Have you ever noticed how somebody else's negative behavior can get you riled up, indignant, and even angry, even if it's not directed specifically at you?

On the way back from camping this weekend, the proverbial jerk on the highway zoomed past us at mach speed, weaving in and out through traffic. My knee-jerk response was, "What an asshole!" But then I thought of something I read in the soon-to-be-published Be the Hero, a parable-style book about the degree to which the stories we tell (about others, our situation, and ourselves) shape the world we experience.

In it, the two main characters are having a a conversation about what boils down to giving people the benefit of the doubt and creating a positive story for them. They were exploring a scenario in which someone they didn't know was behaving like a jerk, and looking at two different possible stories for the reason for the behavior.

In one alternative, the person was just a jerk. In the other, they created a story that put him in a more positive light, coming up with potential good reasons why he was behaving that way.

The point was that telling ourselves that negative story about someone else both disempowers and drains us. Since we don't actually know what is really going on in these situations, why not create a story that lets us feel good (or at least not bad) about them?

With that in mind, I decided to play a game with the highway jerks, coming up with positive stories for why they were behaving that way. De-jerkifying them in my mind, if you will. It started with reasonable explanations but quickly devolved into coming up with silly, funny, occasionally ludicrous explanations. Suddenly the jerks were becoming a source of laughter for us.

Ultimately, neither believability nor likelihood were requirements for the stories we made up. It became less about "finding excuses for them" and more about a fun way to shift our own focus and reactions.

That got me thinking - what if we all made a habit out of de-jerkifying people with our stories? What if every time we're faced with telling a story that we don't really know the details to, we default to searching for a positive spin?

At the very least it could remove an irritant from your life. At most, it could change how you see the world.

--

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

As we hit the graduation season, it's time for a re-post of my advice for new graduates finding their way into the work force.

In my work, I help people find passion in their careers. Typically my clients are making a mid-career change after realizing they're not on the right path.

At a time of year when new graduates are up to their eyeballs in what-do-I-do-now, I have some advice for them to help ensure that they never need someone like me.

What is it? "Don't worry about making the 'right' choice as you launch into your career - because you probably won't."

You can imagine that raises some eyebrows. Of course there's more to it (read on for that). I just like to say that because it gets people's attention.

The reality is, most recent students entering the work force simply haven't had the real world experience to be able to accurately say, "This is the career I want for the next twenty years." I was no different. Thinking back on my days as a new graduate, I shake my head at what I thought I wanted out of my career.

I see it in my clients all the time. I find that people don't start coming to see me until their early thirties (and often older, of course). I call the first ten years out of college the incubation period.

Coming out of college they have this rose-colored, sexy view of what they think they want to do (or what they "should" do), and it takes a few years of real world work experience for them to really start to clue into the fact that "somethin' ain't right here," and, more importantly, "Something needs to change."

So, on to the rest of my advice...

It's really unlikely that your career is going to follow a straight shot trajectory based on the step you take right now. So don't stress about that step as defining your career, because it's almost guaranteed that it won't.

Rather than trying to make the "right" choice right now to launch you into a career for the next twenty or thirty years, look at the next five years as a big R&D project. Spend the time to really get to know what lights you up. Find out where you really feel energized.

Pick a direction that appeals to you, and then treat your life as a big lab experiment. Along the way, keep asking yourself, "What do I love about this? Why? What is it about that that's so fun? What drives me nuts about this? Why? What is it about that that rubs me the wrong way?"

Spend the first years of your career really figuring out what makes you tick.

The fact is, success is going to come a lot more easily for you if you are on fire about what you're doing. So spending the time to really understand what that is can be one of the best career investments you can make.

And investing in that kind of awareness (and committing to basing your decisions on what you discover) will ensure that you never have to come see somebody like me and say, "This path is SOOO wrong. I need to change, but I don't know to what, or how." 

You'll be too busy loving your life.

--

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

I've been reading a book The Pollyana Principles: Reinventing "Nonprofit Organizations" to Create the Future of Our World by Hildy Gottlieb.In it, Gottlieb outlines six principles - The Pollyana Principles - to help organizations rethink and refocus so they can both thrive and maximize their positive impact on the world around them.

As I read through them, I couldn't help but think, "These ideas are totally relevant for individuals as well."

Below are The Pollyana Principles and my thoughts on how they apply to individuals:

We accomplish what we hold ourselves accountable for.

Yes! When we hold ourselves accountable for something, it focuses our attention. We start evaluating the choices we make in terms of whether or not they are leading us towards that goal. It makes it harder to slide down the slippery slope of inaction, because we're paying attention.

In my work with clients, one of the big benefits that people often experience is that accountability. They know that when they commit to doing something, the next week I'm going to be asking, "How'd that go?" It's a simple idea, but it's powerful.

Each and every one of us is creating the future, every day, whether we do so consciously or not.

Choice. Choice. Choice. That's how we create our own future and the future of the world around us. Like creating accountability, and awareness of the fact that your choices are creating the future can focus your attention. That in turn affects the choices you make.

Everyone and everything is interconnected and interdependent, whether we acknowledge that or not.

This is relevant in a couple different ways. The first is that you're a lot more likely to succeed by connecting and collaborating than by being a lone wolf.

The second relates to the previous point about the choices we make creating the future. Because everything is interconnected, the choices we make have the potential to make a significant impact - positive or negative - on the world around us.

"Being the change we want to see" means walking the talk of our values.

If you want to leave a positive wake as you move through life, "being the change you want to see" is a great foundation. Walking the talk of your values requires two things. First, you have to really know what your values are. That means getting out of autopilot and taking the introspective time to understand them.

And second, you have to do more than pay lip service to those values. Again, back to the idea of creating the future through our choices, it is only by aligning our choices and actions with our values that we can have the kind of impact on the world we want to have.

Strength builds upon our strengths, not our weaknesses.

If you really want to shine, build on your strengths. Think of your weaknesses as holes in the ground. Spending all your time "fixing your weaknesses" means you're just shoveling dirt in the holes to try to bring them up to ground level.

When you focus on your strengths, on the other hand, you have the opportunity to start from solid ground and build your architectural masterpiece. You may still need to address those weaknesses to keep them from holding you back, but they are no longer your primary focus.

Individuals will go where systems lead them.

On the individual level, this is really about creating systems for yourself that foster action and energy that moves in the direction of the life you want to create. It's about looking at your life as a whole system and asking, "What will help me move forward? What is dragging me down?"

How can you put The Pollyana Principles to work in your life?

--

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Any time you find yourself feeling stuck, ask yourself one simple question. "Do I need action or introspection right now?"

Looking back over the last eight years of helping people find careers that light them up, I see so much stuckness boiling down to two things: not enough action, or not enough introspection.

More introspection

Action is great. Nothing gets done without it. But without pairing it with the frame of reference created by introspection, you run a real risk of taking action just for the sake of movement.  At best that leads to a lot of wasted energy. At worst, it takes you out of the frying pan and into the fire, again, and again, and again.

For the clients who come to me stuck because of an over-emphasis on action, much of the value of our work comes because it forces them to slow down and really assess, "Who am I? What energizes me? What life do I want to create?" We create more clarity so they can have a solid foundation that lets them get more traction when they do take action.

More action

An over-emphasis on introspection is just as much of a trap. You can build the world's best framework for knowing what's right for you and where you want to go, but if you just keep digging and exploring and getting an ever deeper understanding of what makes you tick, ten years can pass and you're still standing in the same place.

For the clients who come to me with self-awareness coming out their ears, often a big part of the value comes from creating structure and accountability to help them move forward. They already have a lot of the clarity they need, and their real challenge is taking consistent, persistent action based on that insight so they can start getting traction. 

Which do you need right now? Action, or introspection?

--

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Eight years ago today, I launched my career as a Passion Catalyst. It wasn't that glorious of a launch, really. More of a dribble. But I committed to it, took a step, and quickly discovered how amazing it felt to actually be doing work you're meant to do.

For years prior to discovering my Passion Catalyst work I was what I describe as a Professional Malcontent. I had been on a path I wasn't meant for, chasing a dream that in the end really didn't mean all that much to me. And I was unhappy with it.

Fast track to mediocrity

I studied business in school, with a focus on marketing and international business. Coming out of school I saw myself as a mover and a shaker, convinced that I was going to climb the corporate ladder to the top. CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Face on the cover of Fortune magazine. All of that.

But my rocket ride to the top never did manifest. I kept moving through a series of jobs, growing bored and leaving or "being given the opportunity to seek other opportunities" (that is to say, canned).

One day, looking in the mirror, I had an epiphany of sorts. "You're on the fast track all right," I said to myself, "but it's not the fast track to the top. It's the fast track to becoming Dilbert. It's the fast track to becoming bitter, disillusioned, and stuck."

I knew something had to change. I just didn't know what, or how.

The light bulb moment

By early 2001 I had been treading water for a couple years as a self-employed marketing consultant focused on the tech industry. When the dot com implosion came, it was just the catalyst I needed. I was suddenly self-unemployed, with no potential business on the horizon.

Trying to drum up new business, I had a bazillion coffees or so with various contacts from the tech industry here in Seattle. It was during one of these conversations that the light bulb about my Passion Catalyst work finally came on.

After talking business for a bit, the conversation turned to a company he wanted to start based on a passion of his. It was his dream. We talked about that for an hour, and by the end of the conversation he was vibrating with excitement. "I can't go back to work now, Curt!" he said, half in jest. His brain was on fire with new ideas, new possibilities, new ways of seeing things that he hadn't seen before.

Later that day I thought, "What is that? Because that happens to me all the time!" Looking back, I saw it happen over and over where people would come out of conversations with me completely lit up with new ideas, perspectives, and possibilities.

"Hmmmm...," I thought, "maybe this has some value." A potential way to make some money, perhaps?

What exactly is it that I do?

There was just one problem - I didn't actually know what I did. It just happened naturally. I didn't have a conscious approach or methodology. Hard to monetize something you're not sure how to replicate.

I can see now that it was the combination of two main things. First, I'm naturally curious, so I ask a lot of questions. And in answering my questions, people would find insights they didn't realize were there.

Second, my brain is an idea-machine when it listens to someone else talk. So I would always be lobbing out ideas, or alternative possibilities, or ways to approach things. Some of them were just right, while others sparked still other ideas from the person I was talking to.

But at the time I didn't see that. So instead I talked about it, trying to figure it out. Ultimately I realized that it had to be more than a one-time conversation for people to get long-term value out of it.

"Aha!" I thought. "I can be a coach." 

After a couple months of exploring it, I realized that I can - and often do - talk a good idea to death. If I was going to do anything with this one, I had to jump in and get started.

The guinea pig

For me, jumping in and getting started meant finding a guinea pig client. As luck would have it, another of the people I had connected with in my schmooze-a-thon looking for new consulting business was at a career crossroads, and open to testing the waters with me.

Eight years ago today, I took a risk and jumped into the unknown. Eight years ago today, I had my first coaching session with that guinea pig client.

After we wrapped up that first session I remember thinking, "I don't need a guinea pig. This is who I am! This is what I do!" I had been nervous and uncertain before, but came away with a feeling of confidence that comes when you find your groove.

--

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

You've probably heard of the idea of writing a letter to your future self as a goal-setting tool. It's a way to say, "Hey future me, here's my intention for what I want to create in (1/5/10/etc.) years time. Here's the life I'm aiming for."

One of the challenges, of course, is remembering the letter once you write it. You know how it is. First it gets tucked safely away. Then it gets put somewhere else in a fit of organization. Then you move and it's somewhere in a box in the back of a closet. Then you forget about it entirely.

One way around that is FutureMe.org. You can write yourself an e-mail, set the date you want it delivered, send it on its way, and sit back and wait.

Imagine sitting down and writing yourself one to be delivered in one year, and then another in five years. What would you say?

The great thing about this kind of exercise is that it isn't just about goal setting. It's also about self-exploration. It forces you to sit down and say, "OK, what is it really that I want to create? No vagueness - get specific!"

And to do that, unless you just pull random ideas out of the air, you have to have a good understanding of what's important to you. Who are you, and who do you want to be? What do you want to achieve? What do you care about enough to turn it into your future reality?

Give it a shot. Who knows what you might discover!

--

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Do you ever get so caught up in trying to create the perfect outcome that you end up not really moving forward?

When I show people my travel photography, they often make some comment about how much better my pictures are than their vacation photos. What they don't see is the fact that the pictures they're looking at only represent a fraction of the total number of pictures I took.

Going through my shots when I got back from a trip, I'm often struck by how completely underwhelming many of the pictures are. Sometimes it's because what I was trying to capture just didn't quite work. Other times it's because I'm exploring various facets of the same subject, looking for the most interesting and visually appealing approach.

So while I am pleased with the pictures that I end up showing to people, many of the pictures I take end up "on the cutting room floor," so to speak.

When it comes to photography, National Geographic has always been the gold standard in my mind. A few years ago I went to a presentation by a National Geographic photographer, and one of the things that stuck in my mind was the sheer volume of pictures he took for a story - 400 rolls of film (14,400 pictures).

See a trend here? If you're getting caught up in trying achieve the perfect result, you're probably limiting what you can realistically achieve. The more things you try and the more attempts you make, a) the more chances you have to learn and improve and, b) the more chances you are creating to align your luck and skill with opportunity.

Is there anywhere in your life where you're limiting yourself by not letting yourself be imperfect? Is there anywhere you need to take a high volume approach? What could that look like?

--

Need simple steps to re-energize your career?
Get started with 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work!

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

In my work, I talk a lot about personal energy management  (see this blog post on The Gain-to-Drain Ratio, for example). In many ways, how you manage your energy is how you live your life.

This morning I was looking at the transcript from my M.A.P. Maker podcast featuring Daryn Kagan. In it, she had a great take on her own energy management approach that she describes as choosing how to spend her energy budget.

I love that idea. It takes something abstract and creates a concrete concept around it.

Try this: For the rest of the week, pay attention to how you are choosing to spend your energy budget. (You might want to keep track of what you find with an End-of-Day Review.) Where is your energy going? Is it contributing to building the life you want, or are you throwing energy down the drain?

--

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

I had coffee this morning with a friend of mine who has been focused on recruiting and hiring in various capacities for 24 years. We were talking about how competitive the job market is these days, and how people really need to make themselves stand out from the crowd.

The conversation turned to the importance of passion, and she said something that stuck in my head enough that I felt compelled to share it with you. "I always hire the person with passion - the one who can communicate it."

How do you consciously, purposefully use passion to help you stand out from the crowd? A great place to start is this post I wrote last year on tapping into passion as a competitive advantage.

I'm also doing a free job search teleclass next week (Wednesday at noon Pacific time) that will give you more insight on that (among other things). If you're in the search, I would love to have you there.

--

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

When it comes to pursuing (and achieving) your dreams, self-belief plays an enormously positive role. But even the most confident of us can occasionally get caught up in a downward spiral of self-doubt. So what to do?

One idea is to create a positive guide to yourself. Start by asking some questions:

• What have I done that I am proud of?
• What have I achieved?
• Where have I succeeded?
• What have I done well?
• What would others say I have done well?

The answers can be big things or small things. Basically what you're doing is creating a list of positive outcomes.

For each of the things you come up with, ask yourself, "What is it that allowed me to do that? What skills do I have that helped me accomplish that? What characteristics do I have? What knowledge do I have?"

Start building a picture of not only what you have done well, but also why you have been able to do that. The more you understand about why you have succeeded in the past, the better equipped you are to see how those things might apply to success in the future.

This exploration focuses your attention on the positive, but more than that, it creates a positive reference guide to yourself that you can refer to in the future. You can pull it out when you're starting to feel down on yourself, or any old time you want a reminder.

Try this: Instead of doing this in one positive binge, try making it an ongoing part of your weekly habit. Start by making the list from the questions above (and any others that come to mind) and each week pick two or three to explore.

By making it an ongoing habit, you incorporate a regular, systematic positive focus into your week.

--

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

If you've ever tried to make a positive change in your life - maybe shifting a negative habit or a limiting belief - you know that it can be easier said than done. It would be nice if we could just flip a switch and be New & Improved (with 30% fewer calories!), but life typically doesn't work that way.

Think of making a positive change in terms of creating a new habit. Maybe you want to stop being so self-critical, or stop being such a perfectionist, or stop being so argumentative (or any one of a bazillion other changes you might want to make).

Make change a process

Instead of expecting yourself to make that change all at once - both noticing when it happens and immediately swapping out the new for the old - think of it as happening in stages.

Notice: First things first. If what you're trying to change is such an ingrained thing that it's what you naturally do without even noticing it, your first task is to start noticing it every time it happens. A habit is mighty hard to change if you don't notice what you're doing.

See the alternative: Noticing it consistently is a good start, but it's not enough. You have to be conscious of the alternative. 

Implement the alternative: Ultimately your goal is to put the new alternative into action. But even if you do a) notice it and b) see the alternative, it can be a challenge to make that change on the fly. Especially if what you are trying to change is an ingrained knee-jerk reaction.

Do an End-of-Day Review

A great tool to facilitate that positive change process is the End-of-Day Review. It's a way to take your change out of real-time and give yourself more time with it. It's simple. Every day, at the end of the day, spend a few minutes looking back at your day and ask, "Where did the old habit pop up?"

If you're in the "noticing" phase, don't worry about anything else at first. Just start training your brain to recognize when it happens. The more you practice you have seeing it in your End-of-Day Review, the more readily you will recognize it when it actually happens.

If you're trying to get better at seeing the alternatives, The End-of-Day Review is a great place to explore that. Each time you see the old habit cropping up, ask yourself, "What would an alternative have been? How could I have reacted to that? What are some different ways of looking at that?"

The more practice your brain has running through positive optinos, the more readily it will be able to gravitate to those options when it really counts.

In a M.A.P. Maker podcast a few months ago, Howard Behar (former President of Starbucks) talked about the value of what he called "celebrating failure." Here's what he had to say:

Like them or not, mistakes often come bearing gifts if we're open to receiving them. Today, over on the US News & World Report blog, I explore that idea, inspired by one of my favorite quotes from Miles Davis: "Do not fear mistakes. There are none."

Read: What if you'd made no mistakes in your life?

--

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

There's never a time when problem-solving isn't a good skill to master, but in a career environment as challenging as today's, it becomes absolutely vital.

Here's an interesting workbook focused on creative problem solving. It takes you through several different aspects of problem solving, including:

--

Need simple steps to re-energize your career?
Get started with 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work!

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Lately I've been working on some aspects of my life that haven't been working for me. Habits, ways of thinking, etc. that simply haven't been leading me in the direction I want to go.

I haven't been making big sweeping changes. I've been working on creating a better path one choice at a time. As so often happens, I started thinking of an analogy for what I've been doing.

It occurred to me that every time I was confronted with the choice of whether to pursue the old mode that wasn't taking me where I want to go, or the new mode, I was in essence at a crossroads. And depending on the choice I made, I was taking a step toward the life I want or a step away from it.

After I started thinking about that, it wasn't long before I hit the whiteboard to sketch out a visual. I scribbled something like this:

For me, it was helpful to see a visual of the idea. Every point along the way has the potential to lead me toward what I want (the green) or away from it (the brown). But not only that, the visual reinforced the notion that, even if I slip, movement towards where I want to go is only one choice away. In fact, every crossroad is the potential beginning for an endless series of positive choices.

It's unrealistic to think that every step and every choice is going to lead you in the right direction. But keeping this crossroads concept in mind can make it easier to consciously take a path that leads to the life you want. You end up with something a little like this.

 The beauty of this approach is that it really focuses your attention on the question of, "What choice am I making right now? Which direction am I choosing right now?"And it's the cumulative effect of those individual choices that takes you where you want to go.

You can apply this at any level, from the macro (would taking this job lead me in a direction I really want to go?) to the micro (e.g., creating a new habit). 

Where are the crossroads in your life? What choices are you making?

--

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Do you want a career that lights you up? Do you want to tap into the potential of passion? Do you want to stand out from the crowd? More than that, do you want a screamin' good deal to help you get there? Then read on!

In January I launched a test version of a six-week Wild About Work group coaching program. I learned a lot from doing one round, and want to do one more test round to solidify it.This one starts on Thursday, April 30th at 6 p.m. Pacific time.

Because part of the intent is essentially "R&D," for my group coaching, I'm offering this at a significantly reduced rate ($125, versus the normal rate of $295). It will be phone-based, so it's easy to take part wherever you are.

This is the last time I'm going to be doing the reduced-rate test version, so after this it will be the full rate.

More information below.

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Do you want to:

- Use passion as a competitive advantage in today's job market?
- Fuel your career success?
- Find clarity, take action, and get traction on a a career that lights you up?
- Spend your time doing something that energizes you and makes you feel alive?
- Connect with a group of like-minded individuals who are all committed to pursuing the dream?

If the answer is to any of these is yes, this Wild About Work group coaching program may be just what you need.

Space is limited to 8 - 10 people, so if you want to take advantage of this opportunity to launch your life change, contact me ASAP. It is telephone-based, so you can join in wherever you are.

I created the Wild About Work group coaching program to help people tap into the energy, insights, and inspiration that comes from working with a group of like-minded individuals in pursuit of a common goal.

You can find more information here .

I hope you'll join me!

Curt