Career Zen Chapter Eleven

C a r e e r   Z e n
by Larry Daly, 'The JOB DOC'

Chapter 11.   Miscellaneous, and Executive Summary

Your Health and Your Career
To have a good career, you must first have reasonably good health. Yes, we all know blind people who have careers, and people in wheelchairs who are successful, and others who have apparently monumental health problems but achieve great things. They may have problems, but most of them who have achieved their goals are otherwise in exceptionally good health.
Health is not just having all your parts, but keeping what you have in good shape, and being able to work around problems, maybe by making something else do double duty. And by understanding how to work with others, and knowing they need help, and getting it. No matter what problem you may have, you can have a career, if you really want to, as long as you have good health in all of the rest of you.
What I mean by health comes in three parts: Physical, mental, and emotional. You already know this. Sounds simplistic. But wait.

Your Physical Health
When you can't breathe, nothing else matters. If your heart isn't pumping, nothing else matters. If your brain, liver, and about 40 other parts and functions are there and working, and you know who you are and where you are, and what you want and where you are going, and can get around somehow, or get business to come to you, there's really not much else that can stop you from achieving virtually any goal in the world.
There are problems that can hold you back a little. If you are smoking, you are screwing up your lungs and probably all 40 of those other functions, so quit, or realize that you are handicapping yourself. Smoking is subtle. It comes up on you slowly, gradually, over a long time, and your body adapts to the slow decay, compensating. You don't notice it until one day the problem is so big you can no longer overlook it, and you suddenly realize that you are very ill. Look closely at that line above, because now it pertains to you and has real meaning in your life: "If you can't breathe, nothing else matters." By that time, the damage is permanent, irreversible, and quitting only keeps it from getting worse. What damage? For one thing, the carbon monoxide in smoke fills up the oxygen receptors in your lung cells, so the oxygen you need can not be absorbed. Your body is not getting all the oxygen it needs for optimum operation. The tars and poisons in tobacco have killed the celia and disabled other parts and functions. You also stink, have dental and digestive and emotional problems, have impaired most aspects of your IQ and mental abilities, and harmed your emotional foundations. Smoking cigarettes is so subtle and dangerous that it ought to be classified as a controlled lethal substance and managed by the FDA, but will never be because the tobacco lobby is so powerful. Fact of life. Quit. Now.

Drugs and Substances
Alcohol, caffeine, and other drugs and substances are right behind smoking in harming your system, so quit. Now. A couple of cups of tea or coffee in the morning can be handled by your body. The normal healthy human is remarkably durable and able to recover from a serious amount of hardship and abuse, but we are not bullet - proof or poison - proof. A coke or two during the day can't harm you much, but five can, and ten is simply committing slow suicide. A glass of wine a day is good for you (not too close to bedtime, or your sleep suffers), or an occasional party (maybe 2 or 3 humdingers a year), but getting socko every weekend will add up, makes you stupid, ugly, smell bad, leads to accidents, too often fatal to someone, and impairs your physical, mental, and emotional health. Heavy drinking usually is a sign of already existing and serious emotional health problems. Overdoing anything makes you appear stupid to others. Having a career means you are on view, a role model to others, a leader, an achiever, a valuable citizen. That can carry you, for a while. But when you crash, you're trash. You already know this. If you can't handle the temptation, rationalizing that what good is life if you can't have a good time, and think that you are having a good time by lushing out, you are already in trouble. Your career is going, or gone, or will never come. Get help. Now. Fast.
This goes double if you are using other substances we all know are stupid and destructive. Get loose, or get lost.
One more harmful substance we use too much in America today. Sugar. Bad. Again, a little on your cereal and in your coffee or tea won't harm you, but when individuals consume it in virtually everything, more than a half a pound a week, that is serious, and our doctors should be warning us about this, but are not. It's not a conspiracy, but simple ignorance of the harm so much of it does us. It is in virtually everything we consume, so you can't avoid it, but you can cut down. Measure your major intake: put a half pound of sugar in a jar and use it only from that jar all week, see if any is left at the end of a week. If not, or if you've used more, cut back.

Breathing
Breathing is automatic. Good breathing is not. At least two or three times a day, oxygenate your whole body by at least a half hour of exercise stiff enough to make you breathe hard and almost break a sweat. What you do -- walking, jogging, swimming, riding a bike, etc. -- doesn't really matter, as long as you get plenty of fresh new oxygen down into every last cell of your body. If you sit still for several hours at a stretch, that goes double: oxygenate four to six times a day.

Sitting
Sitting is bad for you. Let me repeat that: Sitting is bad for you. In addition to being bad for posture (you will get back pain in your 40's and continuously after that), sitting puts pressure on many body organs that can't handle it. Worse, it deprives a quarter of your body mass from full oxygenation. The large artery down into each leg is bent at the point where your leg leaves your body. Press your fingertip into the crease between leg and body and you will feel that heartbeat there. That artery, one in each leg, is almost as thick as your finger. It carries a lot of oxygenated blood to your legs, the largest muscles and biomass next to your trunk. When you sit, that artery is bent and its carrying capacity is diminished. The veins that carry the depleted blood, and the poisons carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, away, back to your heart and lungs, are just as necessary, and if they are also pinched by sitting, their flow constricted, those poisons start to build up at the cellular level. Bad! Your lymph flow is impeded. If you wear tight underwear which also crimps those arteries, veins, and lymph conduits, they carry even less blood and wastes. Locked in down there, those fluids make your ankles and feet swell up. The oxygen and nutrients in your blood are desperately needed by every cell in your body, and every cell in your legs, also. Without that oxygen, and with that back pressure and poison buildup, cells begin to die. Your muscles, nerves, tendons, flesh and organs begin to decay like rotten meat. You'll get numb, and weak, have difficulty stepping up onto buses, climbing stairs, and so forth, because those muscles are deprived of O2, and clogged with CO2. Due to the pressures caused by sitting, squeezing your genitals and procreative organs, your bladder, colon, liver, kidneys, spleen, all of your internal organs are hampered in their functions. The lungs are pushed up from below when you sit, diminishing their capacity and elasticity, hampering breathing and blood/oxygen exchange. Take deep breaths while standing and then while sitting and you will feel a significant difference. The heart, between the lungs, and between lungs and diaphragm, is also squeezed, making it work harder. None of those organs was designed to be a weight - bearing structure. If you sit more than an hour or so a day, and more than fifteen minutes at a time, you are hurting your body at more than its recovery rate. The damage will accumulate.
At first this harm will not be sensed by you, just a mild degrading of normal functions, just enough to make you feel a little tired and sluggish, a little depressed, needing something to help you get through the day. The penis may go numb and testicles ache once in a while, erections be less firm, and sexual performance less pleasurable. The vagina and clitoris will not be as sensitive and orgasms rare and difficult to enjoy. You will have gas. Then, as your body slowly continues to rot and malfunction, and you think it is because of old age, you will get hemorrhoids, bone and joint problems, eating and digestion and elimination problems, leg and foot problems, phlebitis, fatigue, weight problems, stress, more and worse sexual problems, emotional irritation, personality disorders, and much more. When you sleep your legs will twitch and jerk, trying to get rid of chronic carbon dioxide buildup. Other people will turn away from your bad breath and body odor. And in a few years your career will begin to decay, also.
Just because we can sit does not mean we should. Just because it does not hurt immediately does not mean there is no lasting harm being done. The human body was not designed for chairs. In fact, the chair is a recent invention, rare more than four thousand years ago, and not in common public use until only three hundred years ago. Today, with so much driving cars and watching tv and using computers at home and at work, we sit so much, and for so long at a time, that this is becoming a serious health hazard, though not yet recognized by the medical or political authorities, or by business management. Ergonomics is not enough. Other than diet and hormone linked osteoporosis, what is the link between so many hip fractures and so much sitting?
The rounded top end of the femur (thigh bone) rotates perfectly in a socket in the pelvis, when standing. But when sitting, the offset between the length of the femur and its head is stressed by the new leg angle. This sitting angle also stresses the socket area of the pelvis, leading to wear and tear on both femur and socket, and on muscles and tissues around them, and compresses the visceral organs upward. This upward thighbone leverage is so strong it deforms or sometimes even breaks the small front bones (sacrum, acetabula) of the pelvis, especially in elderly overweight women.
The human body is highly adaptive. Between four and two million years ago some of our primate ancestors slowly began adapting to an upright posture, walking on the ground, as their jungles changed to savannah and plains. It took most of a million years, about fifty thousand generations, for the pelvis to rotate a little and adapt to this new upright posture, for feet to develop out of the lower hands, and for the first humans to develop the pronounced buttock muscles we have today, so necessary to efficient walking, and to refine our shock-absorbing recurve spinal columns to cushion every step. Adaptation to the changing environment is the primary means of survival. Another million years ago they began to live in caves, another adaptation. Then they began to use tools, and their minds and hands and bodies adapted and became good at holding and manipulating and throwing and thrusting and other tool and weapon uses, so well, in fact, that killing and war became the natural state of being of our primate line, as it still is today. They adapted to the cold of the glaciation periods by wearing skins of animals, and their thick digits adapted to the fine arts of sewing skins and then fabrics together into clothes. Only 65,000 years ago the Neanderthals built the first structures, of mammoth bones. Architecture was born. Only 35,000 years ago we (the late Cro-Magnons or early humans) began to draw animals on cave walls. Art was born. All these things in a long series of adaptations. The human is a new species, fully separating from the original primate line less than 100,000 years ago, only a few thousand generations ago. We're still adapting. Still changing. We will probably fully adapt to sitting in another few thousand years. We are only halfway to what we will be in another 20,000 or 35,000 years, and what we will be in another 65,000 years, and in another 1 and 2 and 4 million years from now. We are still changing, adapting. It takes time. Be patient.
Until then, sit with caution.   Never sit tightly forward for very long. Never sit still in any position for long. Get up and move around frequently. At least every ten to fifteen minutes. If your job demands sitting, and you can't do some of it standing, get another job. Update your resumé today and start looking tomorrow morning. Yes, it is that important. Find a job that lets you move around. Say it again, after me: "Sitting is bad for me." Let your body get fresh blood, and oxygen, all over, by moving around, and walking, all you can, at every possible opportunity and excuse. We are made (by nature or evolution or God, as you choose) to be active animals. No animal -- just look and observe them -- ever sits still for long. An hour nap, stretched out? Then they yawn and flex their limbs and do something, go somewhere, climb and run and play, forage, hunt, make love, whatever. Plants, I like to think, were once animals who sat still too long, and got stuck. And then turned green in envy of the rest of us who kept moving around. We are not plants. Don't act like one. We are animals. Mammals. Top of the line. Be proud of it. Don't ever forget or deny it. So we need to move around, not sit still. The overweight woman I observed on the train the other day, rushing for a seat, then getting out some munchies, just what she needed, and gazing vacantly into space while chewing her cud -- well she has, and you have, the right, as owners of your body and your fate, to do whatever you want with it. If you want to destroy yourself that is your right, but do it knowingly, consciously. But, if you will notice, healthy people are active, and active people go places, and use all of their abilities. Careers don't come to you -- you have to go out and get them. You need all the health and energy and smarts you can get. Our Constitution does not say we are guaranteed happiness, but only the pursuit of it: ". . .life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." You have to pursue it. It's not standing still. It's there. Happiness is out there. Somewhere. Your career is out there. Somewhere. Go get it. Get up and go somewhere, right now. Move it, or lose it.

Diet
Your diet has a lot to do with your health. An all - meat diet is just as bad as a no - meat diet, for each is an imbalance, not meeting the body's needs for complete nourishment, roughage, etc. There is probably no perfect diet, so strive for as inclusive a general diet as possible, on the basis that your body can synthesize most of what you need if it has enough different raw materials. Drink your milk and eat your veggies and fruits and grains, and so on, and you will probably be fine. If you realize you are shorting yourself on something, take vitamins. Let pragmatism rule you -- we come from a long line of very adaptive primates, and wouldn't be here if they were not adaptive, so just don't go to extreme on any one thing.

Sleep
"To sleep, perchance to dream" Shakespeare wrote, four hundred years ago. You need them both, delta sleep and REM dreams. Without either you soon begin to grow weak, have hallucinations, get depressed, and become ill, and fail at any chance of a career, or any kind of success, except as a booby. Is that really a career?
Get your ZZZs.
If there's a problem keeping you awake, fix it, one way or another, as fast as you can, and get on with your life. Move, change jobs, get a divorce, or get married, or do whatever you must. Don't screw around. You already know all of this. Just do it. Now. You know what you have to do. Work it out. If you don't, or can't, then get help and find out, and then do it.
In the past 20-30 years we have learned a lot about sleep and related fields, and there are at least a dozen 'dot coms' on it, so learn and use them. (Same for the other subjects here, and for all the other kinds of research and sourcing mentioned in this whole book; there is an awesome amount of help and sources for self - help on the Internet, most of them free, and if you can't find them, get others to help you and teach you.) Avoid pills unless your doctor says you truly need them -- beware medication rebound and other side - effects, and some are habit - forming, with severe withdrawal symptoms. Do you truly need these additional problems to further complicate your career and life?

Your Emotional Health
Anger. Rage. Stress. Hate. Fear. Greed. Emotions can be bad for you. And good, too! Ambition. Motivation. Joy. Happiness. Calm. Serenity. (Princess Grace of Monaco was known as Her Serene Highness.) One can turn to the other in a moment, and destroy your life in the next moment. An angry word or gesture, or a constant frown, can ruin a career almost as quickly. If you have trouble controlling your emotions, and they make you do things you would not normally do, get help. Find a way to work off your frustrations and find peace. Maybe a religion, or freedom from one, or Zen, or learn the self - discipline of the martial arts, or mountain climbing, or singing or playing an instrument. The mind can control the emotions, or the emotions can control the mind -- the choice is yours. It is your self, and you can and should tell it what to do, not let it dictate to you. You must know yourself, to know others. You must control yourself, to control others. Without those controls, no career is possible, for in all we do, we deal with others.
If you have problems with your self-esteem, or in relationships, a spouse or lack of one, dependence or avoidance, fear of others or peer pressure, self - reliance or sufficiency, sensitivity, loneliness, despair over a loss, suicidal extremes, inability to relax or play or laugh, inability to take life seriously, self - destructive actions, fear of success, inability to give or accept love, lack of commitment, inability to make decisions, over - control, bi - polar problems, too much or too little time, or whatever else, then wake up and admit it and get help and get it fixed, and get on with your life and your career.
Time is not waiting for you. Great careers won't wait for you. The world will go ahead without you if you can't keep up. You are an adult. Nobody is going to take care of you. You are now your own mother and father, and you have to take care of yourself. Do it. Or forget about that key to the executive suite, and the success you otherwise probably do deserve and could achieve.
Best of all is when you can harness your emotions to help you in your career. When you do something you feel is good, praise yourself, to yourself. Seek to do more praiseworthy things. You need not share this with others, but you should share it with yourself. Gift yourself a flower or toy or something, and when you do something of which you are ashamed, put something or some pleasure away in self-discipline penance for a week. Reward yourself, and get a good healthy dose of pleasure.
One valuable benefit of an active physical exercise program of any kind is that, in addition to the obvious physical benefits, and the self - discipline it develops, you can work off your aggressions and frustrations, and achieve a state of renewed serenity and readiness and self - control. Safely and constructively venting your emotions is truly valuable to any career. And you can often make valuable contacts in sports and health clubs, another benefit not to be ignored in pursuing career and personal success.

Your Mental (Cerebral) Health
When most people mention mental health they mean emotional health. By Mental Health, I mean the abilities and skills in using the intellectual thinking parts and functions of your mind well. So maybe I should say 'cerebral' skills and abilities. Cerebral health. The ability to learn something difficult. The skills of reading, studying, writing, numbers, and logic. The rules and systems and organization of your life. Knowing how to observe and find and use the facts even if they disagree with your preferred point of view, which is honesty, also. The creative skills, and resourcefulness and cross - pollinating one discipline with the benefits of another. The communication skills, such as speaking and gesture and posture, being always conscious of how you are sending and receiving messages, verbal and non - verbal, and improving those abilities and talents. The application of information, in analysis and synthesis, projection and forecasting. These are all mental skills, and to do them well and consciously is good cerebral mental health. Your physical health and your emotional health can either help you here in your mental health, or interfere with you and bring you down. You have to fight this war on all three fronts, to survive, and to prevail, and to become a success in your career.
Another mental skill is that of compartmentalization. Most presidents and top business leaders are masters of this mental art. They have their people coming to them every day, every hour, with problems in finance, personnel, time, and other things. The President has lobbies coming in favor of this situation and others against something else. One hour comes a military person, with news of a problem. An hour later the director of the budget comes with another problem, seeking guidance. At three o'clock comes the head of the social services, and at three thirty comes the captain of protocol with a political situation. At four comes the media, and at five comes the private secretary to plan the big function for next week. At five thirty is a stock market crash crisis in Whatsisland and at six a political coup situation in Whosisland. In each case, the President must put aside his own problems, put aside every other situation, and concentrate on this one, listen to the experts on each side, listen to his cabinet of advisers, and yet keep his own mind and the national needs and goals in mind in making the decision, or putting it off until more information is available and a sensible decision is possible.
Similarly, if you are worried about a loved one, and can not concentrate on other situations demanding attention, your career options are severely limited. You are the president, the chief executive, of that country between your ears, and between your hat and shoes. You must learn the ability to compartmentalize and focus and concentrate and make decisions independent of your own wishes and desires and needs. This is a mental skill, yet it involves your health and emotions. You must not only absorb a huge amount of information, but also recognize that every minute the world keeps changing, so that same information will be different tomorrow in some way, and must be renewed, revised, perhaps discarded. To hold onto the known and live only in the past is just as bad as to abandon all knowledge and live on the cloud of hope -- either way a long hard fall is pretty well guaranteed. In meeting and dealing with people, you must use your mental skills of observation and critical logic as well as apply your emotional arts of intuition and trust. There is no easy answer, so you will be working all the time on many levels.
You must maintain health in all three of your interlocking and mutually reliant sectors.

Executive Summary Review
Now you know what to do, and why and how, if you didn't know before. You have no more excuses.
Review. We've looked at a whole range of things that determine your career success: (Page numbers refer to the 1998 edition of Career Zen.)
Your Career as Your Life Work 5;
Building and Upgrading Your Career 5;
Careering is an Art & a Science 5;
Career Is Defined by Results 5;
How this Book Will Help You 5;
Career Tip of the Year 6;
Jobs, Careers, & Professions, Defined 6;
Your Future 6;
Career Basics 7;
67 Most Common Career Problems 8;
Checklists of People Problems, Job Problems, Personal Problems 9;
Career Therapy 11;
Checklist E, Personal Needs 13;
The 16 Stages in a Professional Career 13;
Ten Tasks for Career Advancement 14;
Help Wanted Ads 16;
48 Rules for Career Success 16;
People Study 18;
Self-education and Leading, Teaching Others 20;
The six Basic Learner Types 21;
Peer Relationships 22;
Social Skills 23;
Business Personality Types 25;
Communication Style Interactions 26;
Your Career in Context 27;
Your Personal Learning List 27;
Setting Career and Life Goals 29;
Controlling Your Own Future 32;
Your Personal Reward & Motivator System 35;
Self-discipline 36;
Seven Rules (And Don't's) for Getting Raises 36;
Studying Your Boss, and His Boss 37;
Basic Tactical & Strategic Career Tools 38;
Fifty Self-help Questions & Cues 43;
How to Become an Expert 47;
Expert Checklist 48;
Your Career Support Team 53;
Writing, Research, and Resources 62;
The Values of Writing 69;
The Martian Method 70;
Health, Breathing, Sitting, Other Dangers 71;
Career Rules #49 and #50 74;
Shopping for a Better Job 75;
Moving up by Moving Sideways 76;
The Zen Careerist 79;
Realistic Expectations 81.
A better tomorrow is built on what you do today. Not just knowing, not just talking, but actually doing what is necessary and effective. And not just doing something once in a while, but doing it every day, all the way. We achieve because of obstacles and when there are problems, not by waiting until everything is settled and we have time. Every barrier and obstacle is an opportunity to find a newer way, a better solution. The moment you perceive that you have a problem is the best time to examine it, think out what to do, then attack it, not only to solve it, but to keep it from getting worse, and to keep it from happening again.

The Second Worst Problem in the World
One of the hardest things, and it brings down good people all the time, is doing your best work in spite of all the crap and BS thrown at you every day on the job. You have to take a lot of shit to get ahead in this life. Learn how to get past that, and smile, and you are halfway to your goals. Let it get to you, and you are through. Learn humility and how to achieve in spite of all the jerks and humps out there. It's not personal. Bosses and foremen do it all the time, to everyone. No discrimination intended. When they find someone they can get a rise out of, they do it double to him. It breaks the monotony of their lives. Notice that when there is a real crisis, there is no horseplay or discrimination or harassment. Most managers need a crisis to feel important and perform best, and if necessary they will create a minor one for that excitement, usually by provoking others. Let it roll off your back and they will go and look for someone else to harass. It really is that simple.
There's a pecking order in every group. Learn it, and participate, and enjoy it as a game or sport. Yes, it often IS cruel, but get around that, somehow. Think about it this way: if you have read and understood this book, and put even part of it into practice, you will very quickly be at or near the top of the pecking order in your workplace, with more people below you to peck, and only a few above pecking you. That can be almost as good as earning more.
That's the second worst problem. What's the worst?
In my mind, it is apathy. Also called procrastination, self - defeat, passivity, lack of initiative, fear of making a mistake, fear of the opinions of others, and so on. Inaction.
When you are joyous or suffering, you are in touch with life, and living fully. When you are numb, bored, unconscious, you are out of touch, not living. Enjoy your problems. They mean you are alive. There is only one alternative to life. You'll get that one, too, real soon.
There's a line in a recent Broadway play:
"Life doesn't hold tryouts."
You only get one life, and this is it. This is not a rehearsal. It's the only chance you will ever get. And pretty soon, it's all gone. You don't know when. It's ticking away, every minute. And you can't get one minute back. Once it's gone, it's gone. So, don't waste it. Get moving. Now.
No more talk. We are what we do. Now it is time for you to take action. Go for it. Do.
Good luck.

END of Chapter 11
Click HERE to go to Chapter 12

Click HERE to go to the Introduction
Click HERE to go to Table of Contents
Click HERE to go to Chapter 1    Your Career, your Life Work
Click HERE to go to Chapter 2    People Study
Click HERE to go to Chapter 3    Your Career in Context
Click HERE to go to Chapter 4    Setting Your Career and Life Goals
Click HERE to go to Chapter 5    Long Term Career Development
Click HERE to go to Chapter 6    Career Strategies and Tactics
Click HERE to go to Chapter 7    Realistic Expectations
Click HERE to go to Chapter 8    Your Personal Career Support Team
Click HERE to go to Chapter 9    Team Management; Research and Writing
Click HERE to go to Chapter 10   How to become an Expert
Click HERE to go to Chapter 11   Miscellaneous, and Executive Summary
Click HERE to go to Chapter 12   Your Personal Career Research Resources
Click HERE to go to Chapter 13   Those Awful People At Work Problems
Click HERE to go to Chapter 14   Assumptions and Expectations
Click HERE to go to Appendices
Click HERE to go to Bibliography
Click HERE to go to Index
Click HERE to go to Personal Career Coaching FAQ
Click HERE to return to my HomePage, to access COP and other documents

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