Volume 6 consists of the serialized chapters of a book entitled Ground of Your Own Choosing by Beverly Ryle. The chapters will be available, revised and expanded, in book form in the Fall of 2008. As of January, 2008, they are no longer available online.

Volume 6, No. 12: December 14, 2007
Chapter XII; Professional Self-Care
Like any business, your success will depend on how well you understand your product—your authentic professional self—and how effective you are at articulating its value in the marketplace.

Volume 6, No. 11: November 16, 2007
Chapter XI: Selling Yourself
The graphic design service that Sarah established after she finished her MFA successfully supported her for a number of years, but then came the ready availability of design software on personal computers, bringing with it competitive pressures she felt ill-equipped to deal with.

Volume 6, No. 10: October 18, 2007
Chapter X: Developing Your Entrepreneur
The Entrepreneur asks the question: what would my work look like if I freed myself from its constraints, if I broke out of the box I am confined in. He lives in a world of what-ifs and why-nots and sees endless potential for satisfying his customers’ thirst for new products and services from the springs of his own creativity and initiative.

Volume 6, No. 9: September 21, 2007
Chapter IX: Being Consciously and Intentionally In Transition
The phrase, “I’m in transition,” as a euphemism for being out of work has become so ubiquitous that it is a challenge to isolate it from the world of polite chit-chat and give it real meaning.

Volume 6, No. 8: August 17, 2007
Chapter VIII: I Am the Person
You have reached the Ground of Your Own Choosing the moment you know deep inside yourself, “I am the person to do this work.”

Volume 6, No. 7: July 13, 2007
Chapter VII: Throw Out the Plan
Claiming the ground of your own choosing starts with a conscious act of self-leadership. This act requires truth, the decision to take a hard look at what’s going on internally and externally and be honest with yourself about what isn’t working anymore; vision, the ability to picture what your professional life would look like if it fit your ideal criteria; and discipline, the resolution to move toward that ideal one step at a time.

Volume 6, No. 6: June 15, 2007
Chapter VI: The Ground of Your Own Choosing
On the visit to Gettysburg National Military Park which sparked the epiphany I talked about last month, my husband and I toured the battlefield first by car, guided by an audiotape, and then decided to revisit some of the sites by bicycle to get a closer look.

Volume 6, No. 5: May 18, 2007
Chapter V: Confessions of a Career Counselor
It is time for the author (me) to step out from behind the curtain of anonymity and switch to the first person. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to confess that I started my life as a career professional pushing jobthink as fervently as anyone.

Volume 6, No. 4: April 20, 2007
Chapter IV: Ending Jobthink
A lot of people these days are talking about the jobthinker’s need to transform himself. What are they aren’t talking about is the loss of identity, influence, power, position, income, routine, and sense of worth that result from having your work life as you have known it end. Nor do they discuss the messy period that comes after, where there is no clear path, no bullet points to follow.

Volume 6, No. 3: March 9, 2007
Chapter III: Jobthink
People play the lottery in the hope of winning so they will never have to work again. Jobthinkers live in the hope of finding the perfect job so they will never have to look for work again.

Volume 6, No. 2: February 9, 2007
Chapter II: Workquake
Like tectonic plates moving against each other along a fault line, the Industrial Age, where work was organized in discrete bundles directed toward production, is receding, while the Information Age, where work is organized around knowledge directed toward service, is advancing.

Volume 6, No. 1: January 12, 2007
Chapter I: Everything Has Changed, Except—
Everything having to do with work has changed, except how we go about getting it. Consider three generations of a family, sitting around a dining room table after the dishes have been cleared away and the children have gone outside to play.