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The 7 steps to Find Your Passion and Purpose in Life

So you can love how you live and love what you do…
1. Listen to your inner self. Write down your longings and discontents.

  • What are your longings? Write them down.
  • What are your discontents? Write them down. Marry Morrissey says your longings and your discontents are messages from the universe to your authentic self.

2. Write down everything you love about life.
3. Write down your goals that you can think of right now.

  • Short term goals.
  • Long term goals

4. Decide which goals, longings and discontents give you the strongest feeling inside. Think of pride, desire, love, confidence, passion, drive.
5. Make a decision about the one passion or love in your life that runs deepest, and is inclusive of some of the others, and think of a simple 3 to 7 word statement that can define a purpose for you. Your purpose is the best way for you to offer service in this life. People are on this planet to serve in some way. We all do it. Align your purpose and passion with service. Think of a service you can offer others that can fully, or at least somewhat, align with your purpose right now. Act on it. Some examples of purpose for people I know are:

  • I bring people together.
  • I make music.
  • I make art.
  • I help people find purpose.
  • I bring health into people’s lives.

6. Do something that activates your mind and actions so you can learn more about your passion and purpose and become an expert over time. Go to school or get some work experience in a field that aligns with your purpose. Start right now, no matter your age. It will be fulfilling and rewarding to your authentic self and you will be rewarded in many ways over time. Start now!

  • Enroll in some training on-line or get into a school that offers courses on the service that aligns with your purpose.
  • Get a job, even if it’s at the bottom of the ladder, with a company where you can learn the ins and outs of the business where your purpose can be brought out in some type of service. Living your purpose means building a strong self serving in some way even if it’s being a part of a greater service. People have started out as janitors or mail room clerks and moved up to become the leaders of the company because they had a passion for the service that the company they worked in, provided. Their job, in some small way, aligned with a purpose and a desire to serve with the purpose in mind.

7. Begin now to fulfill your passions and work with your purpose using mentors and mastermind partners. Join the FindAMentor lifelong learning EPIC Mentor Network and find a mentor for free in a category that aligns with your passion. Use the FindAMentor.com unique feature to build a mastermind group in that category. Check other mentoring sites. FindAMentor.com lists many in their mentor websites and resources page.
You might want to watch our FindAMentor, free for members, People Tune Up life coaching video series to get you pointed in the right direction for your thought and emotional processing.
Thank you for reading.
Mike Garska,
President, FindAMentor
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12 Simple tricks to Success

12 simple Tricks to Success – Part 10

This is the 10th blog of a series, “12 Simple tricks to Success” from Findamentor.com. We reveal one trick each month for you to read and practice so that in 12 months you’ll have developed some habits that can expedite your success. Enjoy!
Just like every trade and profession has its’, “tricks of the trade”, all very successful people have 12 tricks they do, no matter what industry or institution they work in. They do those things consistently. They are important processes that great and successful people follow.

12-tricks-to-sucess-part-10

12-tricks-to-sucess-part-10

Trick number Ten:

BECOME AWARE OF YOUR FEARS
. . . use them as building blocks instead of stumbling blocks

What blocks desire? What blocks passion? What blocks brilliance? What blocks love and gratitude? FEAR! Fear is an inevitable obstacle to growth and may be viewed as a stumbling block or a building block. Our choice! Remember, however, that every decision we make will shape our lives. We can decide to stumble through our fears and life, or we can use fear as a step and build our way through life. We decide!

Although many of us have been taught that fear is negative, fear can be a good emotion. It is like a warning signal to be aware, to be prepared. Managed effectively, fear can teach us to look out for ourselves and make decisions that are right for us.

Fear becomes harmful only when it stops us from moving ahead. That sounds simple enough, but fear is a complicated emotion. It can be like a virus that spreads into every part of a cell and then into the next cell and the next and so on. In the same manner, people learn to protect themselves in subconscious, intricate ways that are not necessarily healthy.

Many of the steps outlined in this blog series can help us consciously recognize fear for what it is — and give us the confidence we need to face our fears head on and decrease or eliminate them. Being aware of them is the first step. Going an extra mile, keeping our agreements, building reliable networks, thinking in options, asking questions, believing in ourselves, developing healthy communications skills, getting in touch with our feelings, finding balance will all help us decrease and eliminate our fears. We can develop habits of pushing through fears and becoming stronger with life character in the process.

One method of starting the process of pushing through fear is to create a list of as many options as we can think of in response to the fear. Actually take the time to write the list out if it’s a nagging fear. When it’s a smaller less intense fear, we can do this in our heads.

After the list is done, think about and write down the possible consequences of each option. Simply going through this process often sheds light on a situation and gives us confidence to move forward.
If the fear continues to nag, share it with mentors or trusted friends. Often, when we share fears with others, they ground out because we hear new perspective and the fear no longer makes sense. I can turn to a friend or trusted adviser for help in pinpointing the exact nature of my fears. Discussing fears with others can be very difficult, but we don’t have to share our fears with everyone. Often fear touches the intimate details of our lives. We can choose only those people who respect our need to feel safe and are gentle with us.

No matter what, the bottom line is that we have to push through fear and find a way to get to the other side. Feel the fear and do it anyway. The more we do this, the more our confidence builds and we find ourselves feeling less fear. Confidence is a FEAR BUSTER.
Developing certain thought process habits helps. For example; worry is a fear that blocks growth often, and for many people. I’ve developed the habit, when I’m worried about something, to think of these words… ‘Most worries never happen.’ It’s the truth. Most things people worry about never happen. It’s the first thing that pops into my mind now, because I’ve worked at it. Our time is wasted when thinking about un-known possibilities.

Worry simply blocks healthy thought and emotional habits crucial for success. It’s a waste of healthy energy. Say to yourself, “Most worries never happen. What makes me think this one is any different? Instead of wasting my time on wondering about this outcome, I’m going to just do it, or not, and forget about it, so I can get on with enjoying my life.”

Learning to face fear head on, or developing the habit of moving on from worry, may take many months or even years of self-discovery because fear is part of a powerful need to feel safe. We can make conscious choices to accept fear’s warning signal when it makes sense. Safety, however, is not always the best option when we want to move ahead in new directions. And that is what we need to think about consciously when confronting fear.

When other people are part of the scenario in our fears, it’s important to remember we often do not know how they really think and feel about what we are afraid of, or worried about. Unless we have the opportunity to ask them and communicate in a healthy way, we really do not know what others responses will be. Often we are surprised if we take the time and courage to discuss the issue. Take the time to have the conversation. Push through the fear. It will ground it out.

Pushing through fear begins with becoming clearly aware of the it and slowing ourselves down enough to acknowledge what it is truly about, and what it is that triggers our fear. For example; when I worried about my 16-year-old son being four hours late, it was important for me to realize that my worry was based on a basic human fear of ‘loss of love’. If something drastic happened to him, I might lose my love with him.

We all fear loss of love at some time. It is a basic human fear. The fear is real and brings worry, but the worry is founded on imagined circumstances that may or may not be real. When I slow down enough to understand my feelings and thoughts in more detail, I am sometimes able to let go of the worry. Without denying the fear, I can remind myself that worry is not really necessary unless there are some facts to support it.

When my son came home late, but healthy, although absentminded about others who might worry about him, I was relieved there had been nothing to worry about. With practice I can experience that relief before he gets home.

The one thought that relieves my fear more than any other is, “No matter what happens, I will at some point be on the other side of my situation and the fear will be gone. Either I will attract what I fear, in which case I will deal with it then, or the fear was unfounded and nothing will happen.”

That awareness in itself reduces the influence of fear and helps me focus on the positive side of life. As we become more practiced at confronting fears, their influence begins to diminish. When we walk with fear behind us, our confidence is stronger from the process. Whether the decisions we choose work out as planned or we discover a new aspect of fear we never knew was present, we will have more experience, more character, and more value to ourselves and society.

Move through your fears. Build your character and confidence and you will succeed at more things in life.

Thank you for reading.

FindAMentor.com

12 Simple tricks to Success

12 simple Tricks to Success – Part 6

This is the sixth blog of a series, “12 Simple tricks to Success” from Findamentor.com. We reveal one trick each month for you to read and practice so that in 12 months you’ll have developed some habits that can expedite your success. Enjoy!

12-sucess-tricks-part-6

12-sucess-tricks-part-6

Trick number Six:

Ask Questions

. . . many of them, of yourself and others—any kind, most days

 

“To wonder is to begin to understand.” (Author unknown) This is one of the most influential statements I’ve read in my life. Wondering is about asking questions with an open mind to answers. Our intelligence is sparked in the process.

All humans have intelligence. Some of us don’t know how to maximize our intelligence, but that doesn’t mean we’re incapable. We each have different learning processes — ones particularly suited to who we are. Learn how you learn, follow your interests and passions, ask many questions and you will become very smart.

We can increase the range of our intelligence by simply asking questions. I believe in a law of intelligence, which ensures that every question ever asked is eventually answered.

“Everyone that asketh receiveth,” says Matthew in the Bible (7:8).

Answers may come in the form we expect, but often they come in unexpected ways and times. What we need is the patience to wait for answers and the openness to see them when they appear. Some of the answers may not come right away, but rest assured, they will come.

Einstein stated a theory that gravitational waves exist because he continually asked the question, ‘what makes the universe work?’ He was inspired by the answer he received from the universe so stated a theory. Theories are actually questions because they are not confirmed. By stating a theory I’m asking; How? 100 years later the universe provided the answer to prove the theory through other scientists. He asked the questions for human kind and the answer eventually came. Not all questions take that long to be answered.

I wondered how mobile phones worked when I first used one in 1976. 12 years later I got into the cellular phone business and attended courses explaining how they actually worked so I could explain it to customers.

I wondered about the similarities and differences between Christianity and other religions. I was looking for common denominators. I met many people of different backgrounds over the next few months and found many common denominators.

If you want to learn more, ask more questions of everyone you can think of. Eventually the answer will come and you will be more intelligent. As we ask questions and learn, we become more valuable in the workforce and to our networks of family, friends, and associates.

We can ask questions of children, teenagers, and co-workers—anybody with whom we carry on a conversation. We may learn a small detail about a person’s personal life, or we may find the solution to a complex corporate problem. It’s all learning and learning is valuable to our character. Every single person we encounter — regardless of age, race, occupation, gender, education, sexual orientation, income level, or religious or political beliefs — can teach us something.

The key is being open to learning without imposing negative judgments.

We make judgments about people and situations every day. Some positive and some negative. Negative judgments occur because we believe we’re better than others or we don’t have complete information or understanding or we’re afraid. Asking questions helps us understand and be less afraid. Asking questions before judging, helps us judge more positively which attracts more positive life situations to us.

One of the primary motives for negative judgment is to discredit others’ decisions, personal or professional, in an effort to validate our own or to feel superior. If left unchecked, negative judgment can lead to the implicit belief that everyone in the world should be more like us.

Difference, however, makes the world a wonderful place. Imagine if everybody were exactly the same. Would you like to be a clone? I wouldn’t. We all have our own paths and make our own choices. The more freedom we allow others to live their lives as they choose, the more freedom we gain to do the same ourselves.

Negative judgments block our ability to accept or gather complete information.

Without sensing compassion from us, for example, others will not be willing to share their whole story and we, as a consequence, will not learn as much as we might from the interaction.

My nephew shared a story with his mother about how he really had a hard time liking a fellow student, and then was surprised at how his feelings shifted when he found out how hard the student’s life had been. We were not born to like everyone. We can, however, learn from everyone when we keep our negative judgments at bay and inquire a little deeper with empathy and compassion.

When people feel judged, they don’t want to listen to our questions or opinions. They often withdraw and keep their thoughts to themselves. Sometimes they get aggressively defensive. The learning process stops for both sides, emotions heighten, block reason, and neither is able to accept responsibility for the negative situation. The more negative situations we put ourselves in the more we attract negative situations. It’s simple. If we want a positive life full of positive situations, we need to think and feel more positive every time we think of it.

One of the most effective ways to let go of negative judgments is to ask questions, examine why we have the judgments we do and then to take responsibility for communicating our desires, feelings, thoughts and intentions clearly, and with compassion.

By getting into the habit of asking questions when I’m feeling negative helps shift me to a positive state most of the time.

When my co-worker was installing a cellular phone into a customer’s new imported car, he inadvertently drilled into one of the car’s computer boards. The repair bill was $1500. When he informed me of the mishap, I had a few choices about how to react. I could have yelled, screamed, made him feel stupid, and then fired him.

That choice would have made the co-worker take responsibility for my anger, rather than his actions, and I would have been left with a big repair bill and one less employee who was an experienced, productive worker. I still would have been angry, and I would have had the additional expense of training another employee.

Instead, I let go of the anger — then the negative judgment — and looked at how we could turn the adversity into a benefit. I asked the co-worker why it happened (it was a new model of car that placed the computer board under the gearshift) and instructed him to phone all the competitors with whom we had strong relationships. He was to tell their installers of the new position of the computer board so they wouldn’t make the same mistake.

The result was that the co-worker was encouraged to take responsibility for his error, he felt supported despite his mistake, and my colleagues at other stores didn’t have to make the same expensive mistake. The worker received positive feedback from the other installers and felt good about himself in the end knowing he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. My benefits included a productive and willing co-worker and a number of grateful colleagues and competitors who would return the favor to me in some way in the future.

Asking why instead of moving to instant negative emotion and expression turned an adversity into benefit and attracted positive situations in the future.

Ask questions and you will learn, you will be more positive, you will attract positive people and a more positive life.

FindAMentor.com

12 Simple tricks to Success

12 simple Tricks to Success – Part 5

This is the fifth blog of a series, “12 Simple tricks to Success” from Findamentror.com. We reveal one trick each month for you to read and practice so that in 12 months you’ll have developed some habits that can expedite your success. Enjoy!

Just like every trade and profession has its’, “tricks of the trade”, all very successful people have 12 tricks they do, no matter what industry or institution they work in. They do those things consistently. They are important processes that great and successful people follow.

12-sucess-tricks-part-5

12-sucess-tricks-part-5

Trick number five:

Think in Options and Choose Wisely

Making thoughtful decisions that are right for you. Successful people think long term and big picture when making decisions and they check ideas with team members. They use their power to choose wisely. You could too.

Our power to choose is a gift. As human beings we are very blessed. We can choose our own paths by making decisions. We can track our current status in life back through thousands of decisions we’ve made along the way. We may feel that if we had made choices differently, more wisely, we would be closer to our goals.

So how do we make decisions wisely? Like everyone, we make decisions based on what we think and feel is best given our options at the time. Too often, however, we don’t consider enough options and make decisions too quick. Sometimes we take too long and over analyze. Sometimes we could make wiser decisions following a different decision making process.

Some time ago now, I attended a one-year coaching workshop called The Successful Habits Program. The workshop leader, Les Hewit, Co-Author of “The Power of Focus”, suggested that for every decision, we could find a minimum of ten options. Admittedly, a number of these options might be ridiculous, but that isn’t the point. In a list of ten, there is an option that’s just right for us. Thinking in 10 options is good brain exercise and it opens our mind. It can be fun too.

You can come up with ten different options when faced with decisions, one of which is just right for you, and you might have fun.

For example, I break my leg. Ten options to consider might be:

  1. Ask for help to get to the hospital to have it set.
  2. Crawl to the hospital and have it set.
  3. Set it myself.
  4. Have a friend set it.
  5. Do nothing—just let it set broken.
  6. Wait for someone to notice and let that person make a decision for me.
  7. Break my other leg and leave it un-set so I have a matching set of improperly healed legs.
  8. Kill myself so I don’t have to feel the pain.
  9. Break someone else’s leg so that person can know how I feel and can truly understand me.
  10. Yell, scream, and feel my pain and hope someone notices that can help me.

Some options may seem ridiculous, some not very desirable, but one of ten may offer the perfect solution—a solution we wouldn’t have thought of if we hadn’t exercised our brain and come up with ten options.

Slow down decision making whenever you can. Make thinking in options a habit, so you are able to make key decisions wisely.

Typically, when confronted with difficult decisions, people choose the path of least resistance or what appears to be the easiest way at first glance. Sometimes this is good, but sometimes the path of least resistance is a slower road to success. Sometimes the path that may seem difficult and more work at first could actually be the easiest in the long term. Think long term and big picture. All successful people do when making decisions.

Training ourselves to slow down and think of multiple options in complicated situations puts us in the habit of looking beyond what first meets the eye, of creating our own practical and wise solutions rather than being drawn toward the simplest ones.

Question the outcomes of a possible decision. Ask yourself; what could happen in a year from now if I make this decision? How might it affect others or the team? Will it inspire growth and action or invoke fear or both? If it invokes fear, is that okay in this situation and is it only temporary? In the long term are the benefits there or am I fooling myself?

Too often people make choices quickly and subconsciously. Sometimes it’s safe to do so—other times it’s not. Why gamble with important decisions? We can take greater control of the direction of our lives by pausing for a moment during a busy day to consider more options. We could put off making a decision until we have gathered enough information to make an informed choice. Check your options with mentors and mastermind groups or advisors. They may offer more options you didn’t see to choose from.

With their opinions to add to our own list of options, we can feel comfortable knowing we’ve gathered enough information to make a thoughtful decision that is right for us.

Sometimes we make decisions based on a gut feeling. We have no other choice because of timeframes or outside circumstance. This can work out to be the right decision. Other times it might not.

A key to becoming successful is to be decisive. Being decisive also means recognizing when we’ve made an incorrect decision and taking the time to re-think and make a new decision.

Being dynamic means being adaptable to change. It means being able to admit when we’ve made a mistake. Being dynamic and successful means thinking big picture, long term and in options, and it means being decisive. Just do it. You have the choice. Thanks for reading.

FindAMentor.com

12 Simple tricks to Success

12 simple Tricks to Success – Part 1

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This is the first blog of a series, “12 Simple tricks to Success” from Findamentror.com. We’ll reveal one trick each month for you to complete and/or practice so that in 12 months you’ll have developed some habits that can expedite your success. Enjoy!

Just like every trade and profession has its’, “tricks of the trade”, all very successful people have 12 tricks they do, no matter what industry or institution they work in. They do those things consistently. They are important processes that great and successful people follow.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” …Lao- Tse

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First things first: Write or type your goals or have your smart phone do it for you — just do it . . . even the little ones!

All very successful people have written goals. Write your goals down and have it done in the next 30 days before you read the next blog. Why?

A mid nineteen hundred graduating class from Yale met at a 20 year reunion. Researchers asked how many of the former students had achieved written life goals. Five per cent said they had. Seventy per cent of the class had never set meaningful goals. Twenty-five per cent had New Year’s resolution type objectives or goals they could articulate, but they were not written down. Only five per cent had written goals. The ones who wrote their goals all achieved them or variations thereof.

The researchers had each person complete a financial asset work sheet. The five per cent of the class that had written goals controlled ninety-six per cent of the group’s net worth.

Five per cent is better than average. Only three per cent of the general public writes down goals. Ninety-seven per cent do not have a clear, written idea of where they’d like to be in six months, five years or fifty. Why? They have never been taught the simple rules of success, the first one being to record your goals. Every successful business person records their goals in the form of business plans, operational plans and projections. Banks won’t lend them money if they don’t.

It’s been the way of people for thousands of years. 5 % learn the rules of success and follow them. Most others don’t learn them or have a hard time disciplining themselves to follow them once they know them. Some give up. I wonder why we don’t teach this in school. It’s so important, but there are many important life processes that they don’t, and could, teach us in school.

It’s time to change. Everyone deserves success and deserves to know the secrets of success. It’s time to increase the numbers of successful people on the planet. I was angry when I learned that these simple rules were not taught to me, and to all our children, in school. It‘s time to spread the wealth. Together we can do it.

Writing down and recording our goals — small ones, big ones, personality ones, business ones, and relationship ones — gives us an inventory of our desire and is the beginning of knowing our purpose in life.

Desire is like the starter on a car. It sets everything else in motion. But without a key in the ignition, we can sit behind the wheel all we want — we won’t be going anywhere. A full list of written goals puts the key in the ignition and creates the spark in the starter that fires the engine. With today’s technology, we can speak our goals into our smart phone and it types them for us. One of the best ways to fire the engine of careers is to begin a ‘To Do’ list.

Start with small lists, things you can achieve in a relatively short period. You might, for example, want to call someone you have been meaning to contact for a long time. Maybe there are small projects to do around the home. Maybe you just want to relax all weekend instead of running errands. Whatever your small goals are, write them down and do them.

Soon, you will find yourself regularly crossing goals off lists. The biggest benefit to crossing goals off a list is that our confidence and gratitude build. Positive emotions are key to success. Any action that can build our positive emotions is good to do.

When we become more certain of our ability to achieve what we put our mind to, we find ourselves setting bigger, longer term goals, and our self-esteem continues to grow.

Almost every success coach will tell you to feel and see yourself in possession of your desire. Imagine you already have it. Successful leaders have done this for millenniums. Do it every day with important goals.

There is no absolute time frame for accomplishing recorded goals. We don’t have to tell anyone about them. They are ours and we are allowed to keep things to ourselves. We can review our lists and adjust them, and time frames, as often as we want.

We are the ones who determine what short-term and long-term mean. We are the ones who decide what pace works best for us. Our really big goals, some call them dreams, may take 20 or 30 years to cross off the list — maybe even a lifetime — but recording and acknowledging them will keep us moving in the direction we want. It keeps us working towards purpose in life, which is a great thing.

Eventually, with determination and confidence, all our goals get crossed off, either because we achieved them or because they no longer matter.

In the movie, ‘The Ten Commandments’, the Pharaoh often said, “So it shall be written, so it shall be done.” For thousands of years humans have achieved what they have written down, recorded and committed too. Join the achievers! Record your goals!

The following offers you a simple guide for keeping track of your goals — all of them, even the little ones. Take the next month to record all your goals. You can make lists on your smart phone and in your calendar on your computer.

Personal Inventory of My Desires (Goals)

DREAM LIST

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

GOAL LIST (DAILY)

CAREER

___________________ ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,,

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

PERSONAL

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

GOAL LIST (SHORT TERM (6 months -Year)

CAREER

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

PERSONAL

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

GOAL LIST (LONG TERM)

CAREER

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

PERSONAL

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

PERSONALITY GOALS (THINGS ABOUT ME THAT I WANT TO CHANGE)

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

GRATITUDE LIST (EVERYTHING FOR WHICH I AM GRATEFUL)

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,

Read other parts of this series here.