Thank your mentor today!

Did you know that today is National Mentoring Month's Thank Your Mentor Day? It is! I've been so lucky as to have a few incredible mentors in my life to this point, who have literally changed my life. Friends, colleagues, role models ... these people have been integral to my success in college, work, grad school, and life. I learn something from these people who I call friends and mentors every day. I'm calling on them now for a friendly ear as I think long and hard about the next step I want to take post-grad school because they know me and listen to me and share what they've learned with me.

So, get out there and thank your mentor today! Or tomorrow ... I'm sure they'll still appreciate it if you miss that crucial midnight deadline.

On the hunt

I've been an absent blogger. Again. But, the good news is that I graduated with my MBA from Brandeis! It was a great program, and I'll certainly spend more time sharing some of my favorite parts (and not so favorite!) things in the days to come. I haven't blogged on here in a little while, though, because I've been wholeheartedly engaged in the job search. And it's all I've been thinking about ... but, given the fact that this blog is easily googled and found, I haven't wanted to share those thoughts with the world just yet.

I'll be sure to write a bit about my job search process because I know I have benefitted greatly from talking to people and reading about others' approaches to this daunting task. But, I'll write about it later. When I have a job. And a plan. The short share of thoughts is that I have a few great potential options in the works right now, and I just need to do some soul searching to figure out where I see myself contributing the most, learning, finding meaning and having fun!

"An Exercise In Changing Yourself"

I happened upon this blog posting, "An Exercise in Changing Yourself" by Marshall Goldsmith, an executive educator and writer for a Harvard Business Review management blog in my travels on Twitter one day last week. I've been thinking about it ever since because it seems like such a simple, but powerful way to pick out one solid goal to work on this year and to determine why you want to pick this goal out of so many that I'm sure we can all think of.

One of my favorite passages from the article is, "I have conducted this exercise with several thousand people. Many start with benefits that are "corporately correct," such as: "This change will help my company make more money," and finally end with benefits that are more human, such as: "This change will make me a better person." I will never forget one hard-driving executive who chose: 'When I get better at letting go' as the behavior he should work on. His first benefit was that his direct reports would take more responsibility. His final benefit was that he would probably live to celebrate his 60th birthday."

The exercise goes like this:

1. Pick something that you'd like to improve in your life that fits into the end of this sentence: "When I get better at [this] ..., then [resulting consequence of change] ..."

2. Do it again.

3. Do it again.

4. Do it again.

5. You get the picture ... do it until you really get to the root of why this change that you would like to make will have an impact.

Mine? Here it is: When I get better at not letting the word "should" influence my decisions, I'll follow the path that leads to meaningful work, life, and everything in between.

Next steps: The article doesn't get into the implementation of how to change the chosen behavior or into creating an action plan for change (it is only one little blog post after all), but that's what I went to graduate school for, now isn't it?