How draining it is? How undervalued you are?

Do you catch yourself regretting your career choice? Wondering what would have happened if you had pursued what you really wanted to study?

Or maybe you pursued exactly what you wanted, only to enter the field and find out it’s a terrible fit for you?

Let me tell you something: I was in a similar situation.

In a way, I still am.

Applied behavior analysis (ABA) was the safer option compared to what I really wanted: forensic psychology. ABA was a growing field with plenty of work opportunities working with young children, while forensic psychology would have lil’ old 5’1″, 100 lb me working in courtrooms and prisons.

But now, after working in ABA only a handful of years, I feel stuck. It’s a path that definitely led to many job opportunities, but not a career. Even though it’s a respectable field helping those with special needs, it led more to burnout and resentment than an actual sense of accomplishment.

So what should you do when you’re feeling stuck in a field you hate?

Pivot

One option in this situation is pivoting from your current job into something more desirable. Consider possible options one step out from what you do, like teaching. Chances are this will require developing some new skills, but luckily there are fantastic opportunities online for adult learning.

Online courses at sites like Skillshare and Udemy are great places to learn new skills. In these marketplaces, people with a unique skill in the online community will create a course, publish it, and sell it for a (usually) fair price.

If you want something more standardized, EdX and Coursera offer courses taught by university lecturers from around the world. These can even lead to micromasters or other certifications, which you can then leverage for a raise at your current job — or a pivot into a new field.

If you’re loyal to a specific university, you can always stick with the open courses from certain schools. Yale Open Courses and Harvard Open Courses are great options, though you might be more limited in your options if you choose to stick to a single program.

Make it Your Own

But what if you don’t necessarily want to pivot into a new field? Personally, I didn’t want to shift to do this. I felt like shifting away would mean that the years spent on ABA (and the degree associated with it) would be wasted.

So what did I do?

I decided to leverage behavior analysis with the job I had been enjoying and taking for granted for over a decade: my steady and enjoyable tutoring side hustle.

I wanted to apply the science and techniques of behavior analysis to the daily lives of school-aged children, rather than the special needs community I had been serving. From helping them develop the motivation to complete their homework, to fine-tuning their study skills, I could use my skills in behavior analysis to help my students in new and effective ways.

And even going beyond the students’ learning techniques, I realized I could take all the behavior analysis I know and develop a product that parents could use to aid in shaping their children’s behavior.

A book?

Course?

A live online bootcamp?

There are so many possibilities, all I had to do was pick one and run with it.

These are all targeting a brand new field: the cross section of behavior analysis and mainstream education. Typically, ABA is applied to learning within the special needs community, but this was new.

Now, this isn’t to say that I’ve moved on and made Tutor in Tinseltown my full-time job. I still have my day job in behavior analysis.

But you know what?

It isn’t quite so draining anymore. Just knowing that I have a side project I’m working on to better my situation has been enough to lift me up and renew my energy.

So every day I’m able to, I sit down and work on my products for sale.

Or write a post or two for my blog to get my name out there.

I still tutor 3 days per week, and love watching all my munchkins learn and enjoy learning.

So what’s your next step?

Whether you choose to pivot to a similar field, leverage your current job and expertise to create something new that you love, or gain new skills and request a raise at your current job, don’t feel like you’re stuck in the situation you hate forever.

There are so many options for you to improve yourself — you just have to take some time to truly think about what you want, and how you can work towards getting there in your own life.

So, what do you think?

Are you planning a request for a raise, a pivot, or are you creating something new?

The post I Hate My Job! What To Do When You Want to Switch Careers appeared first on HER Magazine ™.

But in the end it just leaves us feeling miserable.

We generally treat others with kindness, empathy, and respect, and yet we treat ourselves like we’re our own worst enemy. Unfortunately, the older we are, the harder it can be to rewrite all those years of negative self-talk. It’s time to practice self-love rather than self-judgment or hate, but that requires practice. The effort, however, will be well worth it: positive self-image can improve your happiness, your relationships, your success at work — not to mention how a positive example of self-love and self-care can impact our kids and those around us. So with this goal in mind, here are five essential steps you can take today to rewrite those years of self-doubt and negative self-talk.

1. Leave yourself notes in places you see often.

We are surrounded every day with negative marketing, so why not add some positivity to the mix? Leave yourself loving, kind, and positive notes on the bathroom mirror, your computer background image or screensaver, your cell phone — get creative! You can even send yourself an email at the end of the night to be read first thing in the morning.

The key with this is to switch it up, so you don’t become acclimated and stop reading these notes. Create a file of kind, loving images on your computer and set your screensaver or desktop image to scroll from this folder. Switch up your phone background every few days from a stockpile of healthy messages. Try and surprise yourself.

2. Follow each negative comment with a positive one.

I saw this image on Pinterest a long time ago, and its message has always stuck with me. If you slip up and say or think something nasty about yourself, don’t beat yourself up about it — that’s just adding to the pain. Instead, follow up your negative self-talk with something positive. Let’s get your inner dialogue sounding something more like this:

“Ugh I’m so overweight”

“Oops!”

“If my doctor says I’m healthy, that’s what matters. Besides, inches are for measuring heels, not people. I may be a little overweight, but I really rocked that presentation yesterday.” 

Intentionally follow up with something positive.

3. Set routines for yourself while you develop new habits.

You’re going to need some reminders to engage in this new practice of self-love while you develop the habits and break the pattern of negative self-talk. Try setting alarms to ring on your phone every hour or two while you get used to it. Each time the alarm goes off, take a moment, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and complete one of your positivity tasks!

4. Try self-love journaling.

Take a few minutes every day to do some self-love journaling. Take this time to block out all distractions and really focus on the task. Be mindful, really reading what you’re writing, watching the letters and words come from the tip of your pen. Write down all the things you love about yourself, or things that you’re good at. It’s better if these things are not physical characteristics, since the body changes with time (sometimes from one day to the next) but rather about your mind, soul, and spirit. Write about your kindness, your generosity, your playfulness, your intelligence, your love, your community service, your dedication to your family, students or pets. Anything great about you, write it down!

Note that I’m saying “write” it down. And that’s because you should be doing this on paper and pencil, not typed. There’s something beautiful about writing love notes to yourself in your own handwriting, rather than an anonymous, typed letter. It’s more visceral, and will make a deeper connection on you emotionally.

Also, try to keep it all in one notebook, so you can go back and reread it on days you aren’t feeling your best. Then again, if you’re just taking a quick break at work, a scrap piece of paper is better than nothing!

5. Use self-love mantras.

Last but not least, develop some self-love mantras to repeat to yourself throughout the day. Time spent commuting is a great opportunity to repeat kind and loving mantras for yourself, since you won’t — or shouldn’t — be distracted by incoming texts or emails.

“I am kind.”

“I am smart.”

“I am witty and funny.”

“I am important to those around me.”

“I am a work in progress, and that is ok.”

“I am beautiful.”

“I matter.”

Be loving to yourself, flirt with yourself, date yourself! Because, in the end, you are the only person you will be with from the moment you are born, to the moment you take your last breath. Shouldn’t you be gentle and kind with such a constant companion?

The post 5 Steps To Rewrite Negative Self-Talk appeared first on HER Magazine ™.

You might be a part of that 26%. Or, you might be wondering whether you really need to learn more computing skills — after all, can’t you just get along as you always have?

Unfortunately, no. As the driven and successful career women we are, we can’t stay satisfied being on the outside looking in, especially with new technology like virtual and augmented reality getting more and more prevalent every day. But just in case those statistics aren’t motivating enough, consider these five reasons we should all work to upgrade our computer skills:

1) You can leverage your new skills at your current job.

There are many ways you can implement even basic computing skills into a new project at work, which you can then leverage into a raise. And let’s be honest, with the disparities between living wage, minimum wage, and average salaries, who among us wouldn’t want a raise? Maybe you check out your company’s website and it’s incredibly clunky and difficult to navigate — or fresh customers are lacking, and you want to bring in some new faces. Propose a mock-up of an easier-to-use website you can create, or recommend a project to revamp the company’s online marketing using Pinterest, Instagram, or Twitter (with you as the project leader, of course!).

2) If you actually take the plunge and switch careers, computing jobs are more flexible.

Would you like to get paid to write captions for TV, YouTube, and Facebook videos? How about writing cold emails on behalf a company? What if I told you you could complete both these jobs in a messy bun and sweatpants? A basic online search can show you just how many opportunities are out there for working from home on your own schedule. Whether you’re a stay-at-home mom, or just don’t want to waste hours of your life in traffic, these are great job opportunities that open up to you once you learn some simple computer skills.

3) With computing, you can automate tasks in your life to free up time.

From the simple automation tools we can create with a click, to more advanced programs that require a bit more learning, computing and code can take hours of work off of our loaded plates. With tools like Al Sweigart’s book, “Automate the Boring Stuff with Python” you’d be surprised how much grunt work our computers can do for us. Some examples Sweigart discusses on his website are updating and formatting data in spreadsheets, encrypting PDFs and embedding watermarks, and even sending reminder emails and text notifications! LaTeX, while a bit complicated to learn, automatically formats your documents and reports into publishable creations. LaTeX is actually used to create professional textbooks and articles for research journals. This would be especially handy if you’re like me, with report writing and digital monthly billing making up a large bulk of your day-to-day work. I just discovered this program last year, and even though I haven’t quite put in the time to master it, I can’t help but wonder, “Where have you been all my life?!”

4) Schooling is becoming more and more computer-based — stay up-to-date on your children’s education!

This is a given, but if we don’t learn basic computing, you can forget about helping your children and grandchildren with homework in the very near future. All of my students these past few years have had online assignments due on a weekly basis through online learning management systems that track various data types, such as how much time the student spent reading a passage and how quickly (and accurately) they can take an online quiz. With virtual and augmented reality on the horizon, don’t be surprised if our children have virtual assignments to complete for class. It still seems surreal to me, but one of my 9-year-old tutoring students is learning programming through her 4th grade class. Coding wasn’t even offered at my schools until I hit high school, and even then wasn’t commonplace! Needless to say, if we don’t start learning computing and, yes, code, we will be left in the dust by the 3-year-olds of future generations.

5) All of society is becoming more tech-focused, so learning basic computing will allow you to take advantage of the new tools at your disposal.

If you own your own business, you can use analysis of basic (or complex) data to: learn about your customer’s preferences based on where they go in your store, track how long they’re in your store (or website), and which marketing techniques are bringing you more customers so you can use your time more effectively. But it’s not just a “business thing”; the new developments in the Internet of Things can work to improve your health and even reduce your home expenses. I personally have my thermostat automatically minimize the air conditioning or heater when it senses I left the house, and that alone saves me some serious cash.

The latest commercial to pop up on my YouTube presents an animated world where a female engineer creates a robot tool to help her romantic interest get through his taxes and business paperwork, so he can get back to doing what he loves — floral arrangements. Aside from the fact that it beautifully defies society’s gender roles, this feminist and culturally inclusive presentation of a young, beautiful, Hispanic woman working as an engineer should be a wake-up call to all of us: leave your current comfort zone and go learn some computing!

The post When It Comes To Computers, It’s Time To Leave Your Comfort Zone appeared first on HER Magazine ™.