How Discovering and Developing One’s Passion Needs to be An Active Quest

In the never-ending debate about whether we should discover our passion and then work on it, or work and discover our passion in what we are doing, another piece of the puzzle is brought by the Quartz post ‘“Find your passion” is bad advice, say Yale and Stanford psychologists‘.

The gist of the thesis of this post is that “Your passion isn’t out there, waiting to be discovered. It’s not a mysterious force that will—when found—remove all obstacles from your path. In fact, psychologists argue in a new study that the pithy mantra “find your passion” may be a dangerous distraction.” “The directive to “find your passion” suggests a passive process. Telling people to develop their passion, however, suggests an active one that depends on us—and allows that it can be challenging to pursue. This, the psychologist says, “is a realistic way of thinking.””

The advice is thus to demonstrate a growth mindset and not wait passively for passion to uncover itself and develop by itself. I am very much in tune with this approach – although being passionate makes it easier to spend the hours, getting the best at it still requires enormous work and commitment. Having a growth mindset, taking advantage of the opportunities that surround us to develop our passion, experiment and discover more in detail what it is all about, is the way.

Discovering your passion in detail is certainly a way of active search and development, and of demonstrating a growth mindset. Passion is a process.

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How To Do Your Best and then Let Go

Robin Sharma writes “Do your best then let go—and let life do the rest“. This strikes a chord with me as I have notoriously difficulties to let go after I have done my best.

I struggle mainly on two issues.

First, there is always this difficulty of knowing how much doing your best is really doing your best. There is always the risk of stopping too early, and not really doing anything remarkable; and there is the risk of spending too much time and effort to optimise the last bit, which is not really effective. Where should we stop ‘making our best’?

Second, I have difficulties being patient and letting go, waiting for the world to notice and to respond. Generally the response is good, but how much effort should be made in broadcasting our work, showing how we have made our best?

For the first aspect – where should we stop- it is probably a question of experience and knowing what the average person delivers in this context. On the second aspect – how to let go, well, I have to learn to be patient and reap better what the world returns.

What about you? How good are you at deciding when you have done your best and then letting go?

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How People Buy Why You Do It, Not What You Do

Simon Sinek the author of the bestseller ‘Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action‘, writes: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe“.

I was initially a bit sceptical with this affirmation, and with time I see increasingly the value of it, specifically when one is in the business of selling services like I am. Our clients do bother somewhat on what we propose and our track record, but most of all they are sensitive to the fact that we have an intent, a mission, that is benevolent and powerful.

And in reality when we do selling, people buy the reason why we are in business, and they see how our mission unfolds as a permanent background in the services we provide. Keeping the mission, we can be very flexible about the means to reach it. The avowed mission and how we demonstrate our commitment to it is the key.

How clear are you with your mission? Is it broad and benevolent enough?

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How to Direct Your Self-Development: Become a Center of Attraction

Following on our post building on the excellent LinkedIn post  “What I Wish I Knew At 22“, one particular comment has also raised my attention: “Stop chasing the girl, the promotion, and the raise. Become the person who attracts the girl, earns the promotion, is worthy of the raise. Spend your time growing into a more interesting person, and the gravitational force of the universe will shift towards you.

Beyond the limited list of things to aim for (!) that would certainly need to be extended, I like this hint that we need to seek attracting the good stuff in general, rather than constantly chasing it. It is the ultimate aim of any marketing campaign: get people to come to us rather than having to seek them one by one.

It is also quite true on a personal level, and it is interesting to take this viewpoint or objective when considering possible direction for self development. Let’s evolve into someone that attracts what we want in life, and spend less time chasing for it.

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How to Deal with Mood Issues When Facing Disruption during Change Efforts

To complement our post on ‘How to Deal with Inevitable Disruption in a Transformation Process‘, let’s talk a bit further about our mood. In another post ‘How to Get Back on Track with Motivation & Habits‘ Leo Babauta extends his reflections on the issue of one’s mood when facing an unexpected disruption in the midst of a change effort.

In addition to the derailment of our current efforts we are too often impacted in terms of mood and that is very often a killer for the change effort.

His main point is thus that “getting off track and getting back on track is all about mood.” He further proposes the following steps to regain confidence:

  • Admit there’s a problem, and ask a key question to remind us about the objective of the chain.
  • Take one small, easy step. Don’t think about the entire project of getting back on track. That’s too much, and can be overwhelming, which means we’ll never start. 
  • Focus on getting any kind of victories.
  • Build long-term strength with small steps. If you build little victories, take small steps, and nurture your mood as in the previous steps … you’ll start to have a more solid habit or motivation for your project. 

When faced with disruption in a change project, take care of your mood. Go exercise, change your mind. Look at the big picture, and take it a small chunk at a time. Go slow, and go steady.

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How to Deal with Inevitable Disruption in a Transformation Process

When we decide to change ourselves or when we are in charge of a transformation project, things will never go as per the plan. Events will inevitably happen that disrupt our well-thought expected sequence of activities.

Leo Babauta in his post ‘starting, over and over again‘ deals with this issue in the context of trying to gain new habits, but of course the concept can be used in a wider range of situations.

His recommendations are to avoid feeling bad about the disruption but rather to implement the following process:

  • When you get disrupted, notice any tendency to be harsh with yourself about it, or resentful towards life or other people about the disruption.
  • Shake off that feeling and instead, tell yourself that life is an uncontrollable river and you just have to flow with it.
  • Shrugging off any past mistakes, focus on starting again. Just like before, focus on taking the tiniest step.
  • If there’s any learning to take from the previous attempt, adjust your method to account for whatever obstacles you faced.

Above all, his recommendation is not to be too harsh on oneself. Disruption just happens. It is not the fault of anyone. So let’s move on and continue our transformation, becoming wiser in the process.

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How to Do Our Work So Well It Becomes Art

Mitch Joel states in a blog: “When done well, your work becomes art.” “That’s probably the only sign of success that personally excites me. Fame? Money? Likes? Shares? Follows? When the work that you’re doing is, literally, considered art, it truly transcends.”

“This is one of the exact reasons why people laud business luminaries like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. They elevated the ordinary of business to an art form (whether you love their brands or not). You can see this type of magic in everything from business to martial arts.

This is a great pointer towards excellence in whatever we are producing at work. Even more when one considers that art is an expression that aims at changing the way we look at the world, through the production of all sorts of emotional impact.

We should aim at work to produce stuff that changes the world. This should be the basic measuring stick of our success at work. Let’s thus have the mindset to produce art

And you, how are you measuring the impact of your work?

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How Happiness May Depend a Lot on Individual Opportunity

In this Quartz post ‘The quest to measure happiness has missed a key metric—and it’s more important than money‘ the author analyzes in detail how happiness is measured and the problems with this measurement.

Satisfaction is grossly correlated with income, in particular when it comes to satisfying our basic needs (see enclosed graph from the Economist). There is still a very wide spread for the same wealth. In richer countries, however, other parameters appear to become important.

The post stresses the importance of Opportunity as a visibly good discriminator for social happiness between countries. Some very rich countries only give their citizens very limited opportunities, and this would be a cause for lower happiness and revolt.

It still puts some limits to this single parameter, recognizing that “A person’s happiness, and her perception of success or failure, ultimately depends on what measures the individual values over the course of her life—whether that’s providing for a family, fighting climate change, or writing poetry. Wealth is nothing without the opportunity provided by good health to live free of pain and worry. And opportunity itself is important, but is it—or freedom, or love—paramount?

I do believe that individual freedom and opportunity is an essential parameter for happiness – but it must be supported by a social structure that accepts failure and supports individuals through major problems.

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How to Define Personal or Organizational Success

Michelle Obama is often quoted to have said: “Success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.”?

This is quite a powerful quote with, I find, a very deep meaning.

And this approach is both applicable to individuals and to organisations.

The foremost aspect is that what is important is to make difference in other peoples’ lives and not just in one’s own. Making this difference can be direct but also indirect for example through setting an example or an inspiration for others to follow.

An truly, at the end of the day, that’s what is important in one’s life.

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Why We Should Focus On Intentions Rather Than Goals

Leo Babauta at Zen Habits makes the case that we should focus on intentions rather than goals to achieve what we want.

intentionAs you might know, I experimented with giving up goals after being very focused on goals for years. It was liberating, and it turns out, you don’t just do nothing if you don’t have a goal. You get up and focus on what you care about. Read more here. Instead, I’ve found it useful to focus less on the destination (goal) and instead focus on what your intention for each activity is. If you’re going to write something … instead of worrying about what the book will be like when you’re done, focus on why you want to write in the first place. If you are doing something out of love or to help others , for example, then you are freed from it needing to turn out a certain way (a goal) and instead can let it turn out however it turns out. I’ve found this way of working and living to be freeing and less prone to anxiety or procrastination.”

It is true that most of the literature is about setting goals and not necessarily about setting intentions. Personally I am still very much into goals. I am aware this approach requires a lot of personal discipline and is sometimes excessively straining. I certainly need to consider setting strong intentions instead!

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Why, Intead of Staying Caterpillars, We Can All Become Butterflies

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly” – Buckminster Fuller, Author, Designer and Inventor

At the same time, unless there is an unfortunate accident, it is the inevitable destiny of the caterpillar to become a butterfly.

Many people are like caterpillars crawling around in life. Not many know they can become a butterfly. Many will stay caterpillars.

But when one knows it is possible to become a butterfly, unless of an unfortunate accident, they will become a butterfly. In their own way.

Let’s tell more people-caterpillars they have the capacity to become a butterfly.

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What are the purposes of us to be in business – my own 10 purposes

Dear entrepreneurs, why on earth are we developing businesses?

businessLet’s start with 8 purposes to be in business (video) given out by Robin Sharma:

  1. Fulfill client dreams (market – 3 top dreams of customers)
  2. Remove Client Frustrations
  3. Refuel their joy
  4. Distribute Value (10x value obsession)
  5. Total Craft Mastery (TCM) (seeing work as your craft)
  6. Build a team of Picassos
  7. Scale a beautiful life for you and your loved ones
  8. To serve humanity and create a legacy

Most of these are worthy and I do certainly adhere to most although they might be a bit influenced by Robin Sharma’s coaching a focus. There seem to be some missing, in particular:

  • regarding the ability to choose one’s path (freedom) and to discover and explore new things and interests that come up as a result of my activity
  • the fact that the team is not only a team of gifted individuals, but also can deliver something great as a team

So, here’s my personal take on the 10 purposes to be in business:

  1. Fulfill client dreams and refuel their joy
  2. Remove Client Frustrations
  3. Distribute Value (10x value obsession)
  4. Personal Total Craft Mastery (seeing work as your craft)
  5. Build a team of worthwhile individuals that can express their talents (Picassos)
  6. Build a team that can achieve incredible things working as a team and expand one’s capabilities with that support
  7. Be free to choose your development path
  8. Be able to explore new untrodden avenues
  9. Scale a beautiful life for you and your loved ones
  10. To serve humanity and create a legacy

Any other purpose to be in business?

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