Are You Doing What You Love?

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. --Albert Schweitzer (1875 - 1965)





We are busier than we have ever been, working long hours and feeling under more and more pressure. How do you spend your days? For many people work and pleasure are seen as separate, with work being a chore that has to be done to pay the bills. It doesn’t always have to be like that. Although we don’t have to love everything we do, we do need to gain some enjoyment from most of what we do. Take a moment to see if it is time to start afresh and do something you love, something that adds the pleasure factor back into your working life?

Think about what matters to you and why you do the things you do. For each person that means something different. What aspects of a job are important to you? List them. Think about your dream job. Does it motivate and inspire you? If not, think again. It has to mean something to you; otherwise you will not be prepared to put in the effort to achieve what you want. Ask: ‘What am I prepared to give up to make this happen?’ ‘What would I love to try?’ ‘What options do I have?’ ‘What are my talents, skills and qualities?’ ‘How can I utilise them in my ideal job?’ How can you take an idea and turn it into reality? Get creative and think through how you could make money doing what you enjoy.

Starting anew requires courage, confidence and commitment. Hold on to your sense of purpose. Believe in yourself. Ignore the critics, for there are bound to be some, and face your fears (there will many of those too!). Ask for help from those people who can assist you and get supporters to keep you motivated. Research things that interest you and, if necessary, go back to basics and learn new skills. Develop a clear vision of where you’d like to be in 10 years’ time – and why. Write it down. Be specific. This will provide you with something to focus on. Think creatively. This may not happen all of a sudden, but if you work at it gradually, day by day, it can happen.

And if starting something new is not for you, how can you love the job you already have? You can’t always control your situation, but you can always choose how you react to it. Your attitude colours how you face every day and has an influence on the people around you. Choose to be positive. Are there areas of your job that you can improve on? Who can you discuss this with? Is a change to a new role in the same company an option? Examine the possibilities. Your job does not define you, but how you do it does.

And why bother? Doing what you love gives you a good reason to get up every morning. Your life will be challenging, certainly, exciting, definitely. Doing things you enjoy which give you personal fulfilment and satisfaction has been shown to contribute to good health and longevity. Don’t wait for perfect circumstances to start. Begin now!

3 Simple Strategies For Never Losing Out Again

Life is full of ups and downs and sometimes has a few sideways thrown in too. When things go wrong or don’t go as planned, or when something happens to throw us off balance and doubt ourselves it can be tough to deal with. After all, we all want things to go well and to end up as ‘winners’. But life will always throw challenges at us, and we can’t control everything. Nor should we try. It’s not what happens to you but what you do with what happens to you that makes the difference. Here are three easy ways that you can always come out on top.



1. Focus on Your Strengths

We’re a bunch of contradictions – sorry to break it to you. Sometimes happy, sometimes sad; sometimes hopeful, sometimes pessimistic; sometimes childish and sometimes mature. We also have a whole load of strengths and weaknesses that affect what we do and how we do it, but tend to put more focus on our weaknesses and not our strengths.

A strength is something that you do consistently well or at a near-perfect level of performance – it’s something you’re just able to do, you’re hard-wired to do it well and you get an inherent satisfaction from doing it. It could be tackling and solving complex problems, empathising with people, having a lively imagination or being able to make the perfect omelette.

Focusing on what you do well rather than what you’re not so good at makes all kinds of sense. When you look at what you’re not good at you feel bad about yourself and your ability, but when you focus on and play to your strengths you’re guaranteed to get results, and can even eliminate any negative effect your weaknesses might have.

There was a guy I worked with who hated public speaking and recognised that it was one of his weaknesses. He worked as an advertising executive and as he climbed the ladder he found he had to do more and more presentations – he’d stutter, freeze, forget his point and not perform at his best at all. But when we focused on his strengths we found that he had amazing social skills, an ability to establish great rapport with people in no time at all and had a fantastic sense of humour. Using those strengths he was able to connect easily with each person in his audience, enjoy himself a whole lot more and to deliver presentations that had fun, humour and warmth in them. He used his strengths to overwhelm his weaknesses and went from strength to strength himself.

2. Set Things Up Ahead Of Time

Sure, there will be times when you can just head into something, do brilliantly at it and get the result you were hoping for (normally if you’re playing to your strengths), but other times you might blunder forwards, wing it and not get the result you wanted. Whatever challenges or opportunities you’re facing you’ll stand a much better chance of getting a great result if you set things up to succeed ahead of time.

So what exactly do you want to happen? What solution, outcome or result would be great? Get really clear on the outcome you want from what’s facing you and how it would feel to get the outcome you’re looking for. Then start breaking it down – what can you do to set things up so that your desired outcome happens? What needs to be put in place? What will help to make what you want to happen, happen? And to ensure the best outcome, what are you willing to do?

Whatever faces you, it’s possible to get the result you want by being crystal clear about the kind of result you want and by putting effort into setting things up so that it happens. Look at this way – you’re infinitely more likely to get your most wanted result by putting time or effort into setting things up ahead of time than if you don’t. Your choice.

3. There’s No Such Thing as Losing Anyway

What’s life all about, really? Getting a good job, getting married, feeling valued, having fun? It’s about different things to different people, but to boil it down I think it’s about doing the best we can to have, do and be the best for ourselves and those we care about. Sometimes it’s a struggle and sometimes it’s a joy, but what is constant through it all is our capacity to learn, develop and grow. Humans have an unparalleled ability to learn and adapt, which is exactly why we’re able to do the best we can and find ways to have, do and be more.

That’s why everything you do takes you one step forwards and it’s only by doing one thing, then another and another that the most astounding things in our world came about. As Thomas Edison said while he was on his 207th prototype for the electric light bulb - 'I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.' He's absolutely right – everything you do that doesn’t work out is another tick in another box and another step forwards, because you know one more way not to do something and what not to do next time. You’ll never get to 100% without going from 1% to 99% first.

In all that you do, whether it turns out how you wanted it to or not, there’s the capacity for learning. That means that it’s all part of the process and everything that you do and learn is an important step forwards.

There’s no such thing as losing, only learning and growing. So here’s to your continued success!"

Are you lonely in this crowd

This world is a crowd. We all live in a crowd. Our family, our friends, our business associates, our co-workers, and our community. All these form a crowd for us not in the dictionary sense, but let us say that we are always getting connected with someone, somewhere and are not living on an island alone. Even then, many of us feel lonely. Are you one of them?

Being lonely means - you are not able to share your deepest thoughts with anyone. You have issues at home. You have issues at office. You have issues with your relatives. You have issues with your friends. You are carrying so much of hurt and guilt inside yourself. You want to do many things, and at times, need help. You don't know, whom to ask? You feel lonely. You feel all alone. You feel that no one understands you. Despite all your trials, you fail to share and convey your feelings. If you talk about office issues with your wife/husband or your girlfriend/boyfriend, you are not able to get any good advice. They all have their suggestions and analysis of your situation, but that differs greatly from what you believe to be true. Therefore, you shut up after talking for a while with them.



You have friends with whom you try to talk about your problems. But they want to tell you theirs first. What is taken quite seriously by you, is considered ordinary by others. What do you do? Should you consult a psychiatrist? How will that help? Your character, and your thinking. Is something wrong with them? Who will tell you? Who will guide? You feel very disturbed at all the times. You want peace in your mind. You go out to walk alone, but your thoughts don't leave you anywhere. This agitation of mind is becoming intolerable. You feel lonely. You want to talk with someone who will understand your point of view and tell you what to do?

Are you one of such people? Do you feel lonely? Do you also feel that you have no one to share your deepest thoughts? Have you started feeling that everyone is selfish? No one has got time for you? No one wants to understand you? No one cares for you?

What can you do in such a situation? You may be feeling helpless, but something ought to be done. The first step in such agitation should be to avoid thinking for some time during the day. Involve yourself in some such activity that takes your mind away from itself. Any activity that will engross you completely. A good movie, a good novel, some magazines, a TV show, any activity that takes the mind away will give some peace. The next step would be to find out if anyone you know is also facing such a state? How does he/she do that? For this you will have to shift your attention from yourself to others. Begin listening to others. Ask them about their problems and listen. You may probably find that there are few others who are also in the same boat. Even if you are not religious, try to talk to God. Tell Him about what all goes on in your life and your mind. Ask Him to help you.

One who feels lonely in the crowd of people, must first raise his/her self-esteem. You must say - 'OK. Other than God, no one will understand what I am facing. That is OK. I will set some exciting goals for myself. I will try to achieve them. For me, my life is very important. I will live my life in such a way that I feel proud of it. I am a good person and I know that. I don't honestly care if others are not understanding me. I will try to understand their problems and help them. Rather than asking for help, let me start giving.'