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Posts tagged with “passion”

4 Myths about Doing What You Love for Work

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“Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.” ~Buddha

“Big flud strikes Revere!”

That was the headline of the newspaper I made with my sister when I was six. I hadn’t yet honed my skills as an editor, but I knew a good fake story when I heard it.

Eight years later, while wading through my anger toward several people who’d hurt me, I wrote a short book called The Line of the Virtues about the grey area between good and bad. An older coworker at my afterschool job asked, “Are …

Cherish Your Challenges and Find Your Authentic Self

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“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” ~Bernice Johnson Reagon

My quarter-life crisis kicked into high gear about six months ago.

Take this as evidence: I quit my job. I quit my apartment and moved back home. I quit booze and boys. I quit gluten and sugar. I quit friendships I’d imagined would last a lifetime.

I’m not asking for an A+ or gold stars for my “self” work. I wasn’t hit by a spark of spiritual lightening and magically committed to this transformation. In a lot of ways, the …

Get Started on Your Dream: Clear the 5 Most Daunting Hurdles

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“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” ~Buddha

A decade or so ago, when I was twenty, I was supposed to settle into an “arranged marriage,” a common concept in India. I would never have known what it means to be financially independent, to go after my passions, and to be true to myself.

Until then, I had only wished to have a career—to go to a big city, live independently, and explore my identity. But those were merely daydreams. I had accepted that in my …

Overwhelmed by Your To-Do List? How to Decide What to Do Now

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“It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.” ~Proverb

I’ve been mentoring writers for years, and one problem many of them run into is that they have so many ideas and projects that they don’t know where to start. They may want to write for big-name magazines, draft a novel, sell a nonfiction book, start a blog, and write an e-book.

Each of these projects has dozens of to-do items associated with it. Where to start? They’re so confused that they do nothing at all.…

Stop Waiting to Live: Scare Yourself Alive

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“It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Whenever I’m tempted to play it safe with my life, whenever I start talking myself out of the risks I really want to take, I think about something my friend Jesse said years ago, when we were on a work-sponsored retreat.

After a day of travel, activities, and settling in, we were left with a free evening. As the darkness deepened, a group of us stood together, discussing our options. What would we do on our first night in the woods?

There was …

Leaving a Secure Job When the Risk Feels Scary

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“It’s not who you are that holds you back. It’s who you think you’re not.” ~Unknown

Over the past four years, I followed a career path that felt soulless.

As I moved from city to city, climbing the corporate ladder, I noticed that, ironically, the bigger my paycheck, the emptier I felt. Something about advertising felt lifeless, cold, and desperate to me.

But I ignored this feeling and worked over it, drank over it, binged, exercised, and ate over it.

I pressed forward like a steel freight train on a mission to find my happiness. When I got to that …

Find Your Calling: 5 Steps to Identify Your Purpose

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“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.” ~Rumi

When I was young, I fell in love with Africa. It was an unsophisticated and amorphous love, not directly related to anything in particular about that vast continent. I now see that the point of my love affair with Africa was to deliver my first calling to me.

Merriam-Webster defines a “calling” as: “…a strong inner impulse toward a particular course of action especially when accompanied by conviction of divine influence.”

My first calling was to connect with people who seemed very different from …

Tiny Wisdom: On Being Seen

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“Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money, power, and influence.” ~Henry Chester

Influence has become a huge buzz word, particularly now that social media has taken the world by storm. There are sites to measure it. Blog posts that dissect it. Books that analyze the psychology of it. Collectively, we’re obsessed with the ability to persuade other people.

It’s not just about driving consumer behavior, although clearly that’s a big part of it–everyone needs to earn a living. It’s also not all about the ego–having the most followers, the most retweets, or the most influential friends. …

Lifestyle Design: How to Create Your Life As You Want It

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“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” ~George Eliot

If you read a lot of blogs or are even remotely tech savvy, it’s highly likely you’ve heard the term “lifestyle design.” Perhaps you’re wondering just what the heck it means, and how you can do it, too, just because it sounds so enticing!

In a nutshell, lifestyle design embodies the attempt on your part to design a life of your choosing, whatever that looks like. It’s your life, your plan, and you call the shots.

Just because your parents lived in a small town, got married …

3 Mistakes That Hold You Back in Life & How to Avoid Them

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“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.” ~Marianne Williamson

I believe we are here to grow, to expand—to learn and experience and understand. Growth and discovery are the purpose of life.

I also believe we tend to get in our own way.

Our experiences, our cultures, and even our families can create fears and limitations that can hold us back, or hold us down. They don’t do this intentionally. It’s just that we’re all doing the best we can in this beautiful, messy, complicated world.

There are so many circumstances or experiences that …

Why Some Dreams Don’t Lead to Happiness

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When I was 24 years old, I learned that some dreams are actually avoidance tactics, and some discouragement is a very good thing.

I was relatively new in New York City, and I felt overwhelmed by the prospect of failing if I tried to pursue my passions. I’d learned a lot about failure in the six years prior, and the only thing I knew for certain anymore was that I had to become someone important.

When I arrived at my interview for marketing job—as it was so descriptively advertised on Craigslist—I was surprised to find a room full of …

Living Like You Were Dying

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“One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” ~Unknown

A professor once told my class, “In order to live your life to the fullest, you must think about your death every day.”

At the time, I felt too busy to think about my death because I was consumed with law school applications and endless deadlines. But the words came creeping up to haunt me one day.

After I graduated, I moved to Boston to work at a law firm downtown before attending law school the following year. I wanted to be a lawyer because …

How to Discover Your Super Powers to Find Meaningful Work

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“Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.” ~Buddha

It seems like the vast majority of people compartmentalize themselves.

There are the people they show to family and friends, built upon authenticity and genuine passions, and the people who wear work-appropriate masks to make a living from day to day.

I understand how this happens. It’s not easy to identify the work that would feel meaningful for you, discover how you can get on that path, and then consistently take action to create the life you visualize.

Recognizing what you want to do can …

Where We Place Our Attention

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“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh 

Let’s think for a second about emptiness. Why is a cup of tea useful? For its decorations? No—it’s  useful for its emptiness, for the space where we can pour tea.

When we let go of all the things that are cluttering our minds, we become like that tea cup, and we are able to use that space to focus on what matters: giving attention to people, here and now.

Society considers money, praise, and rewards important. However, attention speaks clearer than everything else. Why does …

How to Regain Control of Your Time & Your Life

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“Life is a choice.” ~Unknown

I’m virtually broke, but I’m still enjoying life. How is this possible, you ask?

True happiness comes from having much less than you think you need. Growing up, I wouldn’t say that I had an abundance of toys. By normal standards, my family was just getting by with what we had. The bills weren’t just going to disappear, and there were three other young mouths to feed. It was either use my imagination to escape my reality or die of boredom. Which choice do you think I made?

When You Separate from Your Stuff

In …

Make Now Count: How to Live a Fun Life Full of Possibilities

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“Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional.” ~Unknown

My daughter Nava suffered a medical crisis and was hospitalized for one year. She was in a drug-induced, paralyzed coma on a ventilator for three months, teetering on the seesaw of life and death, much closer to the death side.

Miraculously surviving, she moved on to a rehab hospital for the next nine months where she had to relearn each and every body and motor function. Two miracles occurred: one, she survived; and two, she had a complete recovery, with her life back as before.

Because I have my daughter back, whole and …

On Finding Your Purpose & Running Down a Dream

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“Excellence can be obtained if you care more than others think is wise, risk more than others think is safe, dream more than others think is practical, expect more than others think is possible.” ~Unknown

A revelation came to me the other day during lunch with my co-worker.

As I wolfed down my germ-infused salad-bar lunch, I thought about my father for no particular reason other than I probably miss him since moving out of my parents’ house two weeks ago.

I’ve never been one to admit things, show emotion, or get all mushy, but in my own way I’m …

30 Ways to Live Life to the Fullest

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“Begin at once to live and count each separate day as a separate life.” ~Seneca

At times, it’s seemed as though life contains an endless supply of days.

I thought this for sure when I was younger. It didn’t matter how long I held a grudge or how long I waited to do something I wanted—there would be an unlimited pool of other opportunities. At least, that’s what I thought back then.

Maybe it’s a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, the moment when you realize life happens now and that’s all you’re guaranteed. It doesn’t really hit you …

Live Your Life Out Loud: 30 Ways to Get Started

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“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I will tell you, I came to live out LOUD.” ~Émile Zola

1. Live your life on purpose.

Not on “default.” Be Proactive. Make conscious and deliberate choices. When you don’t choose, circumstances choose for you and you are never leading: you are following or catching up—or worse, living in “default” mode.

2. Utilize your full potential.

Give what you’re doing your best and fullest attention. Be here now. Even if you’re not where you want to be, giving it half your effort doesn’t move you forward. Master …

5 Rules for Life

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When I first sat down to write this piece for 5 Rules for Life, I wrote “Live without rules” five times, each followed by a reason to keep your approach to life flexible.

The way you live is largely a reflection of where you’ve been, who you’ve been, and the beliefs you’ve formed. Who am I to create a cookie-cutter hard-and-fast code that makes sense for everyone?

That’s when I realized I’d need to make a sixth rule to introduce these ideas: judge my words, and anyone else’s, against your own reason and moral code.

Buddha said, “Believe …