Beware of Passion ‘Suckers’!

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

Find Your Passion: Follow Your Dreams... And Other Useless Advice

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

5 Tips to Spice Up Your Life with an Exciting Passion

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

Is Fear Stopping You From Following Your Passion?

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

5 Unconventional Tips for Finding and Following Your Passion

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

8 Simple Tips for Eliminating Excuses When Starting an Online Business Around Your Passion

Everyone wants to get paid to do what they love.

But not everyone is ready to make it happen.

Excuses are everywhere. They can take control of your life unless you transcend them.

You hear people whine, complain, and justify why they can’t do something, but in the end, there’s no one holding them back, except themselves.

There’s nothing you need. And there’s no one you have to be in order to begin your journey. No matter what you think is holding you back, you can start.

Here are 8 simple tips for eliminating excuses when starting an online business around your passion:

The simplest and most neglected tip is the cold hard truth. Look at your life. Look at how your excuses are holding you back.

Are your excuses really stopping you, or are you stopping yourself? You may be afraid. You may have your reasons. But is this the path you want to be on?

Imagine sitting on your deathbed and looking back. What would you have done differently today if you could go back?

You can take action despite your excuses.

I make a living doing what I love. I still have excuses every single day. I could give up, but I don’t.

I refuse to settle for a life I know won’t fulfill me. Often, when I take action, my excuses disappear.

They’re only there for a brief moment before I start. It’s getting started that’s the hard part.

Look for proof to the contrary.

If you think you’re not good enough, look for evidence of where you are good enough. Excuses are never rock-solid. They are made up, so they can be dissolved.

It all comes down to how badly you want to start an online business around your passion.

It’s not going to happen overnight, but it is worth the work.

There comes a point where you’re so sick of making excuses that you’ve had enough.

This happened to me just before I started doing what I’m truly passionate about. I was making excuses. I wasn’t living up to my potential.

But one day I’d had enough, and I just started. I didn’t know what I was doing, or if it was going to work, but I was going to try anyway.

The source of all excuses is fear.

Instead of focusing on why you can’t do something, focus on what will happen if you keep making excuses.

What will your life look like 5, 10, or even 20 years from now if you let your excuses stop you from truly following your inner calling?

Think about what your life will look like if you said goodbye bye to your excuses and pursued your dreams.

A more Zen-like way to eliminate your excuses is to stay present with each excuse. When an excuse comes up, notice it, breathe, and let it be.

Don’t analyze, try to figure it out, or try to get rid of it. Just let the excuse do its thing. Observe it with the same fascination as if you were to see a panda on a walk in the woods.

Each excuse is a thought, and you are not your thoughts. How could you be? You couldn’t be aware of your thoughts if you were your thoughts. You are the awareness behind your thoughts.

You don’t have to give your excuses power. Instead, focus on your breathing.

Shift your perspective from seeing the world as hostile, to seeing it as an adventure, because that is what life really is.

You’re on this planet to experience life, to face challenges, and grow as a human being. It’s through challenges that you evolve.

We aren’t made to settle for mediocrity. We’re made to constantly evolve.

Last, but not least, you have to take responsibility for your life.

If you want to build a business around your passion, only you can make it happen. No one is going to do it for you.

There will be no red carpet. The stars won’t align. And no magic solution will appear.

Start with what you have, and start now.

You can do this, if you truly want to.

If there’s anything I’ve that I have learned from making a living online, it’s that success is not an overnight thing.

It takes time. It’s a struggle, but it’s all worth it.

If you don’t know where to start, find someone you trust and learn from them.

Let your excuses pass you by. You don’t have to give power to them. Let them go, and start moving toward the goals that both scare you and excite you.

Fulfillment awaits.

Are you ready?

Featured photo credit: Cute young girl sitting in an egg chair via Shutterstock

View the original article here

8 Lies You’ve Been Told About Following Your Passion

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

My passion for Pi: Chirag Singh on TEDxTalks

A Pi day special! At TEDxYouth@BommerCanyon, 9-year-old Chirag Singh confesses his irrational love for Pi — and not the kind you eat:

View the original article here

3 Simple Steps to Making Money From Any Passion

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” ~Confucius

Is it possible to have your passion also be your core source of income?

We seem to hear more and more stories of people reaching the promised land, but is it really possible for the everyday person? Or are those ‘lucky few’ just that— lucky?

After years of research I have good news for you…

I bet you there’s something you love doing that someone else would be happy to pay you for right this second. I might go as far as saying I’m sure of it.

But let’s start with a question.

Why is it that the people who succeed once, seem to have similar successes on future endeavors? Whether it’s fitness, entrepreneurship, career, relationships, you name it.

Success begets success.

What are the things that consistently allow certain people to build a business and living around the things they love most, but allow the other 80% of the world to continue to drag themselves, day in and day out, to a job they can’t stand?

Why can some people charge seamlessly from one creative endeavor and passion project to the next, experiencing all sorts of success along the way, while many others can’t take the first step to finding their passion, let alone building a career around it?

The steps aren’t foreign, they aren’t cryptic, or hidden behind some secret handshake. They aren’t complicated and in many cases not even that difficult. But yet they are still massively underused.

Why is that?

These questions have kept me up at night for years.

As it turns out, the answer is pretty simple…

The passionate people simply know what’s actually possible. They are crystal clear about the steps that work, so they don’t think twice in applying them to whatever the excitement of the day is.

The rest of the world doesn’t know the first move to distinguish up from down.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

For the past eight years, and more specifically the past three, I’ve lived and breathed passion. I’ve done case studies with hundreds of passionate workers around the world, conducted countless experiments and profiled 14 of the top experts on and off the web.

Not only have I been obsessed with how people find their passion, but also how the seemingly ‘lucky few’ (hint: it’s not about the luck) are able to push through to the next level and turn their passion into a career – as entrepreneurs and employees alike.

My goal was to combine the art of discovering your passion with the science of making money from it. I recently published the results and process into a self-study course called Live Off Your Passion.

The results were invigorating. But as it turned out, they were not as complicated and unique as one would think.

Living off your passion is more possible than most realize. We just have to condition it.

I wanted to share some of the most profound lessons with you all. If you follow the steps below, I’m sure you can monetize your passion in record time if you want it badly enough.

1. Separate passion from reality.

We must start with brainstorming your passion projects in a way that encourages success. Unfortunately most people do the opposite.

As humans, our immediate reaction to someone’s new idea (or our own) often is to figure out why it won’t work. I know, sad but true. The problem is that when you get critical of something the moment the idea comes up, it gets stomped out immediately. It might not even make it more than a sentence or two before someone else yells out the reasons it ‘obviously’ won’t work. Then you feel stupid and move on.

But if that idea were given say five or ten minutes of brainstorming whiteboard action, along with a solid dose of open, creative and non-critical discussion, it’s very possible that the idea would turn out to have some merit.

Imagine how many brilliant ideas get killed too soon due to premature criticism.

This happens with passion every day—even if we’re just doing it in our own head (which is the most likely and most dangerous case). A lot of times when we task ourselves to think of our passions we only allow ourselves to play in part of the sandbox. Since the end goal is to find something we can make a living from, we subconsciously discard the ideas that are totally off the wall. We stifle our creativity without even knowing it.

In order to have a fighting chance at developing world-changing business ideas or personal passion pursuits, you absolutely must separate the creative and the critical stages.

Brainstorm your most far-out dreams of passion careers you can think of. Then wait for at least a few days if not a week or more before you start to get practical and critical. Mark my words, for every wild idea you come up with, I’m sure there’s already someone out there making a great living off it (and that’s a good thing). More on finding them below.

2. Be the expert you already are.

One of the most common barriers keeping people from making money from their passion is the belief that you don’t know something well enough to get paid to teach it to someone else.

That’s just flat wrong – You know more than you think. Being an expert is purely relative and based largely on perception.

The crazy thing is once you find something you’re passionate about, you’ll likely realize it’s something you’ve been learning and improving upon for years and maybe even decades. You have more experience with your passion than likely 99% of those around you, simply because you love doing it.

If you’ve been on this earth for at least a couple decades, I guarantee you’re an expert at something. Give yourself some credit. Find what it is and find the people who desperately need your help. Combine the two and living off your passion starts to become a reality.

3. Do the impossible.

For decades, breaking the four-minute mile was believed to be scientifically impossible. Right up until Roger Banister did it in 1954. Then you know what happened? 16 more people ran sub four-minutes in the three years to follow.

We’ve been largely conditioned that it’s not possible to build a career around passion. So many people hate their jobs and many of us have decided to accept that as a fact of life. I did too, right up until I started meeting people who showed me another way.

Listen carefully. The most crucial ingredient to loving your work and living off passion is to surround yourself with people already doing it. You must reverse the brainwashing. Spend time around enough people living squarely in their dreams, and living off passion not only becomes possible, it becomes probable. That shift in psychology will change your world.

My recent course, Live Off Your Passion, as well as my site, Live Your Legend, would not exist today if it wasn’t for the ‘crazy’ people I spend time with every day. Leo is at the top of that list. He and others changed my thinking from “making a living online, helping people while doing something I love, isn’t possible” to “I can’t imagine any other way to build a career”. Thanks to Leo and the rest of you.

Once someone knows the process and is convinced not only that it works, but that it is indeed possible, their creative and business potential becomes limitless. It’s just a matter of time before they turn the passion of their choosing into a full-blown career.

Start surrounding yourself with people doing the impossible. Don’t look back.

Often the first step to living off passion, and the most realistic for those scared of the threatening income gap, is to start working with people one-on-one.

Remember, there are things you are better at (and enjoy more) than the great majority of those around you. There are also people actively looking for the expertise you have.

Find the right connection and you could begin making money from a passion tomorrow if you wanted to. It’s that powerful. And it’s that fast.

Need reassurance? Go do some research on some of the people charging folks and making a living from the skill and passion you enjoy. Are they all the next Steve Jobs? I doubt it. They just decided to focus their energy where they could help the most.

The great majority of people who have not been able to monetize a passion does not come down to lack of skill. It does not come down to lack of credentials. It does not come from lack of experience.

It comes from lack of creativity and courage.

Combine those two with something that makes you come alive, and the world will be beating your door down to give you their money.

A recent study reported that as many as 80% of the people in the workforce don’t enjoy their job. And nearly 75% don’t know their true passion.

This is not a coincidence.

You don’t have to be one of them.

What would happen if we could reverse that statistic? Think about it for a second.

If we can begin building an income around the things that excite us, our work will no longer be something we loathe. It will be something we can’t get enough of. Which quickly becomes something the world can’t get enough of. If we can do that, we can literally change the world.

The first hurdle in living off your passion is realizing it’s possible to get paid to do what you enjoy—to show yourself that you’re capable of helping people and they are willing to pay you for it. Whether it’s $1, $15, $100 or $1,000, the point is to make the massively huge leap from earning exactly ZERO from what you enjoy doing, to earning something. Anything.

People will find value in what you have to offer, but you’ll never know unless you start offering it.

In my years of passion research around the world, one belief has become a part of my core more than any other: If you can find something you’re passionate about, you can find a way to turn that passion into profit. I’ve seen too many examples of people living their dreams to believe anything else.

You just have to be willing to get a little creative.

So when are you going to join the 20% club?

You have the tools. The rest is on you.

Scott Dinsmore is the founder of Live Your Legend, and the author of Live Off Your Passion: An Unconventional Guide to Finding Passion and Getting Paid to Do Work You Love.

For the next four days he’s offered up a special discount for Zen Habits readers to get 25% off. Just enter discount code “zenpassion” upon checkout. Live Off Your Passion

View the original article here

5 Shortcuts to Finding Your Passion

“Follow your passion.” It sounds so easy. So why do so many people struggle to find the career they’re excited to wake up to every morning?

Today, I held a free webinar with Jennifer Gresham, founder of the No Regrets Career Academy, called, “5 Shortcuts to Finding Your Passion.”

Jen took a thoughtful look at how to “follow your passion” and find your “fire in the belly” with confidence, and shared:

How to tell if your passion is career material or just a hobbyAnti-passions (and why you can’t ignore them)Why passion isn’t everythingThe #1 mistake people make when choosing a passionAdvice for the extremely passionate (do you have to choose?)

Jen and I also answered a ton of questions about finding your passion.

Watch the recorded videos here (go to the site if you don’t see the videos in RSS/email):

View the original article here

Is Your Passion for Productivity Hurting Your Career?

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

7 Reasons You Haven’t Found Your Passion Yet

There is no clear formula for finding your passion. Some people seem to know it from the time they are born. Others seem to search for it until they die.

One thing is clear: we all would love to spend our days doing what we love. But if you don’t quite know what direction you should head, what do you do?

In many cases, the reason you haven’t found your true calling yet is because you’re focusing on the wrong things. With that in mind, here are 7 reasons that you haven’t found your passion yet — and what to do about it.

Once you start looking for what you were meant to do, it’s easy to get caught up in the search. Unfortunately, continually asking yourself “What am I passionate about?” usually has very little benefit.

You can’t find your passion by searching the depths of your mind. Passions come from actions and experiences — not idle contemplation.

Passions evolve out of experiences. If you’re looking to feel passionate about something before doing it, then you’re going to be looking for a long time.

Would you expect yourself to fall in love with an artist before ever hearing their music? Of course not. How can you be passionate about woodcarving if you’ve never done it? Or at the very least seen someone do it.

The feeling of passion will come after you’ve had an experience, not before.

There is nothing wrong with pursuing a long-term goal or walking the same path for awhile. But don’t let your ultimate goal blind you from the opportunities that arise along the way. Some of the most compelling options might start out as side jobs, hobbies, or a random meeting.

Instead of becoming obsessively focused on one area, take advantage of the new opportunities that arise from time to time.

We often think that if we find our passion, then we will have clarity and know what to do with our lives.

If only it were that simple. Life is a series of confusing situations and you’ll never have all of the answers. Regardless of the situation, we have to make the best choice at the time and continue to move forward.

Finding your passion isn’t about know the right direction from the outset. It’s about choosing a direction, paying attention to what interests you along the way, and pursuing those interesting areas further.

A common difference between those who are living their passion and those who are still searching for it, is that the former group has created something. Maybe that’s art for someone else. Maybe that’s a job for themselves. Maybe that a program for the community. Maybe that’s an opportunity for their career.

The act of creating is important because it allows us to discover things about ourselves.

It is only through the act of pushing ourselves and creating something new that we discover what is important to us, what we’re good at, and what we are willing to sacrifice for.

No, it’s not easy to create something, but it is important to do so.

Searching for our passion is part of a larger goal — we want to know what to do with our lives. We want to know how to spend our time on this planet.

The problem, of course, is that examining our lives from such a high level often prevents us from focusing on this moment.

Discovering your passion happens in a series of small steps. You first hear about it in a book or from a friend. Then you go to a class or an event. Then you try it out yourself. Then you try it again. Then it becomes a hobby. Then you’re telling your friends about it. And before you know it, you’ve found your calling in life.

But it didn’t happen overnight.

Instead of worrying about what you’re going to do with the rest of your life, spend some time thinking about what you should do with the rest of today. How can you do something enjoyable in this moment?

String enough enjoyable moments together and you’re bound to be passionate about one of them.

We all have interests, but we usually keep them as passing interests that we come back to from time to time. Rarely do we take an interest and decide to pursue a specific goal related to it.

Reaching for a goal is important because it starts a process that brings about opportunities that we cannot predict. If you endeavor to reach a meaningful goal, then there will undoubtedly be opportunities that arise along the way that you would never have imagined when you started.

Whether or not you reach your original goal isn’t nearly as important as the journey it takes you on and the opportunities that journey offers.

Pursue your interests with purpose and you’ll find that your passion has a funny way of showing up.

For more on how experiences can reveal your passion, read this article on finding your passion.

James Clear is the founder of Passive Panda.com, a site for people that want to earn more money. Join Passive Panda's Free Newsletter on Earning More for proven tips and strategies.

View the original article here

Simple Daily Habits to Ignite Your Passion

“Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it.”- Hardy D. Jackson

For the past 8 years I’ve run experiments on myself and others to better understand what makes us come alive.

This has taken me on ultra-marathons, to the tops of mountains, the bowels of bookstores, around the world and in front of some pretty fascinating people on some very deep soul searching. Finding passion and helping folks do work that embodies it has become a bit of an obsession of mine and has turned up some interesting results.

It turns out passion is not as elusive as we think. Just like daily exercise leads to a more fit and healthy body, there are habits that lead to fire in your belly. If we are to cultivate such a lifestyle we must act accordingly.

1. Surround yourself with passionate people. This is the foundation. Most people don’t believe you can do work you love because they’re constantly around people who hate their jobs and don’t know what excites them. This has to change. Those around you have everything to do with your success and your belief of what’s possible. You’ll either rise up or sink down depending on who’s next to you.

Passion is contagious. You must have an environment that embodies it. You need a support crew who believes what you believe. People who dream as big as you or bigger. Not only will they give you ideas but they’ll condition the belief that doing what you love is the norm. They fuel our passion and make the unthinkable possible, even normal. You’ll begin to expect the same of yourself.

It’s crucial to get this right. It’s why Leo and I get out on barefoot runs in San Francisco every week or so and why I’m on a quest to document 1,000 people across the world living their dreams. We all need encouragement.

Look around you. Do the people you see inspire and motivate you? Are they doing epic things? Do they love their work? Learn how to make genuine connections with new people doing interesting things. Check Craig’s List, MeetUp, coffee shop bulletin boards, Chamber of Commerce, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Find people in your own town and online. Befriend them. Make them a part of your life. Get out on adventures together. Schedule a weekly dinner or drinks just to talk about what’s exciting. Environment is everything.

2. Create space. If you don’t give big ideas room, they’ll never show up. Purpose and passion are no different. Lack of space creates pressure – the ultimate killer of creativity. And nothing requires more creative juices than passion. Start small with five minutes each morning. Schedule downtime. Start walking to work instead of taking the bus. Don’t multitask. Get out in nature. Just be, let things flow and see what comes up. Give yourself permission to dream. Passion thrives in emptiness.

3. Help someone in a way only you can. We all have natural strengths and talents that can dramatically help those around us. What comes easy for you is no doubt challenging for others. We tend to take these for granted, often hardly noticing our own gifts, and rarely share them with others. Passion comes from using those on a routine basis. Ask yourself, What do people thank you for? What do people routinely ask for your help with? Most people’s passions help others in one way or another. Perhaps for you it’s knitting, teaching children math, cooking a good meal or leading a yoga class. Devote time each day to sharing your talents.

4. Keep a journal of what inspires and excites you. Let your thoughts run wild. Most importantly, keep a running list of what inspires you. Books, magazines, movies, people, products, music, stories, careers, everything. Most people have a brush with passion almost daily, unfortunately we’re often too busy thinking of our 97-item todo list to take in the education. Anytime something catches your eye or excites you, open up your journal and get it onto paper. Over the years you will have a running story of how you might enjoy spending your time.

5. Challenge the norm. Ask questions. Don’t take things as gospel just because that’s how they’ve always been done. Don’t aimlessly listen to those around you. Question everything you’ve been doing and are about to do, especially if you don’t enjoy it. Is it really what you want? Is it in line with who you are? Perhaps there’s a better way. There often is.

6. Scare yourself – Live outside your comfort zone. Passionate people thrive off uncertainty. If you aren’t doing things that give you a few goose bumps you’re either not learning, dying or bored out of your mind. None of which are good. Do something at least mildly uncomfortable daily. This could be as small as making a phone call or sharing your art with someone. Be vulnerable. There’s a pretty direct correlation between pushing limits and epic living.

7. Find the right reasons. If a passionate person gets fired, they brush it off and get excited about the opportunity the lost job must be presenting. You can’t control what happens but you can control your reaction to it. What challenges have come up today? How could you reframe them? The juiciest possibilities often have the best disguises. Notice them.

8. Learn something new. Become obsessed with learning everything you can find – new skills, approaches, ideas, you name it. If it interests you then it’s important enough to get in your brain. We have to fuel what excites us. Grab a magazine or book that interests you and read a few pages on the way to work or before bed. Passionate people almost always have a book within reach. Ideas can be found anywhere. Start looking. Be a sponge.

9. Start at blog. Surprise, surprise, right? But blogs are much more powerful than most realize. They’re a simple way to explore and share the thoughts and beliefs you’re excited about and for people to immediately see and provide feedback. Don’t worry about whether you’ll make money from it or who will read it. That’s not the point. The point is to constantly fuel something that interests you.

For years my wife has loved to cook vegetarian meals. Then last month she started a simple blog and the most fascinating thing started to happen. Her cooking changed from something she simply did, to something she eagerly shared and talked to others about. She suddenly had an audience to teach something she cared about. People started to thank her and cook her meals. Now she wants to do something more with it. Maybe private cooking classes or a recipe book.

This would have never come if she hadn’t taken her interest to the next level. It didn’t have to be a blog. That just happens to be one of the easiest ways of doing it these days. Seriously start a blog. It takes a few hours max. Write about what excites you and nothing else. Publish it for the world to see. Do it daily or weekly. Give your passion room to breathe. See what happens.

Everything you do, everything you try, everything that does or doesn’t work out, whether you like it or not, it’s all an experiment. It’s up to you to decide to learn from it. That’s the ultimate daily practice.

Test how you can help people. Test what excites you. Test what you like. Test what scares you. Realize that if you do what you’ve always done, your results are never going to change.

Living a life of purpose and passion is just that, a way of life. Those who wake up excited aren’t just the lucky ones, they condition themselves to experience and deserve it.

Scott Dinsmore is the founder of LiveYourLegend, where he writes and helps people discover passion & purpose and do work they love. Check out his latest articles or download his free Epic Work Toolkit.
—
Tweet

View the original article here