The M.A.P. Maker

Welcome to The M.A.P. Maker blog!

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.

Visual Self-exploration: Your Life in Pictures #3

Welcome to this week's installment in the Your Life in Pictures series. In this series, you will find photos to use as a point of departure for self-exploration.

Q: What insight does this picture offer about your career? About your life?

[Click on the image to see it full-sized.]

Pictures have great potential for self-exploration, because they provide a point of departure for asking, "how does this apply to my own life?" There is no specific meaning to any of these pictures. They are simply here to give your brain/intuition/creative mind/etc. something to bounce off.

Your exploration could be intuitive and non-linear, or it could be a logical analysis of an idea the picture prompts.

Need help sparking your picture-based self-exploration? Try these questions.

More information on self-exploration using the Your Life in Pictures series.

Visit the Your Life in Pictures archive.

--

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

The power of the crossroads of possibility

Each and every moment, you are at a crossroads with an infinite number of paths. Make one choice, and you head one direction. Make a different choice, and you zip off in another direction. When you look at it that way, the potential malleability of life is mind-boggling.

And yet most of us fool ourselves into an artificially narrow view of possibility. We make assumptions about the way things are and - poof! - a path of possibility disappears. We persist with limiting beliefs that have no basis in our current reality. Poof! There goes another path.

What would happen if you really and truly looked at each moment, not as simply a continuation of an inevitable single-track path, but as a crossroads jam packed with potential directions?

What if you trained yourself to stop and ask, "What are the possibilities here? Where am I going? Where do I want to go? What choices or steps can I find right here and now that would lead me - even incrementally - towards that goal?

One way to start harnessing the power of the crossroads of possibility is to watch for times when you feel limited and make a game of finding options. Or watch for limiting ways you spend your time (mindless TV, or example, or listening to people complain) and explore other ways that could lead you in a more positive direction.

Try this: For the next week, practice noticing crossroads moments. Find moments when you can say, "Is this leading me in a direction I want? What other options are there?" It could be something as simple as being tempted to turn on the TV and tune out, but instead grabbing a book that is helping you explore a new direction. 

The power of the crossroads of possibility isn't in making one monumental choice to take a new direction (though that certainly does happen). The real power, and what makes it so relevant to everyone regardless of their current life circumstances, is in the cumulative potential for change as the choices you make at each of those crossroads add up. 

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, the saying goes. And each single step starts from a new crossroads of possibility.

Where is your journey taking you?

--

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

Will you affirm the Charter for Compassion?

A while ago I posted about the upcoming Charter for Compassion. As I write this, 17, 710 people have affirmed it. Will you?

Watch this video and visit the Charter for Compassion site. Clicking on "affirm" is easy. The challenge - and the potential goldmine - is incorporating the ideas more deeply into your life and spreading the ideas to others. If you want to make a difference with the way you show up in the world, this is a great place to start.

Experiment: Do a news toxicity test

Much of how we experience the world comes from the lens through which we view it. If that lens is weighted towards a sense of hope and possibility, that's the frame of reference we'll use as we go through our lives. If it's weighted towards fear and negativity, we'll experience more of that.

That lens can have a profound impact on the life we create. Hope and possibility open doors to potential. Fear and negativity limit us.

One way we create our world view lens is through what we choose to reinforce on a regular basis.That's why the news can have such a toxic effect. Every day we're bombarded with so much violence, despair, helplessness and anger. It contributes little to our quality of life, and its cumulative effect is corrosive.

Instead of jumping up on my soapbox and trying to convince you not to watch the news, I want to encourage you to try an experiment.Think of it as a news toxicity test.

News toxicity test

Let's start with the premise that repeated exposure to a message - whether negative or positive - is likely to reinforce that perspective. If that repeated message is negative, especially if it is significantly negative, it can be highly toxic to your world view.

The purpose of this experiment is to explore the degree to which the news you watch reinforces that negative story.

Keep watching the news every day, and start really paying attention to what you're seeing. Keep a pad of paper handy. Rate each story you watch on a continuum. At one end of the continuum are the stories that feed a sense of fear and negativity, and on the other are the stories that feed a sense of hope and possibility. Something like this:

Once you have evaluated the news for a week, it's time to score it. See the numbers under the continuum? At the end of the week, go through and tally up the scores of all the news stories you have watched. (So, for example, if you have three news stories, one of which scored 1, one of which scored 0, and one of which scored -2, your final score would be -1.)

If the total score is negative, that means you are choosing to open up your head and pour a negative perspective into it. And when you do that day after day after day, it's a little like waves eroding the shore, bit-by-bit.

What is the energy impact?

Another way of looking at it is asking the question, "Does this energize me, or does it drain me? Does it move me towards a high energy state, or a low energy state?" Again, you can use a continuum to help you evaluate it.

Use the same process as above and add up the numbers at the end of the week. If your goal is to maximize the energy you have in any given day, and the the final score of the news you watch is negative, once again, you're choosing to invite something into your brain that is counter to your goal.

One final note on this. To make it as simple as possible, I gave each score an equal weight. But the reality is that the negative scores - the fear and anxiety inducing ones, like terrorism or a murderer on the loose - often have a far greater emotional impact than stories in the positive end of the spectrum. So when you tally them up, they may actually be larger negative numbers (like - 3 and - 4), because their impact is greater.

--

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

Visual Self-exploration: Your Life in Pictures #2

Welcome to this week's installment in the Your Life in Pictures series. In this series, you will find photos to use as a point of departure for self-exploration.

This week's photo:

[Click on the image to see it full-sized.]

Q: What insight does this picture offer about your career? About your life?

Pictures have great potential for self-exploration, because they provide a point of departure for asking, "how does this apply to my own life?" There is no specific meaning to any of these pictures. They are simply here to give your brain/intuition/creative mind/etc. something to bounce off.

Your exploration could be intuitive and non-linear, or it could be a logical analysis of an idea the picture prompts.

Need help sparking your image-based self-exploration? Try these questions.

More information on self-exploration using the Your Life in Pictures series.

Visit the Your Life in Pictures archive.

--

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

Increase your potential with trips off the beaten track

Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. You will be certain to find something you have never seen before.

~ Alexander Graham Bell

Habit and routine play a positive role in life, to be sure. They help us move forward without wasting energy on mundane recurring choices. But too often they take on a life of their own.

When habit and routine define your path rather than enhance it, it's easy to get bogged down in a rigid, limiting rut that ultimately narrows down your possibilities. Every day becomes a carbon copy of the day before. With no new inputs, the potential for new outcomes dwindles and life decays into a stultifying, enlessly repeating loop.

Yikes! But what is the solution? Sure, it would be nice if you could just take the plunge and break free of your daily routine, never to be shackled again, but that's not always possible. What then?

Try making a habit of taking day trips off the beaten path. Find ways to add new inputs into your system on a daily basis. Make a list of ways you can shake things up, learn something new, stimulate a different way of thinking, or approach things in a different way.

Try this: Brainstorm ways you can take day trips off the beaten path. Trade tips with friends and colleagues. Create a list (and keep adding to it over time) and commit to doing one thing from the list each day.

Here are some ideas to get you started (there are a bazillion more than this, so don't stop here)...

• Talk to people who have taken a drastically different path than you. Make it your mission to learn one thing new from each of them.
• Talk to someone who has recently made a huge change in their life. What have they learned? What helped them succeed?
• Buy a magazine focused on a topic you know nothing about. Buy a different one each week and learn at least one new thing from it.
  
• Approach a problem using an approach that isn't familiar to you. If you are typically analytical, take a creative approach. Ask people whose standard mode is the creative approach for help. If you are typically creative and intuitive, spend some time tapping into the analytical side.
• Get out of your comfort zone. The first thing here might be to explore what your comfort zone is (through journaling, for example), then brainstorm ways to step outside it.
• Change your surroundings. It always amazes me how much a simple change of scenery - even one as simple as a trip to a coffee shop to work - can stimulate my brain.
• Look at the world from different perspectives. Take an opinion you don't agree with (for example, a political opinion), and try to understand where people who hold that opinion are coming from. You don't have to agree with them, just try to create a deeper understanding of why they think the way they do.
• Take a class that is complementary to your path. Make a list of skills are knowledge you would like to gain that is outside the immediate scope of your current focus, but relevant. Pick one you find especially interesting and take a class to learn more. 
• Take a class on something that has absolutely nothing to do with anything you currently focus on.
• Read. Read. Read. (Did I mention, read?) This is one of the easiest ways to, as the quote above says, "dive into the woods." 

This is just an off-the-top-of-my-head list of ideas for how you might take day trips off the beaten track. I would love to hear more ideas. What ideas do you have?

--

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

How are you feeding your tenacity?

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.

~ Louis Pasteur

Do you want to raise the odds that you will succeed in turning your dreams into reality? Give the heave-ho to the notion that it's all going to happen with the flip of a switch (because in all likelihood, it won't). Replace it with a commitment to tenacity.

One of the biggest obstacles standing in our way as we look at creating a career and a life that energizes and inspires us is our cultural obsession with immediate gratification. We want results and we want them now, and if we can't get them now we deem those results to be impossible.

Instead of asking, "How can I make this happen RIGHT NOW," ask, "How can I support my long-term commitment to making this happen?"

Tenacity doesn't happen in a vacuum. Yes, some of it has to do with sheer grit and guts, but there are many other factors that feed that tenacity. For example:

Your goal: Is what you're trying to achieve something you really care about? Is the drive to make it happen coming from deep inside you, or are you driven by surface-level motivators (like what other people think)?

The more personally compelling your goal is, the more determination you naturally have to see it through to fruition.

Support: The more external support you can incorporate into the picture, the less you have to fight your way through alone. And the less energy you have to put into fighting your way through alone, the more energy you have to put into taking ongoing action.

Self-care: The better you take care of your body, the more energy you have to keep moving forward. Diet and exercise can play a huge role in having the juice to keep going. Care of your mind and spirit is important as well. For example, incorporating a practice like meditation can help ground you and keep your energy from fraying and flying off in all directions.

What about you? What are you doing to nourish your tenacity? What could you do?

Try this: Sit down and brainstorm as many things as you can think of that would feed that tenacity (you might start by reading my recent post on the US News & World Report blog, 7 Steps to Sustain a Career Change).

Pick one thing from the resulting list and start taking steps towards incorporating it more fully into your life. If you make a habit of doing that on a regular basis, over time your tenacity will be more and more deeply nourished.

--

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

Visual self-exploration: Your life in pictures #1

[Click on the image to see it full-sized.]

This is the first in my Your Life in Pictures series, where you will find photos to use as a point of departure for self-exploration.

Q: What insight does this picture offer about your career? About your life?

Need help sparking your image-based self exploration? Try these questions.

More information on self-exploration using the Your Life in Pictures series.

Visit the Your Life in Pictures archive.

--

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

Self-exploration: Your life in pictures

I've been looking at the world through a camera viewfinder since I was ten. Photography is high on the list of things that light me up, so it was probably only a matter of time before I found a way to incorporate it into my focus helping people create careers and lives that energize and inspire them.

Today I am starting a new series on this blog, Your Life in Pictures. Each Monday, I will post a new picture to use as a point of departure for self-exploration. 

The basic idea

The basic idea is to look at each picture and ask, "What does this mean to me?" You might want to focus on a specific part of your life - e.g., "How does this relate to what's happening in my career?" Or you might want to simply let the insights flow about whatever part of your life the exploration leads you to. 

Doorway to insights & ideas

Part of the power of self-exploration through images is the way it taps into the non-linear, intuitive part of your mind. 

The picture doesn't have any inherent meaning. It simply gives your mind something to respond to. It's a starting point.

The self-exploration in the Your Life in Pictures series isn't about "interpreting the picture." In fact, it isn't about the picture at all. It's about what doors of insight the picture opens about yourself and your life. There are no wrong answers or insights, so open the floodgates and let them flow.

The next post will be the first image. After that, watch for a new one every Monday.

Enjoy!

--

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

Is your purpose greater than your challenges?

Even in the best of times, life can be bumpy. Challenges are a part of life, and the better equipped you are to overcome them, the greater your potential.

One factor that adds rocket fuel to your ability to blast past problems is to really want to reach what's on the other side of them. When you care more about what you are trying to do than you do about the unpleasantness that the challenge brings up, you're motivated to find a way past it.

In a recent blog post, Jon Gorden puts it this way. “Your purpose must be greater than your challenges.”

I love that way of thinking about it. When you have a compelling purpose to what you do, it pulls you forward past the challenge. That doesn't mean that the challenge won't be difficult, or painful, but when you put it on the scale and weigh it against that purpose, plowing forward is a no-brainer.

The M in M.A.P. Maker stands for meaning. In the sense I talk about it here, meaning comes from working towards making an impact on something beyond yourself that has a significant positive charge for you. It comes from working towards making the kind of difference that inspires you.

One of benefits of having that sense of meaning in the picture is exactly what Jon describes. It becomes greater than your challenges. When you're working towards an outcome that inspires you, it's easier to resist identifying with the challenge, and you put your energy more naturally into moving past it.

Plus, it's a lot easier to experience the bumps and bruises in pursuit of something you really care about than in pursuit of something you don't.

--

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

Just say no...to saying no

I'm always fascinated when I go to the doctor and they tap my knee to test my reflexes. The doc gives a tap with the little rubber mallet and up bounces my leg like it has a life of its own.

Some people's tendency to say no reminds me a little bit of that reflex reaction. They automatically shoot down their dreams, cut down ideas, and stonewall possibilities, all with those two little letters. No.

"No, that won't work. No, I can't because... No, no, no!"

Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to saying no. Saying no has it's place. A suggestion like, "Hey, lets walk across this busy eight-lane freeway instead of using the overpass," for example, is a prime candidate for a well-placed no. 

But too often, people say no out of habit. They shut down the possibilities when, if they stop to really think about it, they just might be able to find a way to say yes. 

A few days ago, I wrote a post about the power of saying yes. But to consciously focus on saying yes, you first have to notice when you're saying no. And when no becomes a reflex, you often don't even notice it.

Try this: For the next week, try going on a "no fast." Pay attention to when you say no. You might even want to carry a little notebook along with you and jot a note down when you notice it.

Each time you find yourself reflexively saying no, stop and ask yourself, "How can I say yes? Is there a piece of this that makes sense for me? Is there part of this idea I can embrace? Is there an alternative approach I can take that will allow me to do this?"

If you try it, I would love to hear how it goes. 

--

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

Are you cheating the world of your gifts?

As I've said many times before, I think finding passion is one of the best investments in your career you can make. It energizes you, makes you more confident, and fuels your persistence. 

The flipside of that is that wedging yourself into a box that doesn't fit who you are (which is what most people do in their careers) can drain your energy, leave you feeling off balance, and make you reluctant to show up to work tomorrow, let alone stick with it for the long term.

There's one more thing that happens when you don't pursue a path that aligns with what lights you up. You cheat the world of the impact that you are uniquely qualified to make.

I'm not sure that I buy that each of us has one specific thing that is "why we're here." What I do believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that each of us are uniquely qualified to put the gifts we have and the juice that using them gives us to use in a positive way. We each have a set of skills and knowledge and energizers that can be put to optimal use.

Think of it as optimizing how you show up in the world. There are a number of variables at play - your skills, your knowledge, your innate abilities, and what energizes you. Your task is to put those variables together in the best possible way for both you and the world around you.

When you take a shoe-horn approach to your career, you are inherently sub-optimizing the way you show up. Why? Because you have chosen a path that doesn't fit. It doesn't allow the full scope of who you are and the potential you have to show up. There's no room for flow. And that means the impact you can have in the world is restricted. 

Take a look at your own career. Do you feel the flow, or do you need a shoe-horn to pry yourself into work every morning? Are you cheating the world of the gifts you have to offer?

--

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

Staying focused: Why it's hard, and what to do about it

You know those machines they use for drawing lotto numbers, with numbered ping pong balls bouncing around inside? Sometimes my brain feels like that. Dozens of little brain pong balls bouncing around and demanding my attention.

Needless to say, focus can be a challenge. So I was especially interested in this article on the brain science behind why it can be hard to focus, and what to do about it.

It turns out that focusing is less about maintaining attention and more about managing distractions. Putting the brakes on when those distractions pop up, as it were. Unfortunately, the area of our brain responsible for that braking action isn't especially adept at it. As the writer, David Rock (author of the new book, Your Brain at Work), notes:

Our braking system is part of the most fragile, temperamental and energy-hungry region of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. Because of this, your braking system only works at its best every now and then. If cars were built like this you'd never survive your first drive down to the store.

When you put those brakes on can play an important role. The earlier, the better.

It turns out that, like the old saying goes, timing is everything. Once you take an action, an energetic loop commences that makes it harder to stop that action. Many activities have built-in rewards, in the form of increased arousal that holds your attention. Once you open your email program and see the messages from people you know, it's so much harder to stop yourself from reading them. Most motor or mental acts also generate their own momentum.

So what does that mean to your efforts to stay focused and productive? Here's what Rock suggests:

And here's a big take away from all this. Manage what you focus on. Pay attention to your attention, and stop yourself from getting on the wrong train of thought early, before it takes over. This is the oppositive of being mindless: it's being mindful.

The best way to do that is to practice being aware of your own thoughts, by activating your observer function.

Put another way, the more aware you are of what's going on in your mind, the more potential you have to guide where those brain pong balls go, and which ones you choose to act on. 

How about you? What helps you focus? 

--

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

Live into your potential with the Rule of Yes

Have you ever found yourself looking at something you would really like to do and responded with, "Yes but...?" Yes, that's a great idea but... I'd really love to but... The variations are endless, and every time you say it, you strangle your potential.

I want to encourage you to banish that combination of words from your vocabulary forever. 

In her brilliant book, Improv Wisdom, Patricia Ryan Madsen offers an alternative to, "yeah but." The alternative is "yes and."

The book takes a look at how the principles of theatrical improv can apply to our lives. One of those principles is the Rule of Yes. As she describes it:

The spirit of improvising is embodied in the notion of "yes and." Agreement begins the process; what comes next is to add something or develop the offer in a positive direction.

How often do we block our potential with yeah-buts? Yeah but is a dead end. It stops the show and brings things to a grinding halt.

When we say yes and to life, we open up to the possibilities. Rather than look for reasons to go no further, we look for ways to move things forward in a positive way. We actively try to find the potential of the moment, regardless of the circumstance. 

So for example instead of, "Yeah, it would be great to pursue a career I love, but I can't because...," you might say, "Yes, I have these obstacles, and these are some steps I might be able to take to explore a way around them."

Try this: Next time you hear yourself saying some variation on yeah but, stop and replace it with yes and. Ask yourself, how can I say yes? How can I stop blocking? What will move me forward?

--

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

Free career passion teleseminar: How to Get Wild About Work

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I think passion is one of the best investments in your career you can make.

When you’re on fire about what you do, it fuels your success, increases your confidence, and feeds your persistence. It also shines brightly to the people around you.

On Wednesday the 4th at noon Pacific, I'm doing a free teleclass. In it, I will share a nuts-and-bolts approach to tapping into the power of passion.

The work you do has the potential to be an incredible source of energy and inspiration. If you want to tap into the high-voltage energy that comes from a career that is an extension of who you really are - not just the mask that so many people wear in their jobs - this teleclass is for you!

Want to join in? You can find more information & registration details here.

I hope to "see" you there!

--

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