The M.A.P. Maker [Meaning, Abundance & Passion]

Five Friday Favorites: July 25th

How to Be an Extreme Encourager
Christine Kane

Reclaim Your Time: 20 Great Ways to Find More Free Time
ZenHabits

Life Lessons Learned from Earning a PhD
Susan Bernstein

Stinking Thinking: Do These 8 Patterns of Limited Thinking Apply to You?
PickTheBrain

A Teacher’s Final Words to All of Us
On the Job

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

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Career change tip: Find a new orbit

Have you ever noticed how much the people around you can affect your outlook on life? "You are what you eat," they say, and in a way it's also true that "You are who you're with."

If everyone around you is channeling Eeyore, that mindset can be hard to resist. On the other hand, the energy of positive people determined to get the most out of life is contageous as well. 

If it's time for a career change, ask yourself, "What tone do the people around me set? Do I feel energized and inspired around them, or do they drag me down? Do they inspire my belief in potential and possibility, or do they seem invested in the notion that life is about tolerating the status quo?"

If you discover that the people around you are dragging your energy down, it's time to, as one career changer in this Wall Street Journal article described it, find a new orbit.

Rather than just plugging your ears and singing, "Lalalala I'm not listening to you," get proactive. Reach out and find new people who feed your efforts, people who inspire you. Not bobblehead yes-people who will agree to the genius of any hare-brained idea you happen to come up with, but people who want to see the people around them supported, encouraged, and inspired.

Take a look around you. What do you see? Are the people around you building you up, or dragging you down? How can you launch yourself into a new orbit by connecting with more of the former?

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Making a difference with your kids

If you are a parent, you have a powerful opportunity to make the world a better place through the values and beliefs you instill in your children. It's a world-changing role.

Every child has the potential to absorb the message that doing good is an important part of life. And for every child brought up not just to believe that, but also to act on it, the future gets brighter.

It starts with a conversation

One of the many things I have long admired about Kevin Salwen (you may remember him as co-founder and editor of the sadly departed Motto / Worthwhile magazine) is the way he and his wife Joan have focused on that very thing with their kids.

I remember one post on the Motto blog where he talked about a conversation his family had around the dining room table. "What if we suddenly had a million dollars to give away to a good cause? How would we spend it? Where would we spend it? What issues are important to us?"

I always thought it was a great way to engage the kids to really think about what's important to them.

Taking action (in a big way)

It was only a theoretical conversation to get them thinking, but something about it must have sunk in...and sunk in deeply.

Fast forward a couple years from that post, and you'll find the Salwens selling their beautiful old mansion (it's still on the market for $1.8 million) to move into a house half its size and half its price, and donating the difference to The Hunger Project. The idea was sparked by his teenage daughter, Hannah. They have a site detailing the idea called Hannah's Lunchbox.

You can see more about their project on these clips from The Today Show and CNN.

Something for everyone

What I love about the Salwens' story isn't the scale of it, though that grabs your attention, to be sure. It's the part that is available to each and every parent, whatever their situation. Playing out on a jaw-dropping scale isn't what's important. What's important is blending exploration, respect for the kids' ideas and opinions, and family action.

In a nutshell, here's what I took away from the Salwens' story (I should note that I have no kids myself, so this is purely from what I have observed and not from any personal expertise - for those of you parents out there, I would love to hear your take on it).

1. Engage in conversations: Having conversations about exploring what feels important and what feels meaningful is where any seed gets planted.

2. Give the kids a voice: The conversations about what's important aren't just about dictating values. They're an opportunity to really open it up for discussion and exploration. What do they think, and why?

3. Explore the possibilities: As you get a better sense for what feels important, you can use that to start exploring possible ways to make a difference.

4. Do it together: The last part of what I find so powerful about the Salwens' story is that it was a family project. Whatever difference you decide to focus on making, there is an opportunity to ratchet up the personal benefit as well by doing it together. Along those lines, here is an interesting study on the benefits of family volunteering (pdf file).

For those of you with kids, how do you engage them around the idea of making a difference in the world? I would love to hear your stories.

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

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Feel your failure...and then move on

When I interviewed Howard Behar (former Starbucks president and author of It's Not About the Coffee) for an installment of the M.A.P. Maker Podcast, one of the things he talked about was the importance of being able to experience failure with a positive attitude. Accept it, learn what you can, and keep moving.

That's not to say that you have to embrace failure like a gleeful puppy. In fact, his first suggestion on how to successfully navigate failure is to give yourself time to feel the sting - but not too much time. Here's what he had to say:

I think number one, you have to allow yourself to mourn. And you can be mad at yourself. I mean sometimes I get just – my self-talk, you know, I can be really mad at myself.

I don’t give myself very long at doing that. What I try to do is I try to set a time limit. I say, Howard, after Friday, you’re done with that talk. Right? I do that. It sounds strange, but I’m talking to myself, and I say OK, you’ve got a couple of days to moan and groan, and then you’ve got to start thinking about what you’re going to do, and talk only about what you learned, not what you did wrong.

It’s a little trick you play with yourself. Acknowledge it. Give yourself time to mourn, and to do all those things you need to do. Yeah, it did happen. I’m terrible. I stink. I will never do anything right. And then starting on Friday, OK, what did I learn from that? And how will I take what I learned into the next experiment that you’re going to try?

As I wrote in my recent post on 9 ways to break free of the Craposphere, sometimes you just have to spend some time and wallow in feeling bad, using up that energy so you can transition into feeling better.

It reminds me of something a good friend of mine used to do with her young daughter. She called it the fussbox. If her daughter was vocally unhappy about something, my friend would sit down and give her five minutes in the fussbox (figuratively speaking) to just vent. But the rule was that she had to vent the entire five minutes. Inevitably the energy behind it would sag before the five minutes was up, and then she was ready to move on to other things.

How about you? How do move past failure? What helps you stay positive after you screw up? How do you keep the momentum going?

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10 giant career change mistakes to avoid

Do you have a career change somewhere in your future? Changing careers can be enough of a challenge without adding to the difficulty yourself. Here are ten big mistakes that make the process harder than it needs to be.

1. Assuming you need to change careers
2. Not starting with you
3. Focusing too much on what's practical
4. Focusing too much on passion
5. Looking for a quick fix
6. Ignoring immediate opportunities for improvement
7. Giving obstacles too much importance
8. Ignoring the obstacles
9. Shutting the door to serendipity
10. Hanging too loose
     

I. Assuming you need to change careers

Before you jump into the career change pool with both feet, stop and ask yourself, "Why do I want to change? What am I unhappy with here? Is it my boss? Is it the work environment? Is it the work itself?"

Once you take inventory of the sources of your dissatisfaction, spend some time with each and ask, "How could I change that? What are some possibilities to make things better without the dramatic step of wholesale change?"

You may discover that, with some tweaks and twiddles, you're closer than you realized.

II. Not starting with you

Trying to create a career that energizes you without understanding where that energy comes from is a little like trying to hit a bulls-eye with a dart while blindfolded. Theoretically possible, but not likely.

The more you understand about what makes you tick, the better equipped you are to both identify and evaluate potential opportunities (a key component of my Passion Catalyst work).

When you understand the underlying reasons why you love what you love, you can look around and say, "OK, what are the potential paths out there that match up with that?" You can also look at a specific opportunity and ask, "How well does this stack up against what I know energizes me?"

III. Focusing too much on what's practical

Nothing kills the potential for passion like an exclusive focus on the practical and pragmatic. A practical approach is one of those things that makes a great servant, but a lousy master.

As a supporting element, the practical approach keeps you grounded in the real world. "OK, that's a great dream - now here are the real world concerns to address as you move towards it."

But as the driving force in your efforts, practicality often drives you the opposite direction from what feels uniquely energizing and meaningful to you. Practicality itself has no soul, no depth. Its only concern is to ensure that whatever path you take has as few bumps as possible. And if that path should leave you feeling unfulfilled, that's of no real concern.

IV. Focusing too much on passion

On the flip side, focusing too much on the passion and the dream is a pretty good way to get frustrated and stuck as well. If you focus just on the dream and not on the everyday practicalities of actually making it happen, odds are good you'll find yourself spinning in circles, having a great time (for a while anyway), but never actually getting anywhere. .

As alluring as the passion path is, the reality is that everything happens in the real world. And in the real world, there are mundane, practical things to consider. "How am I going to get there? What is getting in my way? How could this impact ____? Am I willing to sacrifice ____ to get ____?"

Passion is a great guidance system, but a practical approach is an integral part of the logistics that will help you make it happen.

V. Looking for a quick fix

I know this isn't a sexy message, but when it comes to career change, there is no give-it-to-me-now McSolution. Meaningful career change typically doesn't happen with the flip of a switch.

Giving in to the urge to find a push-button option is likely to lead you out of the frying pan and into the fire. Doing the introspection (and the reflection on what you learn from taking steps) takes time. Identifying the right path for you takes time. And the actual transition takes time.

One big result of taking the quick fix perspective is the wall it puts up between you and many of the potential directions you could take. You look at an idea and think, "I can't," when often what you really mean is, "I can't right now" (which might be completely accurate). Unfortunately, our immediate gratification mindset often turns "I can't right now" into "I can't ever."

VI. Ignoring immediate opportunities for improvement

If you need to stay in your current position for the immediate future while you take steps on the side towards change, you might as well make your current situation as palatable as possible by exploring immediate opportunities for improvement.

Start by doing a two-columned inventory. In one column, list the things that drive you nuts about your current situation. In the second column, list the things that you enjoy.

Next, ask two simple questions. For the negative factors, ask yourself, "Is there any way I can minimize or eliminate this part of my experience?" For the positive factors, ask, "How can I bring more of this into the picture?"

It's not a panacea, but the more you can improve the current situation, the easier it will be to stay put while you're taking action towards your new path.

VII. Giving obstacles too much importance

Too often I see people look at a potential path, see the obstacles and say, "Well, I guess I can't do that."

Here's a little reality check. The path to just about anything worth doing is going to have its share of obstacles. Unless you're very lucky, limiting yourself to a path with no obstacles is likely to lead to an uninspired life.

Obstacles are simply part of the landscape, not proof that something can't be done. When you encounter them, instead of saying, "Guess I have to turn around now," ask yourself, "OK, what are my options? How do I get around (or over, or under) this thing that's standing in my way?"

VIII. Ignoring the obstacles

Picture yourself running passionately down a path towards a destination filled with energy and bliss. You're immersed in the joy of the journey, and you're giddy about where you're going. Then all of a sudden...

Whack!

You've done a full-speed face plant right into a big boulder. You should have been paying more attention.

Just like giving the obstacles in the path too much importance is a mistake, so is ignoring them completely. When you pay attention to what's in the way, you have the opportunity to scheme your way around it. When you don't...well...did I mention, "Whack!"?

IX. Shutting the door to serendipity

When it comes to career change, the idea of "you don't know what you don't know" is as valid as anywhere.

Taking steps towards an objective means taking action, and action creates both insight and opportunity. You may learn something along the way that causes you to alter your course, or a door may open up to an opportunity that you never realized existed.

Having a plan for how to get where you want to go is great. But it should be a living, morphing plan, not a set of goals and steps that are etched in stone. Don't be so rigidly committed to it that you miss the opportunity to embrace an even better/more easily accessible/etc. opportunity.

X. Hanging too loose

While some looseness helps you stay open and creative in your efforts, too much looseness just leaves you wobbling around headed no place in particular.

Structure helps focus your efforts, and gives you something specific to get traction on. Goals help you see where you're going, and how the steps you're taking are moving you in that direction (or not). Having specific steps and stages to go through keeps you from scratching your head and saying the career equivalent of, "I dunno...what do you want to do?"

Parting thought: Do a change audit

You'll notice that many of these mistakes are the inverse of another mistake on the list. Which ones loom largest depends on the individual.

If you're looking at a career change (or any kind of change, really), spend some time going through this list of mistakes and ask yourself, "Which ones am I making? Which ones am I likely to make? What can I do about it?"

The more awareness you have, the less likely you will be to turn one or more of these mistakes into an insurmountable obstacle.

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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

To find the answer, ask ten people

So you have a dream. A vision for where you want to take your life, or an idea for how to make a difference that inspires you. Now what?

If you really want to turn it into reality, don't even think about trying to figure it all out yourself. Regardless of how bright and full of ideas you are, you don't (and can't) have all the answers. So why hobble yourself?

Instead, make a habit of reaching out to others to ask for their insights and advice. You never know where you're going to find the missing piece of the puzzle, or the key that unlocks a door.

In one of the Global X interviews on the Social Edge blog, Kyle Zimmer (President and Co-Founder of a non-profit called First Book), talks about her "Ask Ten" approach:

I think the best advice I could give anybody who wants to be an agent of change is this: Be fearless. Get out there, talk to everyone you can talk to. Make a list - sometimes what I've done is made a list of the ten smartest people I can think of, even if it's a question or idea that doesn't have anything to do with their topic area - and call them. Ask them for advice. Ask them for feedback.

The worst you'll get is no answer. The best you'll get is wonderful advice. But keep going. Keep asking people, keep engaging people, because the answer is there.

She goes on to describe how she applied that idea in the early days of First Book, noting that two of the people she asked ended up on the organization's board, and are still there fifteen years later.

So how about you? What questions do you have? What is your idea? What is your vision? Who would be on your list of ten?

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Five Friday Favorites

Welcome to this weeks Five Friday Favorites...

Brighten up your life: 3 Tips from Thomas Edison on Living Optimistically
LifeDev

How to Connect with Humanity When You Feel Alone
Zen Habits

10 Counterintuitive Ways to Improve Your Life
illuminated mind

Happiness Project: Get rid of things that don’t work
The Happiness Project

22 Emotional Principles for Greatness
Socyberty

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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

Sculpt your story to maximize your potential

 Yesterday I wrote about the idea that the stories we have about ourselves create our reality. Today I want to share a simple exercise you can do on an ongoing basis to start sculpting your stories in a positive direction.

Try this. Sit down and make a list of positive things you believe about yourself - your positive stories. Next, make a list of your negative stories about yourself. Then try an experiment. For the next week, spend some time sculpting your stories (you can make this an ongoing habit, but try it for a week first).

Reinforce the positive

Pick one of the things from the positive list and ask yourself, where is the supporting evidence? What have I done that supports this? What has happened that reinforces this belief? Build a conscious picture for why it's true. Spend some time every day focusing on that. Make a point of looking for more evidence to support that story from your daily experience and activity.

As your list of evidence starts to grow, pick one of those things and go deeper. What happened? Why did that work? Start to build an intimate understanding of your positive story.

The negative: Create a contra-story

On the flipside, we all have negative stories about ourselves. While they may feel like Truth with a capital T, typically they're not.

There's a big difference between having done something - even repeatedly - and taking that something on as your identity. If your negative story is, "I'm lazy," it's the difference between, "I have historically had lazy habits, but that is possible to change" and, "I'm lazy at the core, so there's no hope of change."

Just like you did with the positive stories, you're going to look for evidence here. Except this time you're going to look for evidence to counter your story. This may be a bit more challenging, especially at first.

Look for any evidence to support the contra-story (e.g., why you're not lazy, why you're actually motivated and hard-working). It doesn't need to be big and dramatic. At first all you're trying to do is to gain a toe-hold on a new story. "Well, maybe I'm not completely lazy. Maybe there are times when I'm actually motivated and hard-working. Like that time I shoveled my neighbor's sidewalk because I knew she wasn't feeling well."

As you go through your week, keep looking for more evidence to support your contra-story. Start to build a new pattern.

This isn't a magic-wand solution. I'm not suggesting that a negative story will suddenly change overnight just because you're looking at evidence to the contrary. But by creating a contra-story, and actively, consistently looking for supporting evidence, you create a new space and a new direction to grow into.

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Reinvent your story. Reinvent your world.

We are by our very nature pattern-seeking creatures. The patterns we find, whether through experience or education, form the framework for our experience of the world.

Our minds tend to make the leap from, "This is a pattern I see" to, "This is true." And when we make that leap, we start to look for more evidence to support that truth. That in turn can create a filter that no longer lets evidence counter to that truth through. The pattern goes from seemingly true to rigidly true.

Our patterns = Our stories = Our reality

One of the ways those patterns show up in our lives is through our stories about ourselves. We all have them. "I can do anything I set my mind to." "I can't do anything right." "I'm selfish." "I live to give." "I'm misunderstood." "I'm lazy." "I'm hard-working and industrious." And on and on.

Whatever story we have about ourselves sets the stage for how we experience life.

A few years back, I interviewed a guy who had been very successful in pursuing a passion-filled career while thriving financially. I asked him what was behind his success.

He said that it was at least in part due to being lucky enough to have had some early successes in his career. He took some risks and ultimately they paid off. That started creating the story that he has the ability to make things happen, and that risk is OK. That even failure is OK, as long as it doesn't stop you for good.

He contrasted that to his brother's experience. His brother had the same upbringing and had similar talents and gifts. They weren't all that different. But the brother had a series of failures early on that set the pattern for how he perceived the world. His story was defined by that early failure. He engaged the world with more fear, more timidly, and as a result he continues to struggle.

Truth is relative

Neither of those stories were strictly true, of course. They were both based on personal experience and the patterns that were set by how each brother interpreted that experience.

And that's the good news. Truth is relative. Much of it is based on what you believe to be true. And that truth can be sculpted and formed to give you a more positive view of what's possible. If you reinvent your story, you can reinvent your world.

In tomorrow's post, I will offer a simple exercise to help you start sculpting your stories, reinforcing the positive ones, and reinventing the negative.
 
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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

9 ways to help people help you

Pursuing your dreams and building your vision is an inherently personal thing. There is no cookie cutter process to follow, and on occasion that can leave you feeling a little overwhelmed and alone.

The good news, whether you realize it or not, is that you're not alone.

People want to help

I went to BizJam08 last week, a conference aimed at solopreneurs. One of the speakers, Ami Kassar from ideablob, tried an experiment where he had people with an idea for a business or a product come up on stage and give a one-minute spiel about the idea. The audience was then asked for advice.

For me, it was the best part of the entire conference. Not so much because of the specific advice being given, but because of the energy that was flying around the room as people just about jumped out of their seats wanting to help.

It was inspiring, primarily because it reinforced one of my basic beliefs in life. "People want to help." The people in the audience weren't just offering their advice and ideas because they were supposed to. They were doing it because they wanted to. They were excited about it.

How to help people help you

Like many things, when you reach out for help you can do it well or you can really suck at it. It can be effective and enjoyable for the people you ask, or it can be flat out annoying.

Here are some ideas for how to help people help you.

Tell people what you need: OK, this one seems like it should be pretty obvious, but I'm starting here because this is where far too many people miss the boat. Whether it's for fear of imposing or being told no, or a feeling that they should be able to "do it themselves," the biggest mistake people make when it comes to helping people help them is not asking.

Make it specific: The more specific you can be with your request for help, the more likely it is that people will understand how they can help you. Don't throw out a general need and hope they can fill in the blanks.

Make it easy: Sure, they want to help, but they're still busy people evaluating how they're going to use their time. if your request for help is big and bloated, or needs a manual to figure it out, the odds of it actually hitting paydirt are slim.

Try to make your requests easily implementable. For example, ask for a specific amount of time to ask them questions about a specific topic. Or ask if they have any suggestions for someone you should talk to about _____ subject. Or e-mail them with questions they can easily answer briefly.

Make it relevant: If you're going to ask for someone's help, be sure it's really relevant to their experience. Asking for help is not the time to take a shotgun approach.

Do the footwork first: If you're asking for help, advice, etc. on something you could easily figure out yourself, you're probably just lazy. Don't waste your requests on things that are easily accessible to you; save them for the things you really need.

Make a list: Start a list outlining the different ways you need help. For example:

• Questions you have.
• Introductions you need.
• Specific knowledge and insights that others might have.
• Problems you're grappling with that someone more experienced might have the answer to.
• Help with individual aspects of projects you are working on.

When you have a clear picture of the specific help you need, you're more likely to recognize the chance to reach out and ask for it when the opportunity arises.

Be appreciative: Nothing kills your future potential for receiving help faster than coming across as an ingrate. Don't.

Return the favor when possible: Look for ways you can help the person you're requesting help from. You might see a substantial way to assist them, or it might be seemingly small and insignificant, like a recommendation to a great restaurant. It's possible that you won't see an obvious way, but at least it's on your radar screen.

Keep the good karma going: Keep the good help karma going by paying it forward. Make a point of being receptive to reasonable requests for help from others.

How about you? How do you help people help you?

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101 Ways to Get Wild About work!