The M.A.P. Maker

2 questions to stimulate a fresh perspective

One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, 'What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?' 

- Rachel Carson

Do you feel stuck or uninspired? In a mental rut? Have the colors faded in your world? 

What if there were a way to jump out of that rut without making a single change in the external circumstances of you life. As you may have guessed already, there is. 

Take a minute to really spend some time with the questions in the Rachel Carson quote above. Imagine using them to create a lens through which to look at your life. What difference could that make?

What if I knew I would never see it again?

On occasion I go to an ecstatic dance event here in Seattle. After one dance a couple years ago, a woman described her experience dancing with her boyfriend. She said, "I started imagining, 'What if this were our last dance? What if this were the last time I got to do this with him?" 

That one little question made that night's dance especially powerful and moving for her, because it put her in a place of being truly aware and appreciative of what she had, rather than experiencing it on autopilot.

Part of the power of asking these questions is that it forces you to take yourself off autopilot and engage the world around you with fresh eyes. 

What if I had never seen this before? 

Have you ever been delighted with something new, then gotten so used to it that you scarcely even notice it any longer? Imagine that effect, but instead of that one thing, apply it to your entire life. That's how many people go through their days. 

To start countering that, experiment with looking at things as though you had never seen them before. Spark your curiosity. The world is a pretty amazing place, if you stop and pay attention. 

To help you look at something as though you have never seen it before, here are some questions to ask: 

• What could this be used for?
• How does this work?
• How was this made?
• Who would use something like this? How?
• Where was this made? 
• Who made it? What human hands touched this?
• How did this get here?
• Who came up with the idea for this? 

Questions like these can start to make even the simplest and most mundane of items objects of curiosity and wonder. 

A variation on the never-before-seen theme is looking at someone you know well - a loved one, for example - and imagining never having met them before. Try to look at them with fresh eyes and ask yourself what you notice. What do you appreciate? What do you enjoy? What are you currently taking for granted?

Try this: For the next week, practice looking at things with fresh eyes. Make a habit of asking questions like the ones I listed above. Challenge yourself to find wonder in the mundane. 

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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

Laughter yoga: Laugh your life better

Have you ever had one of those rolling-on-the-floor, I-think-I'm-going-to-pee-my-pants fits of laughter and come out the other side feeling much better than before you started? Maybe you felt some stress peel away, or you just felt lighter. If so, you know the power of laughter to change both your perspective and the way your body physically feels. 

As part of my workhelping people create careers and lives for themselves that energize and inspire them, I'm always on the lookout for ways to improve our experience of the here and now. One of my favorites (though I haven't participated in it myself) is laughter yoga. 

Laughter yoga sounds faintly ridiculous, but research has shown that tapping into laughter has very real benefits. I came across a short video clip this morning featuring John Cleese that takes a look at laughter yoga in India. It's worth watching. 

Even if there are no laughter yoga groups in your area, it's worth keeping the benefits of laughter in mind. If you don't have enough laughter in your life, what can you do to bring more of it into the picture? Who makes you laugh? What makes you laugh? Go to a funny movie. 

Read a funny book. Go to comedycentral.com and find something that makes you guffaw. Make a commitment to yourself to bring more laughter into your life. Conduct a 30-day laughter experiment. Commit to consciously seeking out something every day that makes you laugh and see what effect it has. At worst, you'll get a few chuckles. At best, it could shift your entire outlook. 

[Hat tip to Tim at 360 Degree Self for the video link]

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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 are you feeding your tenacity?

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.

~ Louis Pasteur

Do you want to raise the odds that you will succeed in turning your dreams into reality? Give the heave-ho to the notion that it's all going to happen with the flip of a switch (because in all likelihood, it won't). Replace it with a commitment to tenacity.

One of the biggest obstacles standing in our way as we look at creating a career and a life that energizes and inspires us is our cultural obsession with immediate gratification. We want results and we want them now, and if we can't get them now we deem those results to be impossible.

Instead of asking, "How can I make this happen RIGHT NOW," ask, "How can I support my long-term commitment to making this happen?"

Tenacity doesn't happen in a vacuum. Yes, some of it has to do with sheer grit and guts, but there are many other factors that feed that tenacity. For example:

Your goal: Is what you're trying to achieve something you really care about? Is the drive to make it happen coming from deep inside you, or are you driven by surface-level motivators (like what other people think)?

The more personally compelling your goal is, the more determination you naturally have to see it through to fruition.

Support: The more external support you can incorporate into the picture, the less you have to fight your way through alone. And the less energy you have to put into fighting your way through alone, the more energy you have to put into taking ongoing action.

Self-care: The better you take care of your body, the more energy you have to keep moving forward. Diet and exercise can play a huge role in having the juice to keep going. Care of your mind and spirit is important as well. For example, incorporating a practice like meditation can help ground you and keep your energy from fraying and flying off in all directions.

What about you? What are you doing to nourish your tenacity? What could you do?

Try this: Sit down and brainstorm as many things as you can think of that would feed that tenacity (you might start by reading my recent post on the US News & World Report blog, 7 Steps to Sustain a Career Change).

Pick one thing from the resulting list and start taking steps towards incorporating it more fully into your life. If you make a habit of doing that on a regular basis, over time your tenacity will be more and more deeply nourished.

--

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 are you spending your energy budget?

In my work, I talk a lot about personal energy management  (see this blog post on The Gain-to-Drain Ratio, for example). In many ways, how you manage your energy is how you live your life.

This morning I was looking at the transcript from my M.A.P. Maker podcast featuring Daryn Kagan. In it, she had a great take on her own energy management approach that she describes as choosing how to spend her energy budget.

I do like to talk to people about what I call my energy budget. And just like every business has a financial budget, there’s only so much you can spend, I think every day we each have so many units of energy we can spend as well. And I think it’s really important to decide how you’re going to spend them.

So I don’t really spend a lot of them on critics. And I don’t spend a lot of that on people who tell me why this isn’t going to work. And I think that’s been a really good investment. Because to me, just like that would be throwing money down the drain, I think that’s throwing your energy down the drain as well.

I love that idea. It takes something abstract and creates a concrete concept around it.

Try this: For the rest of the week, pay attention to how you are choosing to spend your energy budget. (You might want to keep track of what you find with an End-of-Day Review.) Where is your energy going? Is it contributing to building the life you want, or are you throwing energy down the drain?

--

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

Create a positive reference guide to yourself

When it comes to pursuing (and achieving) your dreams, self-belief plays an enormously positive role. But even the most confident of us can occasionally get caught up in a downward spiral of self-doubt. So what to do?

One idea is to create a positive guide to yourself. Start by asking some questions:

• What have I done that I am proud of?
• What have I achieved?
• Where have I succeeded?
• What have I done well?
• What would others say I have done well?

The answers can be big things or small things. Basically what you're doing is creating a list of positive outcomes.

For each of the things you come up with, ask yourself, "What is it that allowed me to do that? What skills do I have that helped me accomplish that? What characteristics do I have? What knowledge do I have?"

Start building a picture of not only what you have done well, but also why you have been able to do that. The more you understand about why you have succeeded in the past, the better equipped you are to see how those things might apply to success in the future.

This exploration focuses your attention on the positive, but more than that, it creates a positive reference guide to yourself that you can refer to in the future. You can pull it out when you're starting to feel down on yourself, or any old time you want a reminder.

Try this: Instead of doing this in one positive binge, try making it an ongoing part of your weekly habit. Start by making the list from the questions above (and any others that come to mind) and each week pick two or three to explore.

By making it an ongoing habit, you incorporate a regular, systematic positive focus into your week.

--

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 thrive with a positive personal ecosystem

With all the bad news in the media, it's easy to get sucked into a sky-is-falling view of the world. But guess what? Despite all the gloom and doom, positive things are still happening all around us.

People are still making money. They're still happy. They're still experiencing positive personal growth. People are still finding bliss.

Are people experiencing bad things as well? Of course. But why would you choose to let that define what you are going to experience in your life?

Just because challenging things are happening doesn't mean they have to happen to you. And if they do happen to you, just because other people are wailing and gnashing their teeth about how horrible they are doesn't mean that you have to respond that way.

Take a cue from Pigpen

Remember Pigpen from the Peanuts comic strip? Everywhere he went, a cloud of dust and dirt would follow him. He had his own personal environment that didn't seem to have anything to do with the environment around him.

You can do the same thing, creating a positive personal ecosystem that surrounds you as you move through your life. Except instead of a cloud of dust, it's a cloud of positive perspective and positive experience. 

How? The first step is being consciously aware that you're doing it. Choose to invest in creating it. Once you do that, here are some ideas that will help form and strengthen that positive personal ecosystem.

Keep things in perspective

If negative things are happening in your life, don't let them fill any more of the picture than they really merit. Too often we let whatever challenges we're experiencing swell to fill the room, leaving precious little space for us to experience what's good.

Imagine it as a pie chart, with individual slices assigned to all the things in our lives, good and bad. When you lose perspective, the negative slice takes up almost the entire pie. But if we look at it realistically, there is typically a lot that is positive that we're essentially ignoring because we're choosing to wallow in what's wrong.

Make sure your slices of the pie are in line with reality.

Focus on the positive

It's easy to focus on the negative. It's the whole bur-under-the-saddle thing. It hurts, so it grabs your attention. But what you focus on will determine how you see the world, so make it a habit to spend time every day focusing on what's positive in your life.

Use your commute to take mental note of what's good in your life. Write a list every morning, or every night. Schedule a regular time with a friend to get together and talk about nothing but what is right in your life.

Surround yourself with positive people

I can't stress this enough. In a way, you will become the people you surround yourself with. If everyone around you is negative and pessimistic, it will drag you down. If the people around you have a positive attitude and believe in their potential to create a vibrant, fulfilling life - regardless of the circumstances - you will start to live up to that.

Use tools to build it

There are many different tools you can use to build that positive personal ecosystem. Explore meditation. Pray, if that's something you do. Keep a gratitude journal (or a positive journal). Experiment with EFT. 

Anything you can use to help build the positive and eliminate the negative in your mindset is a potential tool.

Look for the possibilities

Create an outlook that is jam-packed with possibilities and potential.

Make a habit of looking for possibilities. When you're faced with an obstacle, trying brainstorming as many ways around it as you can. Do this for big obstacles and small ones. Take advantage of any opportunity to exercise this part of your brain.

While you're at it, look for possibilities even when you aren't encountering obstacles. Many life-expanding opportunities zip right by us, simply because we're not paying attention.

The more possibilities you see, the more choices you have. And the more choices you have, the less likely you are to feel trapped and stuck. And ultimately, the less likely you will be to fall into a victim mentality. You'll be driving the bus instead of sitting in the back breathing in exhaust fumes.

Plant seeds

Don't sit around and wait for the positive to unfold in your life. It might happen, but it's a lot less like than if you actively cultivate it. Look for ways to create fertile ground and plant seeds of potential. Maybe that means building relationships. Maybe that means letting people know what you want to do. Maybe it means telling the world what you have to offer - and doing it consistently and persistently. 

The more seeds you plant, and the more work you do to create fertile soil for them to take root in and grow, the more potential there is for the positive to come into your life. It's simple math.

Feed the positive

Make a conscious choice to feed your positive outlook by what you expose your brain to. Watch inspiring movies. Read motivating books. Attend inspiring talks. Continually exposing your mind to, "Yes!" helps create that positive perception of the world. 

Eliminate the "junk food"

The flip side of that coin is cutting out the emotionally toxic junk food. Violence and bad news adds nothing to your life. There is no upside to it. All it does is contribute fear, anxiety, and doubt. Stop watching television news. Even better, cut out TV altogether. Choose not to watch movies that reinforce a dark view of the world.

Care for yourself

Your body and brain is the factory that is creating your experience of life. And for a good experience, that factory needs proper maintenance. Eating well and incorporating physical activity into your life will support your ability to feel good.

Do good

Study after study has shown the benefits of doing good. Volunteer. Give. Spend time focusing on helping others. Not only does it feel good, it takes your mind off whatever difficulties you might be experiencing and helps put things in perspective.

Have a vision

I can almost guarantee that you will feel bumps along the way. But if you have a vision for the life you want to create and the difference you want to make, those bumps will be easier to tolerate. It might not take away the pain, but it will give you something positive to focus on as you move through them. 

As Nietzsche said, "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."

So there you have it. This by no means an exhaustive list of ways to create your positive personal ecosystem, but it's a good place to start.

How about you? What has been effective in feeding your own positive personal ecosystem? What approaches do you take? Do you have thoughts on any of these that I listed? Other suggestions? I would love to hear your ideas.

--

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

Free guided meditation downloads

Successful M.A.P. Making (creating a life of meaning, abundance, and passion) isn't just about taking action to make it happen. It's also about creating an internal environment that supports that action. Anything that helps you stay focused, grounded, and energized will build a more solid foundation for your efforts.

One great tool for that is guided meditation. Here is a page with a bucketload of free guided meditation mp3's, with topics ranging from relaxation to dealing with change to coping with pain.

Check it out and jump on in. The price is right.

--

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

You can't do it all (right now).

Do you ever find yourself trying to accomplish so much that life leaves you feeling a little dizzy? You're spinning madly, trying to do more and more and more, all the while stretching ever thinner.

It's tempting to try to cram as much as we can into our bucket o' life, but the reality is, when it's full, something has to give. Something is going to spill over the side. That might be our relationships, our health, the quality of our work, some other adverse effect (or a combination of all of the above).

Over on Self-Help Daily, a post on accomplishing more by doing less got me thinking about a time in my own life when I was addicted to the high-energy pace of the 70-hour work week lifestyle. I wanted to think the volume of my bucket was bigger than most, but the truth was that it was sloshing over the sides at every turn.

One day a friend sat me down and said, "Curt, you're trying to do everything, and you're not doing anything well." Not what I wanted to hear, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was true.

I ended up making a list of all the things I had on my plate and forced myself to prioritize them. I divided my life into two-week segments and assigned tasks to the current segment, then the next, and so on.

Then, when I was tempted to try to do this, and this, and this, oh, and THIS TOO, I could say, "That would be nice, but it's not time for that yet." I was able to focus on a smaller range of tasks and do them better.

How could your life benefit by prioritizing and living it one chunk at a time?

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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

8 simple questions to move you towards your dreams

Despite our best intentions, it can be easy to get blown off course from our goals and aspirations. The busyness of everyday life gets in the way. Or we start habitually doing things or acting in ways that are counter to what we say we want. Or maybe other people's thoughts and opinions start to influence our choices in a negative way. 

Whatever the cause, that drift is a normal part of the journey. It would be nice to be able to be on target, on purpose 24/7, but frankly, that's unrealistic. At the same time, you don't want to wander so far off course for so long that you completely lose sight of your dreams.

The solution? Check in with yourself on a regular basis so you can correct your course.

Here are eight simple questions to help you do a status check on your progress. They can help you catch yourself before you drift too far off course. They can help you identify what's happening in your life that is feeding the dream, and what's happening that is detracting from it.

Most importantly, they give you insight that you can then follow up with one of the most powerful questions I know: "What can I do about it?" That might mean, "How can I change what's wrong," or it might mean, "How can I build on the positive?"

What/who in my life is energizing me?

Take stock of the things in your life that are giving you energy. If you look at everything that happens over the course of a week, what activities leaves you feeling energized? Who is it enjoyable or inspiring to spend time with?

What/who in my life is draining me?

Instead of coasting along, unconsciously letting activities or people suck your energy away, this question is aimed at helping you shine the light on those energy leaks so you can plug them.

What am I doing right?

Sometimes we forget to acknowledge the great things we're accomplishing. We do something and our attention turns to the next item on our to-do list, without ever pausing to celebrate what we're doing right. More than that, our attention can be consumed by where our performance is less than preferable.

Between the two of those, it's a wonder we ever feel capable of moving our dreams forward.Reinforce your efforts by spending time focusing on what you're doing right.

What is distracting me from what's important?

How much time dribbles away in activity that is either standing still or backsliding? Where are you focusing your time and attention that is simply distracting you from what is really important.

These things might be clearly negative (spending five hours a day watching TV, for example), or they might be masquerading as something positive (overcommitting with your volunteer work, for example).

The key is to look at everything you do and ask, "Is this moving me toward my goal, or is it distracting me?"

What step do I need to take that I've been avoiding?

Are there any steps you know you should be taking, but that you're procrastinating or avoiding altogether? What are they? Make an inventory, pick the one that would be most beneficial, and commit to doing it.

Not only will this move you forward, it will also eliminate the seeping energy drain that comes from that little voice that keeps saying, "I know I should be doing this, but..."

Who do I appreciate?

Your journey isn't just about you. It's also about the people who support that journey in many different ways, both professionally and personally. 

It's easy to take the people in our lives for granted. Don't. Take a look at who you appreciate. Then - and here's the best part - tell them.

Who needs my help?

It's not just a one-way street. Just as we can open ourselves to help, there are many ways we can help others as well. Maybe big, maybe small.

Not only does this keep the cycle of giving going, but research also shows that there is a very real personal benefit to helping others. It also keeps you from getting so caught up in your own process that you lose perspective.

What do I need to know?

Finally, look at where you are and where you're going and ask, "What do I need to know?" What knowledge do you need to be able to take the next step. What lack of knowledge is keeping you from taking the next step?

So there you have it. Eight simple questions that - if you ask them regularly and follow them up with the power question, "What can I do about that" - will keep you focused and moving towards your goals and aspirations.

--

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?

--

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