Recognizing the Limits of “Do What You Love”

In the last post I mentioned that finding your purpose might just be as easy as figuring out what you love doing and what you are good at doing and then figuring out how to make a living doing just that.

Works … sometimes.  Think about it.  How many starving artists and musicians are there?  How many frustrated athletes who were the best in their high school and never started in college let alone get into the pros.  Plenty of stories of people who followed their dream into bankruptcy.

What happened?  If this is my “purpose” Mr Smart Guy, why didnt I succeed.  Where is my Nike endorsement contract?  Why doesnt The Donald return my calls?  Why is God messing with me.

Actor Kirk Douglas had a great line (paraphrasing): “God answers all prayers.  Sometimes the answer is ‘No.’” I suppose the quick way to wind down this post (part of my committment to write shorter blog posts) is when you are looking for your purpose, your passion your place, you have to be honest with yourself: is this real or just something you THINK you want?  It is referred to as a ‘calling’ for a reason: is this what is really calling you or is it your ego talking?  Recognizing that it doesnt always work out and you may have to ‘do what pays,’ for awhile longer while the planets line up is a call you may have to make.

I quit a long - and highly profitable - career in engineering to do my own thing.  I was pretty successful but a) it was not quite right (more on that in a later blog) and b) I was not paying my bills (that is called cash flow negative in the financial parlance.  I more into the idea of writing a book and being a trainer/speaker than having that be a call I was answering.  So I went back to work in engineering.  Now, my situation has changed in many ways and I am getting back into writing and speaking for more of the right reasons than I had before.  I’ll get to that next post.

Heard a good joke from a homeless woman yesterday on the beach in La Jolla, CA:

What to know how to make God laugh?  Tell Him your plans for the day.

Creating Reality: Stimulus + Response = Outcome

Creating your own reality is not for sissies….

This is the last post for week 1: Mark & Jack: 52.4 Weeks of Living the Success Priniciples.  As such, it’s my final comments on Taking 100% Responsibility for Your Life (Success Principle #1).  In his book, The Success Principles, Jack Canfield notes a “formula” for success that he attributes to Dr. Robert Resnick, a psychotherapist in Los Angeles: Event + Response = Outcome.

If you look at my previous posts on this Success Principle, you’ll note that I have been talking about this to some degree: the only thing you truly control is your response to the world around you.  No one else will make you mad, happy, jealous, deranged, blissful or any of a number of others states of emotion and consciousness.  You do all of that.

What I think is even more powerful about this formula has to do with the realization I came to when I Read more

You Are 100% Responsible for Your Life (Principles of Success)

I have been living this Success Principle now for just about a week (Success Principle #2 is Coming on Wednesday).  I have had one epiphany and a couple of realizations.

Epiphany: When you live in the Now, there is no way to be OTHER THAN 100% responsible for your life.  I am a big fan of Eckhart Tolle - when you are truly in the moment, there is nothing but your consciousness, your presence.  How can anyone or anything else get in there?  You make your decisions about what to perceive, how to react, what to feel.  Complaints about your past?  Experienced in the present.  Fear about the future?  Experienced in the present.  No one else to blame … no excuses for what and who you are.

Realization #1: 100% responsibility for your life means: no complaining, gossiping, or blaming.  Try doing NONE of those for just a day.  It’s hard but you can do it. Read more

Success Principle #1: Take 100% Responsibility For Your Life

And so it begins…52.4 weeks of The Success Principles.

Taking responsibility for your life is a given.  I soooo get this one.  It is really easy to fall into a pattern where there is ALWAYS someone else you can blame for what has happened to you and where you are in your life.  And to complain about it.  You have said it yourself or you have heard it from others:

1. I had a horrible childhood (parents beat/abused you, i was raised by wolves in the forest, etc)
2. I have this … problem (fill in latest made up disease…can you even keep up with the acronyms?)
3. They (family members, kids, co-workers, Moms at the bus stop where you drop off the kids, the CIA) are out to get me.
4. Life is not fair … why do these thing always happen to me?

Get the idea?  Well then knock it off!  What we need to get is that we have the power to change just about anything in our lives.  No, you cannot grow another limb if you are an amputee.  No you cannot instantly have $1.237M in your bank account (I dont like round numbers).  But you can change your attitude about how you react to your circumstances and what you are going to do about it.  You can get a prosthesis, you can start working towards that $1.237M.

THIS principle is truly one of the secrets to success in anything: Accept responsibility for who you are RIIGHT NOW and pay attention to how you react to your reality on a daily basis … it is all you really control. 

Success Action For The Day: Think of the last time you got mad at someone for something.  Think about how you reacted and come up with at least 3 other ways you could have reacted.  Which option makes you feel better, emotionally or physically?  Which puts you closer to joy?  Is this the reaction you chose?  Think about - and commit to - how you will react differently next time.

Time Management 101 Part 2

Last month I wrote a post about some basic Time Management techniques that work for me.  I just had another epiphany that I thought was worth sharing.

I dont know any “perfect” people.  I dont care how self-aware, self actualized, together, integrated, synergized, etc you might be, just about every conscious person is regularly working on themselves, working to improve on who they were yesterday.  Richard Branson is no different. Jack Canfield is no different. I’m no different.

So, today I noticed something different about my own productivity.  It is President’s Day here in the US and  the stock market, schools, banks and many businesses are closed.  In my world, that means two things:  I am not paying any attention to my portfolio and I have way less emails to “deal with.”

I got into my office this morning and just dove into work, productive and (theoretically) income producing work.  Not the usual time sink I find myself in for a typical Monday through Friday.

Often dominated by the markets and email.  Most books on trading I have read suggest that you really can spend only a few minutes a day (unless you are day trading) managing your portfolio.  You must have a system (which takes time to establish and discipline to implement) that includes taking profits and protecting losses with limits and stops.

Email should be addressed ruthlessly and quickly and only a couple of times a day.  I am “usually” good about this but not always (refer back to my comment about everyone can improve).  Somedays I am more “lonely” than others (working by and for yourself has it’s own drawbacks) and really am looking for someone to talk to.

The whole point of this is that because of an outside condition (President’s Day), I am able to free myself from distractions that I should be able to do on my own any darn day I want to.

Something to think about.

Of course, I could always do another blog post.  Or no….WAIT!  The spot market for gold is open in London.  Let’s go there!

Leadership

I was interviewed yesterday.  The conversation went really well with lots of interesting questions back and forth about my thoughts and experience in relationship building, energizing and motivating teams, delivering results and the like.

Then someone asked me the simplest question of the session and I didnt have a quick answer.  In part because I had too many answers to the question: “How do you define leadership?”

I thought about this for awhile afterwards: in addition to the many possible answers to the question, I came to the conclusion that part of my inability to articulate in words how I define leadership is because leadership is evident in the moment it is delivered, it does not necessarily lend itself to a simple verbal characterization.

Like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography back in 1964: I don’t know if I can define it but I know it when I see it.

When his engines stopped and he knew his plane was going down, did Captain Chesley Sullenberger (pilot of the US Airways jet that went down in the Hudson with no loss of life) think: “Wow, I really need to demonstrate leadership right now.  All these people are counting on me.”?

Of course not.  He did what needed to be done to save the lives of his passengers.  That’s what leaders do: Whatever needs to be done to complete the mission.

Be courageous, empathetic, persistent, fair, selfless, conscientious, enthusiastic, generous, impartial, decisive, visionary, joyful, adaptable, knowledgeable, and stable.

That is how I define leadership.

Go ahead, ask me that question again….

Burn the Boats

The story goes that when Spanish Conquistador Hernando Cortez landed in Mexico, one of his first orders to his men was to burn the ships.  Cortez was committed to his mission and did not want to allow himself or his men the option of going back to Spain.  By removing this option, Cortez and his men were forced to focus on how they could make the mission successful.

In reality, it was likely that Cortez’ men were threatening to desert him and Cortez made such an action impossible by removing the one truly viable option his men had to get out of what was no doubt a challenging situation.  Don’t know that this is the BEST example of leadership BUT, that is not the point of mentioning this little historical anecdote.

I had this little message from my subconscious a few days ago: “Burn the Boats,” it said. Read more

Article 8: Competencies are the Building Blocks of Wealth

Competencies, capacities, strengths …. all are talking about the same thing: what can you do?

Competencies are a major component of our Wealth Potential and include the combination of talents, skills, knowledge, experiences, contacts and many more resources that are an integral part of who we are. It is a part of the Unique Value Proposition that each of us can contribute in exchange for what we want, specifically, wealth in whatever dimension we desire.

If you are employed, your employer expects that you will contribute value to the company’s objectives above and beyond what they are paying you. If you buy a service - cell phones, yard maintenance, business coaching … whatever - you expect a certain value in return for the money you pay.

If you help your neighbor rebuild his deck, you have a reasonable expectation that he will return the favor. This is not necessarily WHY you help him in the first place as giving of yourself has it’s own rewards beyond an in-kind exchange. Realistically though, you would feel as though the balance sheet was a bit awry if when it came time to rebuild your deck, The Neighbor was ‘tied-up’ for three weekends in a row.

Identifying and deploying your competencies builds on the foundation of values I discussed in an earlier post. It is an integral part of The Wealth Manifesto system and something everyone can do … everyone can create value.

This is part of the path to wealth.