Recap WITI Boston - March 5, 2014

Recap WITI Boston - March 5, 2014
"Design and Build Your Career - Not Your Mother's"
By Emily Ubik

Last Wednesday forty attendees arrived at CA Technologies in Framingham with their notebooks ready for the career workshop led by Laurie Gerber. Laurie, Executive and Senior Coach at The Handel Group, shared her techniques on how to successfully build and balance your life. The evening began with a casual supper, drinks, and conversation. Not long after that, Laurie started her interactive coaching session.

Laurie opened by stating that everything is designable. You are the author of your life, not a weather reporter forecasting what is supposed to happen or stating what is happening. The basic method she outlined for achieving any type of goal was to write down your dreams, identify your obstacles, and lastly to develop a plan of action based on your dreams and obstacles. These steps, she explained, would align heart, mind, and body. Each attendee went through this process.

The main question in the first stage is to ask yourself - what do you want? Laurie recommended picking a reasonable time frame to accomplish this goal that is not too far away. She suggested asking yourself, ‘what is your dream for the end of the year?'. She had specific rules to consider while writing your dream. Her qualifications were that a good dream had to be: juicy, have feeling, is a stretch but still doable, is written in the present, and includes both big picture and detail. This seems difficult, but it is important to be positive. Laurie gave an example - it is not acceptable to write that your dream is to be ‘less stressed', rather you should write ‘to be happy' instead. After all, how else are you supposed to accomplish a dream if you start off being pessimistic?

Next, Laurie moved on to the obstacle stage. She asked everyone to write down what was standing in their way from achieving their dreams. She insisted that there was no such thing as ‘not enough time'. Everyone has the same number of hours in a week; you decide what you do with them. She explained that we are bonded to our excuses and in order to accomplish what you want, you need to break those bonds. Excuses come from the chicken or the brat. What Laurie meant by this is that you make excuses when you are scared (chicken) or when you are being selfish or lazy (brat). She also identified several types of excuses that you may find yourself using as legitimate obstacles. These included the victim who says, "It's not my fault", the herd mentality where "Everyone else is doing it", past precedent where "It has always been this way", and lastly the settler who says, "It's good enough". Laurie emphasized an honest inner dialogue. You cannot expect results if you do not base your actions on the truth. Once you are open with yourself, you can express what you want to others and they will then have the chance to support you in fulfilling your dreams.

To complete the process of aligning heart, mind, and body, the action stage was introduced. Here, Laurie stated that whether you like it or not you are voting with your hours. If you are not happy, you have the ability to change what you do not like. The key to action though is personal integrity. In other words, your word should be treated as law. You should make (and keep) promises to yourself that will allow you to reach your goals. These promises need to be specific and have motivational consequences if you are afraid you are going to break them. Laurie ended the workshop by challenging everyone to leave with an actual promise to themselves.

The instructional workshop ended with a WITI raffle! Two books on leadership and two surprise gift bags were given away. The evening was a success, as many left with a better understanding of both what they wanted from their careers and life and how to get it.

About Our Guest Author
Emily Ubik is a junior at Boston University pursuing a double major in electrical engineering and archaeology. She comes to Boston from the Midwest and was interested in getting to know women in business and making connections. She came across Women in Technology through her father, when he mentioned that WITI was trying to become more involved with universities. She is now an active member of the local network and is looking forward to writing more about WITI Boston events.

About Women in Technology Boston
The Boston affiliation of Women in Technology International offers multiple events throughout the year in metro Boston and downtown. Our focus is to provide ways in which women of all ages, skill sets and backgrounds connect with other women both locally and globally to advance their careers and improve the leadership development skills. For 2014 fun events and relevant leadership development content will be provided for members and non-members alike. To learn more and see what's up next, visit http://www.witi.com/boston

About our Speaker - Laurie Gerber
As an executive at Handel Group® Life Coaching and a Senior Coach, Laurie Gerber spreads her message of empowerment through live international events, one-on-one coaching, virtual coaching courses, blogs, and in TV and radio appearances. The Handel Method® teaches how to live from and honor your highest ideals and values. It is taught at universities such as MIT, NYU and Stanford, companies such as Vogue, The New York Times, Sony, AOL, and Conde Nast, and development centers such as Kripalu, Esalen, Menla, and Equinox. Laurie was featured on MTV's True Life Special: I'm Getting a Second Chance, and A&E's The Marriage Test.

About our Sponsor - CA Technologies
CA Technologies provides IT management solutions that help customers manage and secure complex IT environments to support agile business services. Organizations leverage our software and SaaS solutions to accelerate innovation, transform infrastructure and secure data and identities, from the data center to the cloud.

Opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of WITI.