Customer Reviews

Rethinking Work: Are You Ready to Take Charge?

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Living in the Boston area, I had the good fortune to actually work with Cliff Hakim 6 years ago, as a client in his "Rethinking Work" consulting practice. I interviewed numerous career consultants in the area, but chose Cliff because his approach was passionate and holistic--so opposite the standard approach that is dishearteningly mechanical and market focused. That was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Cliff's Rethinking Work process steered me through a great deal of inner reflection; without which I might have blindly made my next career decision. It gave me permission and tools to explore options; without which I would have missed new doors of career opportunity. It gave me the courage to engage a nonlinear course--taking side streets, meeting dead ends, retracing steps, leaping into the unknown; without which I wouldn't have reached the right destination at the right time.

I recently learned of Cliff's newest book--"Rethinking Work; Are you ready to take charge?"--and read it out of curiosity to see if he could put across in writing, the process that was so wonderfully alive and effective during our coaching sessions. I was amazed to find it so engaging and equally as thorough. I was also pleased to discover new concepts (Inner-economy) and tools (Capability & Partnership Statement) he's introduced since I went through his career counseling program. "Rethinking Work; Are you ready to take charge" is an excellent book; enabling, human, and refreshing! I'd recommend it to anyone who wants work to be more than just a paycheck!

All of us are constantly reinventing ourselves, looking for ways to tend our spirits as we take on new projects, new clients, new phases of our lives.

This book from Cliff Hakim, a career consultant in Boston, is a soulful approach to helping us retune, rejig, or otherwise alter our work so we can feel less driven or reactive and get more satisfying returns.

I'd recommend this book to freelancers and self employed people, as well as to those working in an organization.

Hakim illuminates the process we are all eternally engaged in --- of rediscovering different parts of ourselves, using other values and skills to adapt to our own changing inner needs as well as to the marketplace.

Rethinking Work is about staying engaged and happy, while we rub up against the collective and find ways to pay our bills. It's about not letting the job you do run you -- but turning that around so you do conscious and creative work, and find the right environment in which to use your native gifts.

Hakim's advice is good for the boomers who are looking for new and more fulfilling careers, and for the up and coming generation who will have to cope with an ever changing workplace and reinvent themselves at least a dozen times in the years ahead.

This is better than the usual career book; it's a hymn to the creative spirit. It's also interactive and more like a personal coaching session. The exercises in here are terrifically helpful and wonderfully revealing, and they can be done many times--as often as one needs to keep the inner life and the outer one in synch.

If you don't need this book right now, you wll at some point in the future. In the meantime, you'll want to recommend it to your friends and clients who feel a certain itch or are in transition. It's great company, and you'll find Hakim a knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide. He puts the Socratic method on the page and shows you how to birth yourself, your ideas, and your products.

Rethinking Work will challenge you and comfort you. It will stimulate your mind and feed your spirit.

Cliff Hakim draws on more than twenty years experience counseling and coaching individuals on career issues that have kept them stuck and frustrated. In this book he talks to the reader as a trusted and wise advisor. You will not want to be without this book as you navigate challenging career issues.

Cliff employs a variety of exercises, stories and models to help readers move forward in their careers. This is a thoughtful, insightful and practical guide that readers will refer to repeatedly throughout their careers.

Mark Campbell
Author of Five Gifts of Insightful Leaders

This book is for every person who has ever asked themselves on a Sunday afternoon or evening "Why am I going back to that job tomorrow?" Some find no good answer and this can lead to a growing sense of quiet desperation, a kind of 'Sunday Night Blues' or maybe just a sigh of resignation. But the author of this book sugests that this kind of question can be a helpful jumping off point to get you on the road to a work life that compensates you with more than money.

But, Hakim explains, reflecting is just the start of the process; one then needs to move forward to explore (inward and outward) and engage. If you need this book you'll know it immediately from my first comment. If so, act - move - get it while the spirit is upon you. If someone close to you needs this book, get it for them as it is truly a gift of love.

Given the enormous changes in the financial markets in the past few months, perhaps now, more than ever, it is time to re-evaluate what is important to you...and Rethinking Work may just be the tool you need.

Hakim provides many different avenues for you to discover what kind of work best suits you. He guides you with powerful questions that you may not want to address...since they force you to get your answers...from inside.

Some of the questions include:

What do I really want?
What stirs my passion?
How do I engage my spirit at work?
What gifts do I have to offer?
What qualities do I value most?
What can I do to earn a living that aligns more with who I am?

The key is that you are held responsible for discovering what is in your heart. He asks if you will take a risk and let your imagination run wild...exploring your passions and writing about your dreams.

Hakim encourages you to: reflect, explore, and engage as you move through this path of discovery. You can start by brainstorming ideas, take a trial run, and then lock into to the best idea (or bulls-eye) for your new direction.

I especially like his suggestion to ask 6-8 key people you know:
How do I add value to your life? When you get the answers to these questions, you may gain some excellent insight to your future life.

If you are considering a change, and you want practical ideas to explore your options, then I encourage you to take charge of your future and read this book!

Cliff amazes me with his unique insight about what is really important in our work. He helps us understand how intertwined our identities and souls are with our work, then how to really determine what satisfies and motivates us to perform. This can't be faked if we are to be truly drawn vs. pushed by our work. Cliff guides readers through defining themselves from within vs. the default of external definition like; what does the market or other people need me to do? Without this degree of focus, we are destined to reactive and diffuse career transitions, or none at all.

You have a good job and make a nice living, but lately something is missing. The spark has gone out of your work - and your life. You would like to make a change, but you don't know how or where to start. Yet you know that one day you'll be dead inside if you remain too much longer in your current job. Abandoning the rat race and heading off in some novel direction is never easy, but finding a viable way out has become a survival imperative for many of today's professionals. Are you in a rut? Career expert Cliff Hakim's three-step career change and enhancement program can help you transform your life. getAbstract sees his conversational book as an informed, logical map to new career directions and self-fulfillment. Never preachy, Hakim offers sensible, if not especially innovative, advice, urging anyone contemplating a career change to reflect and explore first, and then engage. It's not "fire, ready, aim" but "ready, aim, fire." His warmly supportive book explains how to make a workable transition to a more rewarding professional life.

Rethink Work offers a great perspective on forging a path with you plotting out your own conscious, proactive course. I found it very helpful and inspiriing. Highly recommend; very worthy read