Follow Your Passions

The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.
- Earl Nightingale

For anyone who might be interested in a sort of off-the-cuff, condensed version of the sorts of things discussed on Follow Your Passions, I also post quite regularly on FYP’s sister-blog, Hacking Your Passions. HYP’s stated mission is “to improve productivity, personal organization, work processes or any other areas that can be enhanced through harnessing an individual’s talents, joy, work ethic, strengths, skills, and above all - passions.” Hope ya like it.

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.
- Henry David Thoreau

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
- John Lennon

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- Albert Einstein

How you perceive each and every encounter, situation, event, and relationship dictates in no small part the outcome, which in turn becomes the reality you live in. This is the summation of many things I have written about in this blog, and since it is a concept I think is so important (and it has been a while since I posted on this blog), I thought a recap of sorts pulling the concept together would be helpful.

“There are many hurdles on the way to living our dreams, but the sad part is that most of them have been placed into existence by our minds, and thus we as individuals are the only ones ultimately capable of removing them (or at least getting around them).” - from What Have You Got To Win

“If you desire something more than everyone else combined desires the opposite, then your desire is significantly more likely to come to pass.” - from There Is Only One Now

“Your mind has the potential to be incredibly powerful, regardless of how you choose to use it. Wielded wisely, it can be an incredibly potent tool for good.” - from A Brief Lesson in Mind Management

There are a lot of ways to build on the basic idea, but everything essentially can be boiled down to five simple words.

Your perception becomes your reality.

Understanding who you are is a key component in following your passions, especially when you compare that person to who you want to be. Every step you take towards understanding yourself, you’ll learn better what motivates you, what excites you, what you wake up excited for in the morning - or, what it would take to get you to wake up in the morning excited about the day ahead. I have what I consider to be a pretty handy tool for gaining deeper insight into who you are and who you long to be. Once you have a decent picture of what boh of those people look like, you can begin building a bridge to enable them to meet. That’s a big part of what following your passions is all about.

But first, a story.

About eight years ago, I was in a fairly serious relationship with a woman. Things seemed to be going well, and then one day about three months in I had an overwhelming sense of what I could only describe as jealousy. I had rarely felt that emotion prior to that point, and I had no apparent reason to feel that way, but it was so powerful that it was visible to the person I was dating. When she asked me what was wrong, I apologized because I had no idea why I felt that way - it certainly was not anything like something I normally experience, and did not seem “like me”.

It turned out, my instincts were just very well honed. About a month later it was exposed she had been seeing someone else, and the day she began this coincided when I began to have my jealous feelings. The relationship pretty much ended at that point, but as I moved on and began looking back at what happened, three things stuck out at me. One, I seemed to have much better instincts than I gave myself credit for. Two, I felt like a horrible judge of character for ever getting so serious about someone that was capable of doing what she did. Three, I wondered what would cause her to choose someone else over me.

That last one was the most concerning to me, and it began a pretty serious self-examination process. Why wouldn’t someone consider me a good mate? Well, at the time I was dating her I was struggling in school because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, I had a bunch of credit card debt, I was working as a sales clerk at a clothing store (at least in the part of the relationship in which I was actually working), I didn’t really understand the value of money yet…

I could go on, but I think the point has been made. I was a long way from the sort of person I’d want to be for someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Being able to provide a life for my future wife in which she could choose whatever she wanted to do (work, go to school, be a stay-at-home mom, start her own business, or any combination of those and others I haven’t thought of), and we’d still be well-off financially. Heck, I couldn’t even keep myself fed consistently - those were the days of Top Ramen and using my parents’ CostCo membership to go make a dinner out of free samples.

Rather than be disheartened by this comparison of who I was and who I wanted to be, I saw it as one of the biggest opportunities of my life. If I could capture clearly a few steps that would get me to the version of myself I envisioned as someone worth striving for, I would dedicate myself to the task. This is how I came up with the idea of interviewing yourself.

You’re probably in a very different place in your life than I was back then (or maybe not). Regardless, I think if you perform the following exercise, you will learn things about yourself and hopefully identify not only things you’d like to strive for, but some methods for beginning to explore that journey. The steps are going to seem backwards at first, but I think you’ll see the necessity of the order they are in as you progress.

1.) Picture your ideal self in your mind. What job are they working? What is that person really good at? How does that person spend his or her time? As you begin to get a better picture of these things, jot them down as quickly as you can. Try to make it a brainstorming session, coming up with everything you can think of in every category of your life.

2.) Now we need to take what you wrote and apply a structure to it. The specific structure I am going to recommend is - a job description. Take a look at places like Monster.com or Career Builder, or even your local newspaper, and write a job description as though someone could actually apply for the position of becoming the ideal you.

3.) Once you have the job description pretty well solidified, you are going to apply for the job. Literally write a resume and cover letter describing your experience, skills, background, etc., and just like any job you are applying for, you want to tailor your resume and cover letter to the specific job you are applying for.

4.) Finally, take your resume and cover letter, and modify them (or begin completely fresh if you prefer) and write a version of both that someone with the absolute perfect qualifications for the job of being your ideal self. What skills does that person have? What is that person’s educational background? What sort of people would make great references, that would attest to this person being the best candidate for the position?

When you compare your current resume and cover letter to those of the person you want to become, the areas you may want to apply yourself in should come to the surface. Maybe you’re almost there, which is terrific. If there is a long way to go, I encourage you to take heart. When applying for a job, one of the most critical aspect of a resume is experience, and no one on earth has more experience working towards being who you want to be than you do. Look at the gaps between the two resumes, determine ways you might be able to go about filling those gaps, and take the first step on that journey. The rest of the steps become easier as you go. And remember, when you get to that person you want to be, there’s another better you down the road a bit further. Life is a journey, and there will always be challenges to face, goals to accomplish, and dreams to fulfill. But all journeys ahead begin with one step forward.

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.

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”

I apologize for the sudden leave of absence from the blog over the last few weeks. The silence is soon to come to an end. Look for new posts by Monday.

Thanks.

For several years, I made New Years Resolutions. In fact, my tradition until two years ago was to make twelve New Years Resolutions, a number chosen partially as symbolic of the twelve months of the year but also a number that meant I probably had a shot of achieving at least a couple of them!

I started a series of exercises, somewhat by accident, a couple of years ago that approach assisting me in identifying, defining, and achieving my goals in life in a different way. Now that I approach the first New Year’s Day following the instatement of this new method, I am realizing that New Years Resolutions would not only be somewhat redundant to make, they might also be somewhat detrimental to the process.

I should put the disclaimer in, before we get too far, that I am married. Some of the methodology I have used has marriage, or at least being part of a couple, as a filter. I am confident that there is equal value for singles in the process I have gone through, but there may have to be some adjustment, “tweaking”, in parts to make it fit well for your life if you are reading this and are single. I will try to make suggestions, when applicable, to help that process.

The three main parts to my process are listed below. In the coming days, I will discuss each of them in detail.

Step One: Paint the Big Picture
Step Two: Increase Self Awareness
Step Three: Life is a Beach

I’m going to stop there for today, but I want to say one last thing about New Years Resolutions in general. As you will see in the exercises over the next few days, one of the big take-aways I am trying to suggest is that it is somewhat dangerous to tie resolutions down to just New Years. In fact, it is dangerous to tie goals and resolutions down too much to anything. You want goals to be simultaneously quantifiable and flexible, to give to drive and direction while recognizing that life is always changing and what it important one year may have a totally different level of importance the next, relative to other things in life.

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments”
- Jim Rohn

I used to be a sales person for a major clothing retailer back in the nineties. Before I ever took a job there, I was a big fan of their products, and in fact I chose them because I thought I could do a good job selling something I believed so much in. When I began with them, I wasn’t making much more than minimum wage, but I loved my job and my living expenses weren’t too high at that point in my life.

I stood in the front of the store and greeted every customer. I wanted to sell to them, but I wanted to do it in a non-invasive way. I knew that if I could show them why I was so passionate about the way the company treated the customers, and set up its policies around making sure the customer is happy with the quality and value of their purchases, I could have those customers coming back again and again. And I was successful, always finding new ways to communicate with everyone I came in contact with, quickly becoming the top salesperson in the store for several months.

Then a major shift in management and direction took place, both at a high level and locally to my store as well. Without going into details, things rapidly soured and I felt like I could no longer support the customers like I used to, or sell our products to them with the same confidence that they’d have a great experience with them. I began to just go about my daily tasks, doing what was expected and asked but nothing more. I lost my top sales person status, and just remained average. There was nothing wrong with the way I performed - I did what I needed to do to keep things moving and keep my managers satisfied, but it was just going through the motions to earn a paycheck. Eventually, I left, dissatisfied with working in a place I felt that way about.

When I was passionate about my work, I accomplished. When I lost the passion, I was only doing activity. If you’re a sales person and you just say “can I help you”, that customer is going to just shut you down with a “no thanks, just looking”. If you instead introduce yourself, build a relationship, explain how your product can improve their lives, and be genuine and passionate about it, you’ll accomplish great things.

The same translates to all activities. Managers can make sure their people go through the motions and get their work done, but it is leaders that encourage the people they work with have all the tools and opportunities they need to innovate, to feel empowered, and to not be afraid to ask questions that might lead to improvements or opportunities.  We often get so caught up in other things, that the most innocent, inexperienced eyes can see important things we may be missing.

So at the end of the day, I would ask yourself if you have spend your time working towards activities, or working towards accomplishments?  What have you added value to today?  What will you differently tomorrow?