Tag Archives: complexity

Embracing Uncertainty in Life and Careers

What does uncertainty mean to you?  To many uncertainty is a threat to be avoided or overcome. To others it offers surprise and opportunity.  For some it is both of these things depending upon the context. Uncertainty has a love-hate relationship with planning.  On the one hand uncertainty is one of the major reasons people make ...

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Is goal setting past its peak? Some new data.

How long has there been serious interest in goal setting?  You might be forgiven for thinking it has always been a key approach to changing human behavior.  However according to PsycInfo (the largest and most authoritative database on published psychological research), between 1900 and 1980, a search of this data base on the terms "goal ...

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Make or Break Moments in Careers and Life

Make or Break Moments in Careers and Life Are there moments in life that are make or break?  In Chaos Theory of Careers Terms, tipping points, where everything changes? Can we predict them, how do we deal with them? This link here takes you to an ABC broadcast "Life Matters" where I was interviewed alongside Peter Fitzsimons, ...

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Transform your career by shifting: Shift 10 – From Knowing In Advance To Living With Emergence

Here is a spoiler alert - if you are likely to be going to the cinema or watching TV in the next while, you may want to skip the next paragraph. Rosebud was his sledge.  They all did it.  The dog dies in the final reel.  The shark gets blown up with a scuba diving tank. ...

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The Strange Strength of Vulnerability

Le Cyclop - La Tête Maquette 1970

The Strange Strength of Vulnerability Here is a paradox - the strongest systems are those that are most susceptible to change. They are the ones that have a lot of connections.   The more connected a person is, the more sources of support they can draw upon when they are struggling. The more people in a person's ...

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The imperfect career and a gift from Brene Brown

Gifts of Imperfection

I got a gift from Brené Brown the other day.  Actually you could call it a gift squared, because the gift was The Gifts of Imperfection, her popular and really very very good book. Brené, unbeknownst to me, offers prizes for contributions of comments to her blog. My name came out of her Houston Hat, ...

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An Amusing example of the Butterfly effect (non linearity) in Chaos Theory of Careers – link now works!

In the Chaos Theory of Careers, non-linearity refers to that fact that sometimes very small acts can lead to huge responses down the line, or the opposite, that sometimes very large acts lead to little or no difference later. Edward Lorenz the father of Chaos said famously at a Scientific meeting on Meteorology ...

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