The M.A.P. Maker

What's your Big Why?

Let's face it, however much you love your work, there will always be times when it will be complete crap. Maybe things go wrong and you have to deal with it, or you have to buckle down and do something that isn't all that much fun but needs to be done. Whatever.

If you rely entirely on the Whee Factor ("Wheee! I can't believe I get paid for this!") for the energy in your work, it can be challenging to get through those stretches, because the Whee Factor is missing.

That's one of the reasons a focus on making a personally meaningful difference (in addition to the parts that make you go whee) can be so beneficial. It gives you a bigger context beyond just what is happening to you day to day. When you put your passion to work towards something greater than yourself, there's a difference that inspires you that pulls you forward. 

I've been thinking a lot about this lately for my own journey. I call it The Big Why. Why am I doing this? What is it that I ultimately want to achieve? What is my big dream when it comes to the difference I want to make in the world?

I'm still working on turning my Big Why into actual goals, but the spirit behind it is, I want to help people put their passion to work to make a difference that inspires them, in a way that lets them thrive.

Basically, I want to tap into the incredible power for positive change that comes when people are on fire about what they're doing and why they're doing it. And for each person's efforts to be a long-term, sustainable thing, they need to thrive.

So now I look at everything I do in terms of that Big Why. What are my opportunities to take what lights me up and put it to work in service of my Big Why? Doing that provides both an additional source of energy and a cohesiveness to what I'm doing and the direction I'm going.

What about you? What's your Big Why?

 

Check out 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

New M.A.P. Maker Podcast: Marshall Goldsmith

Executive coach, author, and speaker Marshall Goldsmith has built a career helping CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies enhance their success by making positive changes in their behavior. The latest of the 23 books he has written, What Got You Here Won't Get You There, was a New York Times best-seller and ranked the #1 selling business book by The Wall Street Journal.

Check out the latest M.A.P. Maker Podcast to hear Goldsmith's thoughts on living a successful life and making positive change.

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

Reflect your vision of the future today

Are you living your past, or becoming your vision of the future?

It's a question prompted by a fabulous podcast from Lisa Haneberg where she interviews Bill Strickland, author of Make the Impossible Possible.

Bill grew up in what he describes as a very bad inner city community. Today, he is the President and CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation, an organization that blends business and social change.

During the interview, he talked about something his art teacher in high school said to him that would have a profound impact on his life. "You don’t have to be a reflection of your environment exclusively. You can be a reflection of your vision of the future."

Be a reflection of your vision of the future. I love that! What if we started making decisions and living our lives like that future has already happened, and the ripples of that vision are reaching back to us. What would we do? What wouldn't we do? Who would we strive to be?

The thing I love about the idea is how it turns the conventional way of looking at life on its head. We often give so much power to what has happened in the past, and what our current "reality" looks like. The result can be a little like walking in gumbo - sticky and slow-going. Maybe even completely stuck.

Being a reflection of our vision of the future, on the other hand, lets us focus on the potential. It is also a way to bring that dreamworld of the future (which can too easily remain always somewhere in the future) into the reality of today.

If who I am and what I do today is reflecting this future, what does that look like? Where am I at odds with that future? What steps can I take to bring myself back into alignment with the future?

What if you committed to living into your vision? What would you do more of that you're already doing? What would you change? What would you do differently?

 

Check out 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

Reach out for inspiration

If you want to tap into a ready source of motivation and energy, try reaching out to someone who inspires you.

I spent an hour a couple days ago interviewing Brian Johnson for my podcast. Brian is the founder of Zaadz, a social networking site with a social conscience (think Facebook for people who want to make a difference).

As always seems to happen when I talk to people who are up to some amazing things in the world, I came away feeling so inspired I could barely see straight.

If you remember, I did a 30-in-30 experiment back in November, attempting to reach out and have 30 phone conversations in 30 days with people I had never talked to before, with no intention other than to connect. I think it actually ended up being 23-in-30, but the number was less important than the pattern it set.

I have started incorporating that idea into my life on an ongoing (albeit more sustainable) basis. Once or twice a week I try to reach out and have a conversation with someone new. Invariably, it gives me a boost. I might even come away with new ideas or perspectives.

There's a long-term benefit as well of course, because what I'm actually doing is planting the seeds for relationships. And it's in relationships that the magic starts, whether in our own careers or with the change we want to make in the world.

Who would you reach out to? Why not make a list, pick one, and drop them a line? Take a step, then build on it. Who knows where it might lead?

 

Check out The Occupational Adventure Guide

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

New! The M.A.P. Maker Podcast

If you're looking for personal stories and insights from people who have successfully crafted lives of meaning, abundance, & passion, you've come to the right place!

The M.A.P. Maker Podcast is created from a series of interviews I am doing with successful M.A.P. Makers. The first one, with Phil Borges, is available now.

Phil has created a second career as a hugely successful photographer (at age 45, he left a thriving orthodontist career to start over). Collaborating with organizations like Amnesty International and CARE, he has been the driving force behind numerous award-winning books and exhibitions on causes he cares about.

The next podcast in the queue is from a conversation with Marshall Goldsmith, best-selling author of What Got You Here Won't Get You There. And I have a conversation coming up with Brian Johnson, founder of the socially aware social networking site zaadz.com that I'm completely amped about.

Check out The Occupational Adventure Guide

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

Sir Edmund Hillary: My kind of hero

One of my heroes, Sir Edmund Hillary, has died.

It wasn't so much the fact that he was the first to summit Mount Everest that made me admire him, though that was certainly impressive. What made him hero-worthy to me was that he always stayed humble and unassuming, and used his fame to do good in the world. Here's a snippet from an Associated Press article...

"He inspired people to climb, but he also inspired people to do more than just climb," said Francis Slakey, a physics professor at Georgetown University who reached the summit of Everest in 2000 and was married at the Thyangboche monastery. "He used his world stage to actually improve the lives of people throughout the Khumbu. It's impressive."

...Hillary was a model for other climbers to try to follow. It took decades for others to catch up to his class act. Where many climbers left behind trash, Hillary left a legacy of education, health care and bonds of friendship.

Here's a paragraph from an article in Time describing his efforts to make his world a better place.

Beginning in 1962 he began working with the Nepalese sherpas who had so often helped him. Raising funds through his Himalayan Trust, he helped install bridges and pipes, built nearly 30 schools, two hospitals, 12 medical clinics, two mountaineering clinics, restored monasteries and planted more than a million seedlings in and around the towns of the rugged and poor Solu-Khumbu region of Nepal. Much of the last years of his life were dedicated to the work of the Trust, which opened offices in New Zealand, the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Germany. Even into his 70s Hillary spent an average of five months away from New Zealand every year raising money through lectures and visiting the projects in Nepal. He still felt uncomfortable with his knighthood and fame but realised their advantages and the obligations they brought. "I would like to see myself not going [to Nepal] quite so often," he told TIME in 1996. "But at the moment... the responsibility is there. It has to be done."

Sir Edmund Hillary, thanks for all the good you did, both directly and through the people you inspired. I hope when it's my time to check out I can say the same, in some way, about my life.

 

Check out 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

How to use flickr for self-exploration

Self-exploration - and more specifically, the understanding and awareness that results from it - is a key component of M.A.P. Making. The more you know about yourself, the better equipped you are to create a life that energizes and inspires you.

Exploring the answers to straightforward questions is a good way to start, but I want to share another, more free-form approach - using images as a starting point for your exploration (I've discovered that flickr is a great source of images for this).

The basic idea

In essence, rather than creating structure with a specific question, an image can provide a springboard for your mind to explore and make associations.

When you look at a picture you can ask, "How does this apply to my situation?" Maybe it is the picture as a whole, or just one element of it.

For example, if you're looking at a rural scene with winding road snaking through the picture, you might ask, "How does that winding road relate to my life today? Am I going back and forth like that in my career? Where is it ultimately leading? Is my back and forth action leading me in that direction, or does it just amount to detour after detour? Why is my road so curvy? Could it be straighter? What would that look like? What steps can I take that would carry my more directly to my destination?" 

As you can see, once you start, the possibilities for exploration are just about endless. What I love about this approach is how it allows your mind to make free associations that you can follow (those were just random questions that popped into my head). It lets your right-brained, free-flowing side into the mix.

In my work with clients, I have a step-by-step system I developed that provides a basic structure and focus. But within that framework it's all about organically following the path where it wants to go. I have found that what needs to come up does come up.

This approach lets you play with that same idea. Rather than rigidly asking specific questions, you let the exploration itself guide you.

Here are a couple different ways to work with it.

Topic specific exploration

Sit down and brainstorm key words or phrases representing elements that are strong in your journey right now. For example, "stuck, happy, goals, curious, fear, togetherness, uncertainty, determination, giving, success."

Then go to flickr and do a search using one of those words. Scan the pictures that come up, and pick one that jumps out at you. Then ask yourself, "How does this relate to my life right now? What does this picture have to tell me about the word I chose as it relates to my journey?"

Look for symbolism. Look for literal insights. Ask yourself, "What could this mean?"

So if I do a seach on "stuck," I might look at this picture and ask, "What are those thorns about?" As I explore, I might realize that there is something I'm doing that is effectively playing the role of the thorns, putting up a defensive barrier between me and whatever it is I need to help me get unstuck. I might then ask another series of questions, like, "Why am I doing that? What is it keeping me from? What is the risk of letting down that barrier?"

Or I might look at this one and realize that there is an area of my life that it feels like I'm drowning, and that's what is keeping me stuck. Maybe I'm over-committed, for example. Then I might ask, "How could I learn to swim?" What do I need to do to get my head above water and feel like I have a better control of the situation?

Random exploration

Another approach to this is simply relying on random chance. I like opening a book, closing my eyes, and poking my finger down on a page. I take the word my finger lands on and do the same thing as I outlined above.

Except this time the field is wide open. The resulting picture exploration isn't focused on one topic. It's can take me any direction, to any element of my life that pops up.

You could use this one of these approaches as a way to explore specific ideas, or as an ongoing journaling prompt.

Here's an idea. Try doing an image-a-day exploration every day for thirty days. Then go back through your journaling and pull out the key pieces of insight you got from the process. You might be surprised what you discover.

 

Check out 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

12 months = 12 new opportunities to stimulate my brain

Want to keep your mind flexible and sharp and feeling stimulated by life? Give it a healthy dose of the new, interesting, and unusual.

It's easy to get so focused on whatever it is we're trying to achieve, or whatever obligations we need to meet, that our experience of the world becomes a little monochromatic.

Not only can this lead to boredom, but it can also make it challenging to adjust and adapt to new situations. Because at the same time as we have to put energy into adapting to the new situation (or creating it), we also have to put energy into busting out of the inertia of the same ol' same ol'.

Yesterday, I started a wood shop class at one of the local community colleges. I took a couple shop classes as a young pup in my teens, which I loved, but I haven't done anything with it since. The class will definitely be something "new and unusual" for me.

Though it wasn't my intention when I signed up, that class is going to be the beginning of my grand experiment for 2008. Every month I'm going to take a class or a workshop on something new and unfamiliar that has nothing to do with my day-to-day world.

The idea came while browsing the local classes listed on craigslist. There are so many interesting things that I could dabble in and learn about. I feel like a kid in a candy store.

I could take a silversmithing class, or a workshop on a native plants. I could learn to do the lindy hop, take a pottery class, or cook up a mean Thai dish. The possibilities are nearly endless.

And everything I learn about expands my worldview, stimulates my brain, and keeps my perspective fresh. Not a bad deal, eh?

How about you? What would you do? What would you learn?

 

Check out 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

15 tips for developing flexible stability (tips 11 - 15)

And now for the final installment of my 15 tips for developing flexible stability. Here are tips eleven through fifteen...

11. Learn to fail successfully

As any entrepreneur will tell you, failure of some sort is almost inevitably a part of the road to success. Unfortunately, most of us have a tendency to take failure far too seriously.

If you put any given failure in the big picture perspective, you can see that most often it is a step along the way, not a final cataclysmic destination. Nobody enjoys failing, but you can choose how you respond to it. By seeing it as a step along the way and an opportunity for learning, you take some of the ultra-negative energy out of it and it has less of a tendency to paint your world with drama and trauma.

Failure can be a huge investment in our future success, but most people are more inclined to pretend it didn't happen than to learn from it. Next time you fail, ask yourself some questions to get the most out of the experience. "What happened here? What can I learn from this? What did I do right? What did I do wrong? How would I do things differently in the future? What do I know now that I didn't know then?"

12. Check your assumptions

We all make assumptions. They're short cuts, and serve to make life easier.

Sometimes though, the assumptions we make get in our way. And when we look at them, we realize that they don't really have any grounding in reality. The result is a set of limitations that don't actually exist! We simply created them.

Any time you find yourself thinking that something isn't possible, ask yourself what kinds of assumptions you are making. For each of those, ask yourself, "Is that valid? Do I have enough information to confidently say that is true, or is it actually just conjecture? Why do I assume that? What are some different possibilities?"

13. Eliminate black & white thinking

As comfortable is it might be to have the certainty that comes with painting the world in black and white (things are either this way, or they're that way), in reality there are typically a whole range of colors in between the extremes.

And that's good news when it comes to creating flexible stability. Black and white thinking limits you. It gives you only two options. Multi-chromatic thinking on the other hand (I couldn't bring myself to write "rainbow thinking") gives you a wide range of options.

Say you want to change careers, but it's clear that making a change isn't possible right now. With black and white thinking you shrug your shoulders and sigh, saying, "I guess it wasn't meant to be."

On the other hand, with multi-chromatic thinking, you think, "OK, when could I make that transition? What are the steps I could take that would move me closer? Are there any other more easily reachable options that would give me a similar sense of satisfaction?" It's inherently about looking at the options and possibilities.

14. Coach yourself

Clarity can go a long way towards creating a sense of flexible stability. Much of the benefit my coaching clients get out of their work with me centers around creating clarity - about what energizes them, what they value, what direction they should take and how to get there, what their goals are, what's getting in the way and how to move past it, etc.

Of course much of that benefit comes from my experience guiding people through the process and recognizing the questions that need asking. But even if you don't work with me you can still benefit from a do-it-yourself approach to coaching.

All you need is a journal and an ample supply of question marks. A journal is a way to get your thoughts out of your brain and out into the open. Asking a question launches the exploration, and journaling captures the results.

To get the most of your self-coaching efforts, go back through what you've written occasionally and pull out the key points that feel important. Maybe you see similar trends coming up as you explore what lights you up. Perhaps you see ways you consistently get in your way. You might see opportunities that you can leverage, or recognize questions you need to ask yourself on a consistent basis.

Harvesting the key insights from your journaling gives you an at-a-glance perspective on what you've learned.

15. Celebrate yourself

In the first post in this series, I noted that, "Much of the quest for stability boils down to one thing: a desire to know that the future is going to be OK."

Developing flexible stability is about creating a belief that you can navigate fluidly through whatever comes along. A big part of the belief has to do with how you see yourself and your ability.

With that in mind, anything you can do to support a positive view of what you bring to the table helps develop that sense of flexible stability.

Make a habit of celebrating yourself. Make a list of gifts and skills you have. Write about why each of those is important. Start celebrating your successes. Too often we dwell on our failures and skim over our successes as we turn our eyes to what's next. Linger on what you've done well so it has a chance to become part of your world view.

 

Check out 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

15 tips for developing flexible stability (tips 6 - 10)

Developing flexible stability can help you reduce stress, minimize fear, and increase the potential that you will reach out for the dream instead of feeling trapped by an over-developed need to "play it safe."

Yesterday I shared the first five tips out of fifteen on how to build that sense of flexible stability in your own life. Here are tips six through ten.

6. Take an outside perspective

One of the things my clients are looking for in my Passion Catalyst coaching is an outside, objective perspective. It's really easy to get so caught up in our own lives that we can't see what's really going on. 

As a friend of mine describes it, "Not only can I not see the forest for the trees, I have my nose so far in a knot hole that I can't even tell what kind of tree it is."

An outside point-of-view helps sort through the clutter. Try stepping back from your situation on a regular basis and look at it from a third party perspective. Describe it as though you were on the sidelines observing somebody else's life. Step out of your journey and take an objective look at what's happening.

7. Get grounded

Create an internal stability by finding ways to get grounded. Meditation, yoga, or exercise for example. Anything that lets you come from a  calm and centered place is going to have a positive impact on the way you perceive what's happening in your world.

 8. Build positive beliefs

Just like getting grounded can affect the way you experience your life, your beliefs play an enormous role as well.

If, for example, you believe something something  is possible, you're a lot more likely to give it a shot than if you believe that failure is inevitable. If you believe that change is bound to be difficult and painful, guess how you're going to respond to any change you encounter?

Spend some time exploring your beliefs. What do you believe is possible in your life? What do you believe about change? What do you believe about your abilities?

When you encounter self-limiting beliefs, ask yourself, "Is this true? Might there be another way of looking at it? Is there any proof to the contrary?" Explore alternative positive beliefs, then start looking for ways to reinforce that positive view.

9. Develop healthy habits

Have you ever had your energy sag to the point where things that were typically no problem to deal with suddenly took on monumental proportions? Maybe you reacted to a small setback with a disproportionate level of fear. Or responded to a minor irritation with a level of anger that surprised you. 

Part of developing a flexible stability in your life is having the energy to cope and thrive. One of the big sources of that energy comes from how you fuel and maintain your body.

If you fuel your body with crappy food, train rigorously for months for the couch-to-refrigerator relay, and smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, your energy is going to dwindle and your health is going to suffer. That means you have less energy to fluidly flow with life's changes and challenges.

Healthy habits have a direct impact on the amount of energy you have to put towards thriving. The healthier you eat, and the more consistently physically active you are, the more energy your body and your mind have to navigate your life. 

10. Practice succeeding

Nothing succeeds like success, as the saying goes. The more confident you feel in your your ability to succeed in any given effort, the more likely you are to find workable options and alternatives, and the less likely you are to feel trapped by life's circumstances.

Wherever you are in life right now, however you currently feel about your potential to succeed, you can build your belief in your ability. How? Practice succeeding.

If your confidence is a bit on the shaky side, start small and build on that. If your confidence is already riding hich, aim higher.

Pick something you'd like to try, something that's doable but a little bit of a reach. If it's too easy, you'll get the same boost to your confidence that you would, say, flipping on a light switch. You certainly get a result, but so what?  On the other hand, if it's too hard, it might end up in frustration or, worse yet, a feeling of confirmation that you can't succeed.

When you do succeed, stop and acknowledge it. Write about it in your journal. Explore why you succeeded. Learn from it. Ask yourself how you might apply what you learned in the future. Use it as proof that successful efforts are within reach. Then pick something a little more challenging and repeat the process.

Coming next...

11. Learn to fail

12. Check your assumptions

13. Eliminate black & white thinking

14. Coach yourself

15. Celebrate yourself

 

Check out 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM