- Work: Have you aligned your interests as best you can with your skills? Are you allowing work to govern you, or are you steering the work-ship? How best do you spend your time at work? How best do you apply your gifts at work? How much force or energy are you putting into your work? Are you able to overcome obstacles and achieve your objective at work? All relevant questions about work.
- Passion: Cal Newport (Study Hacks) has done some interesting research on passion. His work shows that passion is not something to be 'found' in the traditional sense. Passion is more something to be cultivated through hours and hours of honing a unique and valuable skill. It's not that important to know our passion. It's more important to make a choice, just decide to do something, to become so good at something that it becomes your passion. Steve Jobs was never passionate about computers to start with, he was into Eastern philosophy. But he saw a gap, went with it, and made computers his passion, and boy was he successful. You can find Cal Newport's talk on passion here.
- Motivation: motivation is intrinsically linked to psychology. Know the inner workings of your mind, and know your motivation. Motivation is the desire to achieve a goal. We all have a need to grow and achieve, this is part of human nature. The question is how do we channel this desire into motivation to take the steps towards our goal? Research shows that you need to be specific is this regard. Don't just say to yourself, "I'll do my best." Setting the achievement bar high will result in far better results than simply trying to "do your best."
- Focus: I have recently developed a separate post on how develop higher levels of focus to achieve your goals. You can find this here.
- Creativity: I think one of the best ways to explore getting more creative is through a process of trail and error. Most of us want to be more creative, but we let fear get the better of us. That inner voice of the victim sounds loud and clear; "oh you'll never be any good at that!" Or, "just think of how bad you'll sound, look, feel if you try sing, dance, act, or write!" The victim mindset dissolves any form of responsibility for creativity, leaving us more miserable than before. Be aware of this and take action despite of any insecurities so creative juices may be allowed to flow.
- Inspire: I think the degree to which we can inspire ourselves is the same degree to which we can inspire those around us to take action aligned with our vision. If we're not interested, excited or eager to participate, cooperate or co-create, then others will pick-up on our energy, negatively impacting the results we want. I think so much of being inspired and inspiring has to do with taking responsibility for our thoughts and actions. Because if we take responsibility for the creative process then there's no room for negativity. The more fired-up we are about what we have to offer, the more fired-up those around us will be.
- Teamwork: We're moving into a time of greater connection and cooperation. We need more of this in our work environments as systems and ways to make money get more complex. We are not machines that work with narrow focus in a cubicle piling through work all day. Even introverts thrive on teamwork where their unique gifts can be utilized for the good of the whole. Effective teamwork involves having conversations using authentic communication. This means asking people how they feel, understanding their needs and working together to have each-others needs met. Simple. Yet we like to complicate the way we connect and communicate.
- Vision: and to finish off a big one. Vision! Vision is an integral part of designing and creating the future. Vision is uniquely part of purpose. This means understanding identity, context (systems) as well as feeling into the future to see how we move forward. Sure, when something's not working we have to go back to the drawing board to tweak a bit here or there. But the core of our vision, I would say, is a delicate balance of heart and mind.
I hope you find these paths and travelling them, rewarding for future success.
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