What Next? career life coaching and workshops - Julia Barnickle - Create an Inspired Life - creative careers and life coach - helping people whose jobs have been made redundant in Surrey and South West London, UK - tel: +44 (0) 845 838 7906

Building a Portfolio Career: Colin McCrudden, Adrian Bourne & Chris Lyons

How to Create a Portfolio of Roles to Suit Your Work and Life

This is a practical guide to setting up a portfolio of part-time business (and non-business) activities to make the most of all your special talents and interests. The portfolio life is the answer to today's changing world of work. It lets you take control. You decide how much to earn, how many hours to work, who to work with.

Build Your Own Rainbow: Barrie Hopson

A workbook for career and life management

This book consists of a number of exercises designed to help you to analyse and develop your personal skills, aptitudes and ambitions. In carrying out the exercises you will discover what is important to you about your work, your interests, your transferable skills, and your most comfortable career pattern. You will be helped to set personal and career objectives and make action plans to take greater charge of yourself and your life.

How To Find The Work You Love: Laurence G Boldt

(author of Zen and the Art of Making a Living)

Technological advances and the global marketplace are changing the way we work and live. Now, more than ever, the importance of -- and chances of -- finding a job one truly loves are increasing. Laurence Boldt has reduced the quest for meaningful work to its essence, and will lead readers toward a breakthrough understanding of what they could and should be doing with their lives.

How To Get A Job You'll Love: John Lees

A Practical Guide to Unlocking Your Talents and Finding Your Ideal Career

Need a career change? Feel like a square peg in a round hole? Lack motivation and job satisfaction? Thinking of a portfolio career? Wondering 'what next?' after your degree or MBA? This book takes a refreshing look at career planning. It teaches you how to think outside the box, tap into your hidden talents and identify what type of career you really want.

The Little Black Book of Career Success : Hilary Wilson

The unwritten rules, tips and insights for success

I attended one of Hilary's workshops on "The DNA of Career Success" - this is the workbook to accompany that workshop. Being good at your job isn't enough to differentiate you in the 21st century. Learn how to get noticed for all the right reasons while still being yourself, ensure you are always in a job that you find fulfilling and rewarding, and create security in an ever-changing world of work.

The Work We Were Born To Do: Nick Williams

Find the Work You Love, Love the Work You Do

To get the most benefit from this book, you need to be prepared to take the time to work through it. There are a lot of exercises which help you to get clarity about what's important to you, what you're good at, and how to work out what you really want to do with your life.

Zen and the Art of Making a Living: Laurence G Boldt

A practical guide to creative career design

For Laurence Boldt, everyone is the artist of his or her own life. The first part of this book is about identifying work that will be deeply satisfying - discovering what you really want to do. The second part provides practical, active steps to finding or ceating that work. In addition to traditional material on assessing career skills and conducting a job search, Boldt provides innovative ideas and strategies, with over 120 worksheets and over 500 inspirational quotations from sages of every stripe

Loving What Is: Byron Katie

Four questions that can change your life

A lot of our most difficult issues concern things we wish were true, rather than what actually is true. With four questions, Byron Katie helps you to accept "what is" and to find peace.

How to be an Ordinary Hero: Dwight Longenecker

The magic key for taking charge of change and reaching your heroic potential.

This short book tells the story of the Hero's Quest, the backbone of any novel or film script. The book helps the reader to manage change, and is especially relevant if you're feeling restless, and believe there ought to be more to life than what you're currently doing. It includes a set of questions to help you identify your Call to Adventure, find help for the journey and achieve your goals.

This book is only available from the Ordinary Hero website

Who Moved My Cheese?: Dr Spencer Johnson

An amazing way to deal with change in your work and in your life

This short book tells a story about what can happen when you choose to embrace change, and what happens if you don't. It's particularly relevant with regard to enforced change, such as redundancy. The message is clear: "when you change what you believe, you change what you do".

Eat, Pray, Love: Elizabeth Gilbert

One Woman's Search for Everything

Once I started reading this, I couldn't put it down. It tells the the story of one year in Elizabeth Gilbert's life, just after she went through a messy divorce. It's a sort of travel anecdote meets spiritual journey, about taking the time to understand yourself and to enjoy life, and it's written in a warm, frank and humourous style.

Unstoppable: Adrian Gilpin

The pathway to living an inspired life

"When I first read Unstoppable, I thought Adrian had written it for me, until I realised it was for everyone." Sir John Whitmore

If you've ever felt you don't know what direction you want your life to take, or wondered how to find direction when you're in completely the wrong line of work, this book is for you.

Adrian is the founder of the Institute of Human Development, "a group of professionals dedicated to the study and dissemination of ideas contributing to human excellence... The purpose of the IhD is to awaken millions of people to a new way of thinking about what it is to be human and what it takes to make life on this planet work for everyone."

What Should I Do With My Life?: Po Bronson

The true story of people who answered the ultimate question

Po Bronson wanted to find out what to do with his life so he started interviewing people who were asking the same question. He wound up writing an excellent self-help book, called, naturally enough, What Should I Do With My Life?, consisting almost entirely of questions instead of slick answers. Here are over 50 short real-life stories of people who woke up and realised that "this is not a dress rehearsal". They took the trouble to ask what life is for, where their real gifts lie and what they really want to do with their lives.

Brilliant CV: Dr Jim Bright

What Employers Want to See and How to Say it

When you apply for a job, your CV is compared to hundreds of others. You've only got the time it takes the employer to scan the pages to show how brilliant you are. How do you impress them when you don't know what employers are actually looking for? This book tells you what they want to read - and how to write it.

You're Hired: Corinne Mills

How to write a brilliant CV

This book guides you through the preparation process to identify your most relevant skills and experiences for the position you are applying for. The step-by-step guide enables you to develop a great CV with ease, tackling all aspects from format to functionality. Filled with real-life examples and practical advice on how to address more tricky information, use your CV and stand out from the competition makes this an indispensible guide for job hunters.

Networking for Business Success: Heather White

Quick tips for busy people

This book has been written for busy professionals needing immediate answers to their networking issues. It will show you how to get started, how to work a room, why most people network, how to find the people you want to meet, what will guarantee personal success at networking, and things that guarantee failure.

The Artist's Way: Julia Cameron

A course in discovering and rediscovering your creative self

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It's a twelve-week programme which contains lots of really good ideas for getting in touch with your creative side.

The Art of Possibility: Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander

Transforming professional and personal life

The premise of this book is that anything is possible if you change your assumptions about yourself and others. It offers a host of wonderful, creative ideas for 'stepping into a universe of possibility' and developing collaborative relationships at work, in schools and at home. Chapter three is an absolute must-read not only for musicians, but also for anyone who plays second fiddle...

Brand You: John Purkiss & David Royston-Lee

Turn Your Unique Talents into a Winning Formula

This book will show you how to: identify your unique talents and turn them into a winning formula; identify your values and your unique combination of skills and experience; discover your purpose; build a strong brand identity; make sure employers, clients and customers remember you. When they have a need, they will ask for you.

Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway: Susan Jeffers

How to turn your fear and indecision into confidence and action

This is a very practical book which does exactly what it says on the cover. When I read it, I gained a new perspective on so many things! It's amazing how simple concepts can make such a huge difference in your life, and how easy it is to overlook the obvious!

I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It Was: Barbara Sher

How to discover what you really want and how to get it

This book will help you to learn what to do if you never chose to be what you are, how to get on the right track, how to regroup when you've lost your big dream, and how to start creating luck rather than waiting for it. In this book, Barbara introduces the concept of 'Scanners' and 'Divers' and suggests how to find satisfying work if you're a Scanner.

View videos by Barbara Sher.

Strengths Finder: Tom Rath

Now Discover Your Strengths

An updated version of the StrengthsFinder program developed by Gallup experts to help readers discover their distinct talents and strengths and how they can be translated into personal and career successes.

What Do I Do When I Want To Do Everything?: Barbara Sher

A revolutionary programme for doing all that you love

This book is for everyone who feels they want to do too many things and can't choose just one. Scanners feel obliged to make narrow choices and then feel discontented with what they choose - or they are overwhelmed by choice and end up doing nothing at all. In this book, Barbara Sher helps people understand that they don't have to focus on one thing - that they can love many different things and do them all.

View videos by Barbara Sher.

What's Your Purpose?: Richard Jacobs

Seven questions to find your answer

There are some really interesting and challenging questions in this book. We can get a bit hung up on the question "what's my purpose", but, as Richard Jacobs explains, our purpose "expresses our core values, talents and abilities", and this book helps you to identify what those are.

Authentic: Neil Crofts

How to make a living by being yourself

This is the book that first got me thinking about working for myself, rather than for an employer. It starts off with the question:
"How would it be if no-one exploited anyone or anything and no-one felt exploited? How would it be if everyone felt confident of their purpose and place in society? How would it be if we all worked to a common aim - happiness and quality of life for all? How would it be if companies collaborated to achieve this aim rather than competed for their own short-term gain? How would it be if every business were authentic?"

Screw Work Let's Play: John Williams

How to do what you love and get paid for it

The idea, of getting paid to do what you love, inspires virtually every self-employed person and entrepreneur, whilst employers would often have you believe it's pie in the sky, and that what you love doing has to be confined to the weekends. In his entertaining book, self-confessed "career maverick" John Williams has created a "blueprint to create a work-life full of fun, freedom and creativity, something more like play than work".

Making a Living Without a Job: Barbara J Winter

Winning ways for creating work that you love

This is the perfect handbook for anyone who dreams of starting their own business. Barbara gives practical, step-by-step advice on getting started, building multiple streams of income, and avoiding the most common pitfalls of self-employment.

The Success Principles: Jack Canfield with Janet Switzer

How to get from where you are to where you want to be

I avoided buying this book for ages, because I was put off by the photo on the front cover. Then a friend read a couple of extracts from it, and I decided it was worth giving it a go. I'm glad I did. It's the kind of book you can keep dipping into from time to time, for ideas.

The book combines practical advice on figuring out what you want and how to go about getting it - including finding people who can help you - with anecdotes about people who are at various stages of the journey.

Unconditional Success: Nick Williams

Loving the Work We Were Born To Do

Unconditional Success is about allowing your true self (your unconditional self) to come to the fore, rather than running your life according to the demands of your ego (your conditional self). I recommend reading this book if you'd like to find out how to make a success of being your true self.