I'm taking a pause from my "Passionate Pursuits" series to tackle a seasonal topic: New Year's resolutions. A great idea in theory, but not always in practice. My best advice for 2013 is to commit to learning something new today so that by this time next year, you will be...

I have identified nine distinct catalysts that most people travel to find and follow their own heartfelt work. Think of these paths or icons for you to mull over, try on. If you ache for something of your own, this can lead you to identifying it. If you think you're...

As I have grown in my professional practice, I've continued interviewing and collecting stories to add to a framework of work. I began with Skills for Success, where I described how to find the courage and risk required for success. This time I'd like to share my research on finding...

Graduate school, far more intense than college, provides a direct pathway to developing your career. The last thing you want to do is wait until it's over and hope that your new degree alone will launch you-- it won't. You need a hidden curriculum to make graduate school worth it....

Graduate school is an experiment in hope. It's also a risky investment, an expensive program in which we entrust time in our lives to school for both a new identity and a ticket to a career. We expect that answers will be revealed to us through academic study, leading to...

Sending your kid off to college might result in sudden loneliness, especially if you've had a close relationship. You might fool yourself into thinking that you are worried about them when, in reality, you just miss them. When it comes down to it, that umbilical cord, never emotionally cut, could...

Watching the sport of pole vaulting in the Olympics always takes my breath away. Using a flexible pole made of fiberglass (a far cry from the first bamboo and aluminum versions), athletes hurl themselves over an insanely high bar. These athletes have been training and steadily advancing with good, better,...

Decision-making is difficult, especially when it involves complex factors. Even if we are smart and diligent, when it comes to settling on a course of action we resort to delaying tactics or blaming others to duck responsibility for fear of being seen as "wrong." Answers are not usually immediate. Here...

College career centers are often a graduate's first (and sometimes only) experience in catapulting the start of a career. Most career centers' websites list employers and maintain a relationship with recruiting personnel. Company representatives use these centers and their career fairs to make appointments with graduating students and to publicize...

If you've left your college campus but still don't have a job, consider these strategies to get you in the door of your new career. You won't be able to do it alone -- nobody does. You will have to start risking engaging with others to help you find leads...

Turning points arrive after crises, when we feel lost or are grief-stricken. Turning points are experienced as a sudden awakening -- an epiphany that directs us to the True North on our internal compass, spinning us to destinations that later we call our destiny. Only then do we embrace them...

Even though you possess talent or technical ability, having and honing is not enough. Here are six critical, transactional success skills to stimulate your most meaningful and fulfilling career.

1. Exploring: Most of us remain a prisoner of our obligations instead of listening to our instincts. A necessary step...

Graduation is just around the corner. Here are some gratifying things to take advantage of before you don your cap and gown.

1. Reach out to the professors, advisors, deans, and club sponsors who have made an impact on you over the last few years and thank them. Tell...

Women don't get as many raises or earn as much as men, and I feel it's largely because we don't ask for what we deserve in the first place. Instead, we buckle down to do better work, waiting to be recognized instead of stepping up. The fact is...

Career and job fairs offered by your college are a free and valuable resource to you. Go. Sure, it's called a "fair," but it is business -- serious business.

Recruiters pay money to attend these events because they need to recruit candidates -- students like you. They want to...

A young, beautiful, talented and experienced woman failed yet another interview in her second year of job hunting. She did not know how to do better because she didn't have a clue about why it was happening to her in the first place, time after time. What went wrong? Were...

For some companies, the usual Monday morning meeting is becoming unusual. It is revamping itself, becoming a stand-up, short-lived check-in. For those who still endure the old sit-down conference table version, the format is unbearably predictable: the boss unceremoniously starts the meeting by reading the agenda, reciting the latest sales...

You've been waiting for this day for so long -- a big promotion, award, or accomplishment! You thought you'd feel on top of the world, but for some reason, you don't. Not only are you not in any celebratory mood after you've realized this achievement, but you notice that you...

As a candidate for a job, boost your success rate by figuring out who and what the interviewer is seeking. Give up the idea that an interview is a test where "right answers" are the ones given by experts and "wrong answers" cause you to fail. There is no perfect...

So, you're no longer the young one on your team at work. Time speeds up so suddenly that after a decade or two, you find that you are working for or with others who are closer in age to your children than they are to you. And the longer you...