Our guest today, is Karl Staib from Work Happy Now. Karl used his coaching skills to help me work through an issue last year. I think of him both as an expert in his field and a personal friend.
What is the mission of Work Happy Now?
The mission for WHN is to help people unleash and leverage their superpowers within their career. Too often people lose passion, focus and stop using their strengths at work. I hate to hear stories of people who hate their jobs. It makes me want to scream, "It doesn't have to be that way!"
If someone isn't happy they need to leverage their superpowers so they can do work that they love. Building a great career takes time. It's about being dedicated to growth at every stage.
How does your new (product, program…what shall I call it) Fear to Fuel fall in line with your mission?
Fear has played a huge role in my life. I held back from doing work I loved because I thought it was the smart choice. I lived for a paycheck and the weekends. I was nuts. I realize that I can have my cake and eat it too.
It was hard work to get to my present position, but coaching people with their careers energizes me. I'm happier now because I'm doing work that aligns with my superpowers and values.
I created the Fear to Fuel e-course to help people embrace this fear and learn how to use it to improve their career. It's a work of love. It's the best part of creating something that aligns with my values. I probably learned just as much from e-course as the people who bought it.
What is your best tip for turning fear into fuel?
When you are afraid of something it usually means that you should move toward this thing. It's pent up energy that needs to be unlocked. For example I was deathly afraid of public speaking, now I get paid to talk to people. It's beautiful.
I'm no longer afraid of giving a speech or a workshop. I do get a little rush before I talk to a group, but I enjoy this feeling. Some people call this fear, but I like to think of it as a sign that I'm doing something that energizes me.
What motivates you and inspires you?
Wow, so many things. My curiosity is a superpower that I constantly feed.
I'm inspired by:
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Love in all forms
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Teaching people how to make the world a better place through their work
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Connecting with new people (I actually enjoy marketing. When I stopped
thinking of as finding new business as marketing and just connecting with people my attitude changed. I stopped pushing for sales and just cared about solving people's pain.)
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Dragon Flies (I can watch them all day long.)
- Hiking, and also, I come up with my best ideas when I'm walking a trail with my dog
What is one unexpected thing that has happened to you in the last year?
I unfortunately found cancer in my right testicle. It still weird to write that. I'm lucky. I caught it early and I should live a long time barring anything crazy happening to me.
I really do feel fortunate. Cancer has taught me many lessons that probably would have taken 20 years to learn. I stopped working so hard to get to point B and enjoy the journey more so much more now.
I know we've all heard that metaphor over and over, but it really didn't sink in until after dealing with my cancer.
If you had to choose your best method to grow your blog quickly …excluding great content what would it be?
Connecting with other bloggers. Links are the gold standard. If you can encourage other bloggers to ask you for interviews, link to your blog posts, and help guide you, you'll grow much faster than most other bloggers. The biggest part is giving as much of yourself as you can – comments, links to other bloggers, asking for interviews, etc.
Tell us about your one sentence journal.
My one sentence journal is one of the best tools I teach my clients to use on a regular basis. The concept is simple, every single day write an entry of what happened in your day and how it made you feel. Most of my clients 1 sentence journal usually ends up being two to three sentences. At the end of every week they review and write one thing they did very well and one thing they need to improve on.
The reason this helps my clients and myself is it helps a person see the patterns that occur throughout their week. These patterns dictate a person's happiness. The more they can improve these bad habits the happier they will become.
Check out my article, "4 Steps to Overcome Blogger Burnout and Rediscover the Joy of Blogging," at Virgin Blogger Notes.
What is your biggest struggle at work? How have you managed to stay happy? Please leave a fabulous comment below!
Hi Tess and Karl,
Beautiful interview. I really love the idea of turning fear into fuel. Brilliant. We carry way too many fears with us. If we could really transform all these fears into fuel, we’d have more fuel than we’d know what to do with it. I like your idea of confronting the fear. What I also do is surround the fear with love, have a loving attitude towards what cause us fear. Fear and love cannot co-exist. When one enters, the other has to leave the premises.
Thanks for the inspiration. Loving blessings.