The M.A.P. Maker

Gratitude: What's it good for?

Today is Thanksgiving here in the US. For most of us, it's an opportunity to stuff ourselves to the gills with turkey and fall asleep watching football on TV. But I want to encourage you to make it more than that. Make it the starting point for an exploration into one of the most powerful and high-impact feelings you can develop: gratitude.

Why is gratitude so potent? Here is a snippet from a summary of recent research into the effects of being habitually grateful...

Well-Being: Grateful people report higher levels of positive emotions, life satisfaction, vitality, optimism and lower levels of depression and stress.  The disposition toward gratitude appears to enhance pleasant feeling states more than it diminishes unpleasant emotions.  Grateful people do not deny or ignore the negative aspects of life.

Prosociality: People with a strong disposition toward gratitude have the capacity to be empathic and to take the perspective of others.  They are rated as more generous and more helpful by people in their social networks.

Spirituality: Those who regularly attend religious services and engage in religious activities such as prayer reading religious material score are more likely to be grateful.  Grateful people are more likely to acknowledge a belief in the interconnectedness of all life and a commitment to and responsibility to others. Gratitude does not require religious faith, but faith enhances the ability to be grateful.

Materialism: Grateful individuals place less importance on material goods; they are less likely to judge their own and others success in terms of possessions accumulated; they are less envious of  others; and are more likely to share their possessions with others relative to less grateful persons.

The summary also talks about the positive effects of "gratitude interventions" (i.e., gratitude journaling) on psychological and physical well-being.

Want some ideas to help focus your gratitude journaling? Check out 15 questions to prompt your gratitude.

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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

6 questions to supercharge your networking

This article is from FUEL!, my e-mail newsletter focused on helping you create a Fully Energized Life. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.

If I had to suggest just one way to invest your time on the path to passion and success, it would be networking. Whether you are eyeing a career change, launching a new company, or simply maximizing the potential of your current path, building relationships plants seeds for the future and opens the door to opportunity.

Here are six questions to ask to make your networking focused, effective, and mutually beneficial.

1. Why?

Before you take a single step, ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” What is your intent? What do you want to get out of it? What are your goals? What will the focus of your interactions be?

The more clarity you have about your reasons for reaching out, the more likely that your networking efforts will be beneficial to both you and the people you connect with.

Some examples of what you might want out of your networking include:

Open doors: You want to connect with people who can open doors for you in your career change. This might include people with the same career focus that you are changing to, and people who are involved in the industry you are exploring.

Knowledge: What knowledge do you need in order to make the transition? Who are the subject matter experts?

Inspiration: The people you connect with can be a huge source of energy as you pursue your passion.

Ideas: The more people you build relationships with, the more perspectives you can tap into.

Support: Building a network of mutual support with others who are on a similar journey can be enormously beneficial.

2. Who?

Once you know why, it’s easier to define who. Who do you need to know? What kinds of people are relevant to your goals?

For each of the areas listed, try building a picture of the people you might connect with. Who are they? What is their professional focus? Where are the watering holes where herds of them congregate?

3. What?

Now that you know why you’re doing this, and who you want to connect with, it’s time to ask, “What is my message?” What is your story? What do you want people to remember about you? What do you want them to remember about what you need? What do you want them to remember about how you might be able to help others?

4. Where?

Next, ask yourself, “Where is the focus of my networking?” Is it local, or broader in scope? Do you want to build critical mass in the local community, or does your focus lend itself to a national or international scale?

5. How?

Once you know where the focus of your networking will be, you can start to focus on the next question: “How am I going to approach it?” How will you connect with people? What networking avenues will you use?

Once upon a time, networking was mostly limited to opportunities to get face-to-face. Now, with online social networking sites coming out our ears, that’s no longer the case. But the question is still the same, “How can I connect with the people I need to know?”

You can invest your time into one-to-one (e.g., informational interviewing), one-to-many (e.g., an in-person networking event or a social networking site like Facebook or Twitter), or some combination of the two.

6. When?

As with any plan, you have to execute it in order for it to have any impact. When will you do your networking? How often will you do it? How many new people per day/week/month do you want to connect with? What specific people do you want to meet? Set goals.

Parting thought

Successful networking isn’t just about what’s in it for you. Really successful networking weaves in a focus on what’s in it for them. As you network and build relationships, keep asking yourself one last question. “How can I help?”
The more you look for opportunities to assist others – even in small ways – the greater the likelihood that the help you need will come back to you.

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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

Thought replacement: Make the positive habit-forming

Yesterday I wrote about the value of noticing whether your thoughts are negative, wasteful, necessary, or positive. Today I want to share a simple exercise to help you start habitually moving your thoughts in a positive direction.

Each time you find yourself thinking a negative or wasteful thought, stop and find a positive thought to replace it with. The positive thought might be related ("OK, what's good about this situation?") or it might be a complete tangent.

When you do this, you're accomplishing multiple things...

Loop interruption: Negative thoughts have a funny way of taking on a life of their own, feeding on themselves in an endless loop. With this exercise, you stop them cold. You interrupt the loop and replace it with something beneficial.

Awareness: Nothing focuses your attention on what's really going on in your mind like having to take action when it's less than preferable.

Positive practice: Not only does this actively break the negative loop, it also gives you practice finding the positive.

Try this exercise for a day first. Journal about how it went. What did you notice? Was it easy? Was it hard? Are you more positive than you realized? More negative? Was it easy or challenging to find positive replacement thoughts?

If you find the exercise beneficial, commit to doing it for another day. If you find yourself wanting more, commit to it for a week.

Bit by bit, your positive habit will start to grow.

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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

Guide your mind: 4 levels of thought

What effect are your thoughts having on your life? Would you like to take that in a more consciously positive direction?

Most of us spend our days swimming through a non-stop stream of mind chatter. That current of thoughts can have a positive or negative effect on how we experience the world, but often we're largely unaware of the impact it has.

A great place to start moving that mind chatter in a positive direction is simple awareness. In Learn to Meditate by David Fontana, PhD, the author talks about noticing different levels of thoughts to help guide and direct them.

The first and lowest level is negative thought, which includes feelings of anger, fear, sadness, regret and unease...The second level is wasteful thought, when we waste our time worrying about things that might not happen, or things that are outside our control. The third level is necessary thought, such as "I must not forget to pay the electricity bill," or "I must remember to send a birthday card." The highest level is positive thought, which encourages peace, harmony, creativity, love and happiness.

Fontana suggests that being aware of the various levels of thought and categorizing them as they come up can be helpful in guiding your thoughts to the higher levels. While he is referring specifically to meditation, that can be a valuable approach in every day life as well.

Why? Because it gives you a way to be conscious about what's going on in your mind. It lets you group and sort (and your brain is a grouping and sorting machine!) and be more fully aware of where your attention is going.

When you are more fully aware of where your attention is going, you can start to make choices about it. If you're operating on autopilot without that awareness, you're at the mercy of whatever those thoughts happen to create, like a puppet on a string.

Try this: For one day, pay attention to your thoughts. Categorize them as negative, wasteful, necessary, and positive. What do you notice? Where is your focus? What reality are you creating?

The more awareness you have, the better equipped you are to sculpt a positive experience in life.

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Need to re-energize your career?
Get started with 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work!

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

How to turn hope into reality

For the last few months, I have had two pairs of words written on my whiteboard:

• Hope & possibility
• Growth & transformation

Those four words are my guideposts for what I want to focus on in my life, both personally and professionally.

Last night, as I watched the election results, I was struck by how relevant those four words are for us as a society as well. Barack Obama has inspired millions with his message of hope and positive change. Now, as we turn our attention to what that hope might bring, it’s time to start building a bridge between that inspiration and the real world.

“We can what?”

The well-known catch phrase of Obama’s campaign is, “Yes we can!” Whether you’re an Obama supporter or not, I want to plant the follow-up question to that… “We can what?”

Today, as you turn your eyes to the future, ask yourself, “What can I do? How can I have a positive impact on the world? How can I make the world a better place? How can I make my world/country/city/neighborhood/home (take your pick) a better place to live? How can I plant the seeds for a better tomorrow?”

In short, how can you start building the bridge from hope & possibility to growth & transformation?

Change is up to you

Do you want real change? It’s not going to come from a politician. Politicians can help the process, to be sure, but real change happens when each of us steps up and says, “Yes, I can.” And more importantly, “Yes, I WILL.”

Every day when you get out of bed in the morning, remind yourself that you have the potential to make the world a better place by the time you go to bed.

It doesn’t have to be big and dramatic. It doesn’t have to be covered by the nightly news. It might be something as simple as remembering to tell your children you believe in them, or stopping and having a real conversation with a homeless person rather than hurrying on by and pretending they’re not there.

It might be stepping up and volunteering for a cause you care about. Or you might take it a step further and create something yourself.

It might mean getting involved in the political process in your community. That could be something as simple as regularly letting your elected officials at all levels know what you think, or as involved as running for office yourself. 

Whatever that positive change looks like, one thing is sure. It’s NOT going to come if we all sit and wait for someone else to do it. It’s not going to come from waiting for our politicians to come riding in and wave a magic wand. It happens one step at a time, one person at a time.

What will you do? How will you be the change?

Questions to ponder

Here are some questions to help prime the pump as you explore the potential for positive change...

• What difference do I want to make?
• Who do I want to help?
• How am I well-positioned to help (what skills, resources, etc. do I have)?
• What volunteer opportunities do I have?
• What choices am I making? How do they affect my family? My community? The environment? Others?
• If I had to pick a positive change theme for my life, what would it be? What would I focus on?
• What legacy do I want to leave?
• How do my interactions with others affect them?
• What am I ignoring that needs attention?
• What values do I want to live? How do I act if I’m living my values? What choices do I make?
• What small step can I take today?

The bridge from hope & possibility to growth & transformation is built one plank at a time.

And it is built by you.

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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

Job search: Passion as a competitive advantage

This post is part of a collective Job Action Day effort to help people thrive in the face of the current economic turmoil. You can find a list of other participating blogs here.

If you’ve ever interviewed for a job, you know how important it is to be able to clearly, concisely answer the question, “Why should we pick you?” Now more than ever – as increasing numbers of job seekers pursue a dwindling supply of open positions – it’s vital to be able to position yourself competitively.

I hear people talk about skills and experience when it comes to their job search, but not so many talk about the potential for passion to be a competitive advantage. And that’s a shame, because it’s a great way to stand out from the crowd.

Differentiate yourself with passion

Picture this scenario. Two candidates are in the final running for a job. They’re both similarly qualified. They share a similar background and similar skills. But there’s one huge difference. Not only is one on fire about the job she’s interviewing for, but she is also able to convey why it lights her up. She can say, “This is what lights me up, and this is why I’m going to be on fire about this job.” She can give specific details, not just vague positive generalizations.

Which one would you pick? If you’re a hiring manager, the answer is a no-brainer. You want employees that are energized and engaged by their work. When they can convincingly articulate why they would be, your decision just got easier.

How important can this be? Very. I recently had a client who was trying to make a change in the large technology company he worked for. He wanted to move from a programming role to a marketing communications role, which was a much better fit. Because of the work we had done together, he was able to make a convincing case for why he was perfect for the job, and he was hired.

Find your Passion Factors: Ask what, then why

As a job candidate, having passion for the work you do is great. But if you want to fully leverage the potential of your passion, you have to be able to communicate it. You have to take it out of the abstract and show how it’s relevant to the job you’re interviewing for.

To take passion out of the abstract and into the real world, identify your “Passion Factors.” What are those? Your Passion Factors are the underlying reasons why you love what you love. They’re the underlying characteristics that tend to be in place when you feel energized and engaged.

To identify your Passion Factors, take a look at what you have loved doing over the course of your life – work or play – and then ask, “Why? Why is this so much fun? Why is it so interesting? What is it about this that is so compelling?”

What you love is only part of the equation. Whether you realize it or not, when you say, “I love _____,” what you really mean is, “I love _____ because of _____, _____, and _____.” You and I might love the exact same thing, but the reasons why we love it might be completely different. Those reasons why that are your Passion Factors.

Do you love writing code? Why? What is fun about that? Do you love marketing research, or writing a strategic plan? Why is that so appealing? As you explore multiple things you love, you’ll find similar themes start bubbling to the surface. Those are your Passion Factors.

Maybe you love piecing together puzzles. Or maybe a sense of exploration and discovery is always there when you’re feeling the juice. Maybe you delight in analysis, or getting lost in that creative flow.

Whatever they are, when your Passion Factors are in the picture, you are more likely to feel energized by what you’re doing. Knowing those Passion Factors takes the guesswork out of it.

“Here are these underlying characteristics that tend to be in place when I’m on fire about something,” you might think. “And here’s this job that is chock full of these underlying characteristics that tend to be in place when I’m on fire. What are the odds that I’m going to be on fire about that job?” They’re excellent!

Communicate your passion

Understanding your Passion Factors allows you to clearly articulate not just how your knowledge and skills make you a good fit, but also how the very nature of the job will actually give you energy – energy that you can then put back into optimal performance. In essence, you can say, “I’m perfect for this job because it’s going to fuel me. Here’s how, and here’s why.”

To help you communicate your passion story, try this. For each of the Passion Factors you identify, write one or more vignettes from your past work experience where that has come into play. Think of it as creating a cheat sheet to help you tell the passion story. Demonstrate where the energy comes from.

Next, identify elements of the job you’re interviewing for that tie into your passion factors. You can do this both ahead of time and by asking questions during the interview. For example, let’s say the job requires a strong degree of organization, and you love, Love, LOVE organizing and creating order. You can use those vignettes of your past experience as examples, then illustrate how those Passion Factors apply with the new job as well.

Ask questions to find alignment

Do you want a job you know won’t energize you? Probably not. Not just because it won’t be fun, but also because you are less likely to shine if the work is out of alignment with what makes you tick. When you understand your Passion Factors, you can ask questions in the interview to really understand if the job is a good fit for where you’ll be at your best.

Keep planning for passion

Finally, once you do land the job, remember to keep using those Passion Factors to help guide your path. Use them to evaluate opportunities that arise. Share them with your boss so he or she knows what makes you tick. Having a clear understanding of what energizes you makes it that much easier for him or her to guide you down a path where you can deliver on your highest potential.

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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

Job Action Day

Randall Hansen over at Quintessential Careers has declared November 3rd "Job Action Day" (more information here).

But rather than simply assign an empty designation to a random day, Randall asked a bucketload of career bloggers to write posts today to help people thrive in the face of current economic challenges.

Drop by the other bloggers involved in Job Action Day and see what nuggets o' wisdom they have to share...

• Alexandra Levit: Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom
• Barbara Safani: CareerSolvers
• Career Manangement Alliance Blog
• Darrell Gurney: In The Line of Hire
• Dave Rigotti: Career Fire
• Deborah Brown-Volkman: Surpass Your Dreams
• Diane Danielson: THE WOMEN'SDISH with Diane & Friends
• Jacob Share: JobMob
• Jason Alba: Jibber Jobber Blog
• Lindsey Pollak: Lindsey Pollak Blog: Career Advice & Commentary
• Louise Fletcher: blueskyresumesblog
• Maggie Mistal: what if...
• Miriam Salpeter: Keppie Careers
• Rich Milgram: EmploymentMetrix.com
• Steven Davies: JobPerfect Job Search Techniques
• Steven Rothberg: CollegeRecruiter.com Blog
• Wendy Terwelp: Rock Your Career
• Willy Franzen: One Day, One Job

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Need to re-energize your career?
Get started with 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work!

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst