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.

Fear or possibility: Which does your focus feed?

A few weeks ago, it dawned on me how many times one of my friends on Facebook had made some variation on the comment, "I love how positive your focus is with your posts here." 

It's tempting to believe that my focus is so positive because I'm just an inherently positive guy. And while that is accurate to some degree, I'm also a guy who gets pissed off at the latest insanity in the news, or depressed at the seemingly endless waves of negativity. I get incensed at people's actions. I think quite often - in big, bold, capital letters - "WTF???" 

And in truth, often I'm tempted to post my outrage, or indignation, or sense of hopelessness. But it always comes down to, "Is that really what I want to add to the world?" Because really, there's enough of that out there without pouring my own fuel on that fire. 

And so I choose to focus on what I want to see more of in the world. I want to see more compassion. I want to see more tolerance. I want to see more people inspired to make the world a better place. I want to see more people living vibrant, energized lives. I want to see more love. 

In essence, the question I ask myself when deciding whether to write about or link to something is this: "Does this feed a sense of fear, or a sense of possibility?" 

That's a great question to ask in our lives as a whole, not just in assessing what we post online. Take a look at your own life. Which of those does your focus feed? 

Here are some questions to help you explore where you're directing your focus:

• Do I focus on what's wrong, or do I focus on what's right?
• Do I put more energy into focusing on people who are doing good, or people who are pissing me off?
• Do I habitually complain, or do I habitually look for what's good?
• Does the media I consume paint a generally positive or negative picture of the world?
• Do I spend more time feeling angry or feeling loving/compassionate/interested?
• Do I spend more time assigning blame (Those people are wrong!) or exploring ways to create more of what I want to see in the world?

That's far from a comprehensive list, and I encourage you to keep adding to it, but it's a good place to start. 

The pessimists and skeptics among you might be saying, "Yeah, but what about the 'real world?'" To that I would say, I'm not suggesting that you ignore the real world. Regardless of how positive your focus, challenges will find there way into your life. You will feel bumps. You will get bruised. That's just a part of life. But why go out of your way to bring more pain into your life? Why make a special effort to paint the picture darker? 

The world you experience is determined by the world you see. The lens that determines the world you see is created in large part by what you choose to focus on. 

Which does your focus feed - possibility, or fear?

--

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

Power your potential with promises

Every day, whether you are aware of it or not, you are doing something that sculpts both the way other people see you and the way you see yourself. Depending on how you handle it, that action can paint a picture of you as trustworthy and reliable or flaky, unreliable, or even dishonest.

What is that? You're making promises. 

Until a recent conversation with Jason Womack (co-author of The Promise Doctrine), my definition of a promise was pretty narrow. When I tell someone "I promise," well, that's a promise. Pretty simple. But in Jason's view, any time you create an expectation, you're making a promise. And the sum total of your kept and broken promises has a big impact on your potential. 

Your promises might actually involve the words "I promise," or they might be something like telling someone when they can expect something from you (e.g., a completed project),telling someone you'll send them some information, or even setting a time for a meeting. When you set up a meeting, implicit in that is your word that you are going to show up when you said you would. If you're late, you've broken your promise. 

If you interact with people, you make promises. It goes with the territory.  

Raising the stakes

There's something about the idea of treating every agreement as a promise that really struck me. I think part of it is that it raises the stakes on what you say you'll do. There's more of an emotional association (for me, anyway) with "I broke my promise" than with, "Oops, looks like I'm not going to get that to you when I said I would." 

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of creating unnecessary guilt or self-flagellation. But the benefit to upping the ante by seeing your commitments as promises isn't about beating up on yourself. It's about recognizing that whether people feel like they can trust you, and whether you feel like you can trust yourself, plays a key role in the potential you have in life. And whether or not you do what you say is a big part of how that trust (or lack of it) gets shaped. 

Managing your promises

Raising the level of emotional importance is just the start, though. If you do that and nothing else, your best-case scenario is that nothing changes. More likely though is that your inner critic will have more ways to club you over the head. 

The real power of raising the stakes is that it makes each commitment you make more important. You start asking, "Is this a promise I'm really committed to keeping?" It can make you more conscious of what you say yes and no to. And that can help you be more realistic about what you take on and what you tell people you will do (how many people do you know who are chronically late to meetings because they try to shove four meetings in where there is only space for three?). 

Not only that, it makes it harder for you to slack off on keeping one of those promises just because you don't feel like it, or it's inconvenient. It raises your personal stakes. 

Creating self-trust

Keeping your promises isn't just about the internal perceptions you create. It also has an internal component. The more you keep your promises, both to others and yourself, the more you can trust that you will really do what you say. And the more you trust yourself, the greater your confidence. And the greater your confidence, the more potential you have to stretch yourself and achieve your dreams. 

Whether you are an entrepreneur, a solopreneur, or employeed by a Fortune 500 company, success in your career depends not on just your ability to deliver, but on people's belief in your ability to deliver. And that belief is built by promises. 

--

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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

Creating good habits: A kindergarten approach

Have you ever tried to create a new habit, only to find yourself backsliding right back where you started? Here's a simple yet (for me, anyway) effective way to support your effort. 

Back in March, I decided that I needed to build some better habits into my life. I resolved to:

• Exercise 30 minutes a day
• Meditate 20 minutes a day
• Drink 64 ounces of water a day
• Eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day

My intent was good, but I knew that the implementation of that intention had a perilously short life span if left to its own devices. I needed a way to keep myself on track. 

I decided to take a page from The Kindergarten Handbook (OK, there's not really a Kindergarten Handbook, but there should be). I created a four-columned chart with a column for each habit and went to the local stationery store to buy some sticky stars (multi-colored, thank you very much). I put the chart on the wall where I see it all the time.

Each day that I did my new habit, I got a star in that column. Any day I didn't, I was faced with a huge, ugly, you-failed-buddy expanse of white space. 

It's amazing how effective that approach has been. There was an immediate and sustained shift in behavior. I would like to say that I responded to the reward of being able to put a star up daily for each column, but the reality is that I was more driven by not wanting to see the white space as constant reminder that I didn't do it. 

There have been many days when the only reason I did one of the new habits was because of the chart. 

I did this for a couple months, then fell off for a few weeks. And while I did each of them more consistently than when I had begun (which tells me that I really was deveoping better habits), it was still too easy to just let it slide. I started it up again a couple weeks ago, and have jumped right back to close to 100%. 

What new habits do you want to develop? Why not make a chart and experiment? Maybe it will work for you, maybe it won't (who knows - I might just be stuck developmentally back in kindergarten). But the risk is zero, and the potential upside is huge. What have you got to lose?

--

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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

Are you aligning with your excuses?

Are you making any excuses in your life that are limiting your potential? (Hint: The answer is almost guaranteed to be yes.) We all do it. We all have reasons why we're not showing up as fully as we could. We all have reasons why we're not living into our full potential. 

The question is not whether or not you have excuses. It's what kind of role you are going to let those excuses play in your life. What kind of power are you going to give them?

In her book, The Best Year of Your Life, Debbie Ford has a chapter where she looks at the excuses we all make. She says:

We all have them, and we all pretend we are made powerless by them. But if we are to have the best year of our lives, we have to be willing to give up all the excuses we've used. We have to ask ourselves this fundamental question: "Do I want to align with the greatest vision of myself, or do I want to align with my excuses?"

That's a powerful question. When I first read it, it stopped me in my tracks. I asked myself, "Which am I doing?" While my goal is to align with my greatest vision of myself, if I'm being honest, all too often I throw my lot in with my excuses. 

The either/or nature of this question is what makes it so powerful. It's probably a bit simplistic to think that you can make a sweeping, broad brush assessment as to whether you're aligned with your greatest visions of yourself or with your excuses, but you can use the question on an ongoing basis. It can be a great north star to guide your efforts. 

Make it a habit to stop and ask yourself on a regular basis, "Am I aligning with my greatest vision of myself, or my excuses?" Notice what excuses you're giving power to. 

When you see the excuses that are coming up, try a little exercise. Stop and say, "If I couldn't let this excuse stop me, or limit me, how could I get past it? How could I help my greatest vision of myself show up?"

I'm not saying that none of your excuses have any validity. We all operate within constraints in life. But - if your life is anything like mine - you probably give those excuses more weight and more power than they really merit. Making a consistent effort to shift your alignment away from your excuses and toward your greatest vision of yourself is a great way to start taking the power back. 

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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

Passion Catalyst lesson #8 - Love yourself

This is a series of lessons learned in my nine years as a Passion Catalyst.

If I could magically incorporate one piece of advice into all the success literature ever written, it would be this: Love yourself. 

Over the years I have come to believe that this isn't just a nice feel-good philosophy, but a central pillar of building a life that really lets you shine. It's not just important in the abstract. It's important in a very real, concrete way. 

Self-love vs. Self-negativity

What do I mean by love yourself? Simple. Be kind to yourself. Be compassionate with yourself. Shine a light on what's positive about you and what you've done and celebrate it. Look at what you see as negative aspects about yourself and your performances through the lens of kindness and compassion. Resist the urge to beat yourself up or tell yourself that you're not good enough. 

Sadly, I think most people struggle with this one to one degree or another. We lapse into a focus on how what we're doing isn't good enough, how we're not good enough. We identify with that last failure and make it our identity. We club ourselves over the head with every little mistake, and neglect to celebrate the beauty and success in our lives. 

And the more we're in that negative spin, the more it limits us. The more it fuels our faulty notion that we just don't have what it takes. And the more it feeds on itself like that, the more it continues to limit us.

Loving ourselves, on the other hand, supports us. It builds our belief in ourselves and what we can do. And that belief is a huge part of what defines our potential. Loving ourselves also cushions the bumps and bruises we inevitably experience along the way. It helps us see mishaps and failures as simply something that happened, rather than as something we are. It helps us notice what's good in our lives.

My own experience

I wish I could say that this lesson has been built solely from watching others, but the truth is it has been as much a part of my journey as anyone else's. 

While I have always been blessed with a healthy self-image and self-confidence, there is also a streak in me that runs completely counter to that. It comes from a part of me that feels not good enough. It's the piece of me that not only lets the inner critic run amok, but also hands it a cat-o-ninetails so it can scourge me more effectively.

Historically, when that part of me has come up, I have been brutal to myself, treating myself in a way that I would never accept from someone else. Kindness and compassion? Forget it. When I'm in that mode I'm out for blood. 

It's something I have worked hard on over the years, and thankfully over time I have seen a big shift. I still notice it wanting to rear its head occasionally, but when it does, most of the time I'm able to look at it and say, "Uhhhh...no." 

So I have personal experience of how toxic not coming from a place of self-love can be. I know firsthand how limiting it can be to let myself get wrapped up in that negative view of myself and my place in the world. 

And I also know how liberating it can be to fill that space with kindness and compassion toward myself. I have learned how much less it depletes me when I don't go to that abusive negative space, and how much more potential I can see when I come from that place of self-love. The difference is huge.  

Don't expect to flip a switch

If, like me, you find that you still have some work yet to do in this arena, resist the urge to aim for immediate change. That's a great way to bring your efforts crumbling down on top of you. 

Instead, look at moving toward kindness and compassion as an organically unfolding process. Do it choice by choice. 

Try this: 

To move toward greater self-love one choice at a time, start with this three-step process:

Notice: You can't change what you don't notice, and for many people that negative perspective has become so ingrained and habitual that it is invisible to them. For one week, work on just noticing, without judgment. You don't have to change anything. Your goal is just to start recognizing it as it pops up. Notice when you are self-critical. Watch for red flags like, "I can't," or, "I never," or, "Why do I always..." Don't beat yourself up for it. Just see it and say, "Ah, there's one." 

Throughout the day, jot down what you notice. If you find it hard to notice it as it happens, do an end-of-day review and scan back through your day. The idea is both to train your brain to be more aware of these instances and to give yourself examples to work with in the next step.

Identify alternative reactions: Pick one of the instances you noticed and start exploring ways to reframe it. Ask questions like:

• Is this negative reaction realistic?
• What if this situation happened to someone else? Would I see it in such a negative light?
• What was good about what I did?
• How could I describe this in a way that is objective and neutral?

Keep doing that every day. Eventually the goal is to catch yourself in the act and reframe your negative response on the fly. Doing this after the fact will give your brain a chance to practice and build that mental muscle. 

Catch yourself and reframe: Once you start noticing the negative instances and feel like the after-the-fact reframe is coming more naturally, it's time to start doing it on the fly. When you catch yourself slipping into that negative mode, practice saying, "OK, what are my alternatives here?" Find a reframe. 

Don't get sucked into feeling like you need to catch and reframe every single time from the beginning. Just make it a goal to start doing it, even once a day, and build on that. 

--

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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

Passion Catalyst lesson #7 - Start with yes

This is a series of lessons learned in my nine years as a Passion Catalyst.

Do you ever find yourself saying no automatically to ideas or opportunities? Is that expanding your potential, or limiting it?

Last week I wrote about staying open to possibilities and avoiding the inherent limitations of tinybox thinking. One of the ideas I talked about in the post was the importance of saying yes. I want to expand on that idea, because it's an important one. 

If you want to expand your future by making one simple, small choice, do this: default to yes until you are really sure that no is the right answer. 

When you default to saying no, it automatically shrinks your potential. Because you will almost never say no and follow that up with, "OK, let me explore whether this is a possibility." You say no and you move on, effectively eliminating whatever you just said no to from the picture.

Saying yes, on the other hand, initiates further exploration. You may eventually discover that no, in fact, is the right response. But you will also find that yes keeps on being the right answer for a percentage of those opportunities. And those are opportunities you would never have had if you started out by saying no. 

There is no risk to saying yes until it's time to say no. There is only upside.

Try this: Next time you hear yourself saying no to an idea or an approach, ask yourself, "Do I really need to say no to this yet?" Then start to explore the idea. Look for ways it might in fact make sense. Explore how it might actually be possible. 

Another helpful habit to get into is to examine why you're saying no. Often the no has nothing to do with the validity or viability of the idea. It's because of inertia. Maybe it's just outside the scope of what we're used to thinking about. Or it might feel like it's too hard, or too scary. Or because someone told us we couldn't do something like that back when we were in second grade. 

The more you recognize the driving forces behind your urge to say no, the more readily you can recognize when the right answer is actually yes. 

--

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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

Passion Catalyst lesson #6 - Tinybox thinking limits your potential

This is a series of lessons learned in my nine years as a Passion Catalyst.

One of the hardest things I have grappled with over the last nine years is my own tendency to create a small box for the future and then proceed to try to shove myself into it. 

The box is created by my expectations and a desire to control what happens. "This is what I want to see happen, and this is how I'm going to do it, and this is what it's going to look like." Once I have that defined in my head, it shuts out all the other possibilities. As a result, the infinite potential that exists shrinks to fit that box. 

It's like the future is this huge, magnificent hall where I could dance with wild delight, and I'm grunting and snorting in the corner trying to wedge myself into my tinybox, frustrated because there's so little room to even move, let alone dance.

I've gotten much better at setting my vision and then staying open to letting the story unfold in unanticipated ways, but it's still something I grapple with. 

Check your tinybox thinking

Are you falling prey to tinybox thinking? Are you unnecessarily limiting your future? To explore that, spend a little time with these questions. 

• Am I regularly looking for opportunities to say yes to?
• Do I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall, trying to make something happen that just won't?
• Do I default to saying no? 
• Am I doing anything differently than I was one year ago? Two years ago? Five years?
• Do I have a picture for how the future should look like that life isn't cooperating with?
• If an opportunity presented itself that is outside the scope of my plan, how likely am I to seriously consider it? How likely am I to dismiss it out of hand? Can I point to any instances where either of those have happened?

Reprogram your tinybox thinking

When you notice the tinybox thinking, you can start to do something about it. For example:

Practice saying yes: 

When you catch yourself saying no, practice saying yes (and remind yourself that it doesn't have to be a forever-yes). 

Stop and scan: 

When something isn't working, back up and scan the horizon. What other opportunities might be presenting themselves? 

Practice looking for new possibilities: 

Make it a goal to find one new possibility a week. Make that exploration part of your conversations with others. Maybe that new possibility is a way to collaborate with someone, or learning a new skill. Maybe it is committing to taking a step toward building a network in the career direction you really want to take. Or it might be deciding to take on a project you want to do, but feel some fear about. 

You don't have to take action on all those possibilities. The point is just to exercise the ability to recognize them. 

Act on new possibilities: 

Once you start expanding the scope of possibilities you see, you can start choosing ones to act on. As you notice them, jot them down. Then, on a regular basis, review the list you have created and ask, "Which one(s) do I want to do?" The more you act, the more comfortable you will be turning that potential into reality.

Practice staying open and, step-by-step, your future will automatically expand. 

--

If you liked this post, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed.

--

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

Passion Catalyst lesson #5 - Success is not a solo sport

This is a series of lessons learned in my nine years as a Passion Catalyst.

As I was transforming myself from Curt the marketing guy to Curt the Passion Catalyst, I realized I had a lot to learn. I had put a framework around something I had done naturally, informally for years, but the career passion spin was new. 

I decided to start building a "knowledge base" by interviewing people who had successfully pursued their passions. As I did, a few common themes started to emerge. One of the big ones, expressed in some way by pretty much everyone I talked to, was this: "I couldn't have done it alone."

The more clients I see moving toward their own transformation, and the more I experience of my own journey,the more convinced I am that the support of others is as vital to our success as oxygen is to staying alive. 

That support might come in any of a number of packages. For example:

• Emotional
• Knowledge (e.g., a mentor)
• Logistical / practical
• Networking / connections
• Creative / brainstorming / idea-bouncing
• Spiritual
• Financial
• Motivation / inspiration

My own path has been packed with examples when, if not for the support of others, I would have just gone splat. Some of them have related to my business, others have related to other parts of life (which in turn related to my business, because life is a holistic system, with every piece interconnected). 

On the non-work side, I have written about the support of my friend Sharon during some really challenging times with my health. On the work side, one of my favorite examples took place in the first year of my Passion Catalyst work. 

The 11th-hour reprieve

As you might imagine, recreating myself with no formal background to stand on other than, "This is who I am - I do this naturally," presented some challenges. In fact, that first year was brutal. After ten months of trying to make something happen and making about a third of what I needed to meet my monthly obligations, I finally threw my hands up and said, "I give up." I resigned myself to having to go back to the marketing world. 

Just prior to that I had reached out to Richard Tait, co-founder of the game company Cranium, and asked him if I could interview him to get his career passion insights (his e-mail address had been on their web site, and I just lobbed the request over to him). He graciously said yes. 

Over the course of our conversation, I told him about my Passion Catalyst work, and mentioned some discussion groups I had been organizing. Something about what I was doing must have resonated with him, because later that day he sent me an e-mail offering to talk to one of my groups. 

Rather than something small-scale like that, I decided to create an event called the Passion People Speaker Series. Richard was the first speaker. That month, for the first time in the ten months since I had hung out my shingle as a Passion Catalyst, I earned enough to pay all my bills. And I could trace all that additional business to the event in some way, whether it had been someone who had heard about me via the event promotion, or someone I met at the event. 

In a very real way, my Passion Catalyst work exists today because of Richard's generous offer of support eight years ago. I'm not sure if I would have picked it up again after feeling so battered and bruised by the attempt. Richard's support, whether he realized it or not (I'm sure he didn't), amounted to an 11th hour reprieve. 

Do a support check

Having the support you need to succeed is too important to leave to chance. Take a look at your own life and ask some questions:

• Where do I get my support?
• Where could I get my support?
• What kind of support do I need? 
• What kind of support am I missing?
• Who can I reach out to?

And to balance the equation out and keep the energy flowing, complement those questions with these:

• Who needs my support?
• Who can I help, and how?

Be conscious about what you need, be purposeful and intentional about bringing it into your life, and be proactive in reaching out to find it, and the support you need will show up.

--

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

Passion Catalyst lesson #4 - You are your own best expert

This is a series of lessons learned in my nine years as a Passion Catalyst.

One of the first things I tell new clients is, "I don't have the faintest idea what's best for you." I follow that up with, "What I do have is an unshakable belief that you do!"

Over nine years of watching clients go from confusion to clarity, not once has the answer to what is right for them come from an outside source. They may feel like they don't have the answer at first, but what's really happening is that the answer is simply obscured. It's there; it's just covered up. And our focus is on uncovering it. Think Indiana Jones hacking through the jungle to find the treasure covered in overgrowth. 

What is the number one reason people's self-expertise is obscured? Focus. 

More to the point, they have an over-developed focus on external factors, and under-developed focus on that internal self-expertise. And that isn't a reflection on them. When I hear people get down on themselves because "I'm __ years old and I still don't know what kind of career I would really love," I always respond with one question: "Why would you?"

Think about it. We live in a culture that celebrates action and achievement. But self-awareness? When was the last time you saw an Introspection 101 class? So when our environment focuses our attention on that external aspect, if we happen to stumble into a career we love it's really more luck than anything. 

Want to build your self-expertise? Keep these three pieces of the puzzle in mind:

1. Develop the self-expertise
2. Compile the self-expertise
3. Use the self-expertise

Develop the self-expertise

I think of developing that self-expertise as an excavation process. The answers are there, but they're going to require a little digging. One great place to start is the Passion Factor exploration I mentioned in lesson learned #1 (in a nutshell, identify the common themes present when you feel energized by first asking what you love doing, and then asking why). 

There are a lot of great books with a lot of great approaches to self-exploration (I'm fond of my own e-book, The Occupational Adventure Guide). And that's where your self-expertise starts. Get to know what makes you tick so you can consciously make it part of your decisions. Otherwise it's all guesswork, and that is ineffective at best.

Compile the self-expertise

Another huge mistake I see people making is doing all this self-exploration work and then just letting most of the insights float away. Maybe a percentage of the insights they gained stick with them, but the rest disappear again. Why? It's hard to keep something in your head when your attention is elsewhere. So as they go about the day-to-day business of life, those insights start to drop off the radar screen.

To make the most of the self-expertise you are gaining, compile the key things you learn along the way. Think of it as creating a reference guide to what makes you tick. Instead of leaving it on pages and pages and pages of a journal, for example, summarize the key points on one page for an at-a-glance view of what you have discovered. 

You can create various categories for it, for example:

• What energizes me
• Ways I get in my own way
• Questions to frequently ask
• Dangers to be aware of

Not only will this give you a useable reference guide as you make decisions going into the future, it will also serve as an ongoing reminder. The question I always ask my clients is, "How much of this will you remember in five years when you haven't been intensely focused on it week in and week out?" Your self-expertise is only as robust as what you can remember. 

Use the self-expertise

Self-expertise is great, but it's little more than glorified navel-gazing if you don't do something with it. The great thing about compiling your insights in one place is that now you have a tool you can use as you move forward. 

For example, in my work with clients I have them make a list of the underlying themes that tend to be present when they're on fire (which we identified by exploring what they love doing and why). Putting those in one place creates what I describe as an internal compass. It's a distillation of where the energy comes from that they can use to both generate ideas and evaluate options. It takes the guesswork out of the process. 

If you do lots of great self-exploration, but then it stays buried in a file in a drawer, the odds are good that you will only harness a fraction of its value. Make the most out of the time and effort you have invested by summarizing the insights you gain in an easily digestible format. Then make a habit of referring to it frequently. 

--

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

Passion Catalyst lesson #3 - Meaning is a powerful motivator

This is a series of lessons learned in my nine years as a Passion Catalyst.

During the financial meltdown of 2008, I went through several months when my business disappeared. I was literally self-unemployed. Not only did I have no revenue coming in, the horizon looked devoid of income as well. 

The stress built and built as I continued to bang my head against the wall, trying to make something happen. 

BANG! 

nothing

BANG! BANG! BANG!

more nothing

Finally, one morning in December I threw up my hands and said, "I give up! I can't do this. I can't make this happen. I don't have what it takes."

That lasted till mid-afternoon. 

Despite my best intentions, I just couldn't bring myself to quit. What I felt (and feel) called to do and the difference I felt called to make was just too powerful. It was like the universe came along, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, picked me up and said, "Sorry pal. You don't get to quit." And so I didn't. 

I would love to be able to say that the story has one of those magical endings where as soon as I decided not to quit everything aligned in my favor and the floodgates of prosperity opened. In reality I struggled for several more months. But despite the lack of a Hollywood ending, the important thing was that I opted to stick with it. 

In retrospect, that experience felt like a watershed for me. I can guarantee you that, if it had only been a case of, "I want to do this work because it's so much fun," there's no way I would have stuck it out. No way in hell. But because I felt such a powerful call to the difference I have the potential to make with this work, I almost felt like I had no choice but to figure out a way to stay with it. 

I'm not suggesting that everyone will go through the kind of challenging time I did, or even that they need to be as obstinate as I was in refusing to yield to the smackdown I was getting (in fact, I really wouldn't recommend it). But at some point, you're going to hit bumps and you're going to get bruises. And if you are working towards something that really matters to you, it will be infinitely easier to maintain your momentum in the face of those challenges.

Meaning is a powerful motivator.

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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

Passion Catalyst lesson #2 - Authenticity creates confidence

This is a series of lessons learned from my nine years as a Passion Catalyst. 

For the first ten years of my career, I worked madly to try to make a success out of being who I wasn't. Simply put, I was on the wrong path. I was doing work that ultimately didn't fit who I was. And it showed.

One of the effects of wearing that mask was a constant feeling that I was missing something, that I needed to work harder to gain that extra edge. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was missing something - me! 

I wouldn't have admitted it at the time, but trying to be someone else had a negative effect on my confidence. I was always a bit off balance, trying fit into the faux self I thought my career required.

I started my Passion Catalyst work by literally putting a framework around what I had been doing naturally, accidentally for years. There is no mask to it - what you see is pretty much what you get. Who I get to be day in and day out is deeply aligned with who I am. And that has made a world of difference in my confidence about the work I do.

One of the things I often say is, "You can never be anyone else half as well as you can be you." My clients come to me because they want to create a career that lights them up. And what that really means is finding a career path that lets them be who they are. 

When you're trying to be who you're not (which, sadly, is the case for a big chunk of the people out there in the work world), it creates a tension that saps your energy away. It's like driving a car with tires severely out of alignment. You're constantly having to put effort into keeping pointed straight ahead. 

Being who you are, on the other hand, is easy! There is no friction, and no energy drain. You don't have to worry about the car driving off the road. And just that one thing - knowing you can just show up naturally and not worry about keeping the mask on - can have a significant impact on the confidence you feel about your work. 

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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

Most people's concept of passion is limiting: Lessons from 9 years as a Passion Catalyst - #1

This is a series of lessons learned in my nine years as a Passion Catalyst.

If I asked you what your passion is, what would you say? Most people would give some kind of answer like travel, or cooking, or software programming, or writing, or helping kids, or any of a bazillion things that people feel passionate about.

And while none of those answers would be wrong, they would only represent a limited snapshot of where that feeling of passion could come from. 

As I see it, what we see as our passions are really only vehicles that allow us to experience what I call our Passion Factors - the underlying themes that tend to be present when we feel energized and inspired. And that fact gives us exponentially more opportunity to find work we love than most people realize.  

Definition of passion

To explain what I mean by that, I'll start with my definition of passion: "The energy that comes from bringing more of YOU into what you do." It's being who you are, and doing what you're naturally drawn to. It is, for example, the difference between wearing the soul-sucking mask of my previous career as a marketer and being unabashedly myself in - and unabashedly energized by - the work I do now (nothing inherently wrong with marketing as a career, it was just wrong for me). 

Find your Passion Factors

If that definition of passion makes sense, the big question is, "How do I consciously, purposefully 'bring more of ME into what I do?'" How do you apply that in the real world?

My short answer is this: Find your Passion Factors, then find ways to incorporate them into your career path. To identify your Passion Factors, ask, "What lights me up?" Then ask, "Why?" Reverse engineer the things you love doing - work or play - to identify the underlying reasons why you love them. 

As you do that, you will start to see recurring reasons why, even in things you love that seem completely unrelated (for example, a key reason why I love both my Passion Catalyst coaching and travel photography is a sense of exploration and discovery, which is a theme that shows up again and again for me). 

What will let you experience those Passion Factors?

When you have identified your Passion Factors, you can ask, "What kinds of careers are out there that will allow me to experience these?" And far from being limited to one path, there are probably numerous paths that would let you experience those Passion Factors. That's what I mean when I say that the things you are passionate about are really simply vehicles that let you experience those underlying themes.

And when you shift your perspective from "what is my passion" to "what will allow me to experience those Passion Factors," it blows the doors wide open with potential directions that will let you feel energized by the work you do. 

Think both big picture and small picture

You can use your understanding of your Passion Factors at the big picture level (what career path should I follow?) and the small picture level (how can I experience more of these Passion Factors in the work I'm doing right now?). 

If you want to expand the passion potential in your career, it all starts with awareness. Identify your Passion Factors, then step-by-step, choice-by-choice, start incorporating them into your future. 

[Want to read all the lessons learned? Here's a compilation (at the bottom).]

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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

Lessons from 9 years as a Passion Catalyst

[Scroll down to the bottom for links to the full series.]

Nine years ago today, I took the first step on a journey that would take me from feeling like a professional malcontent to being a Passion Catalyst. I took off the mask I had been wearing for so many years in my career and started showing up as who I am. It has made all the difference. 

I wrote more about taking the plunge in a post a year ago. Today though, I have been thinking less how it happened and more about what I've learned in the last nine years. 

There's an interesting dual view doing work like this, helping people create careers and lives that energize and inspire them. On the one hand, I get to watch other people's journeys unfold. I get to see the obstacles they encounter - both internal and external - and watch as they find their way past them. I get to see what helps them really get traction and move forward. I get a front row seat on both the frustration and the joy that the process inevitably creates. 

At the same time, I'm also just another poor schlep trying to find my own way. Far from being the mythical all-knowing expert who has it all together, I have my share of frustrations and foibles. Sometimes I feel like I'm on top of the world, and occasionally I question what the hell I'm doing. Sometimes my focus seems laser sharp, and now and then it seems clear as mud. Same as anyone else, really. 

From both those perspectives - both my own journey and the journeys of others - I have had a chance to learn an enormous amount about pursuing passion and creating what I describe as FUEL, a "fully energized life."

My initial intent was to write one blog post describing some of the lessons learned. But as i started whiteboarding them, I saw that the post would be waaaaay too long. So instead I am making it a series. 

Stay tuned for my lessons learn from nine years as a Passion Catalyst. And thanks for reading!

Lesson compilation

Most people's concept of passion is limited

Authenticity creates confidence

Meaning is a powerful motivator

You are your own best expert

Success is not a spectator sport

Tinybox thinking limits your potential

--

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

42 questions to ask when you hit a career roadblock

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know what a fan I am of the power of the mighty question mark. Over on the US News & World Report blog this morning, I take a look at 42 questions to ask when you hit a career roadblock. Check it out, and if you have any to add to the list, I would love to hear them. 

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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

Career passion tip: Seek change

I'm no psychic, but I can guarantee one thing about your future beyond a shadow of a doubt. It's going to entail change. 

Most people resist change kicking and screaming, but that doesn't stop it from coming down the pike. It's part of the human experience, and it's going to happen whether you like it or not! 

So if change is inevitable, use it to your advantage. Instead of resisting it, tap into its potential to sculpt your career to increasingly reflect what energizes and inspires you. Think of incremental change as a tool to help you keep moving towards work you love (and make sure you stay there once you find it). 

Too many people look at their jobs like they are chiseled in stone. But in reality, most people’s work is much more malleable than they realize, especially when they add time as a variable. Small steps taken over time can add up to a big shift. And what is out of reach today eventually comes into reach when you combine choices and action with time.

Make a habit of seeking change. First spend some serious time taking a look inside. Figure out what makes you tick. Identify the common themes are that tend to be present when you feel energized (read Does your career fit for some ideas on how to go about that). 

As you develop the habit of seeking change, focus on incorporating more of what energizes you and reducing what drains you. The insights you gained in your self-exploration provide the building blocks for change. Using those insights you can continually ask, “How can I build on what is working? How can I change what I don’t like?”

Some changes will be big, and others small. Over time, you just might be surprised at just how much potential there is for change when you consciously, consistently look for opportunities to sculpt your work.

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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