by Lynn Schmidt
I went back to school to get my doctoral degree in mid-career.
At the time I was working in corporate America as the director of leadership development. I kept seeing women in senior level positions come and go in executive roles quickly and I wondered why.
Based on my own experience as a coach and as a female executive I didn’t think it was solely due to the women’s leadership styles.
How Can You Thrive as a Professional, Rather Than Just Survive?
My doctoral dissertation was on women and career derailment. I interviewed 23 women within 3 levels of the of the CEO who were fired, forced out, or asked to resign. My research showed career derailment is a systemic issue with four components:
- societal biases about gender,
- organizational biases about women in leadership and programs and practices set-up to support men, not women,
- individuals biases about women in the workplace, and
- women not seeking development and networking opportunities.
My dissertation identified why derailment was happening. My fourth book, Shift Into Thrive: Six Strategies for Women to Unlock the Power of Resiliency focused on the issues women face in the workplace and the strategies women need to implement to overcome workplace challenges, based on my doctoral and resiliency research.
My fifth book, Thriving from A to Z: Best Practices to Increase Resilience, Satisfaction, and Success is a natural follow-on to my earlier work on resiliency and thriving. Thriving from A to Z is for men and women and focuses on the 26 best practices that enable you to thrive, not just survive.
What is the Difference Between Thriving and Surviving, Professionally?
Thriving is an intentional choice. When you encounter challenges and adversity, big or small, you typically move into a state of decline. Decline is a negative state of mind. You might experience negative self-talk, anxiety, and low self-esteem. How long you stay in decline will usually vary based on your resilience, or your ability to recover quickly from difficulties.
At some point in time, you will move from decline to survive. Survive is who you were and where you were before the challenging event happened. Life is back to how it was, often with the same issues and challenges.
To move from surviving to thriving requires intentionally implementing resilience practices for you to learn, grow, and transform. Thriving requires getting out of your comfort zone. You can proactively implement actions that help you thrive, or when necessary implement the actions reactively.
Of course, I recommend being proactive. Thriving from A to Z: Best Practices to Increase Resilience, Satisfaction, and Success provides 26 best practices proven to help people thrive. Each chapter provides an overview of one of the 26 best practices, tips for implementing, and reflection activities. Journal pages are included so you can take notes as your read and create your plan to thrive in the book.
This Book is For Those with Short Attention Spans
I believe that people need an easier way to approach resilience and thriving then long academic books. This book is for all of us today who have shorter attention spans and don’t want to read a book from front cover to back cover. Those looking for immediate gratification.
I know if I have to scroll to far down on my phone to read something I stop reading. The book is structured in bite-size bits of information and you don’t have to implement all 26 best practices to change your life. Pick two or three to start. Each chapter on a best practice is five pages long. That is plenty of information to be able to implement the best practice immediately.
I enjoyed writing this book and even though the book is research based, I followed a less formal process than I have in the past. And because of my knowledge on the topic and the desire to create something esthetically pleasing as well as useful, its been a fun project. I’ve enjoyed creating something that I think people will benefit from, enjoy, and use because of the books easy to digest structure and activities you can immediately apply.
In Writing This Book, I Realized Where I, Myself, Had to Change and Grow
Writing the book helped me gain a much better sense of the 26 best practices individually and holistically as they can be integrated together for optimum results. I better understand how they help a person thrive, separately and together. And now I think about the 26 best practices all the time.
Each one represents a letter of the alphabet, hence A to Z, so when I’m talking to friends who talk about issues they are facing or when I’m coaching someone, I’m always saying things like; that is C in the book, here’s what to think about. Or that’s I in the book, and its actually a great habit to grow.
My friends may soon get tired of all my references to the best practices and the alphabet letters. It changed me because I’m now always pushing my behavior up against the best practices and thinking, wow, I need to do more of that. Or if I’m mad about something I’ll think, hey I need to be more empathetic, which is the E best practice.
This is my fifth book, so writing is becoming a habit for me, I know what works and what doesn’t, what my writing style is. I do believe you need to write every day, writing every day changes your brain, and like anything else you get better the more often you do it.
I Love that People are Benefitting from My Book
I’ve received comments that my books on thriving have been life changing. People have commented that they love the format of Thriving from A to Z, bite size bits of information with tips and activities to implement right away using the journal pages.
People also love the beauty of the book and the symbolism of the sunflower mandala on the cover and on the journal pages. A mandala is a spiritual symbol and its purpose is to help transform ordinary minds into enlightened ones and to assist with healing. Its circle design alludes to wholeness or completeness. A sunflower adds the symbolism of warmth, joy, energy, nourishment and longevity to the mandala. When you put the two together, a sunflower mandala represents transforming and achieving completeness through warmth, joy, energy and nourishment leading to longevity.
When I think of the book and its purpose that is what I think of. The intent of the book is to transform people and enable them to thrive by achieving wholeness through nourishment (the 26 best practices) leading to joyfulness and longevity.
The thing that made me feel good about the book was that several people preordered it before actually seeing anything physical. I didn’t even have the cover design yet. They preordered based on my description of the book and what it provides. People keep telling me they love the concept and structure of the book.
Advice for a Young Writer: Think of the Reader
Writing a book, particularly a nonfiction book that is a wellness or self-help book, isn’t about you the author at all. Its about the reader.
Are you providing the reader something useful even if you are writing about something you are passionate about? You’ve got to include your readers in the process all along the way.
I asked my readers to provide me with one word that represented the most important action they take to build resilience. Some of those words are included in the 26 best practices. I got input from my readers on the book title, subtitle and on the cover design. All of this input lead to a better book that matters to my readers.
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Lynn Schmidt, PhD, is an award-wining author of five books. Lynn’s new book, Thriving from A to Z: Best Practices to Increase Resilience, Satisfaction, and Success was recently published. Her fourth book, Shift Into Thrive: Six Strategies for Women to Unlock the Power of Resiliency won six literary awards and was listed in Inc.com as one of the top 60 books about leadership and business written by women.
Lynn is a highly sought-after key note speaker around the world. Her career is focused on developing leaders in Fortune 500 companies, non-profits, and academia. She is an experienced consultant and executive coach with a focus on assisting men and women to create careers accompanied by growth and success. Lynn was named one of the Women of the Year by the Idaho Business Review for her work with women and resilience.
For more information on Lynn and her work, please see her website, or connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Thriving from A to Z: Best Practices to Increase Resilience, Satisfaction, and Success: Thriving from A to Z provides you with 26 best practices proven to enable you to thrive, not just survive.
The powerful best practices, valuable implementation tips, and engaging reflection activities help you build resilience and overcome challenges. You’ll experience more satisfaction and success personally and professionally.
The ability to thrive is not a given; it is an intentional choice. Choose to create your most successful self today! Individuals of all ages will be able to implement the best practices to grow and thrive. Parents, teachers, leaders, coaches, and human resource professionals can use the best practices, tips, and activities to coach others to thrive.
Available at Amazon.