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.

--

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

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.

--

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

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.

--

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

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

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.

--

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

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.

--

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

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

--

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

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Unless they start their own business, at some point career changers will need to interview for a role that is essentially a break with their past.

Here's a good article with six interview tips for career changers.

--

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

Here's a good article with six interview tips for career changers.

--

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

For many people, taking the path to passion in their career means striking out on their own as a self-employed, freelancing, solopreneur type.

If that's you, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of Michelle Goodman's latest book, My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire. It's not often you find a how-to book packed to capacity with real-world advice that is also such a fun read.

I got my copy of the book last week. Since then, I have picked it up repeatedly and flipped it open at random. Again and again my reaction has been, "Oh, that's good." It's high on utility and low on fluff, all written in Michelle's irreverent style that will make you smile, chuckle, and occasionally guffaw (I kid you not! Actual guffaws!).

Even if it weren't so fun to read, this book has so much useful information that it would still be a mandatory addition to any freelancer's library.

--

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

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

This morning I woke up with a variation on that theme running through my head: Life is good...and here's why. It has stayed with me all morning. A laundry list answer even ended up being my journal entry for the day.

The more I think about it, the more it seems like that simple thought-starter has the potential to be a powerful tool for focusing attention on the positive. Imagine developing a habit of regularly inventorying reasons why life is good. Multiple times per day, even. It takes next to no effort, and the payoff could be enormous.

The more you focus on the positive, the more your awareness of it grows. And the greater your awareness of it, the more positive the lens through which you view the world becomes. And the stronger the positive correction of that lens, the more positive your experience of life becomes.

Try this: Sit down and make a list of all the things that come to mind when you say, "Life is good...and here's why." Then keep repeating it in your mind as you go through your day and see what else comes up.

--

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

For those of you who subscribe to my e-mail newsletter, you know that it has been on the inactive list for a long, long time. This morning, I re-launched it with a new name, FUEL! (which stands for Fully Energized Life).

If you would like receive it in the future, you can subscribe here (as a bonus, you will get a free six-installment audio-course on how to get Wild About Work).

Here is a copy of the premiere issue.  

---

Welcome to FUEL!, a newsletter focused on helping you create a Fully Energized Life.

FUEL! is the new incarnation of my Wild About Work newsletter. While creating a career that energizes and inspires is still a primary focus, the expanded view is a nod to the whole-system nature of our lives, and that work doesn't happen in a silo. The various facets of our lives are interconnected, and what happens in one part often affects the others.

And now it’s time for…drum roll, please…the premiere issue of FUEL!

--

QUOTE:

If you hear a voice within you saying, “You are not a painter,” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.

- Vincent Van Gogh

--

SILENCE THE VOICE OF DOUBT WITH ACTION

[Note from Curt: Please help me focus on what you care about and answer the one-question survey at the end of this article.]

If you commit to creating a life that lights you up, at some point along the way you’re likely to hear the voice of doubt. “You can’t do that,” it might say. “You don’t have what it takes. That’s not practical. That’s impossible.”

I am consistently amazed at how often that voice of doubt is wrong. The voice would have you believe that it is simply giving you a picture of reality, but frequently it is merely reflecting a negative view of reality that it has created itself.

One great way to take the wind out of the voice of doubt’s sails is to take positive action and give it space to grow. Taking action opens the door to possibility, and giving it space to grow (i.e., having patience) gives a positive outcome room to unfold.

Why is taking action so powerful?

Action creates opportunity

The voice of doubt is strongest when you can’t easily see the possibilities. When you take action, it sets the game in motion. It creates the potential for opportunities to appear that you could never have known about while standing still.

Action can prove the voice of doubt wrong

When you take action, you create the opportunity to prove the voice of doubt wrong (or at least raise serious questions about the strength of its arguments). If you take no action, that voice is right by default.

Action creates your reality

If you want to be something, take steps to become that, whether or not that’s how you see yourself to begin with. Think of the steps you take as the brush strokes with which you create your masterpiece. You don’t start out with a work of art. You start out with a blank canvas. It’s only through exploration and action that the image starts to emerge.

Action creates positive certainty

The voice of doubt thrives on uncertainty. Any time you don’t know for sure what’s possible, that voice is more than happy to step in and fill that space with a negative certainty. When you take action and start to have successes – even small ones – you start to create a positive certainty.

Try this: Think of a vision you haven’t pursued because of that voice of doubt. Make a list of steps you could take in pursuit of that vision, both baby steps and giant leaps. Pick one that feels doable, and take action. When you have done that, come back to the list and choose another.

Please take a moment to share your perspective with this one-question survey. I would love to know on a scale of 1 to 5 how much interest this article’s subject matter holds for you. Over time, this will help guide this newsletter’s content.

To answer the question, follow this link.

--

BOOK RECOMMENDATION

There are so many great books out there that will help you create a life that lights you up. In each issue of FUEL!, I will recommend one of my favorites. Some of them will be how-to books, while others will be stories of inspiration and hope. This issue’s recommendation lies in the latter category:

Make the Impossible Possible
One Man’s Crusade to Inspire Others to Dream Bigger and Achieve the Extraordinary
by Bill Strickland

This is one of those books with an “anything is possible” feel to it. Born in a poor inner city neighborhood, Bill Strickland’s prospects looked bleak until a high school teacher inspired him to believe that his future could be different.

Strickland is now the CEO of Manchester Bidwell, a jobs training center and community arts program. He has received a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” lectured at Harvard, served on the board of the National Endowment for the Arts and, together with Manchester Bidwell, been the focus of three Harvard Business School case studies.

It’s worth reading both for the insights and the inspiration.

--

Curt Rosengren
Passion Catalyst ^TM
"Love your work. Change your world."

e-mail: curt@passioncatalyst.com
web: www.passioncatalyst.com

One effect became obvious by the third day. Here's a snippet from the journal:

I'm starting to think that keeping this positive journal is a little like keeping a dream journal. When I consistently write down my dreams in the morning, I remember my dreams much more. My mind knows I'm paying attention, so it pays attention.

Even after just a few days with this journal, I find myself looking for the positive elements. it's like my mind is aware that there is a place for those things now, so it's paying more attention.

I think part of the trouble with "positive thinking" can be that we try to do it on the fly and there's no place for it to get traction. It comes and goes, and life gets busy or something goes sideways and all of a sudden we're not paying attention to the positive.

When I started writing my positive journal, I took it out of the on-the-fly world and created a static repository for that positive focus. It literally created a space for the positive in my life to pour into.

How about your life? How can you let your mind know that you're paying attention to the positive?

--

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

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

That might be gratitude journaling, or looking at the countless ways abundance shows up in my life (not just financial), or exploring how to shift a limiting perspective to a positive one.

I'm not sure if it was simply the right idea at the right time for me, but my positive journaling has had a powerful impact on my life. It has been an extraordinary tool for building a stronger positive perspective and not allowing negative experiences consume me.

While I can't say whether or not it could have the same effect for you (though I suspect the net result would be positive), I can at least share some of the insights that have come out of my journaling thus far.

Over the next couple weeks I want to share some of the insights I have gained. I will be compiling the links in this post, so you can find them all in one place.

Positive focus: Let your mind know you're paying attention

Positive focus: Life is good...and here's why

--

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

Over on the U.S. News & World Report blog, I wrote a short post offering some ideas for finding a sense of peace in the the middle of all this turmoil.

The post wraps up with the question, "How do you find peace in the midst of all the fear." I would love to hear your thoughts over there.

Thanks!

--

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

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Got a dream? Found an obstacle? This teleforum just might be what you need. Drop me a line to register and I'll send you the dial-in information.

Hope to see you there!

curt