doing what is right for you. When people speak about their true passion, they display visible changes in their faces and bodies. They physically glow when they work within their calling.
Test the degree of your passion by asking an objective friend to listen as you describe your dream. As you become “warmer” or more excited, your eyes light up and your skin begins to glow. You feel more alive, more connected to your surroundings. When you grow “colder” or less enthusiastic, your expression falls and you disconnect from the people around you. An observant friend will notice the difference.
Already, you know some of the activities that turn you on and increase your vitality. Those activities are pieces of your life’s puzzle. Write each activity down on separate Post-it notes as they occur to you until you have collected a stack of notes representing the activities that form the mosaic of your ideal life.
Then lay the notes out and examine them. Sort them by similarities. In one corner you may place music or entertainment interests. In another corner you might begin with academic pursuits. Still another part of the puzzle might organize around sports or recreation. As you try to fit these activities together, you will begin to see that there are elements missing from your life. This awareness will put your biocomputer in a search mode, ferreting out connective activities that fill in the missing pieces.
Someone may light up on fishing and accounting. But how do these disparate activities fit together? Might there be connecting pieces that you have never before considered? Should you become a bookkeeper at a fishing lodge, or perhaps work for wealthy clients who go fishing with you?
As more pieces of your puzzle accumulate, the possibilities increase. The idea isn’t to get the “right answer.” Rather, you are learning to keep your options open and recognize the overall pattern in your needs. As you become comfortable with not knowing the answer, more intricate patterns will emerge. Look for the unexpected. After days or even weeks of contemplation, some event will occur in your life that makes sense in the larger pattern. Unexpected events will seem to answer the question that your mind couldn’t resolve. You will feel more alive and your view of your life will be larger.
Teachers and coaches tell us to focus on one thing, and most people interpret that to mean one piece of the puzzle. True focus creates a larger perspective by organizing all the activities that go into a great life. Your new perceptions approximate reality more closely because they don’t exclude essential parts of your nature.
When you were born your life was a puzzle. However, there was no picture on the box to help you assemble the pieces. Because we evolved from hunters and gatherers, we instinctively focus on the objects and movement. For eons our survival depended on noticing the movement of other bodies as distinct from the background. That familiar way of thinking limited our options. Traditional learning reinforces that fragmented thinking by interpreting every event we encounter as a potential threat.
Once mankind fulfilled some basic survival needs, a few people began to look at life from a larger perspective. They began to notice how events were connected. That kind of thinking is called systems thinking. When you let go of your fixation on objects and begin to notice how events are connected, you have more options to respond to those events. You can adapt better.
If we ask someone to describe something that occurred in their company, they respond with a generalization. “Janis did a good job.” If we ask them to clarify, they make a more specific generalization. “Janis really gave her best effort.” These concepts can’t be verified, so arguments ensue. People work at cross purposes. Vitality decreases. Their lights go out as they struggle to prove they are right and others are wrong.
Systematic thinking focuses attention precisely on the event. “Janis removed the vase from the table.” That statement is an accurate description, which helps other people notice what they did in relation to Janis’s action. “She handed me the vase and I put it in the sink.” Suddenly people are speaking the language of events. Their conversations reflect actual reality rather than conceptual reality. Instead of trading opinions, their words begin to reflect actual occurrences. They have common ground, which enables them to coordinate their actions better. Vitality increases. They light up.
Group thinking is what happens when people share conceptual realities. Concepts can be perfectly true, but they can also be perfectly boring. People argue familiar points and disagree on how to proceed. Opinions proliferate. Projects bog down. Thoughts and feelings flare up in response to separate interpretations.
Systemic thinking is thinking together as a network. Instead of interpretations, people communicate with descriptions of events. The accuracy of their observations enables them to play off each other. As the pace picks up they begin to get results at a faster pace. Their language brings attention to outcomes that are self-evident. Their descriptions can quickly be verified and the team can see the next step. Aliveness increases as everyone is caught up in the pleasure of achievement. Individuality disappears as the connections between their activities become clearer. When change comes they can adapt to real events, while others continue to gaze at their mental models.
Systemic thinking doesn’t eliminate ordinary thinking. In fact, you must persist in generalizing and in fulfilling your ego desires until they combine and merge with your actions. Systems expand your options by giving you an additional way to look at things. By adding another way to relate to events, you enrich your interpretation. Eventually your ideas begin to integrate with actual events. Through trial and error you awaken your senses and harness the energy that comes from vivid perceptions.
Action brings the conceptual and actual worlds into alignment. Go for what you want. When you fulfill a false desire, you get past it. You begin to notice the vitality that happens through your connection to other people. When you communicate through action, you create a natural attraction for the things that truly matter in life. You move and speak with the confidence of someone who won’t be denied. Your projects are magnetic and other people feel included. Money and pleasure come easily because you exude a strong yet gentle approach to life. Depriving yourself of legitimate desires destroys your motivation and only leads to burn out.
Once you know what lights you up, you must consider the second question: are those activities feasible? Can you assemble all of the things you enjoy into a workable business design? Do they add up to a service or product that works in the real world and under actual market conditions?
There are some simple reality tests that will help you answer these questions. Has anyone ever succeeded in doing the thing that interests you? Do you have talent in this arena? Do the activities you enjoy work within the laws of nature? Do they lend themselves to use by others who would pay to participate in them? Could you do those things for many years without burning out? Do listeners light up when you describe the activities you want to do for a living?
Look beyond the glamorous pictures in your mind to grasp the reality of your dream before you pursue it. Someone who wants to own a horse ranch, for example, should first spend some time cleaning stables. Actually, owning a ranch is nothing like Bonanza. Real ranching is sustained drudgery; lugging heavy tools, and completing earthy jobs. If you don’t resonate to that work, a horse ranch would just steal away your attention from the things you really enjoy.
On the other hand, don’t feel limited by obstacles that exist only in your mind. To find your core activities you have to try a lot of different things. Work on a ranch. Play in a band. Fly a plane. Try out all of the different things that you’ve ever wondered about.
Even if you think you are too young, or too old, or too ordinary, take some chances. It’s never too early to begin. It’s never too late, either. Beware self-doubt. Don’t accept disappointing verdicts from well-meaning friends. Einstein was considered simpleminded by his schoolmaster, yet, he learned the fundamentals of science, and then carried the entire field into a new
