During COVID, many of us have lost our loved ones, our jobs and our way. Ken Lindner’s new book, Career Choreography: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Finding the Right Job and Achieving Huge Success and Happiness, can help you “learn to perceive every unexpected event, challenge, or obstacle as a golden opportunity to make something good or great happen.” With his decades of experience choreographing his clients incredible careers, he will show you examples of how: “When you’re handed lemons, make lemonade.”

Many thousands of this country’s most successful and popular television newscasters and program hosts, as well as many hugely successful entrepreneurs and professionals have worked with him over the last 35 years. Lindner shares stories of helping such well-known individuals as Lester Holt, Mario Lopez, Megyn Kelly, Robin Meade, and Liz Claman. If COVID has kicked you in your ass-ets, you can use his 8C’s to clarify your values, goals, dreams and set your sights on your next stop towards success.

Career Choreography™ enables you to craft your most rewarding career path, secure the job or position of your dreams, and be hugely successful at your position or profession. On his website and through his book, you can “reflect, assess, and tweak or reboot [your] professional plans and dreams.”

The 8C’s are: Choreograph your Career by Consistently implementingConscious, Constructive, success-evoking Choices, made with Cognitive Clarity.

As Lindner states: “The difference between individuals who consistently fulfill their dreams and those who don’t is that the former make constructive and self-enhancing choices on a consistent basis.” 

This reminds me of a quote by Leonardo da Vinci: ”It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

I was fortunate to meet Lindner several years ago through Rabbi Herscher at Stephen S. Wise Temple. Just as he explains in his book, he asked me about my goals and dreams and helped me think through my possible career trajectories. As we discussed back then, step-by-step, I have been sharing my travel stories on KTLA TV and even won awards for them in the Southern California Journalism Awards as well as in the National Arts and Entertainment Journalism awards. I have been hard at work on my memoir and book proposal. Now, as I search for an agent and finish my book, I am closer than ever to having my own TV show about travel, culture and interacting with interesting people around the world. It is something which I’ve always done on my YouTube channel, We Said Go Travel, but next I would like to share in a more formal way as a show and grow my audience from the 1.3 million views I have now.

Lindner says that: “while you’re alive, you always have opportunities to take steps that will put you in a position to fulfill your most positive potential and make your heart sing!” 

I have been following his advice:

  1. construct a success-evoking set of steps that put you in a position to attain a specific goal or set of goals by visualizing “what can be”“what is” (where you are today) and write down the steps so that you can make your vision a reality.
  2. carry out—or implement—these steps.

On Career Choreography, https://careerchoreography.com/, website, you can find more tips about the Positive Life Choice Psychology Lifestyle™ with Goal and Dream Lists. In this time when so many can or need to pivot, start with a Clarifying List: 

  1. What makes you happy? 
  2. What do you like/love doing? 
  3. What are you good at? 
  4. ​What skills, experiences, and/or education do you have that would prepare you to have a fulfilling and successful career or experience in a particular field? 
  5. What do you not like doing or not want in your job or career?

Lindner shares stories about his own career, his father’s two incredible careers and how he took “paddle tennis—and transformed it into a national and international sport in a relatively short time, with a pittance of money spent.” I also loved his poems and this description of his dad: “he became an invaluable asset to his employer and a pain in the ass-et to insecure superiors.” 

He has written four books including Your Killer Emotions: The 7 Steps to Mastering the Toxic Emotions, Urges, and Impulses That Sabotage You, which is about “EUM”—EMOTION AND URGE MANAGEMENT. Remember in these difficult times, do not let “one sabotaging moment destroy your career for years, or possibly a lifetime.” As Warren Buffett is quoted saying: “It can take twenty years to build a reputation, and five minutes to destroy it.” 

Many people talk about EQ or having emotional intelligence, IQ or your relative intelligence but don’t forget about what Lindner calls “P.I.”—politically intelligent! When you have defeats, disappointments, and rejection, never stop believing in yourself. “​Try to learn as much as possible from the defeat and get back in the game as soon as possible, with more effective strategies and improved choreographies, because if you don’t get back in it—you have no chance to win it!

Remember to “put your detractors and setbacks in your mental and emotional rear-view mirror as you drive toward success.” I know these trying times have caused many detours, bumps and roadblocks in my plans. Remember the FACT’s: Be FLEXIBLE, ADAPTABLE, CREATIVE and TRUST in the process and you will be open to calmly and effectively implementing the amendments needed to attain your career goals and dreams in these challenging times.

The Four Principles of Career Choreography: 

  1. Construct and implement the most effective set of steps and strategies in order to attain your Goals. 
  2. ​Choreograph your Career by Consistently implementing Conscious, Constructive, success-evoking Choices made with Cognitive Clarity.
  3. Every career decision you make and each career step you take should reflect your most important career values and bring you closer to attaining your career Goals and living your career Dreams.
  4. ​Never make career decisions or act if your best judgment is clouded or dismantled by sabotaging emotions, impulses, or urges.

Ask yourself, “Are you truly living? Is your heart singing? If not, start choreographing! Success in life doesn’t necessarily bring happiness, but if you’re truly happy with yourself and with your life, you are a huge success!”

Author(s)

  • Lisa Niver

    Lisa Niver is a travel journalist and on-camera host who has explored 101 countries. Find her on KTLA TV or her We Said Go Travel videos with over 1.3 million views

    We Said Go Travel

    Lisa Ellen Niver, M.A. Education, is a science teacher and is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 101 countries and six continents. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she worked on cruise ships for seven years and backpacked for three years in Asia. You can find her talking travel at KTLA TV and in her We Said Go Travel videos with over 1.3 million views on her YouTube channel. As a journalist, Niver has interviewed an Olympic swimmer and numerous bestselling authors and has been invited to both the Oscars and the United Nations. She is the founder of We Said Go Travel which is read in 235 countries and was named #3 on Rise Global’s top 1,000 Travel Blogs. She was named both a Top 10 Travel Influencer and a Top 50 Female Influencer for 2021 by Afluencer and is the Social Media Manager for the Los Angeles Press Club.  She has been nominated for the inaugural Forbes 50 over 50/Know Your Value list due out in Summer 2021. She has hosted Facebook Live for USA Today 10best and has more than 150,000 followers across social media. Niver is a judge for the Gracies Awards for the Alliance of Women in Media and has also run 15 travel competitions publishing over 2,500 writers and photographers from 75 countries on We Said Go Travel. 

    For her print and digital stories as well as her television segments, she has been awarded two Southern California Journalism Awards and two National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards. From 2017 to 2021 in the Southern California Journalism Awards and National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards, she has won four times for her broadcast television segments, print and digital articles. Niver won in 2021 as Book Critic and in 2019 for one of her KTLA TV segments NAEJ (National Arts and Entertainment Journalism) award. Niver won an award for her print magazine article for Hemispheres Magazine for United Airlines in the 2020 Southern California Journalism Awards and a 2017 Southern California Journalism Award for her print story for the Jewish Journal.

    Niver has written for National Geographic, USA Today 10best, TODAY, Teen Vogue, POPSUGAR, Ms. Magazine, Luxury Magazine, Smithsonian, Sierra Club, Saturday Evening Post, AARP, American Airways, Delta Sky, En Route (Air Canada), Hemispheres, Jewish Journal, Myanmar Times, Robb Report, Scuba Diver Life, Ski Utah, Trivago, Undomesticated, Wharton Magazine and Yahoo. She is writing a book, “Brave(ish): It's All About Perspective 50 Adventures Before 50,” about her most recent travels and insights. When she's not SCUBA diving or in her art studio making ceramics, she's helping people find their next dream trip.