The M.A.P. Maker

Don't just think - create a right-brain file

In a culture that places a high value on taking a left-brained, analytical approach, many of us are only tapping into part of our brain's potential. We completely miss out on the right-brained, intuitive, flash-of-brilliance-out-of-nowhere potential each of us have.

Of course, it's easy to pay lip service to expanding our approach to encompass a fuller range of our brain's potential, but how do you actually do it?

Michael Melcher over on The Creative Lawyer has an interesting approach he calls creating a right-brain file. As he puts it, "it's a way of thinking without, well, thinking."

What you put into your Right-Brain File is anything that tickles your fancy. It could be an article, a photo, a travel brochure, an email, an overheard snatch of dialogue. My Right-Brain File consists mainly of articles, but that’s just me. What you put into your Right-Brain File might excite you, it might intrigue you, it might make you boil with envy, it might just make you say, “huh.” There’s something there, you’re just not sure what. And the key is: don’t think about it. Just put it in the file.

So far so good. The key is to resist the urge to analyze and just toss it in there. And then...

Later, once your file has grown, take a look at what you’ve collected. What do you see? Any patterns, inspirations, insights?  What you have is a record of what your right brain—the intuitive, associative, non-logical part of you—has noticed. It’s been noticing things, even if you haven’t been able to put words around it. Indeed, sometimes avoiding putting words around your impulses is one of the best ways to let them develop.

Another way to think about it - one that keeps your left brain in the loop so it doesn't rebel - is that all this is really doing is gathering data from the right brain that your left brain doesn't have immediately available. Once it has the data, your analytical side can group and sort and analyze and pattern-recognize to its heart's content.

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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

When crisis strikes, ask, "What matters?"

When I look back over the years at the significant growth and positive change I have experienced, much of it has come from times when life has sent me tumbling ass over tea-kettle. They have been things that sucked to go through, but that ultimately planted the seed for something really positive in the long run.

This morning I ran across an interview with Rachel Remen MD, author of Kitchen Table Wisdom (a book I highly recommend). In it, she echoes that experience, pointing out that sometimes it's the negative experiences that jolt us into a life worth living. She says:

Very negative experiences, including anxiety and fear, have the potential to cause us to question the way we've been living. They're a wake-up call. They make people think more deeply about things and ask themselves questions like: What's important? What really matters? How do I want to spend my time, my money, my energy? How do I live more deliberately according to the things that are important to me? Just a very simple two-word question—"What matters?"—can change your life and the lives of people around you.

Such a short question, and yet so powerful. Yet too often we end up so immersed in the minutia of our day-to-day lives that it takes some kind of significant negative experience to shock us out of auto-pilot.

Finding the answer to that question can do two things as you grapple with your challenging situation. First, it can focus your attention on the things that are truly important in your life. It helps you keep from over-focusing on the negative and put your focus instead on what feeds and energizes you.

And second, it can plant the seeds for a long-term positive goal, putting your immediate situation in perspective and giving you something beneficial to focus on and move towards.

Even if you don't find yourself confronting a crisis right now, answering that one little question - what matters? - is one of the best investments you can make.

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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

A realistic look at how to be happy

What does it mean to be happy?

We live in a culture that has somehow sanitized and packaged happiness in single-serving, easy access packets. "Three easy steps to being insanely happy!" We want it served up like fast-food.

But happiness isn't just a high-voltage smile, and when that's all we're trying to achieve we start to one-dimensionalize life.

I ran across this description in a recent PsychologyToday article on happiness that sums up my perspective on happiness really well.

What is happiness? The most useful definition—and it's one agreed upon by neuroscientists, psychiatrists, behavioral economists, positive psychologists, and Buddhist monks—is more like satisfied or content than "happy" in its strict bursting-with-glee sense. It has depth and deliberation to it. It encompasses living a meaningful life, utilizing your gifts and your time, living with thought and purpose.

It's maximized when you also feel part of a community. And when you confront annoyances and crises with grace. It involves a willingness to learn and stretch and grow, which sometimes involves discomfort. It requires acting on life, not merely taking it in. It's not joy, a temporary exhilaration, or even pleasure, that sensual rush—though a steady supply of those feelings course through those who seize each day.

The article goes on to look at a variety of ways of bringing that sense of happiness into your life, all the while avoiding hyberbole and platitudes.

One of the things I appreciate most about the article is that it leaves room for the full range of human experience. It says, "Hey, it's possible to experience negative emotions and still have a happy life." Take this bit about mindfulness, for example:

"If you bring mindfulness to bear on negative feelings, they lose their impact. Just let them be there without struggling against them, and you'll eventually feel less anxiety and depression," Harris says. Don't banish your negative feelings, but don't let them get in the way of your taking productive actions, either.

Lots of good juicy ideas in this article. Well worth a read.

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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

How to get things done with a five-minute focus

As I sat trying to write earlier today, I found my attention drifting and my focus wandering. I was taking way too long to accomplish way too little.

To counter that, I downloaded a free digital timer and started setting it in five-minute increments. My intent was to focus on writing in five-minute chunks and not let myself do anything else but the task at hand during those five minutes.

I've been finding it a really effective way to reign in my entropic focus. Every time I wanted to wander over and check my e-mail, or read Twitter, or go to the kitchen to get something to nibble on, or...well, you get the idea, I checked myself and stayed on task. Because I had committed to focusing only on what I was writing for that five minutes, I stayed with it.

What made this so effective for me was that I always knew I was only a couple minutes from being able to take a break if I really wanted to. It removed the impulsive, spur-of-the-moment scatteredness and put boundaries around when my attention could wander. At the same time, it didn't make the breaks so few and far between that my mind rebelled.

The discipline involved in saying, "I won't look at Twitter until I write for another three minutes is significantly less than, "I won't let my attention wander until I've written for an hour." 

And often, the five minutes would be up before I knew it because I had fallen into a rhythm with what I was doing. I would take a couple seconds to reset the timer to five minutes, and be off to the races again.

How about you? How do you stay focused and productive?

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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

How to turn life's potholes into forward-focused energy

In your career, and in your life, you're inevitably going to encounter bumps in the road. Sometimes they're just little potholes, and sometimes they feel like it will take a four-wheeler to get over them. Most of us - yours truly included - resist those bumps. We want (or at least we think we want) nothing but smooth sailing.

What if, instead of resisting and railing against the bumps in the road we experience in life, we had a way to turn them into energy? What if we could actually transform those bumps into something that helps us power forward?

That question was prompted by this article on a shock absorber a group of MIT students recently developed that converts bumps in the road into energy. It got me thinking, "What's the equivalent of that in life? What are the components of a system that will turn our bumps into energy to propel us farther in life?"

Several things come to mind that might be the life-equivalent of an energy-generating shock absorber:

Positive focus: What is positive about this?

As the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining. Ask yourself, "What is positive about this?" You might be surprised at what you find.

For example, let's say you've lost your job and are in the job search. It's tempting to paint that with a broad negative brush, but if you look for the positive you might see, "Well, this has been a great chance to take stock of where I am in my life and where I want to go. I was always too busy while I was working. And it has been really nice to have a little more time to spend with my spouse/partner. And it has been a great opportunity to start building more professional relationships."

None of this negates the painful parts of the experience, it simply gives you a fuller picture and helps you find good things to focus on, not just the difficult aspects.

Learning: What am I learning from this?

They might not be pleasant, but life's challenges can be some of the best teachers you'll find. The key is pulling yourself out of the experience for long enough to stop and ask, "What am I learning here?"

This is really a subset of the question, "What is positive about this?" While it may not eliminate the unpleasantness of what you're experiencing, a focus on what you're learning can at least broaden your perception to include how this experience might benefit you as you move forward. And the more positive you can see coming out of an experience, the easier it is to tolerate (or even appreciate). 

Once you have gotten through the bumpy patch, you might also look back and do a post-game review.

Connection: Reaching out to others

Our most challenging times are the times we need the support of others the most. Reaching out to others can plant a seed of connection that can grow over time and give you a stronger foundation for moving through challenges in the future as well.

Insights to help others: How can what I'm learning help others in the future?

A great way to take your focus off yourself is to ask yourself, "How might others benefit from what I'm learning here?" What am I learning that could make others' paths easier? What tools am I gaining as a result of this experience that I can share with others?

Support is a two-way street. The more you focus on helping others, the more potential there is for that support to come back your direction. And it's not just support in challenging times. Helping others is a way to build relationships, and relationships open doors.

Confidence: If I can get through this, what else do I have the potential to do?

When you successfully navigate a sea of obstacles, you gain first-hand experience that you really can deal with whatever comes your way. And when you feel confident that you can deal with challenges, you're more willing to take risks and pursue fulfillment in life.

Coping tools: What helps me get through this?

Think of challenging times as an R&D lab for coping tools. Explore different ways of staying positive, focused, and grounded. Take what works for you and put it in your toolkit. The more you have in your toolkit, the easier it will be to move through future challenges and the less you will let them slow you down.

What else comes to mind that helps turn the negative of a challenging experience into a positive that moves you ahead? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[hat tip to AEnews for the tweet about the shock absorbers]

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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

Harness the power of great questions

When it comes to creating the life we want, I'm a huge believer in the power of questions. Questions can shine a light on things we've been missing, jolt us out of an un-thinking rut, and help us look at the world in a whole new way.

This article on asking empowering questions is a great place to start exploring what the might question mark can do for you. I especially like the list of empowering questions you can start asking today.

How about you? Do you have any favorite questions you like to ask?

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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

Great list of inspiring movies

So much of what is possible in each of our lives depends on how we see the world. Is our perspective positive, or negative? Do we see possibility, or impossibility? Meaning, or pointlessness?

And so much of how we see the world depends on how we feed our minds. Dish up a steady stream of negative, violent, hopeless input, and it can't help but color our perspectives. Serve a constant flow of inspiring, positive, hopeful input on the other hand, and it will nourish a similar worldview (And with the stress and uncertainty people are feeling these days, nourishing that positive worldview is more important than ever).

With that in mind, I am always on the lookout for movies that inspire me and make me feel good. I want to feed a sense of peace and possibility.

The question is always, "What movie should I watch?" You can't turn around in a video store without knocking over a DVD with a dark, violent view of the world, but really good positive movies are much fewer and farther between.

I recently came across an excellent list of life-affirming and inspiring movies. I printed it out and highlighted the ones that I've already seen (about a third of them) and by and large agreed that they belonged on the list, which seems a good indication that the others stand a good chance of being worth watching as well. So I'm giving this list two thumbs up.

Next time it's movie night at home and you're looking for a movie to watch, this list is a great place to start.

Which movies from the list would you recommend? Are there other inspiring movies you would suggest that aren't on the list?

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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