The M.A.P. Maker

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M.A.P. Making is about crafting a life of Meaning, Abundance, and Passion. Who is "The M.A.P. Maker?" In your own life, you are! (More about M.A.P.)

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This blog is brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst.

Open the door to possibility: Challenge your first no

For most people, saying no to possibilities seems to be an ingrained response. "No, that won't work. No, that's not realistic. No, I can't do something like that." 

In the last 10+ years of helping people create careers that energize and inspire them, here's one thing I've learned about that initial no:

It's often complete and utter bunk. 

Frequently, when I challenge people to take a second look at their initial negative assumption, they discover that it wasn't accurate.

Maybe they are making a flawed assumption. "I can't do that, because nobody would want to help" becomes, "Wow, I reached out and there were people who were actually delighted to help." The assumption that nobody would want to help creates an obstacle that doesn't actually exist.

Or maybe they are wearing their black-n-white glasses (a prescription far too many of us wear). They look at something they want to do, don't see a clear path there, and decide that it's impossible. "Either I can see a way to do it immediately and directly, or it can't be done."

If they challenge that perception, they might discover that, while they might not be able to get there in a straight easy shot, they could if they took a different approach, or took more time to get there, or reached out for help in an area that blocks them. 

Challenging that initial negative assessment opens the door to possibility. Sometimes that no really is accurate. But imagine if you make it a policy to challenge your no's and discover that 75% of the time you're right. The answer really is no. 

That means every 4th time you say no, a door opens and a possibility that would have remained unclaimed finds its way into your life.

What kind of impact do you suppose that would have over the course of your lifetim?

Try this: For the next month, when you catch yourself responding in the negative to ideas or possibilities, stop and ask yourself, "Is that really true?" Challenge yourself to prove it wrong. Challenge yourself to find ways you could turn it into yes. 

You have nothing to lose, and the potential upside is enormous. 

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

Positive change: The BIG power of small

As you embark on the new year, you might be tempted to use it as an occasion to make wholesale change in your life. My advice? Don't!

Wholesale, grand scale change almost never works. You run at it fueled by an initial adrenaline rush, maybe feel that first blush of successful change, and then almost inevitably start to falter as old patterns start to take over again. 

Instead of going for that wholesale, grand scale change, do something different. Tap into the BIG power of small. Twenty small steps in pursuit of a big change is exponentially more likely to bring the results you want than one gargantuan one. 

Training for change

One way to think about it is using your time through the year to train for a marathon. Except in this case you're not training for a marathon, you're training for a substantial positive change in your life. 

If you're training for a marathon, what is likely to be more successful, breaking your training into ongoing, consistent effort or trying to cram all your conditioning into the beginning of the year? 

Clearly, if you do the latter with a marathon, you have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. Your chances aren't much better taking that approach to making a positive change. 

Instead of making a wholesale change, think about the small changes you can make that would add up to the larger change. For example, let's say you're tempted to make a sweeping commitment to eating healthily. Great! 

Real change is like playing with LEGOs

To tap into the big power of small, resist the urge for instant gratification. Instead, brainstorm what building blocks to that change could look like.

So maybe your first change is in your level of understanding and awareness. You decide to educate yourself on what your body needs and the impact of various foods on both your physical and mental state. You can start incorporating more healthy foods into the picture as you feel called to, but it isn't your focus.

Maybe the next step is to simply commit to eating the recommended minimums on fruits and vegetables. No wholesale change to your diet. Just adding the positive impact of nutritious food. 

Maybe another step would be to minimize your sugar consumption, or to start drinking more water. 

As you make small changes and give them time to gel, you can start building on them. If you take the approach to change I talked about in yesterday's post, looking at it as a year-long project, by the end of a year's time you can have made significant and - even more importantly - long-lasting change. 

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

New year's resolution success: Make it a 1-year project

If you're like most people, your new year's resolutions are anything but a path to long-lasting positive change. You make a resolution, stick with it for a couple weeks before letting it lapse, and then beat up on yourself for not being able to stick with it. 

Instead of setting yourself up to fail (and let's face it, that's what most people do with their resolutions) by expecting magical change in one fell swoop, take a different approach. 

Rather than a flick-of-the-switch change, look at your resolution as a year-long project. Take action on it, but don't assume that your current decision to make a change will be enough to power it forward through long-term integration into your life. 

Instead, commit to doing the work to integrate it over the next year. In all likelihood that integration process will have its share of backsliding. But think about it this way:

If every month you take two steps forward and one step back, by the end of the year you will still have taken twelve steps in the right direction!

To support your project, here are some ideas to keep in mind. 

Set up monthly checkpoints

When you make your resolution a year-long process, it creates the opportunity to check in on a regular basis. Once a month, stop and take a look at how things are going on your resolution. Ask questions like:

• How well am I doing?
• What do I need to do differently?
• Where am I falling down? What can I do about that?
• What is getting in the way of my progress? What can I do about that?
• What support do I need? Where can I find it?
• What knowledge do I need? Where can I find it?

Look at your experience as research and development. You work on implementing your resolution for a month, and then bring it back into the lab to look at how it went.

What can you learn from the experience so far? What's going well? How can you build on that? What is challenging? What might you do to overcome that?

Checking in once a month lets your learn from the process. It also gives you twelve built-in chances to get back on track when you wander. 

Create accountability

One of the benefits my clients find in my coaching is accountability. Knowing that someone is going to be asking about what they have committed to do adds an additional incentive to actually do it. 

The same is true any time we express our commitment to something to someone else. It's much easier to let something slide when you're the only one who is watching it lapse. 

Is there anyone in your life you can use as an accountability partner? It could be as simple as checking in with them once a month to update them on your progress, what you've learned, and how you plan on moving forward. 

Find a partner

While we're on the topic of the value of incorporating others into your efforts, you might want to find someone who can be your resolution partner. In this case, instead of just you creating accountability by reporting in to someone, you partner up with someone who is also working on their own year-long resolution project. 

Acknowledge your progress

Finally, acknowledge your progress as you move forward. Spotlight your successes. Recognize the steps you have taken in a positive direction. Give yourself credit for those positive steps, without taking it away with a yeah-but focused on where you haven't been up to snuff. 

Reward yourself. Praise yourself. Ask someone else to give you kudos. All too often the only feedback we get from ourselves is a kick in the ass when our efforts fall short. How motivating is that? 

Trying setting up a reward system where you get a reward each month if you meet certain goals. For example, if you're cutting down on sugar, treat yourself to something special each month you hit a target goal (like 25 days out of the month where you keep your sugar intake within a set range). 

At the end of the day, real change takes time. Making your new year's resolution a year-long project will make that time an inherent part of the process. 

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

Employee retention keys: Passion and career planning

Companies invest a lot in finding top talent. Unfortunately, they often don't seem to invest as much in keeping them once they're on board. A recent Forbes article offers up the top ten reasons why large companies fail to keep their best talent. 

The two that struck me most (or, more accurately, the two things that fit tongue-in-groove with my focus) were:

#2: Failing to find a project for the talent that ignites their passion:
"Top talent isn’t driven by money and power, but by the opportunity to be a part of something huge, that will change the world, and for which they are really passionate. Big companies usually never spend the time to figure this out with those people."

and...

#4: No discussion around career development:
"Most bosses never engage with their employees about where they want to go in their careers — even the top talent. This represents a huge opportunity for you and your organization if you do bring it up."

Finding the fuel source

When people come to me for career passion coaching, it's typically because their current work doesn't tap into their passions (i.e., #2) and they don't know where to go from here in their career (#4). They typically feel frustrated and stuck, and many feel inclined to jump ship from their current jobs immediately. 

If you're a manager who wants to ensure your employees don't experience those reasons for leaving, try taking a page from the work I do helping my clients create careers that energize and engage them. 

It starts with my definition of passion: "The energy that comes from bringing more of YOU into what you do." It's the result of being who you are and doing the kinds of things that naturally energize you. 

Simple, right? The trouble is that most people have spent their lives so focused on external drivers like goals and achievement that they have no idea how to consciously make choices that bring more of who they are into the picture. 

So here's what I do with my clients (if you'd like to get a deeper picture, here is an article on planning for passion that looks at the process). I have them make a list of things they have loved doing over the course of their lives, work or play. Then they pick one and we start reverse engineering it, looking at why they love it. 

As we do the same thing for multiple items from the list of things that have lit them up, common themes start to emerge. Common characteristics start to show up that are consistently there in the things they find energizing. Some individual examples might be:

• Exploration and discovery
• Problem-solving
• A focus on the details
• Deep connection with people
• Analyzing 
• Creativity

Passion and Planning

As those underlying themes show up, we compile them in one place, so they have a list of characteristics that tend to be in place when they feel energized and engaged.

That becomes a tool (I think of it as an internal compass) they can use to both generate ideas for where to go in their career and evaluate opportunities as they come up. 

Imagine having that same insight into what makes your employees tick. Would it be helpful to understand what kinds of work leaves them feeling most energized? Would that help you design and refine their jobs to help them stay passionate? Would it be helpful to be able to have a career pathing conversation that looks at the possible paths in terms of which ones would leave them feeling most energized and performing at their best?

Sure, those insights take a little investment up front, but the pay-off is worth it.  

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

Unplug to energize yourself

When was the last time you slowed down and got out of your daily grind? When was the last time you unplugged and let your daily distractions fall by the wayside? 

Most of us stay plugged in for way too much of the time. The result is drained energy and decreased effectiveness. 

Power up by unplugging

Over the last couple months, I’ve been having trouble focusing and getting traction in my business. I’ve felt distracted and unable to get anything of much substance done (at least that's how it has felt). Occasionally I would get a burst of productivity, but for the most part I was slogging through gumbo. 

Last week, I took the week off and went to a week-long program held by Mata Amritanandamayi, an Indian spiritual teacher more commonly known as Amma, or the Hugging Saint. I checked my e-mail once, about mid-week. I had my cell phone, but didn’t use it for any work-related calls. 

In short, I was nearly completely unplugged for eight days. I hit pause in my work life and focused my attention elsewhere. 

When I pulled out my computer again yesterday, I felt a change. Where before I had a big case of brain constipation every time I sat down to write, now the ideas started flowing easily. I felt excited about planning for the possibilities that 2012 has to offer. I felt positive and energized. 

I don’t think it was just that I had a change of location for a week (though that certainly helped). A big part of the shift has been the result of staying unplugged the entire time. I was able to let work go. I was able to let that field lie fallow so it would be more fertile when I started working it again. 

Experiment: Unplug yourself

Even if you don’t have the opportunity to unplug for a whole week in the near future, there’s a lesson to be learned there. Every time you plug into work when you’re not working – whether that is checking your e-mail, or your work voice mail, or just doing a little work on that budge spreadsheet before you go to bed – you’re taking yourself out of rest and relaxation and into work mode. 

Try this: For the next week, commit to unplugging when you’re away from work. Don’t check your work e-mail. Don’t check your work-related voice mail. Resist the temptation to do “just a little bit more” on that project. Let yourself be fully present in the rest of your life, without your attention seeping away to work distractions. 

If you have obligations that you absolutely, positively need to take care of during off-work hours, create a confined space for them. Don’t let them sprawl across your non-work time. Create a space in your schedule for them and outside of that space, put them down. 

You might be amazed at a) how hard it is to unplug (which is all the more reason for experimenting with it) and b) how good it feels. 

Are you up for unplugging? Let me know how it goes!

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

Are you killing your forward momentum?

As I write this, I’m sitting on a friend’s boat near San Francisco. It’s a cool, grey, slightly misty day. I’m up top, bundled up in a blanket with a hot cup of coffee and a laptop. A perfect spot for writing.

Every now and then, I see some rowers going past. I rowed in college, and noticed that the last rowers who went past were rowing slowly, focused on technique. 

In rowing, it’s not all about strength and endurance. It’s just as much – if not more – about technique. The idea is to slow yourself down as little as possible, letting all the power you put into the stroke translate into maximum forward motion. Poor technique is like putting the brakes on. For example, rushing the slide on the way back up from your stroke is essentially throwing your weight in the opposite direction you want to go. It kills the momentum. 

So the better your technique, the less you get in the way of translating power into speed. 

How important is technique in rowing? Incredibly. I’ve seen teams with big, powerful gorilla rowers get buried by smaller, less powerful teams with excellent technique. You can have all the power in the world in your stroke, but if you keep putting the brakes on, you’re wasting most of it. 

It occurred to me that there’s a lesson there that applies to our careers, and our lives in general. How often do we put all kinds of effort into making something happen, only to put the brakes on and slow ourselves down, or even grind to a halt? I know for me it happens waaaay more often than I’d like. 

We do it in a bazillion different ways. For me, a lack of organization is a big one. I dive into ideas that inspire me, but my technique holds me back. The disorganization prevents me from translating all the effort into productive forward motion. It wastes my energy and kills my momentum. 

Some other ways people kill their momentum include a lack of clear focus, a lack of planning, focusing on too many things at once, procrastination, not saying no enough to other people’s requests so we have time for our own efforts, rushing the process, etc. 

Take a look at your own life. How is your technique? Is there anything that is slowing you down? Is there anything that is preventing your efforts from translating into maximum forward motion? What can you do to start fine-tuning your technique? You don’t have to be perfect. Just keep refining it. 

Remember, getting the most from your stroke isn’t just about putting a lot of power and effort into it, it’s also about not getting in your own way. When you do that, you achieve more with less effort. 

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

Is lack of self-kindness limiting your potential?

What if you knew someone who, every time you tried something new and wobbled a bit, or expressed your perspective less than gracefully, got in your face and started berating you, yelling like a drill sergeant, red-faced and spluttering with flecks of spit. 

Would you tolerate that? Probably not. But if you're like most people, you do it to yourself at least some of the time. 

As I often say, we are our own worst obstacles when it comes to creating a rich, meaningful lives for ourselves. And one of the ways we get in our own way is by being unkind and critical. Sometimes it's just a passing negative judgment. Other times it's full-on drill sergeant mode. 

However it manifests, it gets in the way of your stepping into your full potential. it limits you, reinforces doubt, and tears you down. 

I started to think about the obstacles we often create when I read this blog post on how to be kind to yourself. There are some good ideas there. I would like to add three more:

Celebrate your success

When you do something well, stop and take time to pat yourself on the back. Acknowledge that you just did something good. It can be as simple as stopping, closing your eyes, and spending 60 seconds to reflect on what you did and how you did it.

Or you could ratchet it up a notch and tell a comfortable friend that you want to spend a few minutes celebrating out loud, describing what you did, what went well, how you solved the problems you ran up against, etc. 

The key is to create space to focus on and acknowledge the positive. 

Celebrate yourself

You don't need to wait for a specific accomplishment to tap into the power of self-celebration. Try celebrating yourself on a regular basis. Take stock of what you like about yourself. What do you do well? What are your gifts and skills? What are you proud of? What do other people tell you that you do well? What do people compliment you on? 

Start by just making a list. Then keep adding to it over time. Challenge yourself to spend time adding to it at least each week. Then, when you start to feel down on yourself, pull it out and go through it. Or pull it out, tell a friend what's on it, and use it as a springboard for a positive conversation. 

Push pause

When you feel that critical voice start build up pressure, like a geyser getting ready to erupt, hit pause. I know it's hard to do, especially in the heat of the moment, but try. You might not even be able to manage more than a brief pause before the momentum of that critic spills over, but the more you practice, the more space you will be able to put between the feeling and the reaction. 

In that space, try to whip out your curiosity. Ask questions. Is this really an accurate reaction? Are you doing black-and-white thinking when there are actually a full spectrum of colors in the picture? Could there be a different way to see it? What could you learn from the situation? 

Pushing pause lets you take back control so your internal critic doesn't have the opportunity to get up a full head of steam. 

How about you? How are you kind to yourself? How do you accentuate the positive? How do you curb that internal critic? 

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

Stress wrangling: How to tame your stress

Face it. You're going to experience stress. It's just a part of life. And while there's nothing you can do to avoid stress entirely, there's a lot you can do to change your experience of it. 

There are two kinds of stress. Stress that pushes you, helps you grow, and possibly even energizes you, and stress that grinds you down. The good news is that many of the stresses in your life aren't automatically one or the other. Two people can experience the exact same thing and one can feel challenged and energized and the other can feel frightened and anxious. 

If you want to wrangle that negatively stressful experience and move it in the direction of something energizing and growth-inducing - or at least stop it from being quite as anxiety-inducing - here are some factors to keep in mind. 

Build your foundation

When you feel like you're tumbling ass-over-teakettle through your life, any new stress that comes up is that much less likely to feel manageable. So it plops resoundingly into the anxiety-inducing stress category. 

Imagine changing that scenario to one where you have both feet planted on the ground and a large buffer zone between you and feeling overwhelmed. Think that might change the way you experience a new stressor? 

Here are three ways to start building that solid foundation. 

Get grounded

Picture a catherine wheel firework. It's spinning around in a circle, throwing sparks off in all directions. When we get spooled up and tense, we're a little like that. We're using up all kinds of energy being stressed - throwing it off in all directions - which means we have less energy to put into engaging stressful situations. 

Anything you can do to feel more grounded and calm is going to improve your ability to handle stressful situations. Meditation is a great tool for this. Other possibilities include movement oriented practices like tai chi or chi gong, singing or chanting, or journal writing. 

Change what you can

Another part of building that foundation is making whatever changes you can to reduce the current stress in your life. 

A lot of the stress we experience is like junk food. It adds nothing to our lives, and we don't need to experience it. 

As a starting point, do a stress audit in your life. Where are the stresses? Are you over-committed? Do you have a particularly challenging person in your life? Are you saying yes when you should say no, or no when you should say yes? 

Once you get a snapshot of where the stress is coming from, look for opportunities to make changes. What burdens are you currently shouldering that you don't need to take responsibility for? Can you prioritize your commitments so you're not creating a false sense of urgency by giving everything a default sense of high priority?

Build your belief

This might actually be one of the most important pieces of building your stress management foundation. The more you believe you can handle whatever is coming your way, the less stressful it is. 

How to build your confidence that you can handle change/problems/difficult circumstances/etc. could be the focus of an entire blog in itself. To start things off, here is a good post with 63 ways to building self-confidence. 

Wrangle your stress in real-time

Building a foundation is great, but stress happens in real time. What can you do to wrangle that stress as it unfolds? 

Step back

Before you can do any stress wrangling, you need a little room to maneuver. Stop, step back, and get a little distance from the source of your stress. Remind yourself that the stress you're feeling isn't a finite reality - it's simply your current version. 

Once you remind yourself to step back, you can try some of the following ideas. 

Check your story

A small, manageable fire of stress often becomes an inferno because of the way we pour fuel on the fire. Let's say you get laid off. That's stressful, to be sure. But you can make it exponentially more so with the stories you tell. 

Your simple, objective current reality is that you were just laid off and need to look for work. You can make your here and now feel much more stressful by layering it with stories about how you can't do anything right, that you're probably going to end up losing your house, that you'll never get another good job in this economy, that you and your family will wind up living under a bridge...you get the idea. 

In his brilliant (if a bit dense) book The Mandala of Being, Richard Moss says there are four places we go when we leave the present moment. Those are:

• Stories about ourselves
• Stories about other people
• Stories about the past
• Stories about the future

Make it a regular habit to check your story. Are you adding fuel to the stress? Use those four directions to help you recognize when you're getting sucked into stress based on something other than the current reality you can know and prove. 

Breathe

Yes, this seems perhaps too obvious, but next time you feel stressed, stop and check your breathing. I'll bet you dollars to donuts it's shallow. Stop and spend sixty seconds breathing deeply. Let yourself un-tense.

I would love to say that all of this is the magic solution, and that if you just do these simple steps you'll never feel your blood pressure jack up when faced with stressful situations that kick up fear and anxiety. But I can't.

What I can say is that, if you start putting some of these ideas (and others like them) to work on a regular basis, you will reduce the amount of toxic stress in your life. You will feel more able to handle the challenging situations that come up, and you will feel more energy. 

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

Positive thinking for pessimists

OK, so you've heard about what a great tool positive thinking is. You've read how it can shift your focus and even your perception of what is and isn't possible. There's just one glitch - you're a natural pessimist, and positive thinking is like trying to think in a different language.

If you're naturally pessimistic (and even if you aren't), you can take a step toward a more positive outlook by simply practicing a little addition by subtraction. 

Every time you focus on the negative, it reinforces that view of the world. It reinforces why things can't be done. It reinforces what's in the way. It reinforces what's wrong with the world. 

In a way, it's like taking a shovel and digging that hole of negativity a little deeper. And the deeper you get into your negative perspective, the farther away you are from that positive perspective.

To practice addition by subtraction, just refrain from following those negative thoughts when they come up. You might not be able to keep them from coming up - especially at first - but you can choose whether or not to feed them.

Try this: For the next week, notice your your pessimistic reactions. You may want to carry a small notebook and just jot down when you notice them. The point here is to help you be aware of when that pessimism comes up. When something is a habitual way of reacting, we often don't even notice that it's happening. 

As you start noticing it more, don't worry about trying to slap a smiley face on it. That's just going to feel inauthentic, and your pessimist will quickly call bullshit.

Instead, just ask yourself, "Could I refrain from judgment on this? Is it possible that there is another way to look at it? Is it conceivable that my negative assessment isn't accurate? Or that there could be another, more positive outcome?"

When you can stop fueling the negative, you make room for more of the positive to find its way in. 

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

Take a free-range approach to your internal voices

If you're anything like most people, you have multiple voices in your head competing all at once for space. Some of them you like, so you welcome them out in the open. Others you want to keep hidden away. Not only do you not want others to see them, you don't even want to acknowledge them yourself. 

For example, let's say that your self-image is overall one of a positive, can-do type of person. The glass is half-full - and thank god there's room in the other half for oxygen, because you need that to breathe!

So one of the voices in your head that you let out regularly is your positive-thinking voice. That's the way you like to see yourself, so you let that voice out into the open as often as possible. 

But you might also have an inner pessimist. It tells you what you can't do, and what's not possible. It is driven by fear of what might happen, and wants to avoid it at all costs. You don't want that to be part of your repertoire,  so you proceed to ignore it. 

Why let the negative voices out into the open?

Why would you want to let the voices you don't like as much have their say? Here are three really good reasons:

You just might learn something.

If you persist in pretending that internal pessimist doesn't exist, you miss out on a golden opportunity to learn something that might help you create the life you want. Used judiciously, that pessimist can call attention to potential pitfalls before you experience them. It can help you navigate sometimes treacherous landscape and minimize the pain. 

They won't go away just because you pretend they don't exist. 

In fact, they might just get stronger. It's the old pressure cooker thing. Stuffing it down and not giving it any release creates more pressure.

Not only that, when you ignore something, it's effectively invisible. And when something is invisible to you, you are helpless to do anything about it. Letting it out in the open helps you keep track of what's really going on. 

Sometimes they take control unless you give them focused time.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are voices that run roughshod over the life you're living. Take an over-active internal critic, for example. It might be such a habitual voice that you scarcely notice it's not actually you. 

Giving it focused free-range time lets you listen objectively to what it has to say. You can both learn from its valid points (sometimes rephrasing them first into less toxic phrasing) and identify the aspects that aren't valid so you can counter them. 

How to go free-range

Taking a free-range approach to your chorus of internal voices isn't about letting them run amok willy nilly, hither and yon. In the US, the definition of free-range for poultry isn't a bird that lives outside. It's a bird that has access to the outside at least part of the time (and yes, I know that opens a whole different can of worms that is outside the scope of this blog). So it doesn't necessarily spend its whole life roaming free.  

It's the same with those less-savory internal voices. You don't want them to have the run of your brain, but you don't want to shove them into little boxes and stuff them down in the cellar either. 

Here are some ways you might take a free-range approach. 

Journaling

Start by taking stock of what those voices are. Do you have a an internal critic? A pessimist? Make a page in your journal just for that list. You can keep adding to it over time as you identify more. 

Pick a voice, and give it space to run (but only a defined space - it doesn't get to take over the show). Let it say what it wants to say. Get those thoughts out of your head and down onto paper. 

Then start asking questions, like:

• Is this valid?
• Is this 100% accurate?
• Are there any different ways to look at this?
• What flawed assumptions is this voice making?
• What can I learn from this voice?
• Where is the kernel of truth that I can use to improve / increase my chances for success / etc.?

Talking with a trusted friend

Another good way to give those inner voices some free-range space is to find someone in your life you can be honest with. Ask them to simply listen, not judge, argue with, or try to fix what those voices have to say. 

Once you get it out there, then you can start talking about the specifics (use the questions listed above as a starting point). Having someone else in the picture is a great way to get a more objective perspective. 

Coaching

You can take the external discussion up a notch by working with a coach like me. This is someone whose focus is helping you sort through things, find clarity, and adjust your choices and actions accordingly. 

Therapy

Sometimes the source of those voices goes deeper than a coach would be qualified to help you with (for example, if you needed to delve into childhood issues). In those cases, working with a therapist can be invaluable. 

Ultimately, whether or not you decide to take a free-range approach with those voices you're not so fond of, they're there. And that means that, in some way, they're having an impact on your life.

Deciding to consciously, purposefully let them into the open will both help you make sure they're not sitting behind the steering wheel without your realizing it, and give you the opportunity to tap into whatever valid, helpful insights they might actually have. 

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

Forget work-life balance (go with work-life flow)

Do you want work-life balance? Good luck. It's a mythical beast based on one hugely erroneous assumption - that you have control over the world. 

The reality (and you probably don't need me to tell you this) is that you DON'T have control over the world. You don't even have real control over your little corner of it (but don't worry - nobody else does either).

You can make choices and take actions that increase the likelihood of balance. You may even start to feel like you really have it under control. But something will always come along and kick the legs right out from under that illusion. 

You can be humming along in a nicely balanced state and then BLAM!, something goes south at work and you have to work double-time to keep things from going under. Or your child develops some health issues that requires all your extra time and attention. Suddenly your best efforts at balance go out the window. 

Take your best shot at creating a balanced picture, and assume that it will ebb and flow from there. Sometimes it will feel in perfect balance. Sometimes you'll have to kick your work life into overdrive. Other times demands in your personal life will come roaring up. And sometimes it all happens at once. 

Part of creating that work-life flow is staying conscious of what is happening. As the inevitable demands on your time and effort crop up, don't just blindly accept them. Make it a habit to ask questions and stay aware.  

Ask yourself questions like:

• Am I willing to take this additional commitment on? For how long?
• Does this commitment have an end point?
• If not, is the new level of demand on me sustainable?
• If not, what can I do about it?
• If I take this commitment on, what am I willing to drop?

You'll never reach that perfect sweet spot for any prolonged period of time. Life doesn't come delivered in a tidy package like that. But if you stay aware and exercise the power of choice, you can at least stay in the flow. 

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

One small question that can change your life

If you want to know what will life look like for you in five years, or even next year, look no further than the choices you are making and the actions you are taking today. You're manufacturing the future through those choices and actions. 

Some of what happens in your life will be beyond your control, true, but you also have a tremendous ability to shape, sculpt, and direct how it unfolds. In fact, whether you realize it or not, you're already doing that. You're already making choices and taking actions (or not making and taking them), and that is defining your future. 

In a post on building effective patterns of action (constructive habits, essentially), Laura Schenck said something that struck a chord and pointed the way to a simple yet incredibly powerful question that has the potential to change your life dramatically. She said:

Each small behavioral choice that you make is either taking you closer to or further away from your true goals.

You can flip that observation into a question that, if asked regularly, could make a world of difference in the life you create. The question is:

Is this choice moving me closer or distancing me from my goal?" 

Simple as that. One little question with two potential answers, asked over and over and over again, will effectively keep you on track and moving in the right direction. You can replace "goal" with "the life I want to create," or "my vision," or whatever else your big picture inspiration might look like, but the basic concept is the same. 

At the micro level asking this question can help you avoid veering off course and create an ongoing awareness of the results of your choices. 

At the macro level, the cumulative impact (of both consciously choosing to direct your choices and actions towards your goal and of refraining from choices and actions that lead you away from it) can be enormous. 

Try this: For the next week, pay attention to the choices you make and the actions you take and ask whether or not they're taking you where you want to go. You don't have to do anything different. Just notice. The goal is just to start building a more habitual awareness.

Once you start to more habitually pay attention to the long-term impact of your choices and actions, you can start taking the next step, which is asking, "What do I need to do differently?"

One little question. What do you have to lose? Or perhaps more importantly, what do you have to gain? 

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

Job Search Happy Hour (new blog)

I started a new blog recently aimed at helping job seekers minimize their stress and maximize their positive outlook. It's called Job Search Happy Hour.

I decided to start the blog as a public service of sorts because so often when I talk to someone in the job search, I hear their frustration and fear. My heart goes out to them. 

The focus of my Passion Catalyst work isn't specifically job search related, but I found myself wanting to be able to help in some way. So I decided to start a blog with links to articles, blog posts, videos, etc. with ideas on how to relieve stress and stay positive in challenging times. 

If you feel like it's a resource people should know about, please blog about it, tweet it, post it to Facebook, or even just send the url to any of your friends or colleagues who are looking for work. Thanks!

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

Making progress: Take a tip from a tightrope walker

Sometimes making progress when you jump into something new can feel as precarious as walking a tightrope. You're up to your eyeballs in the new and unfamiliar, and you're struggling to stay upright. 

 As I was watching a tightrope walker on a Cirque du Soleil DVD the other day, it occurred to me that there was a lesson there to apply to our careers and our lives in general. Here are some of the thoughts that came up. 

Focus on change where it happens: Right here & now

The tightrope walker had to cross a huge gap from one platform to the other. But to get there, he couldn't be focused on the whole distance. He had to keep his attention in the present moment. He had to focus on the step he was taking. Getting caught up in thinking about the whole distance would only serve to distract him.

So many of us look at our goals and get distracted by the big picture. We get caught up in fantasies about what is going to happen and neglect the nuts and bolts work that needs to be done right here and now. Or we let fear of falling somewhere along the line keep us from putting our best focused effort into the present moment. 

When you focus on doing your best in the step you're taking right now, the future takes care of itself. 

Take a small step and build on it

Sometimes staying in balance is the result of simply not throwing yourself offbalance. The tightrope walker didn't take big open strides as he walked forward. Instead, he put one foot immediately in front of the other, then slid it forward. 

One benefit of doing that was that there was a minimum amount of time for his foot to be potentially off track and throw his balance off.

That got me thinking of how we can do the same. Essentially it's about taking a step in the right direction and building on it, rather than feeling like we need to get it all done in one giant leap. 

Any number of things can throw us off balance as we're creating something new. Uncertainty. Fear of failure. Not knowing how to do something. Feeling overwhelmed. Not feeling up to the task. The list goes on (and on, and on). 

Taking small steps and building on them is one way to minimize the likeliness that those things will knock you completely over. As you take steps, you gain insight, understanding, and a level of mastery that you can apply to moving forward. 

Use your vision and goals to help keep you on track

Finally, as the tightrope walker slid his foot forward, the wire acted as a guide for where to keep his center of gravity. It's the same in our efforts to move forward in life, except in our case the guidance comes from sliding our feet along the trajectory that leads to the goal and the vision. 

It's easy to get lost and off balance as you move towards your goal. The busy demands of life, the shiny new ideas and opportunities, they can all distract us from what we originally set out to do. 

Make it a frequent habit to check in with that trajectory. Is what you're doing leading you where you want to go, or is your foot dangling perilously out of line? 

The tightrope walker made it to the other side. You can too. 

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

 

Got a problem? Don't double your trouble

Are you needlessly doubling the trouble in your life? 

In my response to my post yesterday about giving yourself permission to have things be less-than-stellar, Dick Richards (author of Artful Work and Your Genius at Work) shared something that struck a chord for me:

A friend who was in his eighties at the time told me he was having trouble remembering names. I asked how he felt about it, expecting that he would be upset. He said, "Oh, I've accepted that is how it is." I was stunned. Then he said, "Right now I have one problem; I can't remember names. If I don't accept it, then I'll have two problems." 

I love that. "Right now I have one problem. If I don't accept it, then I'll have two problems." 

If I could recapture all the energy I have spent over the course of my life railing against elements of my current reality I didn't want to accept, I could probably power a small city. I may just have to print that quote out and put it up on my wall.  

As Byron Katie puts it, "When I argue with reality, I lose, but only 100% of the time." And when you can't accept that reality, you double your trouble.

Letting go of that resistance doesn't mean you have to curl up in the fetal position and give up. You can still work towards solving problems or at least finding ways around them. It simply means accepting what is so you don't have to put so much energy into wishing for what isn't. 

Try this: For the next week, pay attention to where you are fighting with reality. How much energy is that taking? How would it feel to stop doubling your trouble?

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst