The M.A.P. Maker

Fear or possibility: Which does your focus feed?

A few weeks ago, it dawned on me how many times one of my friends on Facebook had made some variation on the comment, "I love how positive your focus is with your posts here." 

It's tempting to believe that my focus is so positive because I'm just an inherently positive guy. And while that is accurate to some degree, I'm also a guy who gets pissed off at the latest insanity in the news, or depressed at the seemingly endless waves of negativity. I get incensed at people's actions. I think quite often - in big, bold, capital letters - "WTF???" 

And in truth, often I'm tempted to post my outrage, or indignation, or sense of hopelessness. But it always comes down to, "Is that really what I want to add to the world?" Because really, there's enough of that out there without pouring my own fuel on that fire. 

And so I choose to focus on what I want to see more of in the world. I want to see more compassion. I want to see more tolerance. I want to see more people inspired to make the world a better place. I want to see more people living vibrant, energized lives. I want to see more love. 

In essence, the question I ask myself when deciding whether to write about or link to something is this: "Does this feed a sense of fear, or a sense of possibility?" 

That's a great question to ask in our lives as a whole, not just in assessing what we post online. Take a look at your own life. Which of those does your focus feed? 

Here are some questions to help you explore where you're directing your focus:

• Do I focus on what's wrong, or do I focus on what's right?
• Do I put more energy into focusing on people who are doing good, or people who are pissing me off?
• Do I habitually complain, or do I habitually look for what's good?
• Does the media I consume paint a generally positive or negative picture of the world?
• Do I spend more time feeling angry or feeling loving/compassionate/interested?
• Do I spend more time assigning blame (Those people are wrong!) or exploring ways to create more of what I want to see in the world?

That's far from a comprehensive list, and I encourage you to keep adding to it, but it's a good place to start. 

The pessimists and skeptics among you might be saying, "Yeah, but what about the 'real world?'" To that I would say, I'm not suggesting that you ignore the real world. Regardless of how positive your focus, challenges will find there way into your life. You will feel bumps. You will get bruised. That's just a part of life. But why go out of your way to bring more pain into your life? Why make a special effort to paint the picture darker? 

The world you experience is determined by the world you see. The lens that determines the world you see is created in large part by what you choose to focus on. 

Which does your focus feed - possibility, or fear?

--

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

Passion Catalyst lesson #8 - Love yourself

This is a series of lessons learned in my nine years as a Passion Catalyst.

If I could magically incorporate one piece of advice into all the success literature ever written, it would be this: Love yourself. 

Over the years I have come to believe that this isn't just a nice feel-good philosophy, but a central pillar of building a life that really lets you shine. It's not just important in the abstract. It's important in a very real, concrete way. 

Self-love vs. Self-negativity

What do I mean by love yourself? Simple. Be kind to yourself. Be compassionate with yourself. Shine a light on what's positive about you and what you've done and celebrate it. Look at what you see as negative aspects about yourself and your performances through the lens of kindness and compassion. Resist the urge to beat yourself up or tell yourself that you're not good enough. 

Sadly, I think most people struggle with this one to one degree or another. We lapse into a focus on how what we're doing isn't good enough, how we're not good enough. We identify with that last failure and make it our identity. We club ourselves over the head with every little mistake, and neglect to celebrate the beauty and success in our lives. 

And the more we're in that negative spin, the more it limits us. The more it fuels our faulty notion that we just don't have what it takes. And the more it feeds on itself like that, the more it continues to limit us.

Loving ourselves, on the other hand, supports us. It builds our belief in ourselves and what we can do. And that belief is a huge part of what defines our potential. Loving ourselves also cushions the bumps and bruises we inevitably experience along the way. It helps us see mishaps and failures as simply something that happened, rather than as something we are. It helps us notice what's good in our lives.

My own experience

I wish I could say that this lesson has been built solely from watching others, but the truth is it has been as much a part of my journey as anyone else's. 

While I have always been blessed with a healthy self-image and self-confidence, there is also a streak in me that runs completely counter to that. It comes from a part of me that feels not good enough. It's the piece of me that not only lets the inner critic run amok, but also hands it a cat-o-ninetails so it can scourge me more effectively.

Historically, when that part of me has come up, I have been brutal to myself, treating myself in a way that I would never accept from someone else. Kindness and compassion? Forget it. When I'm in that mode I'm out for blood. 

It's something I have worked hard on over the years, and thankfully over time I have seen a big shift. I still notice it wanting to rear its head occasionally, but when it does, most of the time I'm able to look at it and say, "Uhhhh...no." 

So I have personal experience of how toxic not coming from a place of self-love can be. I know firsthand how limiting it can be to let myself get wrapped up in that negative view of myself and my place in the world. 

And I also know how liberating it can be to fill that space with kindness and compassion toward myself. I have learned how much less it depletes me when I don't go to that abusive negative space, and how much more potential I can see when I come from that place of self-love. The difference is huge.  

Don't expect to flip a switch

If, like me, you find that you still have some work yet to do in this arena, resist the urge to aim for immediate change. That's a great way to bring your efforts crumbling down on top of you. 

Instead, look at moving toward kindness and compassion as an organically unfolding process. Do it choice by choice. 

Try this: 

To move toward greater self-love one choice at a time, start with this three-step process:

Notice: You can't change what you don't notice, and for many people that negative perspective has become so ingrained and habitual that it is invisible to them. For one week, work on just noticing, without judgment. You don't have to change anything. Your goal is just to start recognizing it as it pops up. Notice when you are self-critical. Watch for red flags like, "I can't," or, "I never," or, "Why do I always..." Don't beat yourself up for it. Just see it and say, "Ah, there's one." 

Throughout the day, jot down what you notice. If you find it hard to notice it as it happens, do an end-of-day review and scan back through your day. The idea is both to train your brain to be more aware of these instances and to give yourself examples to work with in the next step.

Identify alternative reactions: Pick one of the instances you noticed and start exploring ways to reframe it. Ask questions like:

• Is this negative reaction realistic?
• What if this situation happened to someone else? Would I see it in such a negative light?
• What was good about what I did?
• How could I describe this in a way that is objective and neutral?

Keep doing that every day. Eventually the goal is to catch yourself in the act and reframe your negative response on the fly. Doing this after the fact will give your brain a chance to practice and build that mental muscle. 

Catch yourself and reframe: Once you start noticing the negative instances and feel like the after-the-fact reframe is coming more naturally, it's time to start doing it on the fly. When you catch yourself slipping into that negative mode, practice saying, "OK, what are my alternatives here?" Find a reframe. 

Don't get sucked into feeling like you need to catch and reframe every single time from the beginning. Just make it a goal to start doing it, even once a day, and build on that. 

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Passion Catalyst lesson #7 - Start with yes

This is a series of lessons learned in my nine years as a Passion Catalyst.

Do you ever find yourself saying no automatically to ideas or opportunities? Is that expanding your potential, or limiting it?

Last week I wrote about staying open to possibilities and avoiding the inherent limitations of tinybox thinking. One of the ideas I talked about in the post was the importance of saying yes. I want to expand on that idea, because it's an important one. 

If you want to expand your future by making one simple, small choice, do this: default to yes until you are really sure that no is the right answer. 

When you default to saying no, it automatically shrinks your potential. Because you will almost never say no and follow that up with, "OK, let me explore whether this is a possibility." You say no and you move on, effectively eliminating whatever you just said no to from the picture.

Saying yes, on the other hand, initiates further exploration. You may eventually discover that no, in fact, is the right response. But you will also find that yes keeps on being the right answer for a percentage of those opportunities. And those are opportunities you would never have had if you started out by saying no. 

There is no risk to saying yes until it's time to say no. There is only upside.

Try this: Next time you hear yourself saying no to an idea or an approach, ask yourself, "Do I really need to say no to this yet?" Then start to explore the idea. Look for ways it might in fact make sense. Explore how it might actually be possible. 

Another helpful habit to get into is to examine why you're saying no. Often the no has nothing to do with the validity or viability of the idea. It's because of inertia. Maybe it's just outside the scope of what we're used to thinking about. Or it might feel like it's too hard, or too scary. Or because someone told us we couldn't do something like that back when we were in second grade. 

The more you recognize the driving forces behind your urge to say no, the more readily you can recognize when the right answer is actually yes. 

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Passion Catalyst lesson #6 - Tinybox thinking limits your potential

This is a series of lessons learned in my nine years as a Passion Catalyst.

One of the hardest things I have grappled with over the last nine years is my own tendency to create a small box for the future and then proceed to try to shove myself into it. 

The box is created by my expectations and a desire to control what happens. "This is what I want to see happen, and this is how I'm going to do it, and this is what it's going to look like." Once I have that defined in my head, it shuts out all the other possibilities. As a result, the infinite potential that exists shrinks to fit that box. 

It's like the future is this huge, magnificent hall where I could dance with wild delight, and I'm grunting and snorting in the corner trying to wedge myself into my tinybox, frustrated because there's so little room to even move, let alone dance.

I've gotten much better at setting my vision and then staying open to letting the story unfold in unanticipated ways, but it's still something I grapple with. 

Check your tinybox thinking

Are you falling prey to tinybox thinking? Are you unnecessarily limiting your future? To explore that, spend a little time with these questions. 

• Am I regularly looking for opportunities to say yes to?
• Do I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall, trying to make something happen that just won't?
• Do I default to saying no? 
• Am I doing anything differently than I was one year ago? Two years ago? Five years?
• Do I have a picture for how the future should look like that life isn't cooperating with?
• If an opportunity presented itself that is outside the scope of my plan, how likely am I to seriously consider it? How likely am I to dismiss it out of hand? Can I point to any instances where either of those have happened?

Reprogram your tinybox thinking

When you notice the tinybox thinking, you can start to do something about it. For example:

Practice saying yes: 

When you catch yourself saying no, practice saying yes (and remind yourself that it doesn't have to be a forever-yes). 

Stop and scan: 

When something isn't working, back up and scan the horizon. What other opportunities might be presenting themselves? 

Practice looking for new possibilities: 

Make it a goal to find one new possibility a week. Make that exploration part of your conversations with others. Maybe that new possibility is a way to collaborate with someone, or learning a new skill. Maybe it is committing to taking a step toward building a network in the career direction you really want to take. Or it might be deciding to take on a project you want to do, but feel some fear about. 

You don't have to take action on all those possibilities. The point is just to exercise the ability to recognize them. 

Act on new possibilities: 

Once you start expanding the scope of possibilities you see, you can start choosing ones to act on. As you notice them, jot them down. Then, on a regular basis, review the list you have created and ask, "Which one(s) do I want to do?" The more you act, the more comfortable you will be turning that potential into reality.

Practice staying open and, step-by-step, your future will automatically expand. 

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Time for a career change? Launch it with...
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A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

15 questions to build a positive focus

If you're like most people, every day you're subjected to so much bad news, violence, and turmoil that it can sometimes feel hopeless. 

The problem isn't that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. In fact, I suspect the "good news/bad news" ratio has been more or less consistent over human history. But slathered 24/7 with toxic news and entertainment as we are, it's no wonder the world can seem a little bleak. 

So what is the problem? Focus. Even if the ratio hasn't changed, we have an unprecedented opportunity to focus on the bad news. 

Recently, as I grappled with the negative effects of that toxic slathering in my own perspective, I started to ponder that question of focus. How do we consciously counter that negativity when it is so woven into the fabric of what we're exposed to every day. 

As so often happens, the answer boiled down to, "Ask questions." Let's face it, the news doesn't - and probably never will - deliver much information that makes you feel good about life. So if you want to build that positive perspective, it's up to you to do the work. 

Here are several questions you can ask to help you focus on the positive in your life and in the world. 

• What do I love about my life today? 
• What do I love about myself today? 
• What do I love about the world today? 
• What inspires me today? 
• Who inspires me today? 
• Who do I love today? 
• What gives me hope today? 
• What do I care about today? 
• Who do I care about today? 
• What good do I see people doing today? 
• What good can I do today? 
• What positive trend do I see unfolding in the world? 
• What has improved recently?
• What do I appreciate today?
• Who do I appreciate today?

Make a habit of asking one or more of those questions every day. How? The ways of approaching it are nearly endless, but here are some ideas off the top of my head:

• Incorporate it into a morning ritual. 
• Journal on them. 
• Write them down, put them in a jar, and draw one first thing in the morning to contemplate (and notice!) as you go through your day. 
• Make a date with a friend once a week to share your answers. 
• Make it a daily discussion with your family (at mealtime, for example).
• Print the list out and put it in your wallet, either together with your cash or wrapped around your credit card so you have to look at it frequently. 
• Pick a question to ponder on your commute. 
• Get a group of friends together for a meal and focus the discussion on answering the questions. Brainstorm more questions and add them to the list.  

The questions I have listed here and ways of engaging them are just a sample. I would love to hear your thoughts on it. What other questions could you ask? What other ideas do you have for how to use the questions? 

--

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

Gratitude in a bowl

Want an easy way to significantly improve the quality of your life? One that's available to you right here, right now, at no cost to you? Try gratitude. Studies have shown some of its many benefits include:

• More positive emotion

• More life satisfaction

• More optimism

• Lower levels of depression

• Lower levels of stress

• Greater goal attainment

• Greater feeling of connectedness to others

(Here's a good summary of some of the research on the benefits of gratitude.)

I've been focusing on gratitude a lot lately in my own journey. Not just gratitude for the big obvious things, but also gratitude for the little things I typically take for granted. This morning, gratitude came in a bowl. 

As I was eating my muesli with yogurt and honey, I started picturing all the threads of connection radiating out from that bowl. When I really started thinking about it, it was mind-boggling how many people had to be involved, and how many different things had to come together. When I really take the time to ponder it, it seems nothing short of miraculous. 

I started with the grains in the muesli. There was an opportunity to be grateful for the farmer who grew them. And for the sun and the rain (or irrigation) that provided them with what they needed to grow. And for all the people and companies who supported the farmer in the process. 

From there I started thinking about how that grain got from the farm to my bowl, and all the people and processes that had to touch it. 

And that's just the grain. There are also the almonds, and the yogurt, and the bowl I was using, and the spoon.

The first time I tried this gratitude exercise, I was sitting and savoring a cup of coffee. Really, anything in your life you appreciate and enjoy could be the subject of this focus. 

The more you realize how much there is to be grateful for, even in the little things in life, the more available the benefits of gratitude are. 

So what are you grateful for?

--

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 the drawbridge is stuck, take a nap

Stopped on the freeway at midnight, leaning back with my eyes contentedly closed, I heard an astonished voice say, "He's taking a nap!"

I was driving back from the airport after a short trip to the east coast. Fifteen minutes from home, I felt the relaxation that comes from knowing a long, grueling day is winding down. And then suddenly, as traffic ground inexplicably to a halt, I didn't. It soon became clear I wasn't going anywhere soon, and neither was the ever-growing line of cars behind me.

Just before it ends, Highway 509 - my route home from the airport - crosses a drawbridge spanning a river. I had never seen it up before, nor have I since, but that night I wasn't so lucky. "No problem," I thought. "It will only take a couple minutes." And so I settled in to wait. 

And wait. 

And wait. 

Finally, it dawned on me that something was wrong. As people stepped out of their cars, word started to filter back that the drawbridge was stuck. It was down, but wouldn't latch, which meant none of us could drive across it. Worse yet, because of the cement barriers on either side of the northbound lanes, we couldn't turn around. Until the mile or two of cars that had piled up behind us could be backed out and turned around by the highway patrol, we were stuck, stuck, stuck.  

Fortunately, I was still in travel mode, which essentially says, "Shit happens. Things go wrong. Plans change. Roll with it." So I decided to make the best of the situation, leaned my seat back, and closed my eyes to take a nap. 

How many times in your life have you come up against the equivalent of that drawbridge. Something out of your control that puts a stop to your best laid plans, or at least delays them. And how often have you gotten bent out of shape about it? How effective has that been for you?

It took an hour or so to get us out of there. When the highway patrol finally reached us in their effort to turn everyone around, I felt rested and in a good mood. Rather than letting the experience bother me, I got some rest and then stepped out of the car and enjoyed a good conversation with some of my fellow stucksters. In short, I rolled with it. 

I wish I could say that I consistently apply travel mode to my everyday life. Sometimes I do. More often I don't. But when I do, life goes so much more smoothly. I waste so much less energy, and I see so many more alternatives. 

How about you? What helps you shift into travel mode when you come up against life's bumps and blocks? What effect does that have?

--

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

Positive realism: The best of both worlds

Are you an optimist, a pessimist, or a realist? Do you like to give your day a dose of positive thinking, or does that smarmy over-happiness make you want to barf? 

Over on I Hate My Job, Pamela Grundy spotlights the perspective of Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the book Bright-Sided and one of those rare voices who is vigorously anti-positive-thinking. Ehrenreich's take is that a slavish focus on positive thinking is dangerous, cruel, and leads to poor decisions. In a corporate environment, as she sees it, it leads to sheep-like thinking and a refusal to take a critical look at reality. 

If Ehrenreich had her way she would do away with positive thinking entirely and replace it with this:

"The alternative is realism, trying to see the world not colored by either our wishes or our fears, and understand what is really happening so we can do something about it." 

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, I agree with her, but only to a degree. I'm not a big fan of mindless positivity. It gives positive thinking a bad name and can lead to precisely the kind of reality-denying hot water that lends substance to Ehrenreich's argument (though for the record, I think her view is pretty one-dimensional, and that she's throwing the baby out with the bathwater). 

I want to love her idea of turning to realism as the ideal path. I really do. But I think it's a slippery slope at best. Far too often I see "realism" serving as a nothing more than a facade for negativity and pessimism.

So a happy medium would be ideal, but I don't believe for a minute that "realism" is it. Maybe a qualifier would help prevent it from sliding down that slippery slope of pessimism. How about "positive realism?" That could give you the best of both worlds.

What does positive realism look like? I'm just making it up here, but here are some ideas that fly off the top of my head. To take a positive realism approach:

Assume the positive until proven otherwise

For starters, always default to a positive perspective. Start out by saying yes, rather than by saying no. I can't tell you how often I hear people automatically say, "That will never work," only to have to eat their words once they explore the possibilities. 

There is no danger in starting out with a positive perspective. The danger lies in staying there when it's unmerited. Which brings me to the next point. 

Be open to having it proven otherwise

Don't hold the positive perspective with an iron grip. Sometimes it really is wrong. The world isn't all fluffy bunnies and sunshine, and rigidly insisting on seeing a situation only with a positive glow is a recipe for trouble. 

Question negative assessments (not blindly)

For many (most?) people, seeing the world too brightly isn't the problem. It's being too pessimistic. If you're one of those, even if you start out assuming the positive it can be easy to let a negative assessment knock it unnecessarily out of the running. 

That's why I always encourage people to double- and even triple-check their negative assessments. That pessimism can be a hard habit to break, and it can be a wily beast. Don't just believe that negative assessment. Make sure you really can back it up. 

Use a negative perspective to identify trouble spots 

Finally, use that negative perspective in a productive way. The ability to see what's wrong makes a great servant and a lousy master. Blasting forward with nothing but a positive perspective makes it likely that you'll hit some unnecessary bumps along the way. At the same time, letting the negative view lead the charge is likely to mean you won't even bother trying. 

Team them up, lead with the positive, and let the negative help you identify the things that could get you into trouble. Shine a light on the pitfalls and obstacles that could get in your way. Then go into problem-solving mode. 

Together, the two are a powerful pair. 

The more I think about it, the more it seems this ol' world could use a positive realism movement. What do you think? Care to join me? 

--

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

4 reasons you should celebrate your success

A friend and I were talking recently about growing up watching ABC's Wide World of Sports on the weekends. While one mention of the line from their intro - "the thrill of victory...and the agony of defeat" - immediately brought to mind the image of a ski jumper biting it on the way down, I realized that I couldn't for the life of me remember what the accompanying clip for the thrill of victory was. 

Unfortunately, a lot of people live their lives that way. They remember the failures and face plants. Sometimes they even obsess on them. But when they do something well, they scarcely pause to acknowledge it, much less remember it down the road. 

When it comes to pursuing their passion, focusing on the negative and ignoring the positive can be a dream-killer. It's vital that you celebrate your success along the way. Why? Because when you focus on the negative and don't reinforce the positive...

It eats away at your self-confidence. 

When you jump off the cookie cutter path and pursue a career that is uniquely right for you, it is almost by definition about taking the road less traveled. And navigating that road successfully takes self-confidence. 

Dwelling on the failures and face plants along the way does anything but build self-confidence. It repeatedly sends the message, "You're not good enough. You can't do it right. When you try, you fail." Even if most of your efforts result in success, focusing on your failures is guaranteed to paint a dismal picture. 

It distorts reality.

Minimizing (or ignoring) your successes and enlarging your failures distorts your picture of reality. It's like one of those fun-house mirrors that make you look short and fat or tall and skinny. And because your experience of reality is created by your perception of it, everywhere you look you see the negative element relentlessly confirmed. 

It creates a falsely negative pattern.

When the majority of your attention is aimed at the face plants, that's the pattern you will see. Each failure becomes a clear confirmation that you don't have what it takes. After all, look at all these other botched efforts you can point to to back that up, right? 

It numbs you to your positive achievements.

When you're not in the habit of acknowledging the positive, it takes an ultra-blast of success to get your attention. Run-of-the-mill achievements scarcely make it onto your radar screen as you turn your attention to what's next. 

The more you practice acknowledging the positive, the more positive you will notice. It's a bit like when I start making an effort to remember my dreams in the morning. When I do that consistently, after a few days my brain will automatically start going over the dreams when I wake up. When I focus on remembering dreams, eventually the number of dreams I remember shoots up. 

Try this: Start training your brain to acknowledge your successes, both large and small. For the next week, challenge yourself to find at least three things you did well each day. They could be work-related, or relationship-oriented, or hobby-focused, or any of a bazillion other ways you show up in life. 

At the end of each day, write them down. Spend five minutes acknowledging to yourself that you did them well. Better yet, acknowledge to someone else that you did them well. Get it out of your brain and into the open. 

One last idea to help you tilt the scale in the direction of a positive perception. Every time you find yourself dwelling on something you did wrong, stop yourself and ask, "OK, what have I done right today/this week/this month?" Redirect your mind and celebrate your successes.

--

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

Gratitude in bed

Ever have one of those days where things go downhill as soon as your feet hit the floor in the morning? That first hour of the day can have a significant impact on how the rest of the day unfolds. 

As I've mentioned before here, I'm not always the most naturally positive person in the morning. It often takes a conscious effort for me to shift into positive gear (see my posts on my morning reading and my morning crossroads question). 

I have a close friend who makes a habit of making a gratitude list in her head as she's lying in bed drifting off to sleep at night. As a morning attitude sculpting tool, I decided to riff off of that idea and do that gratitude review first thing in the morning when I wake up. 

Lying in bed, I start to review what I'm thankful for. It's a great way to wipe the slate clean of any petty negative or limiting thoughts and get my mind focused immediately in a positive direction. 

The best part is that it's something even the busiest person has time for. I like to spend a few minutes letting my mind explore the reasons for gratitude in my life, but it could be an effective exercise in as little as sixty seconds. The key is to take it out of an intellectual checklist and let yourself really feel the gratitude. 

You might even extend the idea with a gratitude shower, or a gratitude breakfast, or a gratitude commute. Any time you have an activity that keeps your mind unoccupied for a few minutes, you have an opportunity to fill that space with a gratitude review. 

--

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