How to be happy – Don’t Worry, Be Happy

How to be happy – introductionIs your life passing you by? Are you so focused on your dreams that you are forgetting to enjoy every day to the fullest and be happy with where you are and what you have now?
If you are anything like most people that have a burning desire and vision to achieve something, you could be falling into the trap of being so focused on it that you neglect to enjoy each and every moment on your journey to attaining your goals.
I can liken it to the tourist who remarked that the country he was visiting had very nice scenery if only the mountains where not blocking the view. He did not see that the mountains were themselves part of the beautiful scenery.
How to be happy – the dilemma
So it goes that we often focus so much on our dreams and that ideal life we want to live next year or five years from now that we forget about today. Today is part of the process of getting there and today should be enjoyed as much as when ‘that time’ comes. After all, the pleasure of taking a journey is not in arriving at the final destination, but in enjoying everything along the way.
Have you ever had the impatient feeling that you are not getting to where you want to get quickly enough and therefore find yourself not fully appreciating the here and now? It’s as though something is holding back your happiness until you get what you desire. The only problem in this scenario is that, in the mean time, you are unhappy and life is passing you by.
How to be happy – the good news and the bad news
I have good news and bad news for you. The bad news is that that huge house you desire, the car that costs as much as the house, the huge flat screen television and all those wonderful things you are planning to get once you are successful will never make you happy. In fact, I know quite a few rich people that are more miserable than you could imagine. They have worked hard all their lives and have every material thing they could ever want, but there is still a lack and dissatisfaction within them that echoes with emptiness.
The good news is that, as Abraham Lincoln stated, “People are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” You therefore have the power to decide to be happy no matter where you are in your life. Do not ever make the mistake of thinking you will be happy when you are achieve this and that in the future. If you are miserable now, you will be miserable when you get there unless you change your mindset.
How to be happy – it’s all in your head
Happiness is a state of mind that has little to do with material or social success. “Anyone who desires it, who wills it, and who learns and applies the right formula may become a happy person.” That is the advice from the “father of positive thinking”, Norman Vincent Peale.
There is simplicity in such a statement that makes most people fail to appreciate its significance and truth. We want some complicated formula to a lot of our problems when the answers are with us all the time. The answer to the riddle of how to be happy is simply that you make the decision to be happy. That is as plain and simple as I can make it.
Always remember that there will always be things that go wrong at times and things that upset you or try to frustrate you. But the secret is to decide that no matter what goes wrong and no matter how rough things get, you will not let it get you down. There is one thing that is always in your control. That is you. You decide how you react to any situation.
Norman Peale goes on to say that most people, as much as perhaps four out of five, manufacture their own unhappiness. They do so by thinking unhappy thoughts and having the wrong attitudes towards life. Resentment, ill-will, hate, fear and worry are identified as some of the ingredients of the unhappiness-producing process.
How to be happy – wealth and success won’t do it
No amount of material wealth and success can help an individual that has unhappiness-producing habits to be happy. The result is always frustration and disappointment as the realization sinks into such an individual, after years of seeking happiness through material gain, that it cannot be achieved that way. Some have paid a heavy price in broken family relationships whilst pursuing this mirage. They have had the ability to be happy all along. They just didn’t know it.
It is important to have a dream and to pursue it with everything you have, but you need to know why you are pursuing it. Being happy should not feature as a reason for pursuing that dream. It is not the answer to your happiness: you are.
How to be happy – develop a happiness habit
The process of being happy is simply to replace the unhappiness-producing habits with happiness-producing habits. Changing your thinking and attitude is always the first step. You must drive off the thoughts that lead to discouragement, fear, depression, worry and hate and replace with positive thoughts. For instance, instead of dreading going to work everyday decide that you will enjoy your work today and imagine yourself actually doing so when you start the day. If you expect the best you often get the best.
You should learn to appreciate what you have and where you are at every stage of the journey to achieving your dreams. Remember that your life will not start when you achieve what you want to achieve, your life is right here and now. The present is all you have.
How to be happy – the conclusion
Frederick Keonig said: “We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.”
You are all you can be. Go on and be it.

Related E-Books:- * Practical Step-by -step Guide To Happiness
                              * How To Be Happy - 100 Ways To Change Your Life 
                              * Manual Of Happiness

Related Articles:- Time Management Skill, "Success is a daily habit"
                             Walk Your Talk… One Step at a Time
     

Time Management Skill, "Success is a daily habit"

Time management skill - introduction
What have you done today to move you closer to your dreams? Are you expecting to wake up one morning and suddenly do everything to achieve your dream in just that one day?
Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” Success is a daily habit. It’s the little things you do everyday that will get you to your destination.
Time management skill - cultivate a habit of reading
A friend and motivational speaker, Felix Banda, told me last week how he remembers me reading a book called “The Experts Guide To Managing Your Time” when I was at the University of Zambia in my first or second year of studies. That was over 10 years ago.
He pointed out that it may seem to some, that I suddenly got up one day and decided to start writing these articles, but he realized that it started all the way back there. His point was that it has been a process and not a sudden occurrence.
I had actually forgotten about having read that and similar books, but when he mentioned it, I remembered how the literature I read has had such an impact on me and has affected my life in a positive way. Some of the principles I learnt rubbed off on me so well they became a part of my thoughts to such a point that I eventually accepted those thoughts as my own.
It is the habit of reading that has contributed to a change in my thinking. Had I not started reading those books then, I would still be stuck in whatever thought pattern I had. My horizons would still be restricted.
Time management skill - put first things first
Catherine Nellissen, in his inspiring and life changing book “Effective Time Management” asks the question: “what one thing could you do (you are not doing now) that if you did on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your personal life?”
It does not have to be a huge thing. Neither does it have to be something that requires a huge investment of time, energy or resources on your part. It just has to be something that you can do consistently.
You will discover that you will eventually be doing more of that one thing than you could have thought possible when you started. Over time, it will make a huge difference. Catherine Nellissen further adds that “it’s usually not the dramatic, the visible, the once-in-a-lifetime, up-by-the-bootstraps effort that brings enduring success. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make everyday.”
He called this habit “putting first things first.” I like that name because often we do not put first things first. We put things which matter most at the mercy of things which matter least.
We subordinate our dreams for our jobs, our bosses, our friends, our parents and a whole lot of other people and activities. We should instead place our hopes and dreams as the most important thing everyday.
Time management skill - the time management matrix
One guide that will help you decide whether something should take up your time or not is the time management matrix. In this matrix, which may be drawn as a quadrant, there are basically four groups of activities. There are those things that are urgent and not important; those that are urgent and important; those that are not urgent and not important and those that are not urgent and important.
Most people spend their time doing things that are neither urgent nor important. One thing that immediately comes to mind is the person that spends every bit of his free time at the bar hanging out with the guys and just having a good time. I would not be very mistaken to say that such a person is not only drinking their income away, but also their dreams.
Television is another not urgent and not important activity which, unfortunately, most of us spend a lot of our most productive time on. It is amazing how television sets in most homes are perpetually on and people are fixed on them like zombies, watching everything that is dished out to them! TVs have invaded our lives and crippled our dreams.
Time management skill - do the important things
What we need to do is concentrate on the things that are most important. The hard part is that these are usually the things that are not urgent. Yet they are things that will make the biggest difference to our lives.
Why not turn off the television set tonight and read an inspiring book? Why not take a quiet moment to sit down and write down what you want to do with the rest of your life? Why not spend some time with your kids rather than with the guys at the bar? Why not take a few minutes to read the Bible today?
Time management skill - it ain't always fun
As you can see, the important things are usually not the most fun or exciting things to do. However, they must be done. There is a price to be paid for attaining greatness and at times that means doing things we don’t necessarily enjoy or want to do.
But you must do those things because you realize that your future depends on it. Think about this: if you only had to do the things that are fun and exciting at work would you get anything done? No. But you do it anyway, for the sake of that paycheck at the month-end. Why then, won’t you do the things that matter most for your own life?
Time management skill - conclusion
If you have not done anything today to get you closer to your dreams you are not a dreamer, you are a wisher. Wake up and do something about it or watch the dreamers take hold of their dreams, one little step each day.
In the words of Jim Rohn, “Motivation is what gets you started. Habits is what keeps you going,” Develop the habit of putting first things first today. Work on your dreams each and every day.
You are all you can be. Go on and be it!

Related Articles:- * Motivation to Achieve Success
                           * What Do You Want to Do With Your Life?
                           * How To Stay Motivated
                           * How To Motivate Yourself – Self Motivation

Motivation to Achieve Success

"To All The Dreamers Out There..."   Motivation to achieve success - "To all the dreamers out there" Turn off the T.V. Turn down the volume on your radio. Block out all noise. Be quiet and listen. Listen for just five minutes. I don’t want you to pay attention for my sake, but for yours. Are you not worth five minutes of your own time? Do you have a deep desire to achieve something great? Do you want to live a more satisfying life? Can you see yourself being happy and successful in every way? Do you believe in your own potential and that here is much more to you than meets the eye? If so, you are a dreamer. This article is dedicated to you. Right now you are the most important person around. If you had been the only person to ever read this article, I would still have written it, just for you. You are that special. Motivation to achieve success - what is a dreamer? But before we go any further, let me qualify what a dreamer is because people often don’t appreciate being called dreamers. In-fact, it’s almost an insult to call someone a dreamer these days. It’s associated with having your head in the clouds and not being realistic. So let me explain. A dreamer is a person who is not afraid to challenge society’s norms and not afraid to tread their own path rather than following the well-trodden path. A dreamer is someone who is always willing to take a chance and always asks why before doing something that others are doing blindly. A dreamer is a person who has a great futuristic picture which they work to achieve at all costs. Dreamers are world changers. Dreamers chart their own course and destiny. Dreamers are always striving to be the person they were meant to be and are not afraid to be different. I believe every one of us is born unique in every way, but over the years we work very hard to become like everyone else. Motivation to achieve success - Don't follow the crowd Society’s commonsense tells us that that is the way to go. Unfortunately, commonsense is not always good-sense. It’s just common. If you are a dreamer you cannot afford to work on society’s assumptions and standards. You have to be unique. For instance, a lot of people have spent anything from 15 to 20 years getting an education so they can have that perfect job and earn a huge salary. Unfortunately for most, the perfect job and the huge earnings never materialize. They only have the long hard years of work and loads of papers with unpronounceable names to show for it. Most of them have lost touch with the very people they are working so hard to provide for - their husband, wife and children, all because of having to “work hard” for a living. Yet few ask themselves if there is a better way. They blindly follow what they’ve always been taught. Motivation to achieve success - chart your own course I am here to tell you that there is another way. It’s not for everyone. It’s not the only way. It’s not the easier way. Actually, it is more likely to be the harder way. But I guarantee you it is the best way. It is simply this – follow your dreams. If you can think it, you can have it. Following your dreams, however, is a process and comes at a price. What is the process and what is the price to be paid? Be patient. All will be revealed. Patience, by the way is part of it. Get-rich-quick and easy success schemes don’t last. Motivation to achieve success - What's in store? Over the coming weeks I will talk about the characteristics of a dreamer and some of the things you absolutely must do if you want to live the life you deserve to live. Some of them you may already know and others will be new. Whatever the case, you will pick up a number of useful ideas that may just make the difference between living in mediocrity and living a fulfilled life. Brian Tracy states that “all successful men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.” If you are not a dreamer I urge you to watch this space every week. It may shed light into the darkness in your life. Together, we can find answers to some of life’s questions, but YOU have to do the searching. Motivation to achieve success - I can help" I have struggled with and continue to struggle with many of life’s questions myself. These struggles have led me to some startling and amazing discoveries about human potential, achievement, motivation, success and living your dreams. I have a curiosity about life and see lessons on success and achievement in the most ordinary of events or places. I want to share what I have learnt with you. I can't promise you that you will achieve your dreams after reading my articles - that is entirely up to you and no one else. However, what I will share with you will immensely help you in your desire to live the life you want and deserve. It is a marvel to think what would happen to Zambia if the dreamers woke up and did something about their dreams. This country would never be the same. But there is hope and it starts with each and every one of us making a difference in our own lives. You have no idea what impact a single person’s dream can have on an entire nation. Motivation to achieve success - conclusion I hope your dream will come to life and make a positive contribution to the lives of the people of this beautiful country. You can make all the difference and, if you are a dreamer, I know you are not waiting for someone else to do it. You do it! Sadly but true, and in the words of Myles Munroe - “The poorest man in the world is the man without a dream. The most frustrated man in the world is the man with a dream that never becomes reality.” Have a dream. Make it a reality. www.motivation-for-dreamers.com Motivation to achieve success - "To all the dreamers out there" Turn off the T.V. Turn down the volume on your radio. Block out all noise. Be quiet and listen. Listen for just five minutes. I don’t want you to pay attention for my sake, but for yours. Are you not worth five minutes of your own time? Do you have a deep desire to achieve something great? Do you want to live a more satisfying life? Can you see yourself being happy and successful in every way? Do you believe in your own potential and that here is much more to you than meets the eye? If so, you are a dreamer. This article is dedicated to you. Right now you are the most important person around. If you had been the only person to ever read this article, I would still have written it, just for you. You are that special. Motivation to achieve success - what is a dreamer? But before we go any further, let me qualify what a dreamer is because people often don’t appreciate being called dreamers. In-fact, it’s almost an insult to call someone a dreamer these days. It’s associated with having your head in the clouds and not being realistic. So let me explain. A dreamer is a person who is not afraid to challenge society’s norms and not afraid to tread their own path rather than following the well-trodden path. A dreamer is someone who is always willing to take a chance and always asks why before doing something that others are doing blindly. A dreamer is a person who has a great futuristic picture which they work to achieve at all costs. Dreamers are world changers. Dreamers chart their own course and destiny. Dreamers are always striving to be the person they were meant to be and are not afraid to be different. I believe every one of us is born unique in every way, but over the years we work very hard to become like everyone else. Motivation to achieve success - Don't follow the crowd Society’s commonsense tells us that that is the way to go. Unfortunately, commonsense is not always good-sense. It’s just common. If you are a dreamer you cannot afford to work on society’s assumptions and standards. You have to be unique. For instance, a lot of people have spent anything from 15 to 20 years getting an education so they can have that perfect job and earn a huge salary. Unfortunately for most, the perfect job and the huge earnings never materialize. They only have the long hard years of work and loads of papers with unpronounceable names to show for it. Most of them have lost touch with the very people they are working so hard to provide for - their husband, wife and children, all because of having to “work hard” for a living. Yet few ask themselves if there is a better way. They blindly follow what they’ve always been taught. Motivation to achieve success - chart your own course I am here to tell you that there is another way. It’s not for everyone. It’s not the only way. It’s not the easier way. Actually, it is more likely to be the harder way. But I guarantee you it is the best way. It is simply this – follow your dreams. If you can think it, you can have it. Following your dreams, however, is a process and comes at a price. What is the process and what is the price to be paid? Be patient. All will be revealed. Patience, by the way is part of it. Get-rich-quick and easy success schemes don’t last. Motivation to achieve success - What's in store? Over the coming weeks I will talk about the characteristics of a dreamer and some of the things you absolutely must do if you want to live the life you deserve to live. Some of them you may already know and others will be new. Whatever the case, you will pick up a number of useful ideas that may just make the difference between living in mediocrity and living a fulfilled life. Brian Tracy states that “all successful men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.” If you are not a dreamer I urge you to watch this space every week. It may shed light into the darkness in your life. Together, we can find answers to some of life’s questions, but YOU have to do the searching. Motivation to achieve success - I can help" I have struggled with and continue to struggle with many of life’s questions myself. These struggles have led me to some startling and amazing discoveries about human potential, achievement, motivation, success and living your dreams. I have a curiosity about life and see lessons on success and achievement in the most ordinary of events or places. I want to share what I have learnt with you. I can't promise you that you will achieve your dreams after reading my articles - that is entirely up to you and no one else. However, what I will share with you will immensely help you in your desire to live the life you want and deserve. It is a marvel to think what would happen to Zambia if the dreamers woke up and did something about their dreams. This country would never be the same. But there is hope and it starts with each and every one of us making a difference in our own lives. You have no idea what impact a single person’s dream can have on an entire nation. Motivation to achieve success - conclusion I hope your dream will come to life and make a positive contribution to the lives of the people of this beautiful country. You can make all the difference and, if you are a dreamer, I know you are not waiting for someone else to do it. You do it! Sadly but true, and in the words of Myles Munroe - “The poorest man in the world is the man without a dream. The most frustrated man in the world is the man with a dream that never becomes reality.” Have a dream. Make it a reality.  The Instant Motivation Supercharger, 75% Commission Related Articles:-  Walk Your Talk… One Step at a Time                              What Do You Want to Do With Your Life?                              How To Stay Motivated                              How To Motivate Yourself – Self Motivation

Walk Your Talk… One Step at a Time

Do you claim health is important to you–then skip the gym for 6 weeks? Do you believe being productive is important, but work only on the night before a deadline? Do you believe relationships are important, but let your social life stagnate? How do you close that gap between what you value and how you behave?
Blogging has helped me close that gap by forcing me to walk my talk. I’m far from perfect. Like everyone, I make mistakes and often fail to live up to the things I consider important. But writing has made it easier to stay consistent with those values instead of falling into excuses.
Progress, Not Perfection
Imperfections are part of life. I think it’s sad that some people feel that because being perfectly consistent with your values is impossible, that there is no point trying to debug the inconsistencies. Some self-improvement cynicism is the result of demanding the impossible, expecting perfection instead of progress.
My goal has been to notice gaps between my philosophy of life and my behaviors. I’m certainly nowhere near perfection, but even in just a few years of deliberately pursuing this strategy, I’ve made improvements. Here are a few of the inconsistencies I’ve debugged over the past few years:

1. From Slob to Productive. Productivity and organization were important to me, but I was a messy, undisciplined procrastinator. Focusing on building the right habits and training myself has almost completely closed this gap.
2. Unhealthy to Fit. My health and energy levels were important to me, but until a few years ago, I rarely exercised and didn’t have great eating habits. Fast forward to today and I eat a vegetarian diet while exercising regularly.
3. Non-reader to Literary Glutton. I would have read less than a dozen books in 2002 or 2003. Over the last few years I’ve averaged about 50-70 books each year.
4. Night Owl to Early Riser. After reading about the potential benefits of waking up early for productivity, I made the switch from waking up at 7:30-8:00 back to 5:30.
5. Unconscious Spender to Budget Maker. After seeing how my finances weren’t being guided, I put in place a more thorough system for recording and budgeting my expenses.
6. Occasional Downloader to Abstainer. I’m against downloading music (illegally). But laziness in this belief meant that music would sometimes wind up on my hard drive from less than reputable sources. I stopped adding new music to my library that wasn’t paid in full several months ago. Recently I took the final step of cleaning my harddrive and MP3 player of any remaining music.
7. Shy to Extroverted. A few years ago my social life was nearly a zero. I had only a few close friends and wasn’t as outgoing as I’d like to be. Now I have many friends and enjoy being spontaneous in meeting new people.

I point out these changes because none were instantaneous. Even after I had decided my beliefs on an issue, it took work to change my behaviors. The moment I declared productivity important to myself, I was still a slob. It took a few years of effort to reach the point I’m at today.
From an outside perspective, however, nobody sees that effort. I still get comments from readers that assume I was somehow born productive, early-rising or health-conscious. They don’t see the failed attempts I had in implementing GTD, the days I slept right through my alarm or the four failed thirty day trials I went through before exercising stuck.
I need to take some of the blame for this, because I generally only write about my self-improvement efforts after the fact. Since self-improvement involves so many missteps and dead-ends, I don’t usually find it useful to write about something until I’ve made significant progress in it myself. You only have to look at the current ups and downs of my dating life to see why I don’t share too much advice on that yet.
How to Gradually Debug Your Inconsistencies
Unlike a computer program, your software can never have zero-defects. Instead, try to think of self-improvement as trying to reach 98% bug-free. You will inevitably fail to meet your values some of the time, but those errors won’t matter too much in the long run.
In order to effectively debug your inconsistencies, you need the right tools. There are many different strategies to debug, but I’d like to share a few tools that were “Aha!” moments for myself. These tools were the difference between using a scalpel and a blunt club for my own debugging:

1. 30 Day Trials. Commit to an idea for thirty days, every day. If you mess up on Day 29, you go back to the start. This tool has been invaluable for me in changing many different habits. I’ve probably done over two dozen of these since I first heard of them from Steve Pavlina.
2. Writing out Goals. A goal doesn’t matter unless it is on paper. This applies to simple goals like “Exercise tomorrow” as much as it applies to big goals like “Become a millionaire.” Before I started writing out my goals, it was only my emotional compass that would decide whether something would get done that day.
3. Breaking Down Fears. If something terrifies you, chop it into pieces you can swallow. Public speaking was an area I took one speech at a time, taking on larger audiences and more difficult presentations. Training your courage like a muscle was a better strategy for me than relying on willpower.

I’m still finding new tools, but the fact that this list is small shows that self-improvement doesn’t need to be overly complicated. One good tool, if practiced, can debug a large range of problems.
Nobody can be perfect. But there is still immense value you can get from debugging those inconsistencies. Making the gap between your walk and your talk a little bit smaller.
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Related Articles:- Motivate Yourself – Self Motivated
                         What Do you  Want to Do With Your Life?

What Do You Want to Do With Your Life?

 
What do you want to do with your life? It’s a question almost everyone asks themselves. It’s also a question I don’t believe you should bother asking in the first place.
“I don’t know what I want to do in life, all I know is that it isn’t this.”
That was the sentiment a friend reflected to me. She’s in her mid-twenties, smart, savvy and hard working. But she is still stuck working jobs that don’t hover much beyond minimum wage. Every year, she tells me, that she applies for Universities, but never goes through with it. Why? Because she can’t answer that question.
Passion Evolves
I worry a lot of people fall into the same trap. The trap of believing that they need to make big life decisions before they can start doing anything. The trap that you need to be born with a passion. And the lie that being able to combine your interests with a profession is easy.
When people ask me what I’m going to be doing in five or ten years, I usually tell them I’m going to be an entrepreneur. “Oh. What’s your business going to be?” I have reason to believe this internet business could be it. Between revenues and freelance work I’m expecting to make about ten thousand dollars this year. Concentrated effort for the next four or five years could definitely make this a livable income.
But I don’t usually say that. Because it isn’t the point. In all honesty, I have no idea where I am going to be in a decade. My track record shows that my passions have evolved considerably, even over the last couple years.
Ben Casnocha, the 19-year old CEO of Comcate, shows how his passion didn’t start with a flash of insight, in the book Life Can Be Magick

“It didn’t start with a dream. It didn’t start with in a garage. It didn’t even start with an innovative epiphany, which are perhaps entrepreneurs’ most overplayed recollections.” He continues, relating the story of Jerry Kaplan’s epiphany moment in Kaplan’s book, Start Up. To which Ben adds, “I wish my epiphany were as primal. It wasn’t, and most aren’t.” [emphasis mine]

As Ben shares his story of being a teenage CEO, it becomes clear that his passion evolved. There were interests in entrepreneurship and making a difference. But from these interests, he made smaller steps, each building a passion. I don’t believe his journey ever started with deciding what he wanted to do with his life.
Replace Decision with Curiosity
Instead of making definite decisions about a career path, I believe you should get curious. Get curious about the way the world works. Notice your own interests and find small ways you can exercise passion in something. Even if you can’t find a way to make money off of it yet.
The bridge from passion to money-maker can’t be made hastily. Interests often get discarded because they cannot be immediately relayed into a source of income. And therefore aren’t as important as work that does.
Blogging is a great example. I know many bloggers who want to go pro. They want to take the interest they have and turn it into a passionate source of income. But blogging isn’t easy. Even the most rapid successes I’ve seen, took over a year before the author could claim blogging as more than a hobby. And those were due to writing talent, luck and an incredible amount of work.
Patience is a necessary ingredient in evolving a passion. But even more, you need to be open to other possibilities.
Interest to Income Isn’t a Straight Path
80% of new businesses fail in the first five years. But more interesting, is that of the 20% that succeeded, most didn’t do so in the way they had expected to.
Before setting up his immensely popular website, Steve Pavlina believed he would make most his revenue through products and workshops. But close to five years later, he makes all of it from advertising and affiliate sales. A revenue prospect he downplayed when making his business plan.
Similarly, I don’t believe that most people’s passions follow a straight path. Scott Adams began with a degree in economics and a position in a bank and now he is the successful cartoonist who created Dilbert.
Seven Steps to Evolving a Passion… and Making it Work
Step One – Gather Sparks of Curiosity
Don’t have an inferno of passion driving your actions yet? Don’t worry about it. Most people I know don’t. And if you are under thirty, you are probably in the overwhelming majority.
The first steps is to simply invest your energy into whims. Those little sparks of interest where you don’t know enough to make them a passion. Ben Casnocha calls this seeking randomness. For me, it has been a process of finding my intuition and using it to make small investments in things that are potentially interesting.
This means reading different books, taking on different activities and meeting different people. Broad associations gives a lot of chances to stumble on a passion that can work.
Step Two: Fan the Flames of Interest
After exposing yourself to a lot of randomness, you need to cultivate the successes. Build upon the little sparks of interest that come by your life. If you read a book about physics and like the subject, try taking a physics class. If you enjoy some basic programming try a small software project.
Step Three: Cut Out Distractions
Cultivating whims and exploring new passions requires time. One of the reasons I’ve placed such an emphasis on productivity with myself, is that without it I couldn’t explore these options.
If your interests are genuine and worth exploring, it shouldn’t be too difficult to eliminate the non-essentials. Distractions such as television, excess internet usage and video games only take a bit of conditioning to free up. The hard part is reallocating time you don’t believe is yours.
Step Four: Living Minimally
If you already have a job you aren’t passionate about, work only as much as you need to keep going. Valid passions need time to grow into income generating skills.
I don’t suggest becoming a starving artist and racking up huge debts. But avoid expanding your life to fit a bigger and bigger paycheck if you aren’t living your passion. Otherwise you simply trap yourself into a life that is comfortable, but otherwise dead.
Richard Wilkins, author of "150 Ways To Make Your Life 10 Out Of 10" is a great example of this. With six kids, freelancing work and another job to help support his family he found ways to cut expenses and focus on his passion. His website has quickly grown to become incredibly popular, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a stable source of income for him in a few years. Live minimally, and avoid getting trapped into a comfortable, but unsatisfying, life.
Step Five: Make a Passion that Creates Value
If you have a skill that creates social value, you can make money through almost any medium. Monetizing a passion takes skill, as any entrepreneur can tell you, but without providing legitimate value it is impossible.
You need to transform your developing passions into a skill that can fill human needs. Some passions are easy to translate. An interest in computers could allow you to become a software designer. Others are more difficult. A passion for poetry, may be more difficult to meet a specific human need.
Step Six: Find a Way to Monetize That Value
Once you have the ability to create social value, you need to turn that into a repeatable process for gaining income. This could be in the form of a job. As a programmer you could get hired by Google. Or, it could lead to becoming a freelancer or an entrepreneur.
Monetizing value isn’t easy. It requires that you learn how to market, sell yourself, and find ways to connect human needs. Whether you intend to work in a job or own a business makes no difference. You are the CEO of your life, so you need to know how to connect your passions with serving other people.
Step Seven: Go Back to Step One
Describing this process in steps is misleading. It implies that there is a destination. There is no destination. The process of following whims, cultivating passions, turning them into valuable skills and then finally earning revenue from them is lifelong. I have some passions that are in steps one and two. This blog is in the midst of step six. In ten years I may have gone through them all with a completely different passion.
Not all your passions will or can finish the sixth step. But as persistent as the myth you need to decide what you want to do with your life, is the myth you can only have one passion. I’m at a point where cultivating passions has meant I have too many options. Too many possible paths that could lead to enjoyable and fulfilling careers. Don’t obsess over one failed attempt.
What do you want to do with your life?
Your life doesn’t need to go through a predictable story arc. It doesn’t have to start with a dream, follow through hard work and end up in a nice home with four bedrooms. Instead it can twist and travel. You don’t have to know the final answer, you just need to act on the next step.

Related Articles:- * How To Motivate Yourself – Self Motivation       
                           * How To Stay Motivated
                           * Regain Your Motivation

How To Stay Motivated

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It is hardly a secret that the key to successfully accomplishing one goal after another is staying motivated. There are, of course, tasks which you may not like at all, yet you find motivation to complete even them because you recognize how each particular task serves a greater goal.
How exactly do some of us manage to stay motivated most of the time? Here are just a few ideas you can try:
1) Find the Good Reasons
Anything you do, no matter how simple, has a number of good reasons behind it. Not all the tasks have the good reasons to do them seen at first sight, but if you take just a few moments to analyse them, you will easily spot something good. We also have many tasks which don’t need any reasoning at all – we’ve been doing them for so long that they feel natural.
But if you’re ever stuck with some task you hate and there seems to be no motivation to complete it whatsoever, here’s what you need to do: find your good reasons. They may not be obvious, but stay at it until you see some, as this will bring your motivation back and will help you finish the task.

Some ideas for what a good reason can be:

• a material reward – quite often, you will get paid for doing something you normally don’t like doing at all
• personal gain – you will learn something new or will perhaps improve yourself in a certain way
• a feeling of accomplishment – at least you’ll be able to walk away feeling great about finding the motivation and courage to complete such a tedious task
• a step closer to your bigger goal – even the biggest accomplishments in history have started small and relied on simple and far less pleasant tasks than you might be working on. Every task you complete brings you closer to the ultimate goal, and acknowledging this always feels good.

2) Make it fun
When it comes to motivation, attitude is everything. Different people may have completely opposite feelings towards the same task: some will hate it, others will love it. Why do you think this happens? It’s simple: some of us find ways to make any task interesting and fun to do!
Take sports for example. Visiting your local gym daily for a half-an-hour workout sounds rather boring to many of us. Yet many others love the idea! They like exercising not only because they recognize the good reasons behind it, but simply because it’s fun! At certain time of their daily schedule, they find going to gym to be the best thing to do, simply because nothing else will fit their time and lifestyle so perfectly.
Depending on how you look at it, you can have fun doing just about anything! Just look for ways of having fun, and you’ll find them!
A simple approach is to start working on any task from asking yourself a few questions:

• How can I enjoy this task?
• What can I do to make this task fun for myself and possibly for others?
• How can I make this work the best part of my day?

The answers will pop up momentarily, as long as you learn to have the definite expectation of any task being potentially enjoyable.
Some of you will probably think of a thing or two which are valid exceptions from this statement, like something you always hate doing, no matter how hard you try making it fun. I don’t want to argue – you’re probably right, and that’s why I don’t claim everything to be fun. However, most tasks have a great potential of being enjoyable, and so looking for ways to have fun while working is definitely a good habit to acquire.
3) Take different approach
When something doesn’t feel right, it’s always a good time to take a moment and look at the whole task looking for a different approach.
You may be doing everything correctly and most efficiently, but such an approach isn’t necessarily the most motivating one. Quite often you can find a number of obvious tweaks to your current approach which will both change your experience and open up new possibilities.
That’s why saying “one way or another” is so common: if you really want to accomplish your goal, there is always a away. And most likely, there’s more than one way. If a certain approach doesn’t work for you, find another one, and keep trying until you find the one which will both keep you motivated and get you the desired results.
Some people think that trying a different approach means giving up. They take pride in being really stubborn and refusing to try any other options on their way towards the goal. My opinion on this is that the power of focus is great, but you should be focusing on your goal, and not limiting your options by focusing on just one way to accomplish it it.
4) Recognize your progress
Everything you may be working on can be easily split into smaller parts and stages. For most goals, it is quite natural to split the process of accomplishing them into smaller tasks and milestones. There are a few reasons behind doing this, and one of them is tracking your progress.
We track our progress automatically with most activities. But to stay motivated, you need to recognize your progress, not merely track it.
Here’s how tracking and recognizing your progress is different: tracking is merely taking a note of having reached a certain stage in your process. Recognizing is taking time to look at a bigger picture and realize where exactly you are, and how much more you have left to do.
For example, if you’re going to read a book, always start by going through the contents table. Getting familiar with chapter titles and memorizing their total number will make it easier for you to recognize your progress as you read. Confirming how many pages your book has before starting it is also a good idea.
You see, reading any book you will be automatically looking at page numbers and chapter titles, but without knowing the total number of pages this information will have little meaning.
Somehow, it is in a human nature to always want things to happen at once. Even though we split complex tasks into simpler actions, we don’t quite feel the satisfaction until all is done and the task is fully complete. For many scenarios though, the task is so vast that such an approach will drain all the motivation out of you long before you have a chance to reach your goal. That’s why it is important to always take small steps and recognize the positive different and progress made.

5) Reward Yourself
This is a trick everyone likes: rewarding yourself is always pleasant. I’m happy to confirm that this is also one of the easiest and at the same time most powerful ways to stay motivated!
Feeling down about doing something? Dread the idea of working on some task? Hate the whole idea of working? You’re not alone in that, I’m telling you!
Right from the beginning, agree on some deliverables which will justify yourself getting rewarded. As soon as you get one of the agreed results, take time to reward yourself in some way.
For some tasks, just taking a break and relaxing for a few minutes will do. For others, you may want to get a fresh cup of coffee and even treat yourself to a dessert. For even bigger and more demanding tasks, you may want to reward yourself by doing something even more enjoyable, like going to a cinema or taking a trip to some place nice, or even buying yourself something.
Your progress may not seem to others like anything worth celebrating – but take time and do it anyway! It is your task and your reward, so any ways to stay motivated are good. The more you reward yourself for the honestly made progress, the more motivated you will feel about reaching new milestones, thus finally accomplishing your goal.
Mix and match
Now that you have these five ways of staying motivated, it is a good moment to give you the key to them all: mix and match! Pick one of the advices and apply it to your situation. If it doesn’t work, or if you simply want to get even more motivation, try another advice right way. Mix different approaches and match them to your task for best results.
Just think about it: finding good reasons to work on your task is bound to help you feel a bit better. Identifying ways to make it fun will help you enjoy the task even more. Finally, if you then plan a few points for easier tracking of your progress and on top of that agree on rewarding yourself as you go – this will make you feel most motivated about anything you have to work through.
Steve G.Jones is a creator and maintainer of the PR Development Center, where he regularly writes about successfully setting and reaching your goals through becoming more organized, productive and motivated person. Subscribe to his E-Book Hypnosis To Change Your Life.

Steve is the creator of PR Development Center, where he regularly writes about setting and reaching your goals through becoming more organized, productive and motivated person.

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Regain Your Motivation

you feel your motivation has diminished recently? Or do you feel at the moment that it's gone completely? Do you wonder how you'll ever get it back?
It often happens that many people find their motivation decreasing or disappearing altogether. When this happens you tend to feel stuck and you're not really moving forward. You may feel frustrated because you're not making any progress. Seeing yourself making progress is one way to be motivated. But if that's not there, it becomes a vicious circle, because when you're not making progress, you don't feel motivated and vice versa.

When you want to increase your motivation, it's worth remembering that there's a difference between it and inspiration. Motivation is an external source which encourages you and gives you ideas. Inspiration comes from within and the encouragement and ideas are your own. When it comes from within, you own it and will feel inspired. When you feel inspired you'll take action and taking action is the key to achieving what you want, whether it's increasing your business, making changes in your life or progressing towards your dreams.

So, we're really looking to increase your inspiration here and not necessarily just to motivate you. I've found that people's inspiration drops when they've been doing the same thing over and over again for some time. You may feel you're stuck in a rut; it's become a bit of a drag. If you're feeling this way, it's no wonder your inspiration has decided to 'wander off'.

Sometimes you just need to take a break or have a rest from what you're doing and your inspiration may well come back. This break also allows you to re-assess what you've been doing and not doing. Perhaps then you'll see there are some changes you want to make, perhaps deciding to implement a different strategy or action plan.

Taking a break will mean different things to different people and you need to determine for yourself what this break will be. Perhaps, you'll decide take a day or a week off work, to play and have fun. Or you may decide to go for a brisk walk. I'm even inclined to suggest to you that, while taking this break, you tell yourself that you're not allowed to do or think about anything related to work or whatever it is that you're taking a break from. It's surprising how much most of us react to being told we can't do or have something. The rebellious part of us often surfaces and wants to fight it.

Taking a break from whatever it is you've been doing will probably make you feel apprehensive. All your fears about how much you have to get done, you're wasting time, what if I don't want to go back to doing this, are likely to surface. It's a natural reaction, but the fear is usually much worse than the reality. You need to trust yourself, face up to the fears and know that you can handle any situation.

After a break, you'll feel refreshed and when you feel refreshed, your enthusiasm and inspiration will return. Then, you'll be ready to start moving forward again.

What I want for you is to take a break and allow your inspiration and desire for life and business to return to you naturally.     The Best Motivation E-book in 2010 Motivation To Take Action        CLICK HERE