The M.A.P. Maker

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?

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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

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!

--

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

Shape your worldview with a Positive Journal

Want a simple, powerful way to shape your worldview for the better? A way to focus your mind on the positive and improve the way you opt to experience life? Keep a "Positive Journal."

Defaulting to the negative

A few weeks ago, I was feeling down and frustrated with the way things were unfolding in my life, both personally and professionally. I recognize that any journey is going to have the occasional pothole, but I was starting to feel like the path I was on was cobbled with bumps in the road.

I was bitching about it to my friend Misa who asked me one of those simple questions that zing deep to the heart of things. "Curt," she said, "where's the abundance in your life?" She challenged me to sit down and look at the stories I was creating in my head and explore if there might be alternatives.

It got me thinking about how easy it was to let frustrations and negative thoughts color my whole picture. Overall I'm a pretty positive person, but I can also lapse into an inordinately negative view of things on occasion. How many pages in my journals had been prompted by a need to vent about what wasn't working? Maybe it was time for something different. 

Creating a positive space

I decided to start a journal where I would only focus on the positive. There would be no room for bitching, moaning, kvetching or complaining. It would be a combination of focusing on what's right in my life (a lot!) and exploring how the knee-jerk negative can be transformed into positive habits. Think of it as a gratitude journal on steroids!

I knew if I just said, "I'm going to do this," it would have a life span of a week or so, tops. So I decided to make it a 30-day experiment. Every day for thirty days I would write in my Positive Journal. At the end of that time, I would evaluate whether or not I would continue.

I also decided that I would approach it with curiosity. "I wonder what effect, if any, this will have." Rather than trying to force it to be a profound experience that flipped a happy switch, I simply let it have whatever effect would naturally unfold.

Was it a worthwhile experiment? Well, this morning was Day 40, and I'm not traditionally an every day journaler, so that probably something about the value right there.

The journal has had an impact in so many ways. It has focused my attention on the wealth of positive aspects of my life. It forced me to recognize when and how I lapsed into the negative. It got me habitually asking the question, "Where's the positive here?" It has provided a defined space where there is room for nothing but the positive, and that in turn has started seeping into the rest of my life.

Try it yourself

Don't just take my word for it. I challenge you to try this for yourself. Give yourself thirty days to write in your Positive Journal every day (I always do it first thing in the morning, and it often has a tremendous impact on my outlook for the day). See where it takes you.

Explore the abundance in your life (in all areas, not just financial). Explore the positive impact that has. Write about what you're grateful for. Write about the any negative habits that writing in the Positive Journal shines a light on, and what a positive alternative might be.

Most of all, let it unfold naturally and become what you need it to be, not some preconceived notion of what it should be and what impact it should have.

Do it for yourself

For several weeks I only told a couple people in my life that I was even doing it, and even with them, I didn't share any details of what was unfolding. I didn't want to dissipate its energy by shining an external light on it too soon. I felt protective of what was unfolding, and wanted to give it a safe space to become whatever it was going to become.

It's like the analogy of planting a new lawn. You don't invite all your friends over for a backyard barbecue while the tiny green shoots of grass are just poking up. You do it when your lawn has taken root.

If you decide to take me up on the Positive Journal challenge, I would love to hear what effect, if any, it has (after your lawn has taken root, of course).

--

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

--

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

Reading + Meditation = Readitation

The ability to stay grounded and centered is a huge asset on your M.A.P. Making journey. You feel more focused. You waste less energy feeling stressed. You have more clarity. And if you're looking for a way to get grounded and centered, meditation can't be beat.

One of my favorite meditation resources is Meditation Made Easy by Lorin Roche, Ph.D.  It's easily the most accessible meditation book I've come across, and one many of my clients end up buying. It's also the book that played a key role in my discovering meditation to begin with.

Early in the book, Roche talks about an idea he calls meditative reading (I call it "readitation").

What's a meditative style of reading? It's really simple - just pause at the end of each paragraph or each page and take a couple of conscious breaths. (This pause is actually a mini-meditation, and all you have to do is breathe.)...Enjoy the experience of air flowing in and out as you process the information you've just covered. This will help you translate the information in the book into an internal ability.

Later, he describes part of what happens when you do this.

When you take a few conscious breaths after reading something, you shift your sensory focus from words to feeling your body. When you do this, your body gets to assimilate the learning.

It's a simple idea, but there are so many things I love about it. First, it's a really, really easy way to start dipping your toe into meditation. It's about as easy and non-onerous as you're going to get.

Second, so many of us have a tendency to treat reading (and many other things we do) as a race to the finish. Jump in. Get it done. Move on. The result can be a bit like rain falling on bone-dry soil - the ideas we read just run right off, without a chance to soak in. A meditational approach to reading gives you a chance to really stop and ask, what am I reading here? What am I learning?

Third, it gets you out of your head and more fully into the whole of you (something most of us desperately need).

And finally, it's a way to simply slow down and focus your awareness.

Why not give it a try? Pick a favorite book and try some readitation. Maybe just a couple minutes at first, enough time to play with it, but not so much that it feels like a chore. As you get more comfortable , you can expand the time you spend with it.

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM