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Jay over at InnerNoodle has a great perspective and discussion on the search for Life Purpose and how it’s not as difficult as it’s often made.  He elaborates on his journey in this and I figured I’d prefer to write a bit more then a short comment on the subject and here’s the result.

Searching for Purpose

I definitely agree with many of Jay’s points.  I feel too many people spend (should I dare say waste) time searching for what they wish to find as a life purpose and they ignore for years some obvious known life purpose at that time. Some people spend years of their lives searching for a life purpose.

I think they find many things that could be purposeful along this path, but they either refuse to accept it or simply want to find something that attracts them more.  Often people are so connected with their material world, the same notions bleed into their soul searching so the status and glamor of their purpose is highly important to them.  This ultimately leaves them searching, taking little action and ultimately feeling lost and inadequate from not being connected to something with meaning in their lives.

Living Your Purpose

The point that people are always searching for something that has some, “cool factor” is a massive roadblock to people taking action and simply living what they know best at that time. If you were asked, “What is your purpose?” and you have no response, I can assure you that is because you are thinking you have no response because you’ve trained yourself to wait for a purpose that you want.  Well, what if you purpose is something that you don’t know yet, or really don’t want?  Is that still a purpose?  Do you decide your own purpose or is it something you find by searching?  Is it something that is revealed through experience, through others, through God?  How do you live your purpose if you don’t fully know what it is.

My suggestion is this.  Instead of thinking that you don’t know your purpose, break the habit and develop a new belief that you will only find your true purpose by taking action on what you feel could be your purpose at this point in your life. Act on what you feel, don’t analyze it too much or criticize it, just explore.  Stop and let yourself examine those feelings and desires.

1. What are your strongest desires or feelings in your life right now?
2. What action can you take right now to explore that further?
3. With what you know right now, is it possible that this feeling ties to a purpose in your life?
4. Would it hurt anyone to follow your gut with this and see where it leads?
5. If this is your purpose, could you live it more fully right now?

This type of questioning can help you to explore new areas in safety by using just the imagination at first.  Visualizing yourself take on new actions and living in a way driven more by purpose can enable you to avoid the seeking and start living for what you know at this point in time.  It helps you open your mind to new possibilities of purpose and to discover new and more defined purpose than what you currently know. Getting out of that trap of trying to find a perfect, well defined purpose by living with what you know right now, will give you far more opportunities to know your life purpose, but to actually live it!

Purpose Does Change

I also believe you don’t have ONE set life purpose, your life purpose changes as does your life.  No life is static, nor is any purpose.  If you actually do something for what you feel in your gut at any point in your life instead of just thinking, dreaming, and hoping to discover something greater, then your life purpose will change as you do.  It is something that grows with you and it is something you discover along your journey of life.

Purpose is connected deeply with your spiritual centers and most people seek out purpose to a point where they can find a morally accepted purpose.  To me, this is driven entirely by your connection to God and your faith in that allows you to experience the joy of purpose, with hope for returns outside the worldly temporary things so many cherish in life.  This is exactly why I think so many people struggle to find a purpose, they don’t have the faith or spiritual beliefs that let them connect to a moral purpose, separately from the material temptations.

So, I encourage you to let your heart and mind wander.  If you follow your heart, believe in your ability to find happiness in purpose and accept the journey of discovery, it will lead directly to the purpose you have been seeking.  Just make sure you get your mind out of your own way!

Posted by Mike King under Life | 12 Comments »

Life and work balance seems like it is always a massive struggle for so many people in their lives.  There are constant pressures and trade-offs between working more to get ahead and having time for the rest of your life that seem to always clash no matter what the circumstances.  Here, I’ll present some options for dealing with this.

The Dilemma

Most people have an impression that has developed that you must working longer hours in order to get ahead in your career.  This comes from a huge range of sources nowadays, from work itself, the hectic busy lives in cities right  back to seeing our parents as children and how we are taught in school.  Everyone talks about working more and working longer in order to get what you want.

In learning this, people who have hopes and ambitions for their careers are trained early that it is necessary to put in those extra hours to get ahead which will have a drastic effect on your personal life outside of work.  This is the dilemma one faces when trying to balance life and work.

The Timing

Timing of this dilemma means multiple things to me.  It is about the timing of the balance itself and the timing of the beliefs that feed and re-enforce the dilemma in the first place.  It seems that people change their minds on this belief as they progress through life so where you are at in your career, position or even your age has something to do with how to balance work and life.  I personally don’t believe this one bit and I think that people should be much more careful with when and to what extent these beliefs drive them.  Young people tend to be looked upon as people with less responsibility who can and therefore, should working more in their life.  The age old comments about people who live on their own, have fewer responsibilities and who don’t have kids is something that makes my blood boil.  No one should judge others in this way and if you ask me, young folks make a massive life mistake by adopting this thinking that they should work more now and then later in life have time to do all the other things.

Timing your life is not something you should ever plan for, it’s too short, too unexpected and would be terribly irresponsible not to use your time wisely at any point in life.  A young person should take on work life balance even more seriously than others as it will have a bigger impact on the rest of their life than if they only have 5-10 years left to work.  Imagine if you developed a practice to always have time for yourself each week when you were 20 years old and fit work in without making a huge commitment to work extra and try to get ahead.  Do that when you are 20 instead of when you are 50 and you can save yourself 30 years of unhappy work life balance.  If you change these beliefs early in life, the payout is far higher than waiting until work has worn you down and you only look to balance your life out of necessity before burning out.

The other aspect of timing for work life balance is simply in how you can balance it in the first place.  Develop yourself a routine so that you are dependable with your work and that people learn to respect your time and your decisions about balancing your life.  Flexibility to nice but not at the cost of your free time and life over any long period of time.  Short term flexibility and adjustments of course will be needed in many careers but you don’t need to, nor should you allow these behaviors become habits.  If you do, they become very hard to break and it changes expectations from those you work with.  If you have worked 60 hours a week for 5 years and then suddenly want to scale back to 40 hours a week, all I can say is good luck.  You either won’t be able to, will be so stressed you’ll not enjoy your free time or it will be seen very negatively from your employer.  On the other hand, if you have always worked 40 hours a week and this is consistent, you have no problem scaling up for a short time and returned back to a normal workload.  Don’t let anyone take advantage of this and always discuss it with an employer before you let it happen for more than a couple of weeks so they know it is temporary.

The Sacrifice

So, some of you probably think that working only 40 hours a week will be a sacrifice to your career.  Well, yes it is.  Maybe.  If you look at your career over a longer term however, like I do, then you will not think it is a sacrifice to your career, but to your life.  Why would you really want to work significantly more?  What will it gain you?  Possessions, security, time?  Aren’t each of those things only sought after to give you more freedom and enjoyment in life anyway?  Why would you choose to defer those things if you can have more of it now?

Let me reframe the idea of sacrifice then from one of sacrificing your career progression to one of sacrificing your life.  Don’t be convinced that putting off life, no matter how temporary it is, is going to pay back more in the end, it won’t.  Life is short, it can end abruptly with no warnings and you will never find a single person on their death bed wishing they had worked more in their lives instead of living it.  So, make the sacrifice one of work to ensure you lead the type of life you want, have the free time you need and change your habits to make living the focus.

This sacrifice is something that can also reinforce many great character traits.  If people know that you will NOT sacrifice your life and cannot be taken advantage of for work, good people will respect this and value it.  They won’t try to take advantage of you and you will be appreciated far more when you do put in extra effort from time to time.  Anyone who doesn’t respect this type of moral decision will likely never respect you and I’d say to walk away if you are giving ultimatums or your work is made more miserable because of it.  This is a smart sacrifice to make to get yourself in a job where people value your time and respect your decisions.  I know if I didn’t have that in my job, I would walk a way in a second!

The Solution

Finally, I want to cover more of a solution to this dilemma of work life balance.  It’s definitely not an easy solution to come to.  If you haven’t started your career yet, I guess this might be much easier to apply without any side effects but anyone in a role with a habit of overworking that they want to break, it’s not going to be easy to change.  The best way though by far is to continue to get your work done, but do it in less time by becoming more efficient and more productive while you are working.

If your hours are tracked by a superior, sit down with them and talk to them about your plans to reduce your overtime or extra work.  They need to know you are going to change it so that you do not surprise them and disappoint them unexpectedly.  Discuss the areas of your work that are most important and which areas if something had to go, should.  Ask about ways to be more efficient and be honest with yourself and your boss about time that is wasted on the job that you have room to eliminate to become more productive.  You can make a strong case if you admit that some of your time is wasted on person email or internet browsing when really you should be working and that you are going to reduce your hours worked, but also eliminate those things that could be done outside of work.  This honesty and self-assessment will impress them and give you a big bargaining chip.

Most people if they added up all the time they spent each week on wasted activities could easily have the free time that they really want and they fall into the trap of making themselves look busier than they really are.  Let them know that you are going to try it for a week or two and see how it changes things.  Make a strong effort to kill those distractions and wasted time so you can prove you can get just as much work done.  Ask to meet and review progress in a week and continue to highlight that it is working and making you happier and more productive.

If you are giving no support to try this at your work place I’d would suggest to do it anyway.  Log the hours you work and the hours you waste (for yourself) so you can see what you could still get done with reduced hours.  Then, do it anyway and take on the consequences.  If you are serious about work life balance, then you need to make a stand and do your best to make it work at your present job.  If that won’t happen, then take the plunge and switch jobs, it might be the only way to reset and start over with a fixed work schedule and attitude.

To me, the topic of work life balance is a critical one and the foundation that supports it in your life is productivity.  The more productive you can be, the easier it is to be successful in your career while keeping a happy work life balance.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 23 Comments »

One of the most impactful things I’ve ever learned is to master the control of my state of mind. I first learned this from Anthony Robbins’ books and audio courses and I’ve since reinforced and enhanced this learning by studying the mind, dreams, and other authors and teachers of the mind and psychology. The premise behind what this is about, is that your state of mind affects everything you do in life, either directly or indirectly. Your state of mind has a direct impact on many actions within the body and these are highly tied to your emotions, or how you feel. So if you are willing to learn to control those things that affect your state of mind, then you can have whatever state of mind you like which ultimately leads you to feeling however you like!

What Affects Your State

Many physical attributes affect your state of mind as well as your experiences, words, actions and even things like your diet. However, a number of physical attributes are directly under your own control and so once you learn this, you can understand ways to control your own state. Here are some important things that have a direct response in your mind and on your body.

• Body posture – Hold your head up high and your shoulders back and its an automatic response in the mind of more confidence.
• Breathing – Slow deep breathing does many things for your health and body to remove toxins, this also delivers needed oxygen to your brain which affects your state.
• Facial Expressions – The most significant here is smiling. Its physically impossible to really smile and NOT affect the mind, its subconscious and automatic.
• Energy Levels – How well you energize your self including your activity, exercise, and health affect your mind as well.
• Diet – what you eat has an impact on your state of mind as well.
• Thoughts – Directly and massively impact your state of mind.
  

So, all these things are important, yet the most critical of all is your thoughts. It affects your emotions completely and the good thing, thoughts are controlled entirely by the conscious mind, nothing else! What this means is that the way you feel and your state of mind is controlled by your thoughts.

Remembering a Specific State

The reasons this is important is that you can learn to remember a specific state of mind, and by thinking about that and visualizing everything about that state of mind, you can easily reproduce it and the response of feelings that it generated. You do this by:

1. First pick the feeling you want to reproduce. For most people this is joy or happiness or peace or satisfaction.
2. Then, think of the times that you completely feel that way. Spend some time to remember the details about those feelings and pick what has been the most intense moments of those feelings.
3. Visualize the things you saw in that moment, put yourself into that surrounding, see the colors, the lights, the objects. Spend time visualizing the major components as well as the minor details, the imperfections you can see, the textures and shading, the shadows and reflections if there are any. Remember as many details as possible. Close your eyes if it helps to really visualize it in your mind. There is an interesting article on Practice This about closing your eyes to see more which is about visualization.
4. Now remember the things you could hear in that moment. Think of all the sounds every object makes, or the actions or nature in that environment. Think of the sounds that each object makes when put into motion or moved.
5. Move on to the sense of smell next. What specific smells can you remember. What season was it, can you smell it? Can you smell and sense the air, the humidity, the people and objects in that setting?
6. What feelings or senses of touch did you have. What were you feeling in your body? What clothes are touching you skin? Can you feel anything against your skin, the wind perhaps? What are you touching and how does it feel exactly. Rough, smooth, what other textures. Spend some time and just imagine feeling all those things to put yourself into the same place that you experiences this emotion you are after.
7. Change your own body or face to match what you remember. Were you smiling? Were you moving about in motion, if you can, do those things while visualizing all these other senses to put yourself back exactly into that memory.

All of these steps will bring back memories of that same emotion and state of mind which will in turn, leave you feeling that same state of mind just from remembering it.

Activate that State

The best thing to do with the ability to follow these visualization steps to get into a state of mind is to next, associate that state of mind with something instant. This allows you to activate that state and learn to call upon it whenever you want. One technique for this is to associate that state of mind with some words and actions you can do and say. Pick something that isn’t common for you to do and use that to activate that same state of mind. You want something unique. It could be to snap your fingers, clap your hands, a funny face, a specific body stance, a weird or loud word or phrase, any of these things could be used to associate with your state of mind. To associate it, just do your action or say your words and immediately begin thinking of all those feelings and memories about that state. Do this out loud and in action a number of times over and over. Put some energy into it and be enthusiastic. Keep repeating it until you seem to be able to really feel that every time you activate your state with your words or action you can feel or sense that state of mind and memories it is generated from.

Practice Switching States

And finally practice is where this all becomes useful. To change state, you need to not only associate that state but practice switching states quickly. Pick another state of mind (ideally something quite opposite to the state you first picked) and go through this process again. Do all the steps to learn that new state and really identify with the feelings and senses for that new state. Make a new association (or action) and repeat it a number of times.

Now, you have two separate states, each with its own action. Practice switching between these states by alternating your activation. Start off by giving yourself about 15 seconds in each state. Practice to change faster and faster until you can literally change your state of mind in just an instant. You should be able to activate all those feelings, your memories, thoughts and even all the senses in just a short moment. This can take a bit of time to practice, but just 10 minute sessions for a few nights in a row can really get you quick with this.

Actually Using your State of Mind

So, now that you know you can change your state of mind just by activating it and changing your thoughts and since you’ve conditioned your mind to instantly change its state basically on command, you can do this whenever you want. I’m assuming most people picked a positive set of feelings to learn to associate so you can now use that to change your perception, mood and responses in more difficult or not as friendly environments. Maybe its with someone or something you don’t like but want to kill the negative emotions that go along with that? Well, this will work for that too. As long as you have a stronger associations with your activation to put you into that state of mind, than the things in that situations to put in the state you don’t want, then you can instantly change your mindset make things more like how you really want them.

The more you use this, the more you’ll look to use it and the more you will train your subconscious to recover from feelings and mind sets you don’t want to experience. You can literally get to a point where anything you consider bad or to be replaced state wise, happens automatically by your mind once you’ve become so practiced at doing this.

So, I encourage you to look for ever opportunity to use your knew state associations and practice it. Learn new associations and use them as well. You will eventually be doing this to every negative response subconsciously or automatically without even thinking about. You can experience a lot more joy and happiness in life if you change the way your mind responds to stimuli. My next article I’m going to publish is about how you can use this idea of controlling your mind to impact EVERY response you make in your life.

Posted by Mike King under Life | 8 Comments »

Author: Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, and Ron McMillan

From the authors of Crucial Conversations (another highly recommended book), Influencer is another brilliant guide book to day to day things that have a massive impact on people’s lives. This book in particular focuses on a specific set of strategies that anyone can use to influence people in difficult situations. It is not a motivational only type book or a set of vague principles, it has specific steps and real world examples from some of the world’s best influencers which help guide you to learning an effective approach. This book is also NOT a guide to getting people to say yes, its much deeper and longer laster than that, where you want to influence and change people’s lasting behavior!

The book is written in 2 parts, each worth the price of the book on its own!

Part 1 – The Power to Change Anything

The premise of the book is based on learning from the best influencers in the world and everything is presented clearly based on various real life studies that demonstrate each of the author’s findings perfectly. The reader is encouraged to learn more by seeking out and studying the best examples in the areas of interest and the author’s have certainly put that into practice throughout the book as well. Doing this helps to identify areas of influence in a situation, this is something I particularly liked. I’ve always believed that if you have something to learn, its most effective to seek out and learn from the best. Another major premise of the book is looking at behaviors of people and how that can be used with influence. This behavior based analysis is also very dear to me and reinforced with specific techniques well in the early chapters of the book. The last section of Part 1 is about various methods of changing people’s minds. I really like this section as well with regards to using story telling to influence others and change their minds. I’ve always been a good story teller which I now recognize as one of the reasons why I’ve had as much influence in my life as I’ve had. By this point in the book (only about 1/4 of the way through) I figured this is by far one of the best books I’ve EVER read. The rest of the book easily holds up to this as well. This is a book with so much actionable content and techniques, you could easily have to re-read this book each year to really practice and implement all the principles outlined.

Part 2 – Make Change Inevitable

The second part of the book focuses on the strategic model that works to master influence. Its outlined with great clarity using specific real life examples of each of the 6 sources of influence. The sources are categorized as follows:

All of these 6 sources are areas to overcome to be a great influencer. Its important to learn to recognize each of these 6 sources and learn to address all of them, not just one or two. Having a lasting influence requires major work and needs each of these areas to be recognized and addressed before a significant difference can ever be made. Learning to see these is the first step and the book’s examples show how difficult, yet effective it is to see each one. Putting effort into several of these sources (or all) will result in significantly more influence than if they are acted on individually.

I found the stories used as examples to be captivating and impressive since they are areas that most consider the toughest situations to deal with. One illustration of these techniques comes in stories about annihilating the nasty Guinea worm from villages in Nigeria. Another example throughout the book is in studying what Dr. Silbert has done at Delancey with transforming lifelong felons into productive citizens. There are other examples as well used throughout the book.

Overall, I think this is a fantastic book, but it is also not an easy take it and apply it kind of guide book. The data used to come to the conclusions is obviously massive and the work it takes in the stories of influence presented in the book are also huge. However, the book challenges you to change your thinking and to look outside your normal view when wanting to have more influence. I think scaling the steps and the model from the book into day to day life is fairly easy, since simply knowing what to look for helps in how you choose to respond. The difficulty is in how far you take the influence strategies presented. So, its a great book and I highly recommend it if you have ever wished to have more power to change things.

Note: If you’re interested, one of the author’s, David Maxfield, posted a short comment and summary about this book from another review here.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 3 Comments »

Life is a complex mess of circumstances, interactions and experiences each unique to every single person on this planet. There are countless things that seem to make a difference in people’s lives and how life is perceived. However, there seems to be just a handful of things that make a big difference on a daily basis with our relationships, career and joy in life. That item is part of one’s attitude and specifically, its about complaining in life. Most everyone does more than their share of complaining and it stems from the societal pressure of constantly wanting more, moving up the career chain, wanting to continually improve everything and simply because people are not generally content with what they have. If you take note and make a conscious effort to eliminate complaining in your own life, you will be much happier.

Why So Many Complaints?

Are you focused on constantly wishing things were different, and complaining about them instead of being focused on seeing and recognizing the things that are positive and going well for you? What about with others, do you complain to them more than thank, appreciate or praise them? Perfectionists and critical thinking people often deliver a lot of complaints and don’t see the good things happening around them every day.

People constantly complain about their jobs, there money or lack thereof, traffic and the weather. The news, its just a long series of more things to complain about and rarely anything to be excited about or thankful for. Life is unfortunately, quite a bombardment of media and people who are complaining about nearly everything!

You can change that for yourself by replacing any complaining with more positive thoughts and comments. Look for the good around you, talk about the positive things about your job, start conversations when the weather and traffic are good, see the things you value on a day to day basis and share that with others, instead of the usual set of complaints.

Change Your Focus

Its easy to change your attitude and start thinking and focusing on the positive things in your life if you look for this every day. Its takes some effort, but just a few changes everyday can make a big impact in your life and make you feel happier. Thinking positive and avoiding the complaints are your choice to make. That choice allows you to be in control of how you feel simply by choosing what you will focus on. You can make yourself happier if you choose to and by practicing consciously over and over to see the good things and to value them instead of complaining, you will train your mind to do the same subconsciously. This will eventually change your natural attitude and you won’t even have to work on this anymore, it will just happen. And you will be happier.

Posted by Mike King under Relationships | 2 Comments »

What is Passion?

I’m not sure about each of you, but I know that I get very passionate about things I learn. Or is it that I have the passion for those things and so I learn them? Well, I really don’t know, probably a bit of both. I do however, find it very interesting how much I personally find that my learning and passions align so much in my life. Whether its a similarities in my work and personal life or how I explore books, I continually see alignment of how the things I learn apply in so many areas of my life. Those are the areas I’m most passionate about and it continues to feed the passion in a strengthening cycle. The more I learn about something, the more I enjoy it, and so then the more I want to learn even more about it.

Passion Roadblocks

I’ve spent a lot of time reading leadership/management and business books to improve my career and at the same time, most of the authors I’ve enjoyed most mix the business life with a personal touch and write about applying this in your personal life as well. Changing bad habits and improving one self cannot happen solely in the workplace even if business books, performance reviews, your boss and your company are pretty much only concerned only about your day life at the office. Your actions, mannerisms, character and passions are not completely separable from your personal life no matter how hard you try. In order to change these things, you need to change them everywhere in your life. That’s where passion often plays its part. A passion can be so strong it will steer every area of your life, home and work and can drive a person to learn and follow more about that area of desire.

Using Passion

Now, I’m talking about a positive passion, something to improve your life or the life of others. Recognizing this, understanding it, following it and learning from it are then different for each person. Using a passion in your life can lead to an extremely successful meaningful life. Its a sad fact how many people in this world simply “get by” in life and don’t make the most of it. One way to do this is to have and use your passions in life to be more joyful and to live with purpose and meaning. I’m planning to explore the topic of passion in several upcoming articles.

See Part 2: Passion: Find Your Passions
See Part 3: Passion: Express Your Passions

Posted by Mike King under Purpose/Passion | 6 Comments »