Do what you love to do
You should do what you love to do. That’s an often heard sentiment (or advice) when people talk about work. Of course you know it isn’t that easy. Can you really make money, doing what you love?
A better question is should you make money? A lot of people only consider doing what they love if they know that they will get paid for it. If they are not certain about getting paid, they just won’t do it. And that way they lose out. Doing what you love always pays off in an emotional sense. It makes you happy in the moment. Of course, if your mind is on the bills you have to pay or the empty feeling in your stomach, you won’t feel that happiness a whole lot.
It helps to think about income as part emotional income and part financial income. You can start doing what you love for emotional income and keep your current day job for financial income. This could mean that you have to start small.
Say you dream of being a life coach, helping people one on one or in small groups, using NLP. You would like to earn a living doing that, somewhere in your future. You know that a lot of work goes into making material, getting clients, getting the word out about yourself. It could take a year before you have a small steady flow of clients. If you’re lucky. So this is not a situation where you would jump in and go do what you love. Instead, keep your dayjob and start small. Look in your extended circle of friends if someone needs a coach. Set aside some time and, if needed, some money, to be able to coach. Work for a small fee or even free if you feel like it, but actually coach someone. That way you will be doing what you love, you gain the emotional reward, you get experience and you have a starting point from where to expand your efforts.
As an added bonus, your day job will be more meaningful to you, because it is supporting your emotional income. You might even find that this balance is better for you than doing your dream job full time. I know a photographer who went from amateur to fulltime professional, only to go back to being an amateur, because the business side of photography took the fun out of it.
Some questions to ponder:
Once you’ve answered those questions, start doing what you love and focus on emotional income first, financial income a close second. Once you’ve started you can expand step by step until you’ve found your optimal balance.
Don’t follow your passion. Take it along wherever you go.
DARE - overcome fear of failure
Whenever you want to achieve something, there is a chance that you will not achieve what you set out to achieve. You can see that as failure, and failure is painful. Fear of failure is what is keeping most things from getting done. A different mindset about doing, achieving and failing can help you get more productive on the things that really matter to you.
DARE!
Think of four fases in setting and achieving goals:
Repeat the DARE process until you are satisfied with the result. The key is to embrace the fact that your desired result can be different than your actual result and it will be most of the time. This is not failure. Failure is when you don’t do anything. Your mindset should be: I know what I want, I’ll do what it takes to get there, and I’ll learn from every result, even (or especially) if it’s not what I wanted.
Now stop reading and DARE.
Past, Present and Future: Be a Time Traveler
How can you take control of time and make the most of it?
What is time? I can’t tell you what time is exactly. It’s something you have or don’t have. It’s something that you can’t get back, once it has passed. It is a concept to think about what has been, what is now and what will be.
We constantly travel through time in our minds. We think about what we need to do tomorrow, how we got hurt last week, how great it will be to see an old friend in a few months. As we travel through time, most of the time we skip Now. And as many gurus will tell you: Now is all you have. The past and the future are just imaginations. I’m not a guru, so I’ll just try to make this practical.
Focus on each time with a clear Now purpose. Instead of wandering through the past and the future, seek out what you want to do or learn and then start your time journey. Ask yourself how the situation at a specific time affects you now.
Use the past to learn. The past holds many lessons. You have done things that got you specific results. Certain events caused you to feel a certain way. You can tap into that to see what you can change or what you can keep the same to deal with something Now. There’s no point in trying to change the past. It’s done. You can only change the meaning and take lessons from it.
Use the future to prepare. When you travel to the future, use it to find out what you need to do to make it become a reality or to prevent it if that’s what you want. If you worry about a big presentation coming up and you see yourself sweating and stuttering, that’s a signal that you need more preparation. You may need to rehearse more, let your boss comment on your slides, or do whatever it is that gives you more confidence. Your actions Now shape your future. So don’t keep hanging in the future. Come back to now.
Use the present to live with focus. While your mind is in the past or the future, you are always in the present. If you manage to bring your mind back to the present, you will find it easier to be mindful of your current feelings, thoughts and actions. It allows you to focus and you do your best work and your best living with focus. Of course you need to focus on the right things. Focus on things that help you grow and feel better, instead of things that stall you and bring you down.
Get in sync with others. In your communication with others, whether it’s one to one, in a meeting, or any other situation, be in the same time as the others. A lot of communication goes wrong because one party has its mind on the past while another has its mind on the future. Even when you are in different pasts or different futures things can fall apart quickly. Try to get everybody looking at the same past, present or future and always bring it back to Now.
Create an “I’m Awesome, because…” document
If you’re like most people it’s easier for you to name your defects than your assets. I’m from the Netherlands, where talking about how good you are is frowned upon. And yet, to be able to do great things, I think you have to be great. Or better: feel great.
Every single person has things that he or she is good at. Knowing what those things are can help you think about how you can put those talents to good use. I’ve talked about the talent journal earlier, but this is a little different.
I want you to create a document and name it: “I’m Awesome, because…”. If you want to do it for a specific part of your life, you can have separate documents, like:
In the document you will name all your skills, experiences, knowledge and anything you can think of that makes you awesome. Keep the document alive and go over it regularly to see if you can come up with more. The more you focus on why you’re awesome, the more you will start to feel awesome. That’s why you include the word Awesome in the title. There’s no room for defects here. Only assets.
I create an Awesome document when I feel insecure about starting something new, or when my inner chatter is feeding my self doubt too much. I find that I have to read and work on the document daily and that the effect kicks in after about three or four days. I feel my mind focusing on the positive and taking on a “Can Do” mindset.
So, why are you Awesome?
Don’t let your fear of failure become a fear of doing
Fear of failure is good. What!? I’ll say it again. Fear of failure is good. It is a signal that something important is on the line for you. And when something is important, you care about the result. And you know what result you don’t want, because that’s the failure you’re afraid of.
There are different ways to deal with fear of failure. You can try to ignore the feeling, you can take action to diminish the chance of failure or you can choose to let it paralyze you. In the last case your fear of failure has become a fear of doing, and by not doing you have already failed. The only thing you win by not doing is that you can tell yourself imaginary stories about how things would have turned out and how it was smart to save your energy for other things. Guess what? You still failed.
Let fear of failure be your signal to do whatever it takes to maximize your chances for success. Put some extra time into your preparation. Visualize the crucial steps so you are ready for them when you need to be. Also redefine failure. Failure is a possible outcome. Unless you are in total control, and you almost never are, different outcomes are possible. The outcome you call failure is still an outcome you can learn from. What do you need to change to get your desired outcome? Or maybe you should change your desired outcome.
Link “not doing” to “failing” in your mind, the next time you feel that fear of failure is holding you back. And remember, if you feel this way it must be important to you, important enough to do something about it!
Script your inner voice
Would you like to take control of how you react to events in your life and how they make you feel?
What you do and how you feel is partly determined by what you say to yourself. We all have an inner voice that’s talking to us, even if we don’t listen. What’s your inner voice telling you? I can’t do this? They won’t like me if I succeed? She’s too good for me?
Maybe it’s saying different things. I love doing this. I have a right to succeed. I can do anything.
Be aware of what you’re saying to yourself, especially what you say repeatedly. This inner chatter is what shapes your actions and your emotions. What is your inner voice telling you? What do you want it to tell you? Write the script, practice the script and see how it affects you in a powerful way. The script sometimes goes by the name Affirmations. An affirmation is a positive power statement that you repeat over and over again until it is programmed in your core.
I suggest that you write some affirmations for specific situations. What will you say to yourself when you have give a big presentation? Or when your boss calls you to his office? Or when you make a dreadful mistake at work or in another part of your life? If you make your affirmations specific to situations that occur in your life, you set yourself up to deal with those situations in a positive, productive and powerful way.
I say my affirmations out loud several times every morning and night. During the day I just read them once or twice. When I encounter a new situation that makes me uncomfortable, I listen to my inner chatter and I try to come up with a new script.
So listen to your inner voice and if you don’t like it, rewrite the script.
Be Thankful For Hard Times
Nobody likes hard times. Having trouble making ends meet? Problems in your relationship? Losing a loved one? It’s part of life but we’d like to do without it.
So why should you be thankful for hard times? Well, it’s in hard times that we learn the most important lessons and potentially grow the most. It’s in hard times that we are challenged to look for new opportunities and to take a good look inside at what resources we can use to overcome our current problems.
When you find yourself in hard times, asking yourself these following questions may help you find your way up:
Always acknowledge and accept your current situation and your feelings first. Also don’t try to change the past. You can learn from it, but your starting point is NOW. Use questions like the ones above to focus on where you want to be and what you can learn. Rewire the meaning of “hard times”. See it as a source for growth.
An Important Skill: Stop!
If you’re a procrastination junkie like me, you search the web for information and tips on how to get started on important tasks. Maybe that’s even what brought you here. While it’s good to find ways to get you started, I think it’s equally important to know when and how to stop.
You see, to me procrastination doesn’t mean you’re not doing anything. I would guess that you do a lot during the day. Just maybe not the things that you feel you should be doing. Now before you can start doing what you should be doing, you have to stop doing the other stuff. Simple right? Well yes, it actually is simple, but procrastinators can’t seem to find the off button. Part of the reason is that people feel guilty if they’re not doing anything and they have a task waiting. They feel less guilty when they at least do something else, which is silly, since the task still doesn’t get done.
Also, as long as you’re busy with something else, you won’t be able to start something new. Contrary to what some people believe, people are not good multitaskers. Maybe you can skip from task to task, but you always stop one before you start the other.
Now, to acquire any skill you need to practise, so I want you to practise stopping. And by that I mean you should stop deliberately. It should be a clear decision on your part. Checking your Facebook profile? Stop! Going through Google Reader? Stop! It helps to have a small ritual, like clapping your hands, saying “stop”, standing up or a combination of things. If you make it physical it will put you in a different state, ready for action.
Whenever you feel you’re busy procrastinating, stop deliberately. The worst that can happen is that you end up doing nothing. And that’s still a better place to start from if you want to get started on those important tasks.
Ok, I’m done. So you can stop reading now. Stop! Now!
Back to square…two!
Have you ever tried to start a new habit or stop an old one? And have you ever fallen back and had the feeling that you were back to square one? Well, you don’t fall back to square one. You fall back to what I call square two.
Square two is the place where you have experienced success and failure and where you can learn from those to go forward again. Say you’ve decided to exercise every day. After three days you skip your exercise and you feel like you’ve failed and you have to start again. If you start from square two, you will look at what you did to hold on for three days. What did you say to yourself to get motivated? How did you plan your day? How did you feel after your exercise?
Next look at what made you fall back. What did you say to yourself to rationalize the decision not to exercise? How do you feel not having pulled through?
Use what made you successful and deal with what made you fall back and start again. Starting from square one means you haven’t learned anything and you set up yourself to fail again. Starting from square two makes you smarter and better equipped to pull through.
Tackle those scary activities with Déjà Vu
Do you have an important presentation coming up? A negotiation with your boss? A job interview? We all have things that make us nervous, because we’re not sure of our abilities, we feel a lack of control or we’re just scared of everything that can go wrong.
The antidote to fear is preparation. Thorough preparation gives you confidence and control in dealing with anything that might happen. One of the strongest ways to prepare is visualization. Rehearse the scary activity in your mind, using all your senses. See yourself entering the room, feel how you’re upright with a smile on your face, hear how you greet your boss in a confident tone of voice. Rehearse the crucial parts of your presentation, interview or whatever activity you have coming up. Make it vivid. Also make sure you rehearse different scenarios, especially those scenarios that challenge you the most.
What you’re going for is Déjà Vu. When you actually do the activity, you want it to feel like you’ve been there before. (Déjà vu is French for ‘already seen’) You’ve dealt with the challenging stuff while you were vividly preparing. You will feel more confident and more in control because things are easier the second time.
I use Déjà Vu myself when I need to teach a new group of students or do a presentation for a potential client. Actually, I let my gut tell me when I need to do this preparation. If I feel very nervous I’ll take that as a signal to use the technique. I’ve had a lot of practice with it and I’m now at the point where the activity itself really feels like a Déjà Vu. Surprises still happen, of course, but I’m so confident that I can deal with it in a way that is pleasant to me.
What will your next Déjà Vu be?
Discover your talents: The Talent Journal
How to gradually discover your talents in a few minutes a day
It’s good to think about what your talents are. Your talents are the things that you’re not only good at, but which come natural to you. In fact, sometimes those things are so natural that you don’t even see them as talents. So answering the question “what are my talents” can be hard on the spot.
Discovering your talents is easier done on an ongoing basis, by keeping a talent journal. In this journal you answer the following questions after a day of work or after a specific activity:
It may start slowly and in the first few entries you may find it hard to name the talents you used. Just keep going though. After a while you will descover some patterns. Specific things come back every time, and it’s in those things that you will find your true talents.
You will find that keeping a journal makes you more aware of what you’re good at. As a result you start to appreciate yourself more, which of course is a nice side effect. Knowing your talents will help you putting those talents to use. It’s in using your talents that you can contribute most, while being your true self.
Give yourself the gift of a talent journal and begin to discover your talents.
TIP: Visualize your super productive state
To be super productive and knock out action after action, you need to be in a super productive state. It will be different for everyone. For me, it means I have to be fearless, focused, pumped up and determined. I don’t need to be in very good spirits, because I do some of my best work when I go from frustration to determination.
Anyway, I don’t feel super productive all the time. Heck, I feel that way a small percentage of the time. What I’ve learned to do, though, is to practice that state, by visualizing it. I vividly see myself getting ready to do the work, doing the actual work, dealing with setbacks and so on. I imagine where I will be, what I will feel, how I will do things. If I do this vividly, I will actually start feeling that state in my body. The more I work on this visualization, the stronger I can make the feeling.
By practicing the state in this way I accomplish two things. First, I learn how to get myself in state when I need to. Second, I train myself to recognize that specific state, so when it comes up unexpectedly I can use it to quickly do those important tasks that I have lying around.
State is crucial for being productive, so practice it with a passion.
The status quo you’re holding on to is what you resisted before
I’ve done a lot of change management in companies and it’s always funny to see how people hold on to their current situation. Before the current situation, there was a different situation, and if I ask how the change from the past to the current went, I mostly find that people resisted the change. They didn’t want what is now the current situation. But now it’s here and they don’t want to lose it.
It’s the fear of loss that is causing most resistance. Loss of time, loss of current benefits, loss of control. But people hardly ever make explicit what they think they are losing. What is so great and important about the current situation? If you know that explicitly, you can go into a change with an open mind and express what it is you don’t want to lose. And you might even find that the current situation isn’t as great as it feels. That’s when you see for yourself what reasons there are to change and that is the way to an effective lasting change.
100th Post: What I learned from blogging random wisdom
When I started this blog or idea pad, whatever you want to call it, I didn’t know how long I would keep going. My intention was simply to have a place for these random ideas I have regularly. I’m a thinker. I see things, have ideas and opinions, and keep them to myself most of the time. One day I decided to share those thoughts with…myself mainly. I started this blog as an idea journal for myself, and if anyone stumbled upon on it, fine.
So what has it done for me so far?
Well, on to next 100 posts!
