Dreams and Boundaries

I was inspired by the story of Amelia Earhart.  The movie ends with the quote of "What do dreams know of boundaries?" The challenge with dreams are that the pragmatic side of our lives come to a face off with our dreams.  We must actively remain clear about our dreams and enlist others to help us follow.  

Here are some suggestions for you as you follow your dream.

1. Write it down.  Write down the emotions you want to feel, the people you are with and what you are doing.

2.  Find a picture or portrait of the dream and look at it regularly.

3. Create a 5 year plan to get there and enlist another person to help you.

4. Fail and fail again and get back up and do it again

5. Meet the people who are living your dream currently and build that network

Face pragmatism with passion

The Career Audit

Pretty soon, I will be gathering the receipts of 2010 and starting on my tax return.  Some folks dread the process, I actually enjoy looking back at my expenditures for the year and identifying places for improvement and growth.

The end of the year causes me to do the same with my life.  I break down my life into personal and professional.  I am particularly interested in my career.  I can easily fall into the trap that where I am at currently will remain the same or that I have somehow arrived at the destination.  I find that an audit of last year will help inform the next year in terms of planning.

Just like the financial statements help inform what has passed in a concrete way, your career tends to be much less concrete.  So, I am using a basic positive / negative or plus / delta.  Here are my questions:

• What is working really well? 
• What are the work activities that have given me spirit? 
• What are the work activities that have been draining?
• How would my colleagues answer those two questions?
• As I review the transcript of my mind, what am I saying to myself each and every day? Words that bring courage or words that bring anxiety?
• Did I reach my goals? Did I have any goals? 
• Where will I be in five years? Where do I want to be? 
• Does my current situation allow me to see that picture?

I have enlisted my career coach to walk me through this process to complete the audit.  Oh and by the way, no doubt I will be using my CPA this year to complete my taxes. I can only get so far on my own.

Passion

As I completed the values exercise, I pondered how I discovered that passion was on the top of my list.  I know that I am attracted to passionate people.  I know that I want and long to be person living a cause of passion. It hit me, there were two key moments in my life where a portrait of passion struck me.

The first was the antithesis of passion.  As a 7th grade boy struggling with self-esteem, I recall an angry teacher telling me that I was a loser and would not amount to anything. You never forget those words.  The second was my experience at Cathedral High School.  I was expected to become more than I thought I could ever be and I was surrounded by teachers of passion. Lisa Ford was the portrait of passion.  She expected more and believed in me.

Recently, I went back to Cathedral to honor her with a scholarship in her name and have invited others to join with me in celebrating who she is.  It is that passion, that helped form this key value in my life.

Emotional Commitment

Stan Slap provides a great illustration regarding the importance of being emotionally committed to your work.  How do you get there?  It is more than just basic management techniques, tracking performance milestones and accountability. It is bringing your values to your work place.  How do you discover your values? Well, the values exercise in the book is one of the best I have seen.  The kicker is going back into your story to see how your values were generated.  This is where it became real for me.  My story has great moments of values being unleashed and also hardship, which pushed me to have values.

My top three are accomplishment, compassion and passion.  I will share how I arrived at these and how some key life moments helped build and shape these.

Emotional commitment is critical for true work passion and for your cause to take life.

1 Year Later

I cannot believe that one year ago, I ventured off on my career exploration process.  I was determined to find a sense of "cause" about my life.  That my work and my cause would collide.  A year later I realize that you have to make the best out of your current situation.  You have to find ways to contribute your passion or cause to your work or you can easily allow situations to control you.

You also have to fight the voices in your head that are telling you that it is not worth it.  I realized again that only I can go after the cause.  It is my torch that I am carrying.  No one else can really carry what I care about.  Most of the content in my posts have come true.  You have to go to the place where you can contribute the most, that the cause is found in giving to others, that being present is a big part of this and that I can work where my true self is an outflow.

I have no regrets.  I seriously contemplating going off on my own.  I do not think I was ready for that.  I really like the situation I am in now.  As long as I am detached from the outcomes things seem to go well.  When I over own the outcomes, I get really tired.  Today, the outcome was just ok and I became discouraged.

Hyper-Motivation

I am reading the Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely on my Ipad.  It is more fun because it is on the Ipad, but that is not the point of this blog post.  During a week where I was feeling intense work pressure, I happened upon the chapter on hyper-motivation.  In times of intense pressure, most individuals will actual perform worst.  They are so focused on the outcome, the need to impress others and themselves that they actual psyche themselves out.

What does this mean for you and I?  Well, part of the solution is tricking your mind into believing that the pressure is really off.  Most of the time, the situation requires you to be present in the moment, not blow people away.  You may blow people away by just being yourself and engaging.  That is the internal part of this.

The other factor is that there could be externalities in your organization, which may cause you to feel over-stressed in various situations.  It could be the pay bonus is too high or a boss that says you better perform or you are out or someone below you is threatening for your position.  The solution here in my mind is to find or maintain that sense of personal cause in your work.  Your organization needs you to bring what only you can bring to the work place. YOU!

Practicing the Present

I can still see my father moving his lips without words to hear.  I would look over and say to him "Earth to dad."  He explained to me later that he was thinking about a math problem or some other type of work issue.  Two nights ago, my youngest daughter caught me talking to myself in her presence.  The key word "presence"  I was with her physically, but emotionally thinking of work.

So what does it take to be present in the moment you are in?  Obviously, this is a work in progress, but this has helped me:
1) Trusting that where I am at this very moment is where I need to be right now.  In other words, let go of what has occurred in the past and focus on what you can create now.
2) The people you are with deserve you being with them in that moment.
3) If you are alone, practice observation.  What do you see? What do you hear? How does it feel?
4) Challenge that voice in your head that is screaming for your attention.
5) Imagine yourself enjoying each moment when you are alone.

Life is made up of the moments.