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Home Professional Development The Deep End: Necessary Trouble
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Avatar photoJennifer Abrams
2 minutes read

The Deep End: Necessary Trouble

Jennifer Abrams' video column offers advice on what to do when you feel stuck at work and how taking ownership helps you move forward.

In this edition of The Deep End, Jennifer shares what to do when you feel stuck and how taking ownership and embracing new ideas can help you move forward.
Swimmer diving into the deep end of a pool
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Jennifer Abrams’s monthly edCircuit column “The Deep End” is being presented as a video column where Jennifer will share the same compelling, thought-provoking content through a new and engaging medium.

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In her second video column, Jennifer Abrams combines her own experiences with insights from her mentors to share advice that will help and challenge viewers. If you find yourself in a position where you’re unhappy, what do you do? You can change your situation or change the circumstances within it, but either way, it is up to you to do something.

In this short video, Jennifer shares three key ideas: the need for change, the necessary kind of trouble, and how “making stuff up” can lead to success. The questions below are intended to get you thinking about the path you are on and what changes can, and should, be made to improve your future:

  1. Change isn’t easy, and usually, a lot of effort and work is involved in the process. Think back on a moment of change in your career – what was the hardest obstacle to overcome? What factors, internal and external, are keeping you from furthering your professional career through other employment opportunities?
  2. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. What advice would you give the 18-year-old version of yourself that would have helped you in your career? Have you taken that advice and, if so, how has it influenced you in the workplace?
  3. Jennifer explores the theory behind Peter Block’s book The Answer to How is Yes. How many times in the past week have you caught yourself automatically rejecting ideas that are new or different from your own? In the past month? Year? How does this impact the decisions you’ve made so far?

While this format allows our readers to consume information in a new and engaging way, we also encourage you to continue reading each of Jennifer’s previous columns and keep track of new video columns here.

Subscribe to edCircuit to stay up to date on all of our shows, podcasts, news, and thought leadership articles.

 

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  • Jennifer Abrams
    : Author
    Educational and Communications Consultant

    Jennifer Abrams is an international educational and communications consultant for public and independent schools, universities and non-profits, focusing on new teacher support, hard conversations, collaboration and being one's best adult self at work. She spent more than two decades in the Palo Alto Unified School District as a high school English teacher, new teacher coach and professional development facilitator before starting her consultancy in 2012. Her books include Having Hard Conversations, The Multigenerational Workplace, Hard Conversations Unpacked, Swimming in the Deep End and Stretching Your Learning Edges.

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Promotional banner with a book cover on the left titled 'Purposeful Technology, Powerful Learning: You Can't Ban Possibility' and a blue text panel on the right reading '13 districts. Real classrooms. Documented stories of technology used with intention. Learn More: stayh... com' with the CoSN logo at the bottom.

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Promotional banner with a book cover on the left titled 'Purposeful Technology, Powerful Learning: You Can't Ban Possibility' and a blue text panel on the right reading '13 districts. Real classrooms. Documented stories of technology used with intention. Learn More: stayh... com' with the CoSN logo at the bottom.
CoSN 2027 logo with citrus fruit elements on a blue and orange background promoting the April conference in Orlando.

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