Follow Your Passions

Think about your day, and the people who are a part of it. I don’t just mean the ones you interact with on a regular basis or have formed some sort of relationship with. I’m talking about that girl up there in the front row of your class, and the guy with the graying beard sitting three cubicles down from you at work. I’m talking about the woman behind the counter at the convenience store you buy coffee from every morning. Yes, I’m even referring to the stranger driving by you in the other direction down the road you live on, the one you pass all the time on your way in and out from home.

Who are these people? What are their backgrounds? What can they do, what do they do, what are they passionate about? You don’t know? Then what’s stopping you from going up and asking them? You literally never know what sorts of things they might know that could directly impact your personal goals in huge ways, or what people they know who could be your next best friend, or accountant, or mail carrier. Think about all the things you know, all the people you know who have a lot of skill in different things - how might you be able to positively impact the right person’s life?

You’ll never know until you ask. If you’re a bit timid about going up to a stranger and introducing yourself, here’s how to get over that feeling: go up to a stranger and introduce yourself! Ask them a general question about who they are, what they do, let them know you’re just curious about them. People love to talk about themselves, so you won’t have to work too hard to get the door open so that your next encounter with that person will be easier and more fruitful. Do that a few times, and you’ll find meeting new people is remarkably easy. Sure, some people just want to be left alone, at least when you approach them, but I doubt they’ll do worse than just seem a bit preoccupied and wanting to get back to what they are doing. And that’s okay, you just move on to the next person for now.

Here’s a challenge to you: make it a habit, a goal, a true focus, to introduce yourself and ask a non-evasive question to one new person every day, just to get the ball rolling. “Hi, hey, I come in and buy coffee from you all the time but I’ve never introduced myself - my name’s Iain. Has it been a busy morning?” Next time you talk, maybe ask if they go to school, or maybe something they are wearing will give you a clue to a hobby or interest. they might end up not being someone you connect with, but they might hold the key to an important goal you’ve been working on.

Connecting with other makes us feel good. I think you’ll be surprised how positive an impact it would have on your own life if you did it more often. It may require you to get outside of your comfort zone a little, but let’s not assume that’s a bad thing.

First of all, I’m really excited that $30 has been donated in January to assist National Public Radio in continuing the incredibly inspirational work that they do. Today is the last day to donate for the NPR campaign, though if you want to have NPR or any of the other charities we give to come around again, please post a comment and I will be glad to make that happen.

For February, the charity I have chosen to collect for is Maggie’s Place, a home for expectant mothers who are alone or living on the streets. With help, hopefully these mothers can start by living their dreams of having healthy, successful children, and perhaps start following their other passions in life and find success, stability, and happiness in their future.

Have a charity you’d like featured in the FYP Give-O-Meter next month? Post a comment or drop me a line!

Do you feel like you are stuck? Are you doing something you’d rather not be doing? Do you wish you could quit smoking, but you can’t seem to quit lighting up? Want to lose weight, but everywhere you go there are temptations that are just too delicious to pass up?

Many times, the things we want to change about ourselves can be attributed to having bad habits. In order to move beyond those things in our lives we perceive as negative, we often have to break bad habits and often need to replace them with healthy ones. This is a fairly obvious statement I know, but it is not as obvious to our hearts and our willpower as it may be to our ability to process logic.

Somehow, we need to be able to tether ourselves to something that can get us through the hard part of breaking a habit, which is usually the first month or so of the process. Your mind has to be ready and willing to focus in a new direction, and keep focused on it so long that it becomes your new reality and your old reality seems nothing more than a part of your history (rather than your present or your future).

Something that works for me in times like this is to get a powerful visual image in your mind that represents not just your end goal, but actually includes the action of the struggle you will go through on your journey. There are some good examples of this I have used, but my favorite right now is the following:

Imagine what a rocket has to do in order to get into orbit. Before it gets more than a few inches off the ground, a great deal of energy has to be expended to get it moving in the right direction. Once it gets moving, things get slightly easier, but it still needs a lot of help to make its way up through the atmosphere. However, once it finally breaks through and escapes the atmosphere, things get a lot easier, and you can eventually rely on your momentum to keep you going.

The most well intentioned, supported person might get tripped up on the way though, if they don’t set themselves up for success ahead of time. Continuing the rocket metaphor, conditions have to be right for a launch to even be attempted - skies should be clear, planning and preparation should happen to make sure everything that needs to be in place is there. For someone trying to lose weight, this might involve avoiding the desk at work where everyone puts the cake and cookies they’re trying to get rid of from home (or, it might be going to that desk and bringing the brownies and cookies from home to share with everyone, rather than eating them yourself). For someone quitting smoking, this might be doing your research about what to expect in the days, weeks, and months to follow. Within a week or two of quitting, the nicotine withdrawls are done, and any urge you are feeling to light up is all in your head, all up to your willpower - and that makes it very possible to overcome! Another hard part is the social circles you are in when you smoke (who tend to be comprised of smokers) - to avoid worrying about those relationships weakening, plan events with them that don’t involve smoking, like lunch. You get the idea.

If you’re trying to get out of any bad habit you feel is having a negative affect on your life, whether it’s an attitude, an outlook, etc., feel free to comment or shoot me an e-mail for support. My inbox is always open.

I used to be a waiter in a restaurant (several, actually). I spent a lot of time in that job observing people, thinking about how I can serve them better so that they would leave me a better tip. After all, in Arizona the wage per hour for waiters and waitresses is $2.13, which essentially is enough to cover at least most of the taxes on the tips you earn. Usually.

One thing I discovered early on, which I have transferred into many other aspect of my life, is to set expectations accurately, and to do so as soon as possible. If a group came into the restaurant, were seated, and then I didn’t get to them to take their drink order for five or six minutes because I was swamped (”in the weeds” is the restaurant term for “swamped”), the customers would be very agitated when I got to them. This would not bode well for my tip. However, if I got to the table within a minute or two and just said “Folks, just want to let you know I’ll be with you shortly to get your drink order”, then they’d usually be quite fine with not getting their drink order five to seven minutes after they sat down. I managed their expectations appropriately, they felt acknowledged and not forgotten, and as long as there were no other problems with the service that evening, I was probably in line for a decent tip.

Nowadays, everyone talks about the forty hour work week in America as though it is an urban legend, continued by cruel people who want to set our expectations of corporate life in some way that is not in line with reality. True enough, many exempt employees work fifty, sixty, seventy hours a week - voluntarily! They say it’s good for their career, proves they’re team players, and you might as well get used to it now because it’s just how it is. I know people who work over eighty hours a week, and proclaim that if you want the job they have that’s just what you have to do.

If you want to work that many hours, and you’re just really passionate about your work, and that all fits in well with your perception of a quality work/life balance, then good for you - you found your place in the corporate biosphere. But I know more people who work tens of hours of overtime each week and then proceed to do nothing but complain about it. For years. They get up early in the morning, dreading to go to work. They work ten, twelve, fourteen hour days regularly and have an ambiance around them like they are martyrs, doing what’s best for the company at the expense of themselves so that they can further their career. Then, when they finally leave, they go home and complain about the day at work, and have little energy to do much more than watch television and go to sleep. Or, maybe, to log into work from home and check on things for a few hours.

Let me be so bold as to suggest that there may be a few questions you ought to ask yourself if you are in this boat, or more importantly, to consider carefully if you are thinking of getting into this boat.

- Are you working hard, or working smart?
- Does your manager know that you really don’t like working this many hours?
- Do you live to work, or work to live?
- Would you prefer a work/life balance, or a life/work balance?
- Have you managed your employer’s expectations accurately?

I’m not saying forty hour work weeks across the board is going to be realistic in today’s corporate environment in America. But by setting people’s expectations to be that you are going to work smartly, diligently, and passionately during the hours you are at work, in order to work less hours and spend your evenings and weekends happy and enjoying your life outside of work (enjoying the fruits of your labor), you can probably find a happy medium somewhere between forty hours a week and where you are today. When you find it, stick to it. You’ll be a much happier worker, which translates into increased productivity, could boost the morale of those around you, and will improve the quality of your time outside of work.

We hear phrases like “giving back to the community” and “community outreach” all the time. But what is “community”? A quick Google search provides the following definitions (among others):

- a group of people living in a particular local area
- a group of people having ethnic or cultural or religious characteristics in common
- a group of nations having common interests
- profession: the body of people in a learned occupation
- agreement as to goals
- a group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other

Well, that clears it up, right?

Basically, the common thread is “a group”. Generally it indicates a group of humans, though not always, and if you are supporting “your community”, that indicates it is a group of humans you are a part of.

What communities are you a part of? When people volunteer or donate, they often select something that has touched them on a personal level, indicating somehow they feel tied into that community. This is a very natural thing for us to do. But maybe you don’t feel particularly tied into any of the most visible charitable organizations. Does that mean you can’t make a difference you feel great about?

Allow me to challenge you to stretch your mind about what communities you are a part of, and can make a big difference in by volunteering your time, money, and talents. Here is a list of some of the communities I feel tied into, which all tie back into the definitions of “community” listed above:

- the college I graduated from
- my current employer
- my family and friends (and things which are important to them)
- my church
- the city I live in
- my country
- the human race

That last one might be the most important towards saying what I am trying to say, which is - you ARE part of a community. No matter what. And you can give back to your community, you can reach out to your community, however you define that. You can make a difference.

Today’s post is just personal sharing. Not sure there are great lessons to be learned from it. But it is certainly about following my passions.

I live in a condo. It ain’t bad. It’s got a reasonable amount of space, a decent floorplan, and the location is pretty convenient. The neighborhood is okay, I have neighbors that usually aren’t too awful, and I can see a few stars in the sky through the light pollution.

If I lived in this place the rest of my life, I could certainly live out a happy enough existence. I am not unhappy here. But this place does not really add to my happiness, other than it is a good shelter from elements, has all my stuff in it, and quite often does not have police chasing someone closeby.

But it is not a home my wife and I love. It was a great starter home for us, and we’ve lived hear longer than I think we anticipated originally. 2007 is a year when one of my major themes is Independence. Another is Fun. In the spirit of those themes, we have a goal this year: to buy a home we love.

We have an area we really like, and the pros drastically outweigh the cons in terms of making the move. But it is a huge change, and it will uproot the life we have known, shake it up a bit, and plant it in some new shape somewhere else. Another of my five themes for 2007 is Balance, so while we’re looking for a home we love we’re also not going to break the bank reaching that dream. I am confident we can accomplish both the purchase of a home we love and making sure we continue to be in good financial shape.

I’ll keep you updated on the progress.

Prejudice is a reality. It is something we all experience about some one or some thing else, judging with our eyes when we have little else to go on. It is a natural reaction. But what you do about your reaction, how you process it, makes ALL the difference. Do you take your prejudices and let them rule your experiences and interactions with others? Or, are you conscious of your prejudices, and do you try to make sure they don’t affect your life and the lives of those around you in artificial ways?

When I meet someone new, regardless of skin color, environment, style, or any sort of outward appearance (except, perhaps to some degree, body language), I try desperately to give people the same high level of respect when I meet them for the first time. My philosophy is to start at that high level, and hope that they exceed or match it (and they usually do). It means it is up to their actions and words to make me gain or lose respect for them, not whether they are in a wheel chair, or they are a different age, or female, or from a different part of the world, etc.

Today as you go out into the world and spend another day in the world, experiment with seeing how differently people react to you if you begin the relationship by granting them a great deal of respect just for being a human being, capable of joy and suffering just as much as yourself.

I understand the major themes in my life, and I have taken stock of how I am spending my time relative to those themes (see the previous two posts for what I am referring to). So… now what?

Two summers ago, my wife and I went to a beach town in Oregon armed with a couple of pens and a stack of index cards. We each began writing every goal we individually had in life, whether short term or long, small or massive. Then we combined our individual stacks, tossed the duplicates (luckily there were a lot of those), and laid the remaining cards out in front of us. Slowly but surely, we discussed and agreed upon the priority each item held for us, and combined the results on one sheet of paper in order of priority. Once we had our list, we wrote the time frame associated with each goal, broken down into the categories of “one year”, “one to five years”, “five to ten years”, “by retirement”, and “ongoing”. Some of the items were things we both wanted to work towards, some were individual items, so we noted that as well.

We keep the list on our fridge, looking at it every time we walk by, talking about specific items on it as time passes. Keeping aware of it.

Last year, we went to a beach in San Diego and got our list out. We discussed where we were on the items. What did we accomplish? What new goals do we have? Which goals have dropped in priority or completely off our list? What has become more important? Do the time frames for any of them need to be adjusted? Once we had our answers, we wrote the new list on a new sheet of paper, brought it home, stuck it on the fridge, and kept moving towards our dreams.

I want to be clear - you do NOT have to be married or have a partner to do this exercise. Just trim it to a single person - you just pull out the part where you combine the index cards. But I do recommend once you have them done, you share them with a trusted friend or family member and discuss them. Often times, this will help you get some of them clearer in your mind, and help hold you accountable to the goals.

Also, you don’t have to go to a beach to do this exercise, but I encourage you to find some relaxing, quiet place you can be alone with your thoughts for a while in. And make sure you can stay there for at least a few hours, so you’re not stressed out about getting it done in time. This is worth spending a good chunk of time on, to make you a better manager of your time in the long run.

In my previous post, I talked about the importance of identifying what you feel are the most important themes in your life. If you have accomplished that, I think you’re on a path to living a healthier life filled with success as you yourself define success.

What I would like to suggest you do next is to increase your awareness of how you are spending your time. Keeping your self-defined major themes in mind, begin journalling your days and how you are spending your time from hour to hour, and if appropriate in smaller chunks of time. Try to capture the major things happening during each time period. If you eat dinner while watching television, those are two separate things to journal.

As you are tracking your time, compare how you are spending your time with the major themes you previously identified as the most important to you. How do the activities you are taking part in during the day match up with your themes? Are you spending three or four hours a day watching television? Is “Watch a lot of television” one of the major things you identified as important to you? If so, then great, you’re well in tune with what is important to you. If not, though, maybe it is time to start re-evaluating how you are spending some of your time.

I want to say that I am not saying you need to unplug your TV and toss it out the window! My themes, as I mentioned, included my health, my wife, my family, my work, and my faith. So if I am sitting back watching mindless junk on TV and doing nothing else, then that isn’t very in line with what I say is important to me. But what if I am sitting in the living room with my wife and family, watching Joel Osteen give a sermon on TV, while I answer a few e-mails from work? Now I’m in TOTAL alignment with my passions and I’m multi-tasking extremely effectively.

And that’s one of the big things to take from this exercise. It isn’t just about making sure the thing you are doing is in line with your themes, it is adapting how you already life your life to infuse it with things that build your important themese stronger. In time, you’ll get really good at filtering your decisions on how you spend your time through the question of whether it enhances your life or is ust a distraction (and distractions, some times, are okay - we all need a little time to just chill out and unwind).

You’ll also start to get good at multi-tasking. “How many themes am I strengthening at one time? Can I be doing something right now to add a few of my themes to what I am doing?” This sort of thinking will eventually lead to becoming a much better time manager, and you will be amazed at how much you accomplish in a day’s time.

Next up: “Life is a beach”

It’s quite a bit in to January now - how are your New Year’s Resolutions going? Hopefully the next few posts will reinvigorate and refocus your efforts on improving your life.

A lot of resolutions start out sounding something like this: “I want to lose weight” or “I want to make more money”. Both are good goals, and in fact are goals that, in a form, I hold as well. But they are both questions that require more basic questions to be answered first.

You say you want to lose weight, but why? Is it for increased health benefits? Will it help you feel more attractive? Do you think it will help you advance your career?

Making more money is important to you? Is that because there are items you want, like a house or a new car? Do you want to change your lifestyle to one that demands more income? Are you trying to put away more towards retirement? (And if retirement is the answer, why do you want money for that?)

You get the idea, I hope. The more you can get a good understanding of why you want to accomplish the goals you have set, and the more you write those reasons down and review them, the better you will be at reaching your goals. You’ll have a clearer mental image of the end result. When distractions come your way, you can ask yourself “Do I want to eat this cookie, or would I rather fit into my pants more comfortably?” “Do I want to buy this new pair of boots, or would I rather press the heel of my old boots on the accelerator pedal of my new car?”

Understanding the major themes of your priorities and goals, and being consciously aware of them, is absolutely the ultimate key to success (I’ll talk more about how to do this in the next two posts). And review your themes, priorities, and goals on a regular basis. For two years I filtered everything I did through the five major themes of my family, my wife, my faith, my work, and my health. If something I was considering doing did not enhance one, some, or all of those themes, I usually declined. Now that I am in a constant habit of doing so, and have reworked my life to be strong in those five themes, I am moving on to five new themes that continue helping me build to where I want to be (those five, FYI, are “independence”, “fun”, “creativity”, “Balance”, and “Making a Difference”).

All this may sound rigid to some, but it really doesn’t have to be. It is about focusing more of your time on things that you yourself identify as key priorities for your life, and the more you do it the easier it gets (and the closer you get to where you want to be).

Next Post: “Increasing Self Awareness”