|
 |
|
Do What You Love, Love What You Do
Everyone dreams of a life full of love and adventure. But we fill ourselves with reasons not to follow our dreams. Instead of protecting us, they imprison and hold us back. Life will be over before we know it, so now is the time to really live life and love. In Life Lessons, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler suggest that love is the only gift in life that is not lost and is ultimately the only thing we can really give. Start by loving yourself. 1. Love Yourself. To give love, you must have love. Too often we put conditions on love. Conditions on love weigh it down and keep us from loving completely. * Be Compassionate With Yourself. Don't judge, criticize or beat yourself up when you make a mistake. Cut yourself some slack. * Nurture Your Soul. Do things that make you feel good about yourself and make you truly glad you did them. Let the love in that's all around. Schedule and budget for these nurturing activities; pick something that will make you feel great and do it! * Remove Barriers. Let go of conditions you place on giving and receiving love. Give love freely with no thought of receiving love in return. Receive love with no conditions or self-criticism. Remember the Beatles song lyric from The End, "? And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." 2. Love What You Do. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in Flow, the Psychology of Optimal Experience, identifies eight major components of enjoying an activity. His studies on flow suggest an activity is enjoyable when at least one and often all eight components are present. * Completion. We need tasks with sufficient complexity to challenge and stretch us to develop our skills but that won't overwhelm us. * Concentration. The root of concentrate means to "center". We need tasks that allow us to wrap our mind around it and be challenged by it. Tasks that are too hard will overwhelm us; tasks that are too easy will bore us. * Clear Goals. Stephen Covey tells us to begin with the end in mind, to know what we'd like to accomplish. A clear goal gives us a specific outcome that our mind can use to discern if we are meeting the test. * Feedback. Feedback allows you to compare your outcome to your goal. It's a symbolic message that allows you to create order in your consciousness and shift your efforts if your outcome is off course. * Deep, Effortless Involvement. Attending fully to what is happening in the present prevents our mind from filling with extraneous worries, thoughts and distractions. Applying all your relevant skills to meeting challenges focuses your attention completely, so you cease being aware of yourself as separate from your activity. You become one with it; you act spontaneously. * Sense of Control. Developing your skills so you can reduce the margin of error as close to zero as possible and being able to influence a doubtful outcome produces a sense of exercising control in difficult situations. * Self Concern Disappears. Protecting our ego, the image we hold of ourselves as separate from everything else, requires mental energy. Enjoyable activities with clear goals, stable rules and challenges well matched to our skills present no threat to our egos. Immersion in such activity strengthens our sense of being capable. * Altered Sense of Time. Immersion in challenging activity causes how we perceive time to speed up (we look up and 8 hours have passed without noticing) or slow down (like a batter watching a pitch in slow motion). Complete involvement frees us from the tyranny of time and deepens enjoyment. Pick an activity that has these traits and you'll love what you do. 3. Love in Service to Others. In A Simpler Way, Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers suggest that any self-expression that is not meaningful to others is irrelevant and won't survive in a systems-seeking world. So expressing what you love in service to others is your task. * Do What You Love. Identify anything that meets some or all of the eight criteria listed above for loving what you do. What would you do if money were not an object? Let your list simmer on the back burner of your subconscious. * Combine Activities You Love. List without judging the things you love to do and how you might combine them. If you love writing, travel and spirituality, you might consider traveling to spiritual sites and writing a travel guide on how to get there and what to do once you're there. Or consider organizing, marketing and guiding travel tours there. Be creative; use your imagination! * Serve Others. As you imagine possible manifestations of the activities you love, guide your imagination to ways that serve others. Remember, if you're going to make a living by doing what you love, you'll need others to pay you! Make your offering something others want or need! Love and treat yourself well, learn what you love to do and do what you love in a ways that serves the needs of others! You'll be glad you did! Copyright 2005, Fruition Coaching. All rights reserved. Rick Hanes is a life and career coach, writer, outdoorsman, gardener and tireless advocate for living life with purpose and passion. He founded Fruition Coaching in 2004 to lead the fight against leading lives of quiet desperation. Check his website at http://www.fruitioncoaching.com to contact him about rekindling the fire of your life!
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Answering The What Are Your Weaknesses? Interview Question One of the trickier questions an interviewer might put to you is "what are your major weaknesses?" What Turns Potential Employers ON; What Turns Them OFF? According to an annual survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, these are the most important qualities that employers are looking for in a job candidate, in priority order: (1) Communication skills; (2) Honesty/integrity; (3) Teamwork skills; (4) Interpersonal skills; (5) A strong work ethic. Be sure to highlight those skills in your resume, during your interview, and in your thank-you letter. That same survey discovered the number-one thing that can turn potential employers off -- a job candidate's appearance! Specifically, they cited unusual hair color or style, body piercings, tattoos, and unusual clothing as things that most often gave a bad first impression. What you think is "cool" may be the "hot" ticket to the reject list! So keep your need to express yourself under wraps during the interview, and you'll have a better shot at getting the job. Dissatisfied With Your Job? Stop Putting Your Attention on What You Dont Want! If I were to ask you the percentage of time you spend thinking about what you don't want, what would it be? And the percentage of time thinking about what you do want? Create A Rappin? Resume (Percussion sounds emanating from who knows where while you listen to the cadence of the words below.) Resume Writing and Preparation is Free Online Creating a strong resume is a very important part of applying for a job, either online or off line. There are many resume writing services that will help you build an impressive resume for job interviews. Resume Writing Dos and Donts Do these things Include your full name - don't use nicknames or abbreviations Use a telephone number that you can always answer - use a cell phone if possible or make sure there is an answering machine at the listed phone number Use bullet points to highlight information - it is much easier for an employer to absorb relevant information while scanning your résumé Print your résumé and cover letter on high quality paper - when printing your résumé you should use paper with at least 50% cotton content Be concise and get to the point - say what you need to say and nothing more Use action words and descriptive phrases - be creative when trying to get your point across using as few words as possible Target your résumé - address your résumé to the position you are applying for to show that you are really interested in working for that company Focus on relevant facts only - list skills, accomplishments and personality traits you know the employer is looking for List quantitative support for statements made - back up your skills and experiences with real scenarios, facts and figures Begin statements with action verbs - action verbs demonstrate your importance to the achievement or experience being described Don't do these things Have any grammatical errors - always have someone else proofread your résumé for errors and flow Have any spelling mistakes - always spell check your résumé, your contact's name, and the company's name Misrepresent your background or experience - employers oftentimes verify this information and can fire you if it is discovered that you were dishonest Fill in employment gaps with unrelated information - wait to discuss this information in person to put a positive spin on it Use lengthy paragraphs - employers notoriously skip over paragraphs in résumés Use long sentences - just like paragraphs, the reader easily skips over long sentences Use personal pronouns - keep your résumé impersonal for a more professional image Forget to list basic skills - all employers want to see that you are a team player, take charge of situations and are reliable De-Bunking The ?Follow Your Bliss? Myth Hello Fellow Seekers! Prepare for YOUR Future now -- All Presidential candidates (before and after) make all kinds of promises about YOUR 'social security' when running for the top job. Regardless of the promises, YOU are the one who has to live or die by the future plans made on your behalf. Interpersonal Skill Building -- Yank The Suckers & Weeds According to the National Gardening Association, suckers are rapidly growing shoots rising from an underground root or stem, often to the detriment of the tree. They can be very irritating and annoying for they bear no flowers or fruit. Rather than cut them off, one way to get rid of them is to roughly yank the suckers off to remove the cells and tissues that cause re-growth. How To Get Promoted - Take Control Of Your Destiny! It Is Up To You Skills Make Labor More Valuable As you know by now, if you have been a long time subscriber to our weekly E-zine, I'm a very big proponent of activity, labor and discipline. In fact I devoted one of the five major pieces to the life puzzle (in my book under the same name) to the subject of activity and labor. But now let me add another key word to the labor equation - skillful. Yes, skillful labor. The Computer-Friendly Resume The evolution of technology is changing the traditional methods for job searching and recruiting. More and more companies are now relying on computers to initiate the process of hiring and are filling their database with candidates with skills that are easily searchable. Traditionally, submitted resumes were first received and sorted by humans. What else, right? But now, for many firms, this step has been handed over to their computers. Job Search Techniques: Smashing The Gray Ceiling For decades, women have chaffed at the invisible glass ceiling which prevents their moving into the high executive brackets that their competence, knowledge and skills have earned. The same amorphous barrier confronts older workers both in terms of advancement within a company and, most especially, when a job change is required. There is an adage in the military that if a rank above major has not been obtained within twenty years, it never will be. The ranks of early military retirees are sprinkled with majors who knew that ten or fifteen more years would never bring a Colonel's cluster. How to Get Paid More Without Being Pretty or Good Looking Guess what. The results are out they are ugly. Pretty people do get paid more money. Becoming A Police Officer Just Became Easier As many law enforcement candidates can vouch for, taking the police entrance exam can be a stressful and highly competitive experience. I decided to research some preparation web sites and purchased several E-books on the topic to get a better understanding of what it takes to become a police officer. One thing that I quickly realized was that there were plenty of sources of material available for anyone seriously interested in a future in law enforcement. Fuzzy Headed Job Goals Lead to a Fuzzy Headed Life! May I clarify in this article what I believe to be "fuzzy headed" life and job decisions. I believe both are entwined: life and job. Need a Job? Put a Gun to Your Head A legendary marketing genius once said that, if he had to write a killer sales letter, he would imagine he had a gun pointed at his head and that he would be shot if his advertising didn't deliver. Tips For Successful Job Hunting: How To Get A Job Without A Resume I am in my mid-thirties, and, as you can imagine, I have changed and looked for jobs many times in my life. No matter how successful was in my job hunting research, I realized that there are certain ground "rules" that need to be respected; otherwise, we will not get what we want from our careers. 5 Interviewing Tips To Get That Job! Anyone who is a jobseeker knows that looking for a new job or career is a job in itself. Once you have completed the laborious task of writing your resume and submitting it to various companies, you now have to pass the screen test to get the job. Interviews are the gateway to landing your ideal job. These five tips will help you get own your way to making that job yours. Job Interviews: Six Steps to Acing a Telephone Interview Telephone interviews are becoming more popular these days. Whether that's good or bad depends on how you handle them!
|
| home | site map |
| © 2008 |
