How to decide to quit your job

All our life we jump through hoops
Often without asking why
Its easy to feel stuck – a small cog in a big machine.
It doesn’t have to be like this. 
Don’t waste your life living someone elses.
Don’t wait for permission
Life is too short to do work that doesn’t matter to you.
From: The Escape manifesto, by Escape the city.

A year ago I handed in my notice at Beca and jumped into the scary unknown of being self employed.  

The first year has been equal parts blissful and terrifying.  Going it alone has been a big test of my character.  Overall, I'm glad to be living a more authentic and conscious life, even though I admit sometimes the space I'm currently in can be disorientating and highly uncomfortable. 

I reckon a career change appeals to most people at some stage in their working life.  Heres my advice if you are considering a career change or wondering "what if".

Look up the ladder

Ask yourself: are you climbing a career ladder to a destination you WANT to arrive at?

I worked at Beca for 14 years in total. Long service is common with Beca employees, it's a fantastic company to work for and being employee owned, the longer you stay, the greater the benefits. It's very safe and comfortable.

As I looked up the ladder at senior roles above me,  I couldn’t find anyone whose life I really desired. My perception was that the closer you got to the top, the greater the personal sacrifice of time and energy. By then, I had already invested a lot in my career account over 20 years, at times to the detriment of some other areas of my life like health, wellbeing and relationships.

I knew I didn’t want to keep doing this job for another 25 years, but I couldn’t for the life of me decide what I did want to do.  I felt stuck. I felt like a highly trained monkey.  So I decided I needed the freedom to explore some new areas, to do lots of learning and see where I ended up.  

Think a lot

Literally, block out uninterrupted, empty time where you journal, sit or walk and just think. I suggest early mornings. 

Being confused is normal.  Park concerns about money and write down everything you have enjoyed doing or making.  Set goals that will actually make you happy. Ask yourself quality questions like ths: 

What would l like to be doing in 1 year ?  in 5 years?

If I had $100 million in the bank, what would I do day-to-day?

Most people spend more time planning their next holiday than they will ever spend on such questions. 

Consider writing down in exquisite detail, what a day in your ideal life will look like in 10 years. The dream life you would live if you had no fear.  I borrowed this from Debbie Millmans "Your ten year plan for a remarkable life" exercise.   

I've done this. It's very revealing.

The money question

The main reason people stay in jobs they don’t enjoy is money.  

I certainly encourage you to crunch the numbers behind quitting your job.  Work out the minimum you can live on per month, and then how many months you think you'll have to live on. That equals what you should save for your escape fund. Minimise costs, save intelligently. Think about how much is enough.  Do you need all the things you think you need?  

Beyond all the numbers though, comfort yourself with this thought: I believe that the pursuit of money for money's sake doesn't bring sustainable happiness.  Abundance (including money) flows from the kind of happiness that flows from vital engagement.  Vital engagement is intrinsically fulfilling work, where you see your work as contributing to the greater good. 

Know your strengths

The goal is to choose work that allows you to use your strengths every day.

If you are stuck in a job that doesn’t match your strengths, reframe your job so that it does.  

Strengths are the unique combination of talents, knowledge, and skills that every person possesses. For example, my strengths are Harmony, Learner, Intellection, Connectedness and Achiever. Most people don’t know what their strengths are or have the opportunity to use them to their advantage.  

I really got a handle on this when I did the Strengthfinder assessment at Beca. It's potentially very powerful when building high performing teams. Strengthfinder is a book and an online web assessment tool, which has it's grounding in the positive psychology movement (an interest of mine).  

In the old days we were encouraged to focus on fixing our weaknesses, but research shows that, if you do that you will only ever lift your weaknesses to at best average level, but if you focus on strengths you really have the chance to shine.  

Martin Seligman is one of the fathers of positive psychology and if you would like to know more, read his book Authentic Happiness. There are also a bunch of free online character strength tests you can do which are similar to the commercial offerings. 

Don't wait for an epiphany

The decision to do something different is a process, of waking up to your own values, personal truths.

It requires lifting your nose from the grindstone, snapping our of the automatic routines and all the urgent but un-important tasks that fill our days, and looking at yourself and your life from 10,000 feet elevation.

A gradual epiphany is an oxymoron. An epiphany is a sudden or striking realisation. A moment of truth.  

My advice is:  Don’t wait for one of those.

Why happiness might be found in a bag of saggy old Y-fronts

Dear friends, 

I spent a day volunteering at the Auckland City Mission last week.  

This is the Distribution Centre, where all the donations are brought to be sorted and then redistributed back out to the shops. That mountain of rubbish bags is what we were sorting through and more were being dropped off as fast as we could clear them.

Christmas is the Mission's busiest time of year and it's probably best known for the thousands of gifts and food parcels that go out in December each year, as well as NZ's largest Christmas lunch which hosts around 2000 people.  What I've learned is that it's a big and logistically complex operation.  The work goes on all year round, including homelessness outreach and support, healthcare for marginalised residents, drug and alcohol detox, emergency food parcels, and the list goes on. 

I was with a small group and we were directed to the linen and clothing sorting area.  Guess what, it's a really labour intensive task to unpack, sort and carefully inspect clothing and linen.   Quality varies hugely and sorting through well worn and stained mens undies was memorable for all the wrong reasons.  The Mission, like many charities I imagine, has a growing problem of what it costs them to dispose of the crap that they receive and have to sort through that just isn't reusable.  

At this time of year the focus was on getting warm winter clothes and linen out for the shops, for specific orders  "e.g large man + boy 5 + boy 7", and "Crisis Care" which is for the homeless people who turn up to the Mission with nothing. 

The staff at the distribution centre were friendly, warm hosts which really helped to make the day enjoyable. They took the time to show us around, gave us a good briefing and checked in regularly throughout the day. I applaud them for that, their patience and care, it must be tiring every day directing a labour force of clueless volunteers.  

This kind of volunteering was a new experience for me. One I want to repeat regularly, I'm aiming for fortnightly.  I've wanted to incorporate some regular volunteer work into my schedule for ages.  The science says that the act of service and giving triggers the release of oxytocin in our brains, part of the happiness trifecta of chemicals.  Even better news, these brain chemicals counteract cortisol, the dreaded stress horomone.

So, although volunteering consumes your time and energy, this (or any) kind of service gives you back a whole lot in return.  

To get away from sitting at a computer, to do some manual work and turn my focus to these imaginary people and their families was sobering but also really energising. In fact, I did a couple of hours of work after I got home and it was probably the most productive I'd been all week.  What is that about?? Interesting eh.  

For most of us, our weekends are family time and so we wonder how to fit this kind of extra commitment into a busy schedule.   Being able to incorporate this experience into my usual work week is what's important to me. I'm self employed now so it's easier,  but I challenge you to think about how you could do the same.  Consider the time to be an investment in both your wellbeing and your community.  Can you think of a better reason?!.

If you are interested in going as a group  (3 - 20 people) I highly recommend it.  I even reckon this would be good team building activity.  The centre is easy to get to and there's a carpark next door ($10 a day).   Details of who to contact on the website.

I'm interested: does your employer offer you paid charity days?  If they do, how do you use them? 

My recipe for a more sustainable lifestyle

Dear friends,

Where would you place yourself on the scale in terms of how committed you are to living a sustainable lifestyle?  

Colmar Brunton asks New Zealanders this question in an annual survey of attitudes & behaviour called the Better Futures Report 2016. They've run the survey for a few years now so its interesting to compare the trends.  According to this report, more people are putting value in sustainable choices.  The statistics say 10% rated themselves having a low commitment, 65% were medium and 25% had a high commitment to living a sustainable lifestyle. The "low commitment" proportion is shrinking, which is nice.   

Anyway statistics are handy, but lets talk about reality, I mean action versus aspiration, living in the space where the rubber hits the road.

Ingredients

For the last couple of years, at the start of each year I have picked a theme and chosen a mantra to go with it.  The idea is you ask yourself:

what do I want to do? 

who do I want to be?.

Choose a few words, something you could write on a post-it and stick to your computer as a reminder. In my experience, setting this sort of intention is powerful.  Its powerful because it guides decision making throughout the year.  Keeps your eyes on the prize, in a world full of crazy distractions. 

So through some reflection at the beginning of 2017, I decided on a theme for year of "be the change".  Credit to Ghandi  (Be the change you wish to see in the world). I recognise that the best place for me to start to influence others to live a more sustainable lifestyle is to lead the way, to start with changing myself.  This applies to anything in life by the way, best example has to be relationships.. holy cow, think you can change someone else?  Forget it.. invest your energy in what you can control.

  So......with that in mind, here's my recipe for living a more sustainable lifestyle.  

1. Make smart buying decisions
2. Share insights with others
3. Lead by example
4. Speak up and don't be afraid to challenge others opinions or behaviour.

1. Make smart buying decisions

We all consume products and services each and every day.  We make dozens of purchasing decisions which individually seem trivial but are the small steps which create momentum.  Prioritising sustainable choices and making smart buying decisions around vehicle and household items is such a good thing to do. Where to start?  Here's my ideas:

• Consume less (clothes and shoes in my case).
• Seek to buy secondhand wherever possible. 
• Prefer brands and services that are socially and environmentally responsible. Be interested, ask questions about the origin of raw materials, where its made and what they do with waste.  
• Ditch the top 4 on the hit-list of single use plastic: shopping bags, coffee cups, water bottles and straws.
• Seek to buy grocery items without plastic packaging where ever possible, even if it means changing where I shop. 
• Prepare litter-free lunchboxes.   

2. Share your insights with others

More often than not, there is a dual motivation to my decisions about products, services or ways of doing things more sustainably.  I believe that sustainable choices almost always save money or have astonishing health and happiness co-benefits. I cant begin to explain what a vastly different way it is to experience the world and our connection to our fellow humans when you travel by foot or bicycle,  rather than inside the isolating bubble of a car.  

So, I am committing to proactively sharing my knowledge and what I learn on this journey. That means talking about it at the family BBQ, with friends, partners, children, work colleagues, sharing it on social media. Writing reviews and recommendations for places you observe to be doing well at taking care of people and the planet.  

3. Lead by example

For me, this is going to be mostly achieved through 1 and 2 above.  Reiterating the point that it doesn't matter what everyone else is doing.   I comfort myself with this thought:  

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.  

Mark Twain

4. Don't be afraid to speak up if you think something could be done a better way

For me this is the hardest but probably the most important change I can make in myself.  I can think of half a dozen situations in the last few months where I thought something could have been done more so much more sustainably BUT I SAID NOTHING. I said nothing because I know people make these decisions to save time or money or effort and who am I to tell someone how to live their life?  However, the point is,  information is neutral, it's not offensive or criticism and if someone perceives it as that, it says more about them than me.  

Time to get cooking!

I believe I am not alone in wanting to live a more sustainable lifestyle.  I reckon most people want the same thing that I do, which is to do better at looking after our planet and our people. Does anyone truly want their actions or purchases to support environmental damage or some abuse of human rights?.

I hope I haven't come across as some holier-than-thou greenie, in fact I hesitate to even write about living a sustainable lifestyle because I'm just as imperfect as the rest of the planet, easily distracted watching kittens on YouTube.  

I share this recipe with you because maybe you feel the same way but don't really know where to start.   I think it doesn't really matter what you do or where you start.  Just commit and take one small step. Be prepared to be a little uncomfortable at times.  Be prepared even, to try a little voluntary hardship (according to the ancient stoics you can get a surprising happiness boost from experiencing voluntary discomfort  - read more here).

I say: the greatest rewards are found just outside your comfort zone. What are your thoughts?  Love to hear whether is resonates with you.

It's not easy being green (unless you're grass)

I was very fortunate recently to be invited to listen to a talk by Daniel C. Esty hosted by Berry Simons and Beca Ltd. Daniel is a Professor of Environmental Law and Policy at Yale and co-author of the book  Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage. This book has been out since 2006 and I confess, rather ashamedly, that I haven't read it, but after hearing him talk I will certainly be doing so.

For me, he condensed all of the most important ideas about how and why businesses should be sustainable into a series of excellent short sound bites which I furiously scribbled down. I share some of the ones I found most meaningful below:

No externalities. Companies must pay for the harm they cause

This is far and away his key message.  Its HUGE.  Imagine a world where all producers of products had to take back the waste created by the use of their products. A world where there was extended producer responsibility on chemicals, building materials, packaging.  Frankly I find this mind boggling to even contemplate.  However there are small examples of where this is happening already.  We need to highlight this best practise, copy it and grow it.  Some policy and regulations would be a really big help!  We, as consumers, need to support the businesses who are already doing this.

Sustainability is a lens to drive innovation

We are not just talking technology innovation, but new thinking in EVERY domain of life:  finance, policy, how you tell the story, how you engage the public etc. etc.  People cling to what they know, but the way we have always done things will not work to bring us a sustainable future.

Sustainability is a journey not an endpoint

Indeed. Its a very long term game. Daniel suggests thinking in terms of 10 year plans. 20 years even.

The answer is going to be branding

Brand identity is the intangible but deeply valuable gold in all this.  Transparency is not even a choice. The great brands will have products and services where the sustainability of the whole supply chain has been carefully considered and chosen.  A relevant case in point: when our awesome international brand Icebreaker tenders for their international freight contract, they require their freight providers to answer a rigorous and in-depth questionnaire about the sustainability of their business.

Density is the friend of sustainability

Amen.  Such an important concept that is so relevant and sadly so lost in the currentAuckland (and probably every) debate about urban intensification.

Farmers have gotten a free ride for decades

Ouch! It feels almost blasphemous to repeat this particular statement, it feels very disloyal to shine the spotlight on our fine agricultural back bone. Sadly there's a lot of truth to this.  On the flipside, there is so much opportunity to improve farming practices, and in doing so, tell the story to our markets offshore who will increasingly care about this very fact.

It's not easy to be green

No- one said this would be easy. Nothing truly meaningful and worthwhile is ever easy. The greatest rewards are always outside our comfort zones. However, lets not forget we are living in a time of rapid technological change and unprecedented global connectedness thanks to the knowledge economy, smart phones, social media and internet based business. I see huge potential for this greater global connectedness to benefit the journey on the long sustainability road.

I feel, and Daniel confirmed for me, that we are on a much higher trajectory of action now. After more than 10 years of working in and on the periphery of the environmental sustainability field in NZ, I feel energised, I see a renewed sense of momentum, an imperative, because you know what?  the climate is giving us feedback.

I would love to hear your thoughts on these big ideas. Have you read the book? what did you think?

10 tips for the ladies on how to become a cycle commuter

This is for the ladies out there, did you know we are very under-represented in the urban cycling stats? Three quarters of people who cycle to work are men (that's an NZ statistic, I don't know about other countries).  Its time to change these figures!.  Here are my tips based on my own personal journey to cycle commuting awesomeness.  I hope this helps you get over the "can't be bothered", "too hard", "I'm too busy" "its not safe" valley of reasons that have been holding you back until now.

1.  You don't need to cycle every day to reap the benefits

Try it just once a week.  My personal goal is twice a week,  sometimes I only manage once, but you know what??, that car-free day totally rocks.

2. You don't have to wear lycra

I am totally into the concept of cycling in street clothes.  Picture this,  you arrive at your destination, wearing your work attire, step off your bike, rosy cheeks and fresh as a daisy.  Well that's my vision and it works some of the time. I wear a layer (a light singlet under my dress or top)and shed this when I get to work Helps keep my outfit for the day fresh.

3. Invest in some gorgeous bike gear

This will totally inspire you.  I use wiggle.co.nz (Wiggle.com) for cycle shirts and pants  free shipping worldwide for orders over 50 pounds.  Maybe a nice bike bag, a pretty helmet, have a look online, cycling is becoming uber stylish. For more inspiration:  http://beautifulbikebags.co.nz/ http://www.bikepretty.com/ http://www.bicyclebaskets.co.nz/

4.  Get a good bike seat

I changed the standard seat  that came with my entry level Merida mountain bike (from Bike barn) to a more comfy wider one.  It made a big difference.

5.  You don't need to wear cycle pants

Refer NO. 4 for why not.  I loathe cycle pants, who wouldn't ? They cut my legs off mid thigh and really, whose bum looks good with all that extra padding?. err...no-ones??  (Confession: this single point and my own vanity put me off cycling for longer than I care to admit).

6. Invest in some dry shampoo

Lets face it, hair washing is a time consuming pain, and this stuff lets me have a quick refresh after a bike ride, (a blast with a hairdryer helps too). I use Batiste products -available at Countdown, Farmers here in NZ)

7.  Cycling with kids is totally doable

I commute with my (18.5 kg) five year old daughter in a bike seat on the back. I recommend a seat on the back for ages 3-5 years. Though the Weeride and the Dolittle, which go on the front have been recommended to be me by friends also. We have such adventures! I'm in the process of getting a trailer bike, to see us through the stage before she is confident to ride her own bike.

8.  Wear bike lights front and rear, flashing, DAY and NIGHT 

Its all about being as visible as possible. In my opinion good lights are effective at making cyclists stand out.

9. Safety in numbers

The evidence is growing that urban cycling gets safer the more people who do it, as it helps to raise everyone's awareness.  So join us and consequently help to make our roads safer for cyclists.

10.  Research, research, research

There are so many amazing online resources.  Check out the below for more awesome tips and advice: https://www.bikeauckland.org.nz/resources/biking-to-work/

Good luck ladies! see you out there!

PS: I've just signed up for the Auckland Bike Challenge, (an awesome workplace competition which uses the fantastic  lovetoride website/app format) about to kick off 1 Feb.  Join me ! https://www.lovetoride.net/auckland?ic=d15bc528&locale=en-GB).