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.

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.

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.

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.

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.