Hi there Reader,
Welcome to this edition of Meaningful eMail with the most recent takeaway and updates linked here at the top, and then a full article for your consideration.
Grab what's helpful today, then save others for future reference. You never know when you or someone in your network could use a boost!
Recent Takeaways & Updates
|
|
Top Takeaways: Do The Work by Steven Pressfield
Small book, big wake up for embracing creativity challenges
|
|
|
Live Roundtable Tuesday! Finding Passion and Purpose in Your Next Chapter
Join us for an inspiring conversation as we explore how to ignite passion, discover new purpose, and fully embrace the next chapter of your life.
|
Support For Helene Survivors
For those affected by Hurricane Helene, I'm offering pro bono coaching sessions. If it's you, or someone you know, just get this email back to me in a reply or forward and I'll do what I can to get the right support for the person and situation.
Let's Explore
Finding your spark
Follow your passion
That’s the advice we often hear when we’re not sure what to do next.
Whether it’s a crossroads of our career, a relationship or some other big decision, it seems our passions are supposed to be our guide.
But what if we don’t feel especially passionate about anything? We’re just flat out tired from taking care of others or completely bored after decades in the same career. How do we find a spark that lights us up and lights our way forward?
Plug into energy
One of the best ways to discover our spark is to learn how to spot when it happens naturally. We definitely know when we feel tired after doing something, but there are things we do which GIVE us energy. Yep, it’s true! Not everything we do spends energy, we’ve just become blind to the activities which light us up.
For me, some of these activities include gardening, golf, and learning something that’s interesting to me. They each can be demanding physically and/or mentally, yet they absolutely give me much more energy than they take. I feel invigorated doing these activities and that feeling lasts for a while afterwards as well.
Those are the activities which helped me rediscover what it felt like to be sparked again when I was at my career crossroads. Once I remembered what the spark felt like, it was easier to recognize it in my work activities.
I knew my design work was draining me, but didn’t know what else to do. Yet as I started looking for the invigorating feeling I got from my non-work activities, I saw signs of it in some work-related activities I’d just overlooked. I was blind to them because they were so natural to me. The big work-related activity that really helped me find the spark? The deep conversations I was having with my design clients.
Following that spark led me to pursue coaching, which is full of deep, meaningful conversations.
Watch for the wonder
Your curiosity is another thread to follow in the spark search. Look for the moments you feel the slightest bit intrigued about anything. When you catch yourself saying: "I wonder….". What is it you find yourself wondering about?
What are you searching for on the internet? What documentaries, books, articles, are you into? What type of events are you going to?
As Steven Kotler says in his book The Art of Impossible, curiosity is a potent driver of motivation and is a foundational ingredient in passion. He gives us the science behind it as well: following our curiosity releases so many of those amazing neurochemicals like norepinephrine and dopamine. (Check out my Top Takeaways of that book for more).
Look for the easy
Earlier I mentioned a way of working which gave me energy, but I’d become blind to it. It’s a way of working which comes so natural and feels so easy that I thought it was nothing special. I thought everyone came into conversations with the desire to listen, learn and support the other person. Turns out it’s actually kinda special - it’s a strength of mine. And the more I use it the more I’m able to feel that spark & passion.
Our strengths are the ways we approach life and work which come easily to us. In fact, so easy that we often overlook them. So how do we spot them? This where a few external inputs can be helpful.
Think about what your family, close friends and colleagues seek you out for. What do they admire about you? These are often ways of working which they find difficult and you think are no big deal.
Assessments can be helpful here as well. When done well, the results are often validating and affirm what you already know, but may not have recognized or know how to describe it. There are two I recommend: SparkeType and Clifton Strengths. I’m not affiliated with either company, but I have used them for years. SparkeType is free. There’s a book about Strengths available for about $20 which gets you a code for their basic assessment. But they both are so good at describing the attributes and how they come into play - and work!
Be patient for your passions
The process for finding your passions is just that - a process. Give yourself grace and practice patience. Lean into your curiosities and experiment. If one experiment doesn’t pan out, that’s OK. Try something else, maybe a different combination of strengths and curiosities or a different way of using them.
And draw strength from the science that tells us those who are craving passion are those who are working their way to be peak performers. They are willing to be uncomfortable in this process knowing the journey is worth it. That the journey of self-discovery is a treasure in itself.
Support for your journey
Join me this Tuesday for a live roundtable discussion on discovering passion and purpose in midlife hosted by Jennifer Arthurton of the Old Chicks Know Sh*t podcast. It’s free! Sign up here to get the link.
Check out the book mentioned above - The Art of Impossible - an excellent work covering the science behind motivation, drive, passion and purpose. You can start with my LinkedIn video or my blog post.
Take advantage of my complimentary 30-minute calls to see if coaching is a good fit at this moment in your journey. Use this link to select a time that works best for you.
