“I think I’m at a very different place because I have done so many different things.”

This is the final of our five-part interview. Find out more about Angelina and Vocationing at www.themobiuscompany.com

Read the interview:

Avocationist: What are you most proud of among your various careers?

Angelina: I’m probably most proud of my facilitation work. I’m most proud of it because the groups I work with generally feel like they have accomplished what they wanted to accomplish in the time they’ve had together. It’s almost like they almost don’t notice that I’m there. It’s the opposite of being the actress. I’m most proud of the role that puts me in the place of not providing the content and not being center stage. But rather facilitating the power and the energy of the group.

Avocationist: You talked about your spiritual growth, what other areas have influenced who you are at this stage of your life?

Angelina: I would say, just a whole lot of experiences. I think people don’t realize that the best part of changing careers is how a new career or a new job gives you all of these experiences that you didn’t have before. I think I’m at a very different place because I have done so many different things.

Angelina: There’s that wealth of experience I have gotten through the variety of things I've done. I think that has brought me to a different place.

“Of all the things to look at, I would look first at what are you passionate about.”

Avocationist: What advice would you give to young people about their careers?

Angelina: Well, I would say of all the things to look at, I would look first at what are you passionate about. What is your heart’s calling? I think when you figure out what you are passionate about, then you can figure out, “Okay. I’m passionate about this. Now what kind of talents do I have or skills do I have? How can I get involved in that which I am passionate about?” Then the next piece of advice would be look for the different ways to get into that field. Don’t eliminate any options. It might be taking a class. It might be volunteer work. It might be an internship. In other words don’t close off any of the options. I would also offer the advice to “be curious”. Just be curious rather than being judgmental. Say, “Oh. I wonder what would happen if I did that?”, or “I wonder what that course would be like?” Being curious is what gets you to the next place.

Avocationist: How do you think "being curious" helps when facing a change?

Angelina: Being curious is about being open-minded. When you get there, that’s when you can be present, and intentional, and say, “Okay, well now that I’m here and I was curious and I got here. What do I want to do? What’s next?”

Avocationist: So, in other words, you get the most from these new experiences. As you described yourself, you started as a driven, "Type-A" kind of person - how do you hold back enough to look at other options?

Angelina: That is the process of letting go. That really is very much 40 years worth of wisdom and career experiences and that is very, very much from my spiritual practice.

Avocationist: Tell me more about your spiritual practice.

Angelina: My spiritual practice is very much focused on being in the moment and not attaching to a particular outcome. When you’re curious you don’t attach to the outcome. It really is a willingness to accept what is: “Well, you know what, let’s see. I wonder what could happen here? I wonder what this could bring? Who know what this could bring?” As an example from typical job searches, if I'm convinced I’m going to go have lunch with this guy because I’m going to convince this guy to give me a job and then everything you do building up to lunch has this attachment to getting this particular job. The whole conversation is geared that way. You’re just missing all the great stuff that could have happened while you were having that conversation. Maybe you weren’t supposed to have lunch with that guy to give you the job. Maybe that guy was supposed to tell you about somebody else who had a different job. You’ve got to just go to the lunch and say, “I’m going to see what happens. I’m going to listen to what he says and in the middle of all the things he says, maybe I’m going to hear what I’m supposed to hear because I’m not going to be in my head thinking about all this other crap that I’m attached to. But just thinking about listen to what he says.”

Avocationist: How would you like to be remembered at the end of all this?

Angelina: I don’t think anybody’s asked me that. How would I like to be remembered? When I write letters or email, I sign “In Service”.

Angelina: I would like to be remembered as someone who was present. Whether it’s present in the conversation, whether it’s present in an email. I’d like to be remembered as someone who was present and intentional. And made choices, whether they were good or bad.

“You really need to look at what you’ve done through a very broad lens.”

Avocationist: That’s great. Is there anything that you wanted to talk about that we didn’t get to?

Angelina: One other thing that helps in career transition is to realize that people have a tendency to cubby-hole their own skills. The example I use is when I wanted to leave teaching and work in computer programming. One of their concerns when I interviewed with Digital Equipment Corporation was “We really like to have our consultants at least have been exposed to some sales over the years. Even if you aren’t a sales person. You need to have worked with sales people. Or to have had experience with the sales process.” I was very quick on my feet and my response was, “Obviously you’ve never had to teach thirty 13-year-olds on a hot afternoon in June. I understand sales.” Very often, people will say, “Well, see I don’t have any organizational skills”, or “I don’t have any selling skills”. They don’t look more broadly at what they’ve done in life, and say, “Well, what did I do over there? That little thing that I did when I raised money for the church and I organized everybody to go out there, that was sales”. You really need to look at what you’ve done through a very broad lens, so that you don’t narrowly define what you’ve done. Rather, look at it from the bigger perspective and realize that it is very applicable to what you might want to do next.

Avocationist: A lot of it is about reframing how you think about yourself.

Angelina: Right. Exactly. I mean, I’ve talked with teachers who’ve wanted to leave teaching and say, “But, I’m a teacher. That’s all I’ve done. I’m a teacher.” I think, well if you’re thinking of yourself as only a teacher, then that’s what you’re only seeing. That’s what you’re only going to write on a resume. Let’s go back and look at the other things. What do you do in a relationship to parents? What do you do in the relationship to the organization? You can look at it very differently.

Avocationist: What’s next? What are you excited about now?

Angelina: What’s next. I’m continuing to do facilitating, coaching, teaching and story telling. A little bit more writing. What I’m most excited about is my husband just changed careers. He’s not been as adventurous up to now as I am. He just got in to the world of "going green". Talk about the future trend.

His timing was perfect. I’m really excited about taking what I’ve learned about building my business over the past ten years and helping him build his business over the next ten years.

We’re setting out to build a green home and we’re going to build an average green home for the average home buyer, so they can see you don’t have to spend a gazillion dollars and you can still have solar hot water and all the other stuff. I’m very excited about helping him with his business.

Avocationist: Yeah. The timing is phenomenal.

Angelina: It’s phenomenal.

Avocationist: You must love Al Gore.

Angelina: You could say we love Al Gore.

Next week, Avocationist brings the story of an at-home Mom turned art therapist.

"I think part of the challenge when people make career transitions is they are convinced there is one job that does everything."

Avocationist talked to her in January, 2008 about her careers, how she’s pursued finding a fit in multiple roles and how she’s learned to be more present.

This is the first of our five-part interview. Find out more about Angelina and Vocationing at www.themobiuscompany.com

Read the interview:

Avocationist: Let me start out. If I can get you to tell me what you do for a living now.

Angelina: I am currently a facilitator, coach, teacher and story teller. I provide those services to companies and individuals or groups who wish to live intentional lives.

Avocationist: What do you mean by intentional lives?

Angelina: I like to work with organizations where individuals are making very intentional, conscious choices about what they’re feeling, what they’re thinking, what they’re doing, how they’re responding. I prefer working with individuals in groups who are conscious and intentional about the things that they are about and about the things around them.

Avocationist: Okay. You said you have four jobs right now.

Angelina: Yes.

Avocationist: Tell me about that. How did you get to that point?

Angelina: It’s very interesting. I think I had mentioned to you I had written an article a number of years ago called “Vocationing”.

Avocationist: Which you sent to me, thank you for that by the way.

Angelina: The thought is that, society and especially the American culture, would have us do a JOB. What happens is we try to find the thing that we think best suits us. Sometimes it is the case is that we are multi-talented. We’re in a job that may use a certain percentage of our talents, but it doesn’t use all of our talents. We can express those talents in other ways; either through hobbies, or volunteer work, or things like that. I thought of this when crafting my last career, which was probably about ten years ago. I’m in this career the longest of any career I’ve been in.

Avocationist: What do you mean by "crafting" your career?

Angelina: I crafted it in such a way that it would utilize a lot of the different talents I have. The coaching gives me the opportunity to be one on one and very personal and very intimate. It uses those talents of making connections with people, really working on the feeling level. The facilitation really plays to the fact that I enjoy working in a group, in larger settings, in the corporate setting and in the business world. The story telling is a little bit about the fact that as I’ve gotten older I enjoy writing more, which is a very solitary function. Each of the roles play a little bit to the personality differences, the mood differences and different talents that I have. As a facilitator I don’t deal with content at all, I deal with the process of the group. Whereas when I’m training, I deal with content. As a writer I deal with both. The different jobs really give me a chance to draw on different talents without having to limit myself to just one.

Avocationist: What were you going through when you made that last job transition? That seems to have worked out well because it’s the longest job you’ve have.

Angelina: A number of things. I did specifically take a number of personality or style tests. I did take tests to tell me what my interests were. I did take tests to tell me my personal style, my Myers-Brigg type. I did take a test that measured my abilities. I took those tests to really help me see areas where I was tending to be naturally good. For example, what are the things that I might have known intuitively but I didn’t know concretely that would be good areas for me to pursue. As those things unfolded and I learned from those tests, I said, “Okay, it’s not so far fetched that I could be a teacher and a coach and meld those things together”.

Avocationist: What was it about the tests that helped you figure that you could meld things? Or what was your experience?

Angelina: I think it was the process of looking at all of the different skills and abilities along with my personal style. I went through an exercise using the Highlands Program that really had me do almost a mind map of my abilities. Having all of these skills and abilities, how do I put them together in such a way that can come up with something that suits all of the things that I figured out.

Avocationist: It was the intentional process that you used that helped you look at all the pieces at one time?

Angelina: Very, very intentional. It was interesting because it was the first time that I had done that. I’ve made any number of career changes over the years, but in some ways when I would make the career changes it was usually because one particular talent was pulling me and I had ignored it. The example I’ll use is as a teacher, I really played to that ability to work with groups and to interact and to work on content and be in large groups. I was very happy being a teacher. I left that career and got in to a job as a computer programmer, which feels like the exact opposite.

Avocationist: It does.

Angelina: At it turns out, as a programmer, what I was really getting was very logical problem solving which wasn’t necessarily something that I got a lot in teaching, which is not very logical. You have to be on your feet and answering questions and you never know what kids are going to say next. I guess at the end of teaching, I didn’t realize it, but I was pursuing a career that felt much more in my control and much more logical. Then I left that and went to the next field and it was, again, something that was very different. Each time I made the change it really was whatever ability was screaming at me the loudest. Rather than stepping back and looking at it, and say, “Okay, what are all of these things I’ve got to take in to account and how do I meld them in to what feels like something that can satisfy more of the things that I needed satisfied”.

Avocationist: Can you walk me through all of your careers? I love that list.

Angelina: Okay. I started as a teacher of mathematics. I left that, went back to school and became a computer programmer. I left that and became a controller. I left that and became a consultant on Wall Street. I left that and got involved in a university in school reform. I left that and became the head of human resources for an IT company. I left that and became a business development person for a company, the Highlands Ability. I became business and development sales marketing person. I left that and went in to business for myself. I think that’s all of them. I am not sure if I missed any.

Angelina: I feel very lucky and blessed that I’ve had this career now for ten years that satisfies so many of the needs and plays on so many of my talents and uses so many of my skills. I’ve also come to realize that I really do need hobbies and volunteer work for some of them. The example I’ll use is, I just really love this whole world of decorating and cooking.

Things that have to do very tactilely, with colors and tastes. There was a time when I was convinced that my next career was going to be as a chef. It really was because that was the piece that wasn’t being satisfied.

Avocationist: Is that next?

Angelina: Today I realize that that’s probably not the right next career for me. But that is a piece of who I am and it has got to find a way in to either a hobby or my volunteer work or something I do. So I think part of the challenge when people make career transitions is they are very often convinced there is one job that does everything. And, they ignore the fact that there might be a job that does most of it, or a career that does most of it, but you’ve got to pay attention to the hobbies and the volunteer work and the avocations. Otherwise, you may not get it all from one career.

Avocationist: Right. And if you’re multi-talented then it’s even harder.

Monday: How can one person enjoy teaching, sales and facilitation? Finding the common thread in childhood interests…