Hakala-Ausperk - Renew yourself: a six-step plan for more meaningful work

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Catherine Hakala-Ausperk is a 31-year public library veteran with experience in everything from customer service to management and administration. Now an active library planner, speaker, consultant, and trainer, she is also the author of Be a Great Boss: One Year to Success (2011) and Build a Great Team: One Year to Success (2013). Hakala-Ausperk is an adjunct faculty member at Kent (Ohio) State Universitys School of Library and Information Science, and she also teaches for the American Library Associations Certified Public Library Administrator (CPLA) Program, as well as for InfoPeople. Nationally, she keynotes, presents, and facilitates workshops, seminars, leadership academies, and staff days. Hakala-Ausperks blog is published by Demco and is entitled Library Advice: Thats a Great Question! She is also the editor of By the Book, a professional book review column in Public Libraries magazine. She is the owner of Libraries Thrive Consulting (librariesthrive.com). Hakala-Ausperks passion is for supporting, coaching, and developing great libraries with successful team members, andespeciallystrong and effective library leaders.

2017 by the American Library Association

Extensive effort has gone into ensuring the reliability of the information in this book; however, the publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.

ISBNs

978-0-8389-1499-1 (paper)

978-0-8389-1518-9 (PDF)

978-0-8389-1519-6 (ePub)

978-0-8389-1520-2 (Kindle)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hakala-Ausperk, Catherine.

Title: Renew yourself : a six-step plan for more meaningful work / Catherine
Hakala-Ausperk.

Description: Chicago : ALA Editions, an imprint of the American Library
Association, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016034630| ISBN 9780838914991 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN
9780838915189 (pdf) | ISBN 9780838915196 (epub) | ISBN 9780838915202 (kindle)

Subjects: LCSH: Vocational guidance. | Vocational guidanceProblems,
exercises, etc. | Job satisfaction. | Self-realization.

Classification: LCC HF5381 .H35 2016 | DDC 650.1dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016034630

Cover design by Alejandra Diaz. Images Shutterstock, Inc.

With immeasurable gratitude to my best friend, who also happens to be my husband, for his never-ending support.

A PDF of My Renewal Plan is available for download on the authors website, http://librariesthrive.com/New/renew-six-step-plan-meaningful-work/.

(L IBRARIAN TO A CUSTOMER WHO IS RETURNING A BOOK ON LIFE ):

Are you finished with this? Are you returning it?

(C USTOMERS RESPONSE ):

No, Im not finished. Im going to renew it. Id like to get more out of it this time around.

This book is not about how to quit your job and go live on the beach and sell souvenir seashells. Its about meeting a much more real and pressing need to not just work, but to be happier and more fulfilled while doing it.

Im lucky. In my work, I am privileged to have the chance to travel around the country, helping new leaders build skills, helping teams strengthen, and helping organizations plan. Lots of times, all of this seems to begin to look like therapy. Why? Because the challenges I encounter and the stories I hear can rarely be solved by fixing the organizationbut more often by strengthening and renewing the people who work in them.

No matter what their age, lots of people dont seem to really know what they want to be when they grow up. Theyre still searching, not to figure out what they love to do, but how to make it a part of their working life.

This book is for all those people Ive known in my thirty-plus years spent working in libraries who have confided in me that, whether theyre happy in their current job or they hate it, something else just seems to be missing. Theres something inside them that they really, really want to doto accomplish or to contribute, but they just dont know for sure what it is and they certainly dont have any idea how to go about finding out.

Hopefully, this book and its six-step process will help to resolve that problem.

This book isnt meant to be therapy. Its meant to be fun... and meaningful.

All the people Im talking about have something in commonand you probably do too. Theyre filled with passion, skills, experience and drivetheyre just lacking direction.

We all know that this isnt a dress rehearsal. Were on the clock... all of us... which is likely why you are reading this book in the first place. Have you ever said, I just dont know what I really want to do!? If so, I hope this book will help you to figure that out. You might find the answer by adding something special to what you do now. Or you may end up realizing you need a more significant change. Maybe, its just a new department or title that you needor perhaps its something more significant than that.

The point is to really stop, read, and think about what you love the most and how you can use that to energize and renew yourself and your future. This book is a pathway to help you do just that. Or maybe you only want to figure out, once and for all, how to spend your time, talents, and energy. This book will help you do that, too.

What this book will not do is provide all the answers for you. You will do that yourself, by completing the reflections and exercises and developing your own, unique Renewal Plan. (The plan is in the back of this book, so you can go ahead and take a look at it, but dont be tempted to jump to filling it in on your own. Let this process do its work and help you spend the time you need to figure out just who you really are.)

If someone told you that by reading just a few pages and completing a six-step plan, you could find a way to feel more useful, more engaged, and just plain happier about getting up every morning, would you do it? I hope so. I can guarantee only one thing... youre worth it. We all are.

One of the first things writers learn is to keep it simple.

Start with the basics, then build to the bigger picture. Reporters begin, then, by providing the who, what, when, where, why, and how of what theyre trying to describe. If thats done well, the reader then becomes part of the story.

This book poses those questions and hopefully, as each reader does the work necessary to fill in the answers, even something as complex as finding more meaning in your life can be seen clearly.

Once our path is clear, we can achieve.

There are a lot of complicated ways to consider how to move through life and work.

This isnt one of them.

Since you are the one who picked up this book, its fair to say you just want to take another shot, not just at going through the motions every day, but at actually accomplishing something that matters.

Contrary to what most people grow up thinking, work and life are not mutually exclusive. Finding meaning in oneor the lack thereofis going to impact the other. The good news is, at absolutely any point in your life, you can rewind and restart.