I hear it all the time from people. “I’m passionate about it.” “I’m not going to quit, It’s my passion.” Or I hear it as advice to students and others “Follow your passion.”
What a bunch of BS. “Follow your passion” is easily the worst advice you could ever give or get.
Why? Because everyone is passionate about something. Usually more than one thing. We are born with it. There are always going to be things we love to do. That we dream about doing. That we really really want to do with our lives. Those passions aren’t worth a nickel.
Think about all the things you have been passionate about in your life. Think about all those passions that you considered making a career out of or building a company around. How many were/are there? Why did you bounce from one to another? Why were you not able to make a career or business out of any of those passions? Or if you have been able to have some success, what was the key to the success? Was it the passion or the effort you put in to your job or company?
If you really want to know where your destiny lies—look at where you apply your time.
Me? I think Cuban’s binary perspective that is BS. I am fond of saying it’s not either/or — it’s both/and. In this case, it’s not passion or effort — it is both harnessed and combined effectively. Go to the source if you’d like to read the rest of his perspective, but it seems to me he comes around when he says “When you are good at something, passionate, and work even harder to excel and be the best at it, good things happen.” imho, passion is the fuel that makes the effort possible; without one you don’t have the other…
“The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be.” ~Robert Fulghum
I am not saying that painful things in your past didn’t happen, but what I am saying is that they no longer have to be painful. And it’s not as easy as changing your mind once or twice. It takes work, and reps, like in the gym. But if you try and try enough over time, new life and new meaning can emerge.
One of the best ways I know how to do this is to take ourselves out of our own story and step into the thoughts, feelings and beliefs of the person who hurt us. Not so we can make right what they did, but so we can begin to understand the painful event from their point of view.
As I have guided clients through this process, the outcomes have been amazing. Forgiveness on a whole new level of themselves and others. And of VERY traumatic events.
The point of forgiveness is not to make right what happened, but to bring a new sense of empathy and compassion to all involved – this includes you.
The best way to get back at people who have hurt us is to forgive them, because that is how we break the bond over the painful event. And from there, when we step into their shoes of how they must have been thinking and feeling, we begin to understand that their actions were not truly against us, but a request for Love or Significance in a very messed up way; that was the best way that they knew how to at that time.
Kaizen: constant never ending improvement. Success in a competitive world means not just more but better. Not just better but different. Not just different but innovative. It’s a world of constant, never-ending improvement. But with it, comes success.
The Law of Attraction is a law, just like gravity is a law. It’s working all the time whether you choose to be aware of it or not. We are always drawing to us the people, places and experiences that match our state of being.
A reader requested that I share my thoughts on stress-free parenting, as the father of six kids. And while I have learned a lot about being a dad, and finding joy in parenthood, I also know that stress-free parenting is a myth.
Parents will always have stress: we not only have to deal with tantrums and scraped knees and refusing to eat anything you cook, but we worry about potential accidents, whether we are ruining our kids, whether our children will find happiness as adults and be able to provide for themselves and find love.
That said, I’ve learned that we can find peace.
Peace isn’t a place with no stress, but a place where you take the stress as it comes, in stride, and don’t let it rule you. You let it flow through you, and then smile, and breathe, and give your child a hug.
There is a Way of the Peaceful Parent, but it isn’t one that I’ve learned completely. I’ll share what I’ve learned so far, with the caveat that I don’t always follow the Way, that I still make mistakes daily, that I still have a lot to learn, that I don’t claim to have all the answers as a parent.
Feeling kind of funky? Finding yourself immersed in the drama of your own life despite your desire not to be? I have a quick fix for you. Now, I don’t believe in many quick fixes because usually they are temporary and based in escapism. However there is one quick fix that I subscribe to for de-funking because it always works AND if done over time, creates lasting positive change.
Ready for the quick fix recipe? Here it is: Being of Service.
The best way to shift out of negative and ego based thinking is to stop thinking about yourself! The instant you shift your focus from me to we, your vibration changes. When you start thinking about how you can uplift others, you’ll soon find yourself in your heart and out of your head.
A balanced life has harmony between a professional life and a personal life. There may be times when we need to climb mountains at work. There may be times when we put extra energy into our relationships. But the overall picture needs to balance.
Just as a balanced nutritional diet takes into account the realm of our nutritional needs to stay healthy, a balanced life takes into account all our needs: our need for friends, work, love, family, play, private time, recovery time, and spiritual time — time with God. If we get out of balance, our inner voice will tell us. We need to listen.
Today, I will examine my life to see if the scales have swung too far in any area, or not far enough in some. I will work toward achieving balance.
Rarely is dwelling on the past seen in a positive light. Nor should it be. Thinking too much about times gone by typically keeps your mind–and life–stuck in neutral (and maybe even shifts it into reverse). If you habitually ruminate over your earlier life, you may regularly be revisited by feelings of anger, guilt, resentment, sorrow, or shame. And such emotions are hardly productive. In many ways, they’re downright toxic. Fretfully obsessing about the people and events precipitating such negative feelings can lead to endless recycling. Becoming increasingly stagnant, or fixated, your thinking really can’t progress toward any adaptive resolution.
Moreover, returning to the past to rehearse old dissatisfactions and grievances–even to replay images of earlier triumphs–and idly preoccupying yourself with irreconcilable thoughts about them, can result in self-reproach, lamentation, remorse, and even bitterness. Using your mental energy for such a doubtful purpose can catapult you into the inextricable pit of woulda, coulda, shoulda. With the result that you can end up consumed with regret–what French existentialist, Albert Camus, has referred to as the most futile of emotions.
Yet, to be fair, dwelling on the past does have certain short-term advantages. For instance, you might become preoccupied with earlier events of success by way of rationalizing present-day frustrations and failures. If you haven’t been able to live up to the hopes of others–or to your own expectations–you might find temporary comfort in reliving past accomplishments. But while focusing on past positives may afford you some relief from current disappointments, by itself it does nothing to direct (or re-direct) your efforts to further your objectives in the here-and-now. And if you’re to realize your full potential in life, you need to squarely focus on what you can do right now to fulfill your promise–not on what you achieved in bygone times.
“Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, ‘Make me feel important.’ Never forget this message when working with people.” – Mary Kay Ash
…or how to be a thought leader in your industry without breaking the bank! Prepare yourself — I’ve been thinking about this one all weekend…
I had a chance to have lunch last week with Dana VanDen Heuvel, an internationally known ‘thought leadership‘ marketing expert who happens to live in nearby Green Bay. Dana and I travel in similar circles although his focus is more on strategy while mine is more on the mechanics of thought leadership marketing. Back in November I was trying to get my mind around content marketing and thought leadership and I asked Dana whether or not the two were synonymous. Either he didn’t have time to answer my question or you wanted me to figure it out on my own; in either case eventually I concluded that content marketing is a means toward thought leadership but the two are not the same. You can use content marketing to create share of voice on the internet but it’s the quality of your ideas that determine whether or not you ultimately become a leader by getting share of mind and share of market.
To me, thought leadership is the process of becoming and being known as the expert. In my oversimplified view of things that requires two activities; you have to deepen your expertise and detail your expertise or, get smarter and show people you’re getting smarter. IF you do that well they may actually follow your ideas…
Are you a wannabe thought leader? You can test the waters in this area for $17 per year using WordPress.com as your thought leadership marketing hub. The $17 will buy you a domain and the ability to map that domain to your free WordPress site. Then, all you gotta do is publish something…
Deepening your expertise
In in order to deepen your expertise I think there are three things you need to do
Use Gmail to manage your just-in-time information
Use Google reader to manager just-in-case information
Use Gist to track other thought leaders
Detailing your expertise
In order to demonstrate to people that you are an expert
Either create or curate your ideas in WordPress.com
Share the content you create or curate on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Paper.li, Twylah and MailChimp
Engage in conversations using HootSuite and/or NutshellMail
David Kanigan of davidkanigan.com is an example of someone who had done exactly what I recommended on his WordPress.com blog…
New to blogging — only 6 months in — and he is already rocking his site! His Alexa rank is currently 61,500 in the US — testimony to both the power of WordPress.com and his frequent posting [too bad that due to his work in the financial industry he can’t engage in business blogging]…
You could be a David, too, and take on the Goliath’s in your industry using the tools and tactics I mentioned above. Here are links to every tool and a few more…
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imho, here are the best tools for content management and marketing for thought leadership. All free, all cross platform…
imho, here are the best tools for content management and marketing for thought leadership. All free, all cross platform…
Now, either you look at this and say “Ah, that makes perfect sense — why didn’t I think of that before?” for you look at this and say “What a fustercluck!?!?!?” In either case, I may be a resource for you. Either I can help you simplify your existing thought leadership marketing workflow or I can set it all up for you and teach you how to run it. It’s your call, but if you’re looking to establish a thought leadership position you have just run out of excuses…
Last Wednesday we began a series of ‘lunch and learn’ presentations at The Docking Station in Green Bay, WI and I am pleased to share it [almost] in its entirety below. This is the first in a series of ongoing presentations on the topic of thought leadership marketing which will be published in a book called “Be Known” on July 8, 2012.
Why start with Gmail? The answer to me is obvious; if you can’t manage your e-mail how can you be proactive in social media? Personally I don’t believe that you can ever get ahead as long as you are a victim of your inbox…
I have outlined my thoughts on these topics in previous e-book called ‘personal news aggregation‘ which is free for the registration here. Just click on the word registration, supply a username and e-mail address and you will immediately gain free access. If you want to be a thought leader you have to be able to manage the content you need so that you can become and be known as the expert. The journey starts in your inbox!
Kute Blackson
Bright, shiny objects! 
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