Beware of big opportunities that derail you

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As the labor market slowly recovers from it's paycheck-killing slump, it's natural to hope for your next big break. But remember that when opportunity knocks you should open up cautiously. Beware of career opportunities that look like quick fixes because often they are really career derailments.

Figure out now what you want for your career so when opportunities pop up, you can judge them in the context of long-term goals you believe in. Managing a career is a difficult process — full of risks, disappointments, and feelings of hopelessness. People who stay on track are people who trust themselves to know what will make them happy and trust themselves to meet their goals.

Here are some examples of opportunities that derailed careers:

The family business derailment
Danny loved computers. He was an IT consultant for ten years and then he got a pink slip. He had never had to look for a job in a bad economy, so after he sent twenty resumes and heard back from no one, frustration and fear set in; Maybe he would never get a a job.

His dad, on the other hand, wanted to retire and sell his construction business. Danny saw a golden opportunity to avoid a prolonged job hunt, and he took over the family business. But Manny never wanted to run a construction company. He says he often finds himself fixing the company's computer network instead of building the company's client network. In hindsight, Danny says he could have suffered through a difficult job hunt and to remain in the IT. But at this point, he doesn't know if he has the heart to dump his dad's business.

The grad school derailment
As a college senior, my dad knew he wanted to be a history teacher, but he took the LSAT because his father wanted him to be a lawyer. My dad got a near-perfect score. So while he was applying to Harvard's graduate program in history, he filled out the application for law school, too. Harvard accepted him, but only for law. And my dad thought to himself, “Who passes up Harvard law?” So he went there, and he won a position at a top-tier law firm. But he never liked law and, frankly, he was never very good at it.

The gold rush derailment
Harry was an economic development wiz. He turned run-down cities into hipster destinations, and he had his eye on Los Angeles for his next big job. But then he saw people making millions of dollars on the Internet, and he wanted to make millions, too. So he dumped his government-pay-scale field for a dotcom. He hated his Internet company: Manic pace, pretentious twenty-somethings, and waffling management. He suffered though months and months with the hope of making millions, but the company went bankrupt. And then the economy tanked and most cities had some form of a hiring freeze. So the man who was a rising star in a field he loved became unemployed after spending a year doing something that made him miserable.

Each of these people knew what he wanted, but at a crucial point, diverged from the path he set out for himself. An opportunity is only as good as it's long-term effects on your life. Career focus will help you tell the difference between a good opportunity and a bad opportunity.

Career risks are good, but only in the context of career plans. So make a plan and then trust yourself to set goals and meet them. That way, when opportunity knocks, you won't budge for a quick fix or a big sellout — you'll focus on the path that is right for you.

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Networking tips for introverts

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In college I was such an introvert that when I went to parties (I had to be dragged) I brought a book. It was a lonely existence, but the pain of having to talk to people in an unstructured environment was too much.

So I was shocked a few years ago when someone told me, “Job hunting is easier for you than most people because you could sell yourself to anyone.”

That comment was testament to the fact that I had recognized you can’t get what you want in life without networking. Even though my natural instinct is to sit home and read, I worked very hard to learn how to talk to people. Luckily for me, books are a great resource in this regard.

I read everything I could find. I read that most introverts are scared they'll say something stupid or have nothing to say at all (both applied to me). So I read up on ways to feel self-confident in a room full of strangers and come up with things to say when I felt intimidated. (Here's a recommendation: You are the Message by Roger Ailes.)

I learned that people who are good at networking are interested in other people. And they are good storytellers. After that, I was able to go almost anywhere and talk with people. Good talkers recognize that there’s something interesting about every person, and it’s their job to get them talking about it. But you can't only bombard people with questions. You also need to reveal things about yourself. The best way is by telling fun and interesting stories that make you look good.

Not everyone can do this, though. After I had been dating my husband for about six months, I watched him print out a spreadsheet of names and phone numbers. “What's this?” I asked.

“It's my networking list,” he replied.

“But you never call anyone, ever.”

“I know, but networking is important, and I read that the first step is to have a good list.”

It was an extremely detailed list. For every name, there was a phone number and description of the person. For example, “Bennie Conover. High school music teacher — dead.” Or my favorite, “Penelope Trunk. Girlfriend.”

But my husband is an introvert, someone who loves details but hates talking to people. If you’re similarly introverted, you can still network even though you’ll never get excited about going to parties and learning interesting things about each person in the room. These tips can help.

Use email. Nowadays, you don’t have to speak face to face with contacts. You can write and rewrite your message until it’s right. And you don’t have to worry about saying something stupid because the person caught you off guard. Of course, you lose the intimacy of a personal meeting, but sometimes you can compensate for this by sending an extra e-mail or two.

Read everything. When something is published about someone you know, send a congratulatory e-mail. Incessant reading means getting gossip without having to gossip. Just be sure to act on it.

Go to parties rather than dinners. If you’re like most introverts, the problem isn’t the quantity of people, it's having to show up at all. You can kill more birds with one stone by making one of your rare social appearances in front of lots of people. And think ahead: Have a few things prepared and ready to say to other partygoers.

Write for trade publications. While you aren’t actually talking to people, you’re reaching them, making a point and hopefully being memorable. A reader may even write back to you: Miracle! You have just met someone without leaving your home.

Help others. For instance, send leads to jobseekers you know. You don't have to talk to them, but they'll remember the favor and view you as a friend. My husband maintains a list of specialized job sites that he sends to friends who have recently lost jobs. They're grateful for his help and the time it saves them, while my husband is grateful that he only has to research job sites instead of having to talk to people.

Send New Year's cards. Sending cards at year-end is tantamount to saying “You’re someone I care about.” So send cards generously. If you can, include a short note to each person. Sure, it's a struggle to find things to say, but since it's early November, you have two months to think. Write a few cards each day, and when you're stuck for words, remember the key to good networking: Be interested in other people and talk about yourself in interesting ways. Networking is one of those long-range, money-in-the-bank types of things; you never know when something you say will have a great return. So introverts, start writing!

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Choosing between a kid and a career

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It was one of those nights when my husband rolled over to my side of the bed. Usually this is the first step toward the grand maintenance of our fairly normal marriage. But this night was different. On this night I said, “I can't. It'll ruin my career.”

“Huh?” He was baffled and not quite stopped in his tracks.

“What about me hosting that TV show?” I said. “I can't be pregnant.”

And herein lies the reason that every girl should bring her career to bed with her: Pregnancy is not good for a career. A large belly is limiting; a kid even more so. But society's own perception of a mom vs. a career girl are the most limiting constraints of all.

I know because I planned my first pregnancy around my high-powered career. Everyone told me, “Don't rush. You have plenty of time.” So I didn't rush. I waited until I had made my way through two of my own companies, working long very parent-unfriendly hours. I waited until I could relocate my career across country to be in the same city as my husband. And then, just as my perfect plan reached its apex, the World Trade Center fell two blocks from my company, putting me out of a job. And all the work I did to build an impressive resume was undone when I showed up pregnant for job interviews.

I would like to tell you that employers don't care about pregnancy, but I would be lying. And I can’t fault them for having a negative viewpoint of pregnant job applicants: If two people are equally qualified for the same opening — a common occurrence in this market —the best hire is the one who isn’t five months pregnant- at least in the short term. It’s easy to be philosophical about the long term — how corporate America will only benefit from the systematic accommodation of pregnant women. But the long term is a hard sell to a hiring manager whose bonus isn’t tied to revolutionizing the workplace.

So back to the TV show. Officials with a production company had called to say they like my column and ask me whether I wanted to host a TV show about finance. Of course I was thrilled.

My husband, who’s always skeptical when skepticism isn’t warranted, said, “How can you host a TV show on finance when a company you started went bankrupt?”

“People learn from their mistakes,” I said. Then I said, “Shut up.”

The TV people wanted to interview me so I flew to LA. My husband, Mr. Pessimism, is also Mr. Hollywood (graduated from film school, dated an MTV producer, blah blah). He said, “You need someone to do hair and makeup,”

“They just want to talk to me,” I said.

He said, “They want to see how good you would look on TV.”

So I had someone do my hair and makeup, and I looked great that day. The executives told me they loved my column. They thought my wit and sensibility would come across well on TV. They talked about how the TV show would be structured and the training I would receive in on-air technique. Then they said, “Okay, we'll get back to you.”

My husband said, “That means you'll never hear from them. It's over.”

But if I listened to all my husband's pessimism, I'd have killed myself by now. So I’m still hoping.

Which brings me back to the bed. There we were, talking. We had planned another pregnancy for around this time. But I don't think I’d be hired as a TV host if I were pregnant. By the time we began taping, I'd be very pregnant. It's one thing for Catherine Zeta-Jones to show up really pregnant at the Oscars because the whole world knows she’s hot and she still looks a little hot, belly and all. But my TV audience wouldn’t know if the non-pregnant me was hot. There’s no way I could be pregnant for my TV debut (come to think of it, has anyone been pregnant for their debut as a TV show host?)

And I knew something else: You can't control everything, and there’s no perfect time to have a baby. But one time is better for women than others, and that’s sooner. When I learned the risks of waiting to have a baby, I was shocked. When a woman gets pregnant at 35, her baby has a 1 in 224 chance of being born with Down’s syndrome. There’s a 1 in 200 chance the test for Down’s syndrome will kill the baby. And the odds increase with every passing day. I didn’t hear this when I started a company at 32. Instead I heard, “You have time.”

So now I know I don't have time. And I know that if I put my next pregnancy on hold until I hear from the production company, something else is likely to come up to foil my plan of harmoniously integrating my pregnancy and my career.

We had sex that night. And we hoped for a baby. Because as a seasoned career girl, I know that even if postponing pregnancy would eventually have boosted my career, in the short term, the delay made it too high risk for my liking.

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Couples therapy can help your career

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Couples therapy: My husband is slumped at the edge of the sofa, sulking. I sit in the center cushion, upright and animated, ranting about why he needs to get rid of his bike.

The therapist tells me to be quiet, but in a couples-therapist way: “Let’s give him a chance to talk about the bike.” He says he needs to keep the bike in the kitchen, where it will stay until he formulates a daily riding schedule.

I listen. But not really. Mostly I plan my arguments about why what he is saying is irrelevant and why I am right: The plan is too detailed, he’ll never finish the plan, and because we live in a New York City shoebox, the bike is a waste of space.

We go through this routine for every topic: He cannot figure out every single detail, so he cannot plan; I have no patience for details, and I always have a plan. When we decided to have a child, he wanted to overcome every hurdle first — from finding an apartment with a playroom to setting up a college fund. I told him we had to move forward, hurdles and all. At every session he ends up very quiet in the corner of the sofa, and we accomplish nothing.

Our therapist tried a lot of tactics to get us to communicate. I took notice when she observed that the problems I have in talking to my husband are probably the same types of problems I have in talking to people at work. This made sense to me immediately because I always say that I love my husband but would never want to work with someone like him.

He’s a slow, methodical thinker, and I generally do not have patience for them at work. But the therapist points out that I chose such a person for a husband. “You must have had a reason,” she says. And it’s true. In my heart of hearts, I know that a slow, methodical thinker is the perfect counterpoint for me. At home, my husband is the one who takes the time to find out that our first-choice apartment has rats, and our second-choice apartment — which we live in now — has a secret cubbyhole for keeping cookies warm. In my work, the detailed thinker is the perfectionist who compensates for my disinterest in details.

But knowing something doesn’t mean I’m willing to change. Just like when I claim to be listening to my husband, I seem as though I’m listening to people during work but in reality, I’m more interested in my own ideas than those of the person talking. I talk over and past them. I am dismissive and unresponsive. “How do you keep people from strangling you?” my husband asks, when he’s particularly annoyed and probably considering strangling me himself.

So back to the bike. I tell myself that if I’m patient, he’ll come up with a great plan that will make keeping the bike in the apartment a good idea. That if I can just learn to control myself in the context of the bike, the therapist, and the annoyed husband, then I will do much better in my career. It is clear to me that I deal with my husband in the same way as I deal with people at work. And my career will be stronger if I can become a stronger marriage partner, because the communication skills are the same.

So every time I get frustrated in couples therapy, or I think that it’s a waste of money, I remind myself that communication skills know no boundaries. I can tell myself that I’m a good communicator at work, but the best feedback I can get is at home. If you want to know what your weak points are at work, ask your significant other — that person knows.

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Stay focused on your goals

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My ex boyfriend emailed his online personals profile to me and asked me what I thought. I thought it made him look needy and told him so. I said that if he wanted to attract someone with an independent personality he should change the profile. I wrote a few paragraphs that he ended up submitting in his final profile.

It did not surprise me that he used my wording because I am gifted when it comes to composing personal profiles. I edited my cousin's profile and he immediately met his future wife. I thought this was a fluke until I rewrote my friend Liz's profile. Now she is getting married.

My profile-writing abilities are similar to my resume-writing abilities. In both genres, you must include specific achievements that differentiate you in an interesting way but do not make you seem boastful.

I could write an entire column on this: How to leverage your resume-writing skills to get a date. Instead, I want to explain why it’s important to have a clear career focus.

I have a hard time keeping my career focused because I keep thinking about starting new businesses. I have many ideas, but this is typical of me. I launched two companies earlier in my professional life, and most entrepreneurs are serial entrepreneurs, so I'm sure there will be more coming In fact, my freelance writing career is actually a business, with my writing being the product. I perform all the normal functions of a regular business: marketing, billing, product development and staffing, to name a few.

But here’s where my focus issues emerge. As I work, I keep thinking of new ventures, the latest being, thanks to my ex boyfriend, rewriting peoples' personal profiles.

This idea occurred after my ex asked me to look at the profile of a woman he had considered contacting. (Note: Do not send me emails saying my ex shouldn’t talk to me about this love life — we broke up amicably eight years ago.) So I read the profile, and I was appalled, “Are you kidding me?” I asked. “She screams ‘relationship nightmare.'” I thought this because:
1. Her photo showed her smiling without opening her mouth. This is unnatural. Only people who are hiding something smile like this
2. She wrote mostly about her work and did not appear to have another interest (all recent reading was work related).
3. She said her best friend was her dog.
I could go on. But my next thought was that if she paid me to fix her profile, she wouldn’t have to date psychos. She could attract nice guys. (I don't know what this says about my ex, but trust me, he's a nice guy.)

By now, I had decided the world needed me to start a personality-profile-writing business. She would be my first client. I spent 10 minutes crafting an email to her about why her profile makes her look bad and how I could help her — for a fee. I provided amazing insights so she would trust me. Then I tried to send her my email using her dating-network address.

This was a mistake. As it turned out, I had to join this network to contact her. I spent the next 20 minutes trying to figure out how to sign up for this network. First, I had to create a profile of myself and then, since I’m married, figure out how to use the “hide profile” function. After all that, I was asked to pay a membership fee?

Reality set in. If I was going to invest time and money in this venture, I had to do it right. I needed a business plan — not a long one, but something that would tell me, for instance, how long each profile would take to fix, how much I’d charge and how many pitches I'd need to make to lure a customer. I also would need to advertise on personals sites. Since my success would depend on an initial, online contact, I probably needed to hire a direct mail person to write the email for me.

A career writing personals no longer seemed fun or wise. I had to level with myself. What I really wanted was simply to tell dog lady her ad was terrible on her nickel. Instead, I wrote a column. That is my business now, and for this minute, at least, I am focused.

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9/11 two years later

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For most people, September 11 has come and gone, but the anniversary will always be important to me because I was a block away when the first building fell. The people I have met who were at the World Trade Center that day never stopped associating the event with their work, and I am no exception.

That day, I stepped outside my office to take a look at the spectacle. Before I knew what happened, I was blinded by debris and buried under a pile of people. I pulled myself out of the pile, but I couldn't see, had no idea where I was, and I couldn't breathe. I worried about my family until the lack of air became painful. Then I focused all my hopes on not having an extremely painful death.

There was complete quiet. No one could talk because no one could breathe. Then I heard cracked glass. I moved toward the noise until I saw a glow coming from a broken window. Somehow, I lifted myself into a broken window that was above my shoulders. I found air. And then I thought only of water. I found my way to a bathroom in that building and inside there were debris-covered men in ties drinking out of a toilet. I drank, too.

Days later, I went back to my software marketing job at my Wall-St based company, and though no one was really doing any work, I somehow continued to write my weekly column, furtively, from my desk. Soon, though, the company laid off almost all the employees, including me. I spent October in a daze. I spent November and December attending a group for people with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

The way to deal with post-traumatic stress is to tell your story over and over again. The theory is that when you are in the moment of trauma, you have to turn off all your emotions to get yourself through it. After the fact, in order to stop having nightmares and panic attacks, you have to experience the emotions you missed.

So I told my story over and over again. And each time, the story was a little different. (I still tell the story, although to be honest, most people are sick of it. Even my brother said, “That just took 25 minutes. Maybe you need an abridged version.”)

When I began telling my story I saw myself as an imbecile — for staying at work after the first plane hit, for standing so close to the building, for not trying to help anyone but myself. Later, my story focused on how I was a lucky person to have come out alive. And I was a lucky person to have a moment where I thought I was going to die and saw exactly what I cared about in my life.

This is the process of reframing. How we frame our stories determines how we see ourselves. It's the glass half-empty/half-full thing: The trauma of 9/11 taught me to frame my life as half-full.

Today, when I tell my World Trade Center story, my focus is on career change. Today I am the woman who nearly died at the World Trade Center. I lost my job as a marketing executive. I faced an incredibly tough job hunt, which I wrote about in my column. In the process, I became a writer; turning in a column week after week made me realize that I was a writer who was calling herself an unemployed marketer.

I used to think career changes were planned and instigated and systematic. Now I know that some changes could never be planned, and some changes do not need instigating, they just need recognizing. Positive change comes to people who can frame their world in a positive light — even a world where everything is literally falling down.

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Relish uncertainty – It’s what makes life interesting

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If you could see a movie of your life before you lived it, would you want to live it? Probably not. The thrill of living is that you don't know what's coming. In other words, uncertainty is what makes our lives fun.

Sure, it's hard to see uncertainty in such a positive light when you are out of work, or when you feel like you're flailing. But uncertainty is really another word for opportunity, and you can't harness an opportunity until you recognize it's there.

My first experience with severe uncertainty was my senior year of college. Not knowing what I was going to do with my life was too much for me to bear. I stopped going to classes and failed intro to sociology, which turned out to be a graduation requirement.

So I stayed in school for the summer, and during that time I learned to cope with ambiguity. I realized that the only way to lead an interesting life is to encounter uncertainty and make a choice. Otherwise, your life is not your own — it is a path someone else has chosen. Moments of uncertainty are when you create your life, when you become who you are.

Uncertainty does not end with the job hunt, though. Every new role we take means another round of instability. Even fifteen years after college, when I start a new job I am nervous. But now I remind myself that I am lucky to be nervous — because big opportunity and nervousness go hand in hand.

Most of us already sense that uncertainty rescues us from boredom. We know, for instance, that when we go to a movie, someone will face a difficult situation and we will get to watch her muddle through it. And we pay for that. You would feel ripped off if you went to a movie with no ambiguity. We like watching it, but in our own lives we avoid it.

This doesn't have to be the case, though. Here are some new approaches to uncertainty:

Live through uncertainty: Some of you work for unstable companies. You do not need to create uncertainty; it is there every day that the company veers closer to layoffs. In this case, ambiguity is something to endure. If you can focus in the face of instability, you are more likely to be able to leverage opportunity.

A great example of people who live through uncertainty is politicians running for office. Right now, the democratic candidates are betting almost everything on themselves and campaigning full-steam ahead even though their success is totally uncertain. With so many candidates in the race, the odds of success are not good, but many of these candidates are able to be at the top of their game in the face of huge insecurity.

Use uncertainty to make yourself shine: For those of you who have no idea what to do next in your life, remember that uncertainty is what allows you to surprise yourself. If you could see each future step along the way, you'd never get the chance to be amazed at what you can do.

When I finally did graduate from college, I went on to play professional beach volleyball. At the time I worried that the decision was crazy, and that I wouldn't make the cut. But in the face of massive instability, beach volleyball seemed like a reasonable choice. Now that is one of the parts of my life I am most proud of.

Create uncertainty: Some of you are stuck in your career. The only way to get unstuck is to create instability. Say to yourself, “Maybe I can change my approach, maybe I can find a new specialty.” In the face of a mortgage or a waning 401K, creating instability seems absurd. But think of it another way: Uncertainty is really another word for opportunity, and each of us should take responsibility for creating our own opportunities.

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Make office politics work for you

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Everyone stop working right now. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Does my boss like having one-on-one meetings with me?
2. Do my co-workers like going to lunch with me?

If you cannot answer yes to both these questions, then you are focusing on the wrong stuff at work. It doesn't matter how well you do your job. If you can't get along with the people at work, no one will want to work with you.

Larry works at a company where new employees are on a one-year probation while they do four rotations. Larry has had reviews after three of his four rotations. The third reviewer told him he is unprofessional. When Larry asked other reviewers why they had not told him this they said, “Management told us not to.”

Larry's interpersonal skills are so lacking that the company decided early on that they want him out after a year. Larry realized it was too late to save his job, but he thought there might be hope for his ego, so he went to a lawyer. The lawyer said it is not illegal to be a bad manager or to run a company poorly.

Larry's problem is that he cannot gauge how people expect him to act in a given situation. And he cannot adjust how he conducts himself depending on the circumstances.

For some people, this skill comes naturally — they are chameleons who can mirror other peoples' moods. Chameleons know what to say when their boss's pet gerbil dies and they know what to say when a co-worker suggests a date. Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Computer, for example, acts differently when he meets with Wall St. analysts than when he meets will Dell customer service reps.

Some people have one way of conducting themselves and have no idea how to change for a given situation. These are the people who make inappropriate jokes at a client meeting or are too stiff and formal at a company picnic. Chameleons generally disgust these people, but I've got news for you: chameleons don't get fired for being unprofessional.

Most people who hate office social dynamics think people have to change who they are to succeed. But good social skills at work are really a reflection of empathy for the people around you. Anyone who is being their best self — kind, considerate, expressive, interested in others — will instinctively do the right thing at the office.

If you are being your best self, it won't matter that there are difficult personalities at the office. So stop blaming the people you work with for being misfits and morons. People with good social skills can get along with almost anyone; I'm not saying you have to like everyone, I'm saying that you have to make them like you: Figure out what matters to them, what makes them tick, and then speak to that when you interact.

I think you will find, though, that once you get someone at work to like you, you will like them back. When the ugly guy asks you to dance, he is only ugly until he asks you and then his discerning taste makes him more attractive.

So back to Larry. He is young, so he asked his parents what to do. They said, “You can't change other people, but you can change yourself.” (If Larry's parents wrote a career advice column, I would read it. This is good advice for almost any interpersonal problem — at work, at home, anywhere.) So he is seeing a career coach to help him with interpersonal skills: Good idea.

Work is not only about “getting things done” but also getting people to like you. I applaud those of you are hard workers. But let's face it, most work is easily replaceable, especially when five hundred people would love to have your job. Your personality, however, is not so easily replaced. So get people to appreciate you for your interpersonal skills — and you will not only have job security; you'll probably have a spot on the fast track.

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How to cope with self-doubt

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A very major publication just reviewed my friend's book. The reviewer loved the book and as I read the review, each laudatory sentence makes me more ill. I feel an overwhelming moment of self-doubt coming on. I get sweaty and my heart pounds and I feel like the world will end if I don't have sugar.

My moments of self-doubt always begin with the panic that I will not do anything important in my life. I panic that I will not even figure out what is important, let alone do it. Then I have flashbacks to all the teachers who wrote, “Penelope is bright, but she does not work up to her potential.”

Tonight I am so upset I can't even finish my stack of reading. I fear I will read somewhere in my pile that the Nobel Prize committee has decided to make 100 simultaneous awards and they are all to people I know and now everyone I ever talk to will have a Nobel Prize and I won't.

Tonight I am worrying that other people have greatness and there is a finite amount of greatness and it is slipping out of my hands. Also, it is embarrassing to admit to wanting greatness knowing that there is a risk that I will not achieve it.

To calm myself down I eat some Oreos and as the double-stuffness clears my mind, I remember the aspects of my friend's life that are so destroyed that not even an outstanding book review will help:

1. He has been married for fifteen years and cheated on his wife about fifteen times.
2. His mother is overbearing and controlling and spent his book advance on purchases that will not improve her life, or his.
3. His wife's friends hate him so much for his arrogance they do not talk to him.
4. His dog does not play well with others and you can't teach old dogs new tricks.

Okay. There. I am feeling better already.

So I sit down to do the only thing that can make things better: I do my job. I am sure that the best way to face self-doubt is to push through it.

I remind myself that this guy had writer's block for six months, and nearly lost his whole book contract because he wasn't meeting deadlines. He ran out of money three months before he delivered the book and he lived off credit cards, hoping that the book would sell so well that he would earn over and above the initial advance. He pushed himself in the face of failure and even bet on himself a second time.

I can do that. With a clear head I know that everyone who has wild success is someone who had to eat a box of Oreos. Everyone has her moments of huge self-doubt, often in the face of someone else's grand success. But there is not finite success in the world. There is just a finite amount of people who can stomach the pain of wanting success so much.

So tonight I stomach pain. I put the book review on my fridge to remind myself that my friend pushed through his own self-doubt and garnered laudatory reviews from his peers. I sit down to write another column, and eventually my self-doubt dissipates. It always does.

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Learn to work like a Microsoft millionaire

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The major difference between a millionaire and a working stiff is that the worker uses his job as an excuse for why he’s not living his dreams and a millionaire doesn’t have that luxury. So if you want to feel like a millionaire, start asking yourself the million-dollar question: What would make me feel fulfilled?

In September, Microsoft will end the option grant program that made an estimated 10,000 employees millionaires. While this compensation change signals the end of an era of money, history should prove this time to be the beginning of an era of soul-searching.

Typically, Microsoft millionaires cashed out and bought some big-ticket items. But after a year of shopping and travel, most people grew bored and started looking for something else. Few people had planned to be so rich so early in their career. Most people planned to work their whole lives. Without the need to work they had to ask themselves, what now? What is my life about? What makes me tick?

In fact, what these millionaires had to do was figure out their priorities. What we can learn from this era of options is that everyone can have the life of a millionaire if you soul-search as seriously as the Microsofties did. Soul-searching is difficult, but it is free to those who can endure the challenges of honesty and self-knowledge.

So ask yourself, what would you do if you were a millionaire? Then figure out how to do it now, when you don’t have millions. Because it turns out that very few answers to that question really require you to stop working and live among piles of money.

I realized this truth when I cashed out of one company and started another and found myself making a salary larger than I ever imagined. To my surprise, not much changed besides my bank statement and the restaurants I went to.

Sure, I loved my career, but I would have done the same job for less than half the salary. Once I saw that money didn’t change my life, I felt a lot more freedom to make career choices that were financially risky. Later, when I left my corporate life in order to write, I did not create a financial windfall — in fact, you could say the change had the opposite effect. But I would write this column even if I were a millionaire.

So try thinking about your career as if money weren’t the goal. There are two kinds of jobs: fulfilling and enabling. If you have a fulfilling job, then you are doing exactly what you want to be doing and it doesn’t matter if you’re a millionaire or not. You are lucky. (Though not alone: Microsoft has a large contingency of millionaires –“volunteers” — who continue working even though they don’t need the money.)

An enabling job is what you do if your fulfillment comes from something that doesn’t pay. This kind of job takes the most discipline. If you work and work and never get to the exciting thing you’re going to do on the side, then the only thing you enable is shopping.

And don’t say you have no energy. If you had an appointment with the President of the United States after work, even if you hate him, you’d have enough energy to make it to the meeting. People who are too tired after work are people who don’t know what they want to do. It’s very tiring to not know what makes you feel fulfilled.

One Microsoft millionaire made a mission statement for himself. This is not a bad idea, especially if you cannot figure out what will make you fulfilled. Most of you will find that your mission statement is not about money. His, for example, was about “hard work,” “passion” and “leaving the world a better place than you found it.” Your own mission statement will help you to figure out what you should be doing with your days.

We might not all make millions from our job, but we are all equals in the effort to find a fulfilling life. So stop telling yourself that your life would be really different if you had a million dollars. For most of us, the only difference would be a bigger bank account.

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