|
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!
MORE RESOURCES:
Jobs City of Rochester (.gov)
Careers Washington State University
Work With Us National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
JobFeed NSW Department of Education
Jobs Dublin City University
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
4 Internet Job Search Mistakes to Avoid
The Internet is the most powerful employment tool on earth. Hands down.
Students Discover Your Niche By Using Career Assessment
In our ever changing world where job competition is rampant it can be difficult to understand one's strengths and what one wants to do in life.If you feel uncertain about your career path you're not alone.
Interview Presentation Skills: Dealing With Your Nerves
Sooner or later, the interview invitation is going to say you are required to give a presentation as part of the selection process. And like most people you may dread having to do it.
Knowing and Guessing
The line between average and exceptional work performance is dotted with ordinary day-by-day behaviors. I was reminded of that line recently.
How to Change Careers and Still Pay the Bills - 5 Key Steps
Studies show that more than 50% of people are unhappy in their jobs yet few will actually make a career change in 2005. Why? Most people let fear stop them yet successful career changers know that fear is simply a sign that you are headed in the right direction!Follow the 5 key steps that successful career changers actually take to overcome their fears and make a sustainable change.
Resurrecting the Perfect Resume, Part Two
Are you in denial about the lifelessness of your resume? If you are reasonably qualified for the type of work you seek, yet your resume is consistently failing to win you interviews, then you need to face the reality that your beloved document is dead.
Try these professional resume writing techniques to resurrect your resume and your job search today:
Problem #3: Resume Is Blind
In your eagerness to cut your job search work load have you reduced your objective statement to something grandiose and vague, something that you hope speaks to every employer but which, in fact, communicates to none? A resume with no focus is blind; without a clear focus in your resume an employer cannot perceive what you're offering them; without a concisely stated vision in your resume an employer cannot grasp the big picture of how you fit into their organization.
Overcoming the 7 Roadblocks Women with Families Face Making Career Changes
Family is the driving force of our lives. You need family to support you and in most homes you need money to support your family.
CVs And Resumes Sometimes Just Get In The Way
As a head-hunter and Career Coach I see so many CVs and resumes that look as though they are designed to get in the way of what I (or any other recruiter) might need to know about you the candidate. They vary from pure meaningless waffle without any identifiable facts to lengthy tomes with so much detail they send me to sleep.
TMI: The Resume Destroyer
"They say my résumé should be only one page long. Is that correct?"Not necessarily.
How to Get the Job You Want in Any Economy... Act Like a Headhunter
Having spent the last few years of my career in the staffing and recruiting industry, I'm asked all the time by friends and relatives if I can help them find a more desirable job. I've helped my fiancé get a job, helped my college buddies get jobs after graduation, and even helped a few high school buddies find jobs having not seen them for years.
Free Resume Template: Beware!
Downloading a free resume template can be so alluring. No work to do! You just download it, fill in the blanks, and get the job of your dreams!If you buy that, I've got lots of other things I'd like to sell you.
How to Write a Simple Job Description
1.0 A timely reminderIn a recent decision in a New South Wales court it was found that an employee was psychologically injured and that contributing factors such as not having a job description and controlling management behaviours were responsible.
Do You Have a Hotsy-Totsy Resume?
I begin this article with a bit of slang description. Whatdo I mean by a "hotsy totsy" resume? I mean one thatdoes the following for you, the job seeker and apossible employer.
Leave Your Dead End Job?For Good!
So here you are?stuck in a dead end job. Are you hitting the glass ceiling in a job you once loved, but now can't stand? Maybe the hours are long.
6 Vital Tips For Creating A Superior Resume
1: Keep It ShortConsidering that initially HR personnel only spend approximately 10-20 seconds on a resume, the shorter your resume, the most desirable it is. Aim for one page.
Fact or Opinion?
"You ain't going nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin' a truck.
Online Resume Tips and Secrets
I manage a website for corporate flight attendants that features resumes prominently listed on the first page of the site. Unlike some careers, corporate flight attendants must promote themselves overtly in order to find work especially if they are contractors.
4 Tips for Making Successful Job Offers
The interviews are completed, the paperwork is all filled out for Human Resources, and you have decided that this is the right candidate for the job. Now comes the formal job offer.
You're Ready for a Career Change - Is Your Resume?
You finally did it. You made the decision to leave a career that makes you dread every Monday morning and pursue one that you feel is your true calling.
Losing a Career When Youre Moving for Love
Those who watched HBO's Sex and the City (SATC, now available on DVD) know the last eight episodes were less about sex and more about city. And the last three episodes, taken together could serve as a case study for a decision faced by many clients Should I follow my heart or hang on to my job?Whether you want to move to be closer to aging parents, or follow a lover into a new life, the stakes are extremely high.
|