The M.A.P. Maker

Success is a numbers game

Do you ever get so caught up in trying to create the perfect outcome that you end up not really moving forward?

When I show people my travel photography, they often make some comment about how much better my pictures are than their vacation photos. What they don't see is the fact that the pictures they're looking at only represent a fraction of the total number of pictures I took.

Going through my shots when I got back from a trip, I'm often struck by how completely underwhelming many of the pictures are. Sometimes it's because what I was trying to capture just didn't quite work. Other times it's because I'm exploring various facets of the same subject, looking for the most interesting and visually appealing approach.

So while I am pleased with the pictures that I end up showing to people, many of the pictures I take end up "on the cutting room floor," so to speak.

When it comes to photography, National Geographic has always been the gold standard in my mind. A few years ago I went to a presentation by a National Geographic photographer, and one of the things that stuck in my mind was the sheer volume of pictures he took for a story - 400 rolls of film (14,400 pictures).

See a trend here? If you're getting caught up in trying achieve the perfect result, you're probably limiting what you can realistically achieve. The more things you try and the more attempts you make, a) the more chances you have to learn and improve and, b) the more chances you are creating to align your luck and skill with opportunity.

Is there anywhere in your life where you're limiting yourself by not letting yourself be imperfect? Is there anywhere you need to take a high volume approach? What could that look like?

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

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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

How not to measure success

Do you ever compare yourself to others and feel like you just aren't measuring up? Alexandra Levitt recently wrote about the perils of basing your internal feelings of worthiness on how you compare to others.

What's the danger of that? As she notes, there will always be someone who is "better" than you in any given category. So it's a game you can't win.

That got me thinking about another aspect of it, which is that when we compare ourselves to others, we typically aren't comparing ourselves to reality. We're comparing ourselves to our idealized version of what we think we see.

We often don't have the full story. For example, we see people's ultra-success, but don't see the warts-n-all reality behind the scenes. We don't see the bumps and bruises they've had along the way, or we don't see the fact that behind the face of public success lies a personal life in shambles.

So we end up comparing ourselves to a one-dimensional caricature, and then wonder why we come up short.

Looking at others can be good for goals and guidelines, but it's a poor way to measure actual success. Instead of an external measuring stick, try an internal one.

Start off by spending some serious time taking a 360-degree look at your own definition of what success really means in your life. Don't just blindly accept the definition you've been handed. What do you want to do? Who do you want to be? What's important to you? Do this for all facets of your life, not just work, because it's all interconnected.

Use benchmarks and measure your progress. Take stock of where you are today, set a goal, and then regularly check in to see how you're doing.

And while you're at it, take time to CELEBRATE your positive progress (but that's the topic for a whole new post).

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

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Success secrets of Olympic athletes

When it comes to success in achieving goals, you can't get a much better role model than an Olympic athlete. With that in mind, I was fascinated by this study from the  US Olympic committee that looked at, among other things, the factors to which Olympic athletes attribute their success.

Here are the top ten factors:

• Dedication and Persistence: 58.1%
• Support of Family and Friends: 52.0%
• Excellent Coaches: 49.4%
• Love of sport: 27.1%
• Excellent Training Programs and Facilities: 22.3%
• Natural Talent: 21.9%
• Competitiveness: 15.0%
• Focus: 13.0%
• Work Ethic: 11.6%
• Financial Support: 11.5%

Many of those things are equally applicable in our career efforts. 

One of the things that struck me was how important the support of others is. I found the same thing over a series of interviews with people who have successfully pursued their passions. I summarized the most commonly occurring themes in those interviews in my e-book The Five Fundamentals of Occupational Adventure (which you get as a free gift when you order The Occupational Adventure Guide).

One of those fundamentals is "Don't Go Solo." Whether it is emotional support from friends and/or family, or professional support from a mentor (i.e., "excellent coaches"), having others we can turn to is a key factor in achieving our dreams.

Take a look at your own path, your own environment, and your own efforts. What are the secrets to your success? What can you learn from the Olympic athletes' success factors? What resonates with you? Is there any way you can build more of that into the picture?

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Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

What would make success your only option?

The next M.A.P. Maker Podcast is from an interview with Brian Johnson, founder of Zaadz.com (now Gaia Community since he sold it late last year) and currently founder of thinkArete.com. It was an inspiring conversation, and I'm completely psyched to share the results with you (watch for it next week).

During the course of the interview, we got to talking about the secret to his success as an entrepreneur. Here's what he had to say...

I had a conversation recently with a young entrepreneur who just won a competition in Texas, and had a great idea and was asking me for advice...

My success [didn't come from] the experience or particular skill in building businesses. I think that hands down what allowed me to be successful was my absolute commitment to an idea. That when I come up with an idea and it really takes hold of me, success is my only option. And a willingness to go through that wall and that wall and that wall and that wall, because it’s an idea that I love creating, and I think the world needs, and I feel called to go out and bring to the world.

When I look at the M.A.P. concept, what Brian is really talking about there is the amazing fuel that results from blending both passion ("I love doing this") and meaning ("I'm inspired to make this kind of difference") in what you do.

I've experienced that in my own journey. When I look back, there have definitely been times when I felt like I was just banging my head against a wall. Like I had the talent, but not the skill to breathe life into my vision. There have even been times when I've said, "Screw this! I give up!"

But any time I said that, I would know immediately that it wasn't true. Part of it is because I'm over the moon in love with what I do, and I'm not really willing to give it up. And part of it is because the idea of cheating the world of the positive impact that my work has the potential to make makes me almost sick to my stomach.

Is success actually the only option? No, of course not. I've never been trapped on one path. I could hang up my hat and find some other direction any time I wanted. What it really boils down to is that the pull of that success is greater than the pain of whatever bumps I might experience along the way. And that is because of the powerful mix of passion and meaning.

Take a look at your journey. Where is that intersection of passion and meaning for you? What would give you that unquenchable fire in the belly to turn those dreams into reality? What would make success the only option?

 

Check out 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

S=GxA: What's your formula for success?

What's your formula for success? What does success even mean for you?

Jim Bouchard over at Change your thoughts has come up with this simple equation for success:

S=GxA

“S” is success, “G” stands for goals, and “A” for achievement. Success is the result of your goals multiplied by the number of times you achieve your goals. In other words, the more times you achieve your goals, the more successful you are.

When I started reading his post I had some reservations about the primary focus on "doing" vs. "being" in his equation (a common malady in our action-addicted culture), but as I read further I could see room for a broader picture.

The trick is making those goals reflect the full spectrum of a thriving live, not just the standard measuring sticks of money, status, and power. According to Bouchard:

In the Dynamic Components of Personal Power philosophy wealth means to have “enough”. You need enough to create satisfaction in 3 areas of life: material, emotional and spiritual. Wealth means having abundance in each of these areas. What constitutes abundance in each area depends entirely on your personal needs and desires.

That fits nicely with the idea of 360-degree abundance. And the first step to achieving a full-spectrum abundance (including things like financial, health, spiritual, relationship, and fun abundance), is getting each of the elements on the radar screen to begin with.

I'm still not sure if I fully buy the exclusive focus on achieving goals as the path to success. I think there is also something to be said for simply creating the space for what we need to filter into. But if setting goals helps bring people bring a fuller vision of abundance into their lives, I'm all for it.

 

Check out The Occupational Adventure Guide

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM