I met today with the facilitators of the Back on Track Network (BOT) group I run. It’s the support group for out of work people that helped me out tremendously and inspired me to launch this blog. Rainer Zinn, one of my fellow BOT volunteers, and I were talking. Career Jockey came up and he told me that he blogged too. “What do you know?” I thought. “A fellow blogger that I actually know in the flesh.”
On a weekly basis, Rainer posts an article sharing …

I ran into Heather Mundell’s life@work blog and found some very inspiring articles to help you find your true life’s calling. She’s a career coach, but her sweet spot is working with clients wanting to find the ideal job for themselves. She works with people on their job searches, but according to her writings, prefers to work with people to discern their calling and launch job searches towards that end.

I read her latest article on managing fear and stress during a career transition. She’s writing about staying …

This may seem like an unlikely book for me to review, but my daughter grabbed “Eat, Pray, Love” and she liked it. Two ladies that went on vacation with us last year brought this book along and they both raved about it. It my attempt to stay in synch with the feminine thinking of my household (I have a wife and three daughters) I read it too and found this bestseller to be spiritually interesting.
I’ve read and reviewed “Silence on Fire” (follow link for my review). I’ll …

In Lewis Carrol’s classic, Alice wanders around Wonderland aimlessly. When she bumps into Cheshire Cat she asks him for directions. The cat responds:
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” Alice says, “I don’t much care where.” The cat then comments, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you walk.”
Many of us have a similar problem and if you think Wonderland is confusing, try the current job market. Having your vision defined clearly is critical on any project and a job search is nothing …

I collect quotations. And the one I’ve needed recently is:
You are in one of two places. You are either in the current moment or you are nowhere since the past and the future do not exist. Baron Baptiste
Baptiste is the author of a yoga book called “Journey into Power.” In his yoga lessons, he sprinkles tidbits of wisdom like the one above. Many of them encourage you to appreciate the moment and to live in it. (The book Silence on Fire, which I review in another article …

When I was unemployed and obsessed with finding work, I was so focused on finding work my marriage and relationships suffered. When I returned to work, in a job I really enjoyed, my natural bent to overachieve took over. Once again my marriage took a back seat. I can get so focused on my “projects” as I like to call them the pursuit drives a wedge between my wife and me. I want to share a “project” I assigned to myself recently that helped me address …

My brother buried his father-in-law today. My wife and I witnessed his wife of 50 years saying her last goodbyes. While hugging her youngest granddaughter with tears rolling down her face, she left him behind. You could see how much more she was leaving behind – things she painfully hoped she could take with her.
Cecilin, as most called him, never said much. He had lost an eye in an accident years ago which left him disabled. He was a low-profile, solitary man and, as a result, I never got to …

Before he saw me coming around the separator for a face to face confession, Fr. Eddy started aloud with his prayers. When he saw it was me he stopped, “Jorge, how are you? How are you and your family?” He wore his usual smile and, as always, slowly articulated his words. We had known each other for years— so long he had baptized two of my daughters who were now 18 and 12.
“How is your new position?” He recited – slowly.
“It’s going really well,” I replied. “Times are tough, but …

Spring Hill College President Fr. Gregory Lucey S.J. recommended the book to me when I visited my daughter who attends the school. The book describes four tenets of Jesuit leadership. Those are:

• self-awareness,
• embracing change,
• striving to serve others, and
• heroic ambition.

The author Chris Lowney is a former Jesuit who after having left the Jesuits became an investment banker at J.P.Morgan. He describes the formula used since the time of St. Ignatius to train and sustain the men of that order. And it was critical to the order and their mission of …

Around the feast of the Immaculate Conception, I ran into a copy of a novena. If you aren’t familiar with novenas, you typically say the prayers for nine days making a specific request or prayer intention. Here is the text for this one:

 
Novena Prayer
Oh Immaculate Virgin Mary, preserved from the slightest stain of sin, and enriched with all the treasures of divine grace. I thank you for the many blessings I have received through your most powerful intercession. You know my needs, my trails, my sufferings. Mother of mercy, …

I read this book the first time in 2001 and it changed me. Based upon the writings of Catholic monk Thomas Merton, it helped me see that we live in God’s presence all the time so prayer is not so much a reaching out to God (because He is already here), but a melting away of a mist (frequently made up of our highly driven minds) preventing us from becoming moment-by-moment aware of God’s awesome presence.
In the book, the author states, “Prayer without words is not so much expressing our …