Follow Your Passions

Like a boat moving through the water, each of us creates a wake. In the organizations that form the communities of our lives, our wakes have important consequences. In our businesses, on our teams, with our associates, in our communities and homes, we want a positive wake—one that lifts others but does not capsize them.

A positive wake is critical to our success, to our relationships, to our leadership. But there is only one way to determine the impact our wake has on others. They must tell us. That’s why feedback is a gift.
- Stephen C. Lundin, Ph.D. and Marshall Goldsmith, Ph.D.

Two of the greatest skills you can build to enhance your communication skills with others are related to the concept that feedback is one of the most precious gifts another human being can give us.

I worked for a company for five years once, and during that time I received one review from my manager. He never gave more because money was tight and people tended to associate reviews with monetary increases, but I genuinely just wanted to know if I was doing a good job or not, what I could work on to improve the company, etc. Nuthin’. I didn’t leave that job, I escaped. Psychologically, the lack of knowing whether the work I did made a bit of good was surprisingly important to me. At the next company I worked for, my manager was always there with answers to questions, and gave me constant praise and constructive criticism in the time I was there. Receiving the occasional pat on the back, or assistance in steering my work so it provided the most value, was as important to my job satisfaction as getting a paycheck every two weeks.

I’ve since become a feedback junkie. Sometimes the constructive criticism sort of feedback can be difficult (both to give and receive), but I’ve learned that in many cases it is also the most valuable. I’ve learned to identify those rare individuals that I can count on to poke holes in any theory, project, or idea I run by them - and once I identify them I make sure it’s a relationship I hold dearly, because it is unfortunately rare.

I should add one caveat to the concept that feedback is a gift. The type of feedback that is not particularly helpful is the opposite of constructive criticism, destructive criticism. If the intent of the person providing the feedback is to attack and harm rather than to be helpful, their words are generally valueless and can be quite poisonous if taken to heart.

So seek out opportunities to provide praise or assistance to your fellow coworkers or friends, and do so with a helpful heart. Like many things that are of a rare nature, your words can be of significant and lasting value to others. By providing others feedback, you are working to build empathy for others, a skill that will be of often unsung but still significant value to you in your life and career. And by listening to, and truly considering, what constructive advice people have for you without immediately going into defensive mode, you can increase your capacity for patience and humility. I am convinced that a consistent trait of a great leader, in virtually any situation, is the ability to simultaneously exhibit unwaiveringly confidence and unquestionable humility.

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.

Job satisfaction levels, however, tend to rise as hours worked per week increase, but begin to recede at 60 or more hours.
- The Conference Board, on US Job Satisfaction

I came across an article detailing findings by The Conference Board about U.S. Job Satisfaction declining. It provided a less than inspirational overview of the current situation in the workforce of the United States. But that piece of it above, about job satisfaction increasing as hours per week increased, has me curious to know more. Is it because people are making more money through working more hours? Are the people working more hours closer to retirement? Or, is it the reason that I find myself happier when I work more hours - I enjoy what I’m doing in my job?

More from the article - “Consumers rated bonus plans and promotion policies as the least satisfactory benefits of employment, with less than 23 percent claiming they are satisfied with their company’s policies. Satisfaction is also low for performance review processes, workload, work/life balance, communication channels and potential for future growth. Says Franco: ‘Perhaps, this is why two out of every ten employees does not see himself in his current job a year from now.’”

There are more obstacles than this between you and being happy in your work. If you let them become insurmountable, they absolutely will take you up on the offer. But all of these things are difficult if not impossible to control. There is, however, one particularly effective way at avoiding dissatisfaction in your work because of this mountain of reasons to be disgruntled.

Do what you are passionate about.

You can do this by finding a job you can be passionate about, or by taking the job you have today and unlocking how to be happy in it, but if you don’t figure out how to do one or the other, you run the risk of ending up a statistic.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Meade

Life’s creative solutions require alonetime. Solitude is required for the unconscious to process and unravel problems. Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers.
- Ester Buchholz

The message today is a simple one, but important. In many common environments we find ourselves in - families, school, work, etc - there are times when the situation calls for you to be a dedicated team player, and others where strong independent contributions are needed. Leaders, for example, rely on their teams to realize success in whatever they are trying to accomplish. However, it is the decisive actions of that leader, the choices made when that leader is called upon, which are looked upon to provide direction and guidance. As much as that leader may take in advice and feedback from team members into consideration when making those tough calls, the gut instinct of that leader plays a factor important enough that they “own” the decision more than any other individual in the team.

When Michael Jordan played for the Chicago Bulls, winning the NBA Finals many times over, he was a phenomenal individual contributor. Without him, his team would have been hard pressed to be as successful. However, visualize a basketball game in which the opposing team had to only play Michael Jordan. Five against one, a very different story would likely be told.

The fact is, successful teams are filled with strong individual contributors. The more you enhance yourself as an individual, the more the team can benefit from having you as a part of 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.

Hello blog. I’ve missed you.

It has been six months since I have posted anything here, and they have been six amazing, inspirational months.

On a personal level, here’s a few things I’d love to share -

My wife and I bought a house we love. We did it. More impressively, we sold our condo in this less than stellar Phoenix housing market, and though we did drop our price a bit, we still did remarkably well from an equity stance. Why is the new house so great? Somewhat difficult to express, though it has something to do with having to put so much care into it that the HOA took care of back at the condo. Exterior painting, landscaping, mowing the lawn, caring for the pool, and so on. Also, the condo was new when we got it as opposed to our twenty year old “new” house, so we scraped the popcorn stuff on the ceilings, painted the interior, did a lot of electrical and plumbing work, put new tile and carpet in, hung new ceiling fans, and… I am sure other things I am forgetting. Putting so much effort and care into almost anything will endear you to it after a while, and that has certainly been the case with the new house.

Okay, now that we have the personal stuff out of the way, what will we be talking about here in the coming weeks and months? Well, plenty, but here’s a few topics we’ll tackle first -

• The power of change (and why it’s a good thing)
• The power of perception (and how your thoughts are your reality)
• The power of individuality vs being a team player (and why they aren’t exclusive concepts)
• The power of feedback (and what kind to pay the most attention to)
• The power of you (and how talented I believe you to be)

Stay tuned.

In high school I had an AP English instructor who challenged us on a regular basis to develop a deeper understanding of the things we are exposed to in life. He’d play songs by Simon and Garfunkel or Bob Dylan, hand out the lyrics, and we’d spend days sometimes discussing what the meaning of it all was.

I am not sure how it was brought up, but one day he started talking about people being honest. He suggested that when our acquaintances pass us in the hall or on the sidewalk and ask how we are doing, they are often just doing it as a courtesy and would rather not actually hear the story about how you are feeling inside. And we know this, so we often respond with “Fine” even though fine may be far from the most accurate word do describe our current state.

My instructor challenged us to spend one entire day being completely honest in every conversation. If someone asks you how you are, tell them the truth, and if you don’t genuinely care how they are doing, don’t ask! I started living my life this way, convinced that the point I should take away from the challenge was that I should be brutally honest and just not ask people how they are if I don’t care to hear the answer.

But over time, I have developed something much more important than that as a result of this little experiment. I am not at all convinced this was the original intent of the challenge, but it dawned on me that maybe instead of not asking how people I don’t care about were doing, I ought to focus on caring about ALL of my fellow man, at least enough to care to know their general well being.

Now, when I ask how people are doing, I want them to respond honestly rather than just saying “fine” or “I’m good, how are you?” Unless of course that’s how they truly feel.

So tomorrow when you go about your daily business, take time to ask the people around you how they are doing, and when they tell you the truth, embrace it. Further, when someone asks you how you are doing, tell them the truth. Even if you are feeling “fine”, try to use a more descriptive word. Some of my personal favorites are “awesome”, “groovy”, “inspired”, and “excellent”.

No worries, I am still alive and well. I have been presented with some incredible opportunities and challenges over the past two weeks or so that have been consuming my “blogging time”. But I keep jotting ideas for future posts down, and the content will return soon. I’ll be travelling soon for work and have a lot of free time with a hotel room, my laptop, and free wireless internet.

We’ll talk soon.

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.

If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path. - Buddhist saying

If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody. - Chinese Proverb

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. - Anne Frank

Our friends should be companions who inspire us, who help us rise to our best. - Joseph B. Wirthlin

Listen to people as they talk to you through out your day, and you will quickly find that they all have problems. Colleagues who keep complaining about the way something never works right, or how a process doesn’t make any sense. Friends who are trying to improve their careers, or go back to school. In fact, you don’t have to listen to them to find out something is amiss - just watch your manager’s body language, or note a family member’s mood being unusually negative. Someone who is normally talkative and outgoing being reserved and quiet instead.

The signs are all around us, and where there are signs, there are opportunities to help. Of course, the person has to want the help or you can’t get very far in your efforts. But I have found that once I changed my approach and thought process when it comes to acting on opportunities to assist others, people were generally not only open to having my help but were very grateful for it.

My natural tendency used to be that I was being respectful by just butting out of issues people were facing. If I met a coworker for lunch, and she told me about something she just couldn’t find the answer to, or a project she didn’t know how to take the next step with, I would listen with a caring ear and process what she had said, but then drop it there and move on. It occured to be at some point, though, that some of the times people were telling me these things, they were either consciously or unconsciously asking for help to get past their problems. So I’d get back to the office, pop onto Google or some internal resource, and look up the answer to what they were looking for. If someone was trying to figure out the next step to a project, maybe I know someone who would be good to point them in the right direction and make that connection for them.

These are both small gestures, don’t take much time or effort, but could make a huge difference to someone’s day. Expand this to a way of thinking, of viewing the world, and suddenly you are helping lots of people every day, in both small and big ways. You may be thinking that this sounds like you’d spend a lot of your time helping others and not be able to get your own work done in the process. Allow me to suggest that you will find you can get more of your own work done by doing more for others. By helping others, you are building connections, and those people you are connecting with and helping have skills and contacts that can likewise help you get your projects done and your questions answered. Ever hear the phrase “it’s not what you know, but rather who you know”? This is how to really put that quote into action in a huge way.

Keep the circle going. Help others, and when others help you thank them for it. Heck, send them a little thank you card just for something small someone did for you every once in a while. Think how you would feel if someone took the time to do that for you, how great it would be to find that in your mailbox. Actually hand-write it yourself on real paper rather than an e-mail (e-mail is fine but lacks the feel of that personal touch for most people still).

You’ll be astounded at how enriched your own life quickly becomes if you have a small filter in the back of your mind constantly sifting interactions with other as they occur and looking for the gems of opportunity to show themselves.