading with your business card, period.

    Meet Bri Seeley and Thaís Sky, the founders of The AMPLIFY Collective, a movement to unite entrepreneurs on the basis of who they are, rather than what they do. The LA-based duo is famous for hosting standout events that provide entrepreneurs with both the authentic connection they crave and the business collaboration they need to thrive.

    I caught up with Seeley and Sky on the latest episode of the Unconventional Life podcast, “Un-Networking: Build a Network You Can Depend On By Leading With Yourself, Not Your Business Card.”

    Sky and Seeley launched The AMPLIFY Collective as an alternative approach to the traditional way of networking. They found that, despite having extensive networks, many entrepreneurs were still starving for real and authentic connection.

    The AMPLIFY Collective was born from the idea that you don’t have to sacrifice friendship for success. You can actually have the best of both worlds: meaningful, one-to-one relationships within a community of ambitious entrepreneurs who have your back.

    The secret lies in what Sky and Seeley call “un-networking,” a methodology they developed that fosters connection on the grounds of who you are, rather than what you have accomplished.

    “It’s more important to show up as who you are than what you do. Don’t lead as your job title—it creates a barrier between people. Form a relationship first, get to know the other person and then call them up for their business skills because you love who they are,” Seeley says.

    The duo claims that when we approach business collaboration from an authentic standpoint, it yields better results. According to the Harvard Business Review, when authenticity is perceived in a business relationship, trust, engagement, and commitment are highest.

    “Business takes place in a greater capacity without the cheesy elevator pitch,” Sky jokes. “Too many of us hide behind what we do without getting to the core of who we are. People buy from us because of who we are, not because of our website.”

    The AMPLIFY Collective currently hosts three events per month to entrepreneurs through its membership offering. The events are distinguished for squashing superficial, transactional exchanges in the name of refreshingly intimate and genuine connection.

    Below, Seeley and Sky share how you can transform your own business relationships to feel meaningful and relevant to you

    1. Lead with yourself. Who you are is your greatest accomplishment, and should be at the forefront of an introduction. Lead with what it is that wakes you up in the morning and drives you every single day, or the kind of change you’re standing for in the world. Make sure to omit your job title and how successful you are—these things are secondary and have nothing to do with you.

    2. Focus on the value you get from the relationship. Don’t go into an interaction with an agenda or something you’re trying to get from the other person. Instead, simply let the relationship with that person and the joy you get from knowing them be enough. Others can sense when your motivation for connecting with them isn’t pure and it creates a barrier between you both. If you do really need help with something, disclose that and be fully transparent rather than coercive.

    3. Let the business value emerge from a space of authenticity. Let the foundation for your connection be a commitment to show up as a friend for the other person regardless of what you get in return. From that space, allow any business collaboration to emerge organically. An added benefit to waiting is that you are more likely to understand the other person’s unique skill set and where they are best suited to serve you after you really know them. The quality of the collaboration will be much higher as well as feel better for you both—instead of feeling used or disposable, you’ll feel like a valued friend.

    Enjoyed this post? Check out more of my tools to create a life you love here.

    This article originally appeared on Forbes.com
  • Ep50: 5 Ways Visualization Will Help You Figure Out Your Next Career Move

    Ep50: 5 Ways Visualization Will Help You Figure Out Your Next Career Move

    Visualization… The word calls to mind images of sitting cross-legged on bohemian pillows and chanting nonsensical phrases as the scent of burning sage wafts through the air.

    In our fast-paced culture of doing, visualization may seem like the last thing that will actually help you arrive at where you want to be. You can’t just visualize what you want to happen and expect a concrete result, can you?

    Science shows you actually can. Neuroscientists at Harvard foundthat playing the piano and simply thinking about playing the piano produces the same change in our brains. In both cases, gray matter expands, proving that mere thought can affect physical matter equally as action.

    In other domains, visualization has been shown to improve the performance of athletes, to heal the body of disease, and to increase the success rate of achieving goals.

    If you’ve been feeling stuck or are lacking clarity in making your next career move, visualization may just be the missing link for you.

    Carrie Green, the founder of the Female Entrepreneur Association, says visualization is what helped her conquer a quarter-life crisis and access the clarity to create what is now a global network of 300,000 female entrepreneurs, and counting.

    I caught up with Green about the power of visualization on the latest episode of the Unconventional Life podcast, “Visualization: The Secret to Finding Breakthrough Clarity.”

    Green first learned about visualization from her father at the young age of 9. Growing up with a learning difficulty, Green was barred entry from prestigious schools and struggled with self-confidence.

    What enabled her to persevere through these setbacks was visualizing a more empowering reality. “It really helped me to expand my vision of what was possible and what I could create,” Green says.

    Visualization stayed with Green as she grew into adulthood. While studying law at the University of Birmingham, she was able to launch a profitable side business to pay for tuition as a result of her deep-rooted belief in her own abilities.

    Though she knew nothing about online businesses, she scavenged the internet for free resources to build a website from scratch that ultimately began generating over $10k in monthly sales. “If I could make this happen from being someone absolutely clueless, than what more is possible?” she wondered.

    Thus, the idea for the Female Entrepreneur Association was born. The FEA is a platform for women to come together and experience support and community in business. The site has become an authority for women to access inspirational and empowering content that serves as a beacon along their entrepreneurial journeys.

    “I was consciously aware of the fact that my success is my responsibility and it’s not an accident, so if I wanted to create it I needed to create it on purpose with so much intention,” Green says.

    On the FEA Facebook page, visualization and mindset-related quotes dominate the feed, garnering thousands of likes from purpose-driven women like Green who are applying her advice with massive success.

    Below, Green shares five ways you can use visualization to pierce through the veil of uncertainty and harness the clarity you need to make your next big move.

    1. Think about what you want to achieve or what you want to happen in your life. Don’t limit yourself here—hone in on what makes you feel the most excited or most inspired about living, regardless of “how” this might be possible. Are you lit up by contribution to others? Do you desire greater health and vitality? What is it that excites you?

    2. Close your eyes and connect with what you want in your mind. “See a movie in your mind,” Green says. “Where are you, what’s going on around you, what can you see and feel and touch?” Visualize a vivid scene in which you have already attained what it is you want. Maybe you’ve just launched your dream business and are feeling the rush of excitement as sales flood into your account while you work remotely in a lush tropical location.

    3. Commit to a daily practice. Make it a habit to visualize what you want and, most importantly, how it makes you feel for at least a few minutes each day.

    4. Keep a goal jar. Write each your goals for the future on a tiny piece of paper and store them in a jar where you can pick them out and visualize them from time to time. This ensures your goals stay organized, on hand, and fresh and mind.

    5. Have fun with it. Green jokes that the strangest opportunities have appeared in her life from visualization. “Either I’m producing them through visualization or it’s just a coincidence, but I really think it’s more than that,” she says. No matter what you attribute the cause of your success to, mind or matter, visualization is a fun way to connect with what you deeply desire in life while expanding your mind.

    Enjoyed this post? Check out more of my tools to create a life you love here.

    This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

  • Ep51: 7 Ways To Know If You’re On The Right Career Path

    Ep51: 7 Ways To Know If You’re On The Right Career Path

    According to a study by the American Psychological Association, 18 to 35 year olds are the most stressed out generation ever—earning ourselves the nickname “Generation Stress.”

    Let’s face it, figuring out what you want to do with your life can be quite stressful. For many millennials, the single most importantfactor in the workplace is finding work that is purposeful.

    Though the search for purpose is front and center,  it can also be the thing that is most elusive. In a culture that is perpetually focused on the “next” big thing—like the press feature or promotion we dream of—it’s nearly impossible to experience fulfillment today.

    How are you supposed to know if you’re on the right path if what you want is always a few steps ahead of you?

    One millennial thought-leader says the key is a simple shift in focus: it’s not about getting something or somewhere but rather about giving something.

    Meet Peta Kelly, a speaker, self-made millionaire by age 25, and founder of a global movement empowering Gen Y to live radically fulfilling lives through contribution.

    This week on Unconventional Life, Kelly shares how to align yourself with the career path that’s best for you.

    Growing up as one of four kids with a single mom in Perth, Australia, Kelly says she developed a strong work ethic from an early age.

    Work for Kelly initially looked very traditional, earning a bachelor’s and a master’s en route to a Ph.D. But midway through her Ph.D. program, she experienced a “big whack” from her intuition that sent her spinning in an entirely new direction: entrepreneurship.

    “I began to feel a deep sense of dissatisfaction and misalignment. I had no choice but to listen,” says Kelly.

    Since making that transition, Kelly has gone on to lead others who find themselves at a similar crossroads. Her event, The New Way Live, serves as an awakening ground for thousands to reroute themselves on their own creative career paths.

    The access point to discovering the path that is right for you is what Kelly calls your “zone of genius.”

    “We all have a zone of genius,” Kelly says. “Unique talents and abilities. We have this zone of bliss, creativity, productivity, effectiveness and efficiency that we can live in… But we can’t live there if we are only moving based on what’s practical and logical. Excitement is the compass.”

    If you’re feeling uncertain about whether you’re on the right career path, tapping into your zone of genius could be the solution for you.

    Below, Kelly shares 7 ways to know if you’re living from your zone of genius and are on the career path that’s right for you.

    1. You’ve quieted the noise. You’ve quieted the external noise in your life that prevents you from doing you. The voices of other people—the expectations, the “shoulds,” the “what will they they thinks”—are no longer a factor for you. You are deeply connected to your innermost desires and often take quiet time to deliberately discern what your next move is.

    2. You’re doing what excites you the most. You wake up in the morning and the first thought on your mind is how excited you are to do what you’re most passionate about. You can hardly call it “work” because it feels like play for you—you’d do it even if you weren’t being paid and weren’t on the clock.

    3. You’re a master at what you do. The work you do is inspired from the gifts and abilities you were born with. You do what you do better than anyone you know, and it’s effortless for you. Forget the grind, the stress, the 10,000 hours—you’re simply playing your muse.

    4. You don’t settle for mediocrity. You don’t have time for a thousand and one “side” projects. You are focused on what you do best and you aren’t watering the things you’re just mediocre at. “Was Steve Jobs a fashion icon? Was Albert Einstein a great cook? Was Nikola Tesla the world’s best tree lopper? No,” Kelly jokes.

    5. You don’t work for your schedule, it works for you. Your work schedule is centered around the time your creativity is most active. If you thrive at 2:00 in the morning, you’re working then. You save the times you’re prone to feeling brain dead for things like responding to emails, and you’ve got at least a few hours each day reserved for play.

    6. Everything in your life is “working.” You experience a deep sense of alignment in everything from the thoughts you think about yourself, to the opportunities that show up in your life at the right time, to the ample resources you have to do the things you love. You’re not crunched for time or money, and you no longer have limiting beliefs that put a cap on how good your life can become.

    7. You’re committed to service. Your primary focus is on the impact of your work. You thrive on contribution and are aligned with a business that serves the needs of the planet. You don’t support businesses that are centered around one person, but rather that are centered around a collective. You are constantly looking for new ways to create solutions for humanity and positive change in the world.

    Enjoyed this post? Check out more of my tools to create a life you love here.

    This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

window-close-line

UNCONVENTIONAL LIFE

Instagram