I’m still making my way through Seth Godin’s new book ‘Linchpin’. I read something the other day that really jumped out at me and totally resonated. Here’s what he said:

“Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion”.

It resonated because I’ve felt the very same thing about strengths. It would be easy to look at what we think our strengths are and then decide that we need to find a different job that will match our strengths.

There is a slim possibility that that may be the case. But it is definitely not where to start. We start by discovering what our passion and strengths are and then we look for ways to bring that passion and those strengths to the job that we have.

There is no perfect job. We won’t find something that is a total match for our passion and strengths. We have to bring our passion and strengths to what we do.

So maybe, just maybe, instead of dreaming about the perfect job that doesn’t exist, we could think about how to integrate our current job with the passion and strengths we do have.

Rest. We all know we need it. Most of us don’t get enough of it.

And let’s be honest, life is busy, there’s always stuff going on. Who wants to potentially miss out on something exciting because we’re doing something as boring as rest?!

But what if our understanding of rest is all wrong? Rest isn’t about doing nothing when we could be doing something. Rest is about refreshment and replenishment. It’s about recharging the batteries before they run out.

What is restful for me more than likely isn’t restful for you. But if we are going to be people who maximise our lives then we’ve going to need to figure out our means of rest.

If we are going to be creative, innovative, and imaginative people, then we need to optimise the conditions of our life around unleashing our potential.

Rest is about ensuring our life doesn’t get stuck in a rut (a creativity killer if ever there was one). Let’s make sure we take time this weekend to get out of the rut and see things from a fresh perspective, get replenished, and discover and unleash our creative genius. Who knows what next week might look like if we do.

What are the things that leave you feeling inspired?

Is it a particular type of film? Certain books? A good talk? An interactive conversation?

We’re all inspired in different ways. Sadly though, we all far too often not inspired at all.

We get sucked into the daily repetitive rhythms of life and forget to dream, imagine, and explore.

So what are the things that inspire you to dream, imagine, and explore? Take some time this week to do something that you know will leave you inspired.

Read that book you’ve been meaning to read for ages. Take a night off and go and see that movie. Make the time and space to do something that you KNOW we revitalise you.

And then make sure you do this at least once a week.

I’ve been thinking a lot about gifts lately. I’ve been struck by the reality that pretty much all of the gift giving I do is obligatory. Family and friends birthdays, Christmas, and, most recently, Eloise’s baby friends birthdays.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way begrudging this giving of gifts. Not at all. It’s just that I wonder if we’ve lost some of the joy of giving because it is almost always tied to people and circumstances where it is an expectation.

Isn’t giving most exciting and meaningful when it is surprising and with no expectation of anything in return? Giving is a totally different entity when there’s no expectation that the other will give back when it’s your birthday, or whatever.

We have a budget item for gifts in our spreadsheet. Our giving of gifts is planned to every detail. Without necessarily suggesting that we just scrap this, what if we could find a way to add pure, spontaneous, non-obligatory giving to our lives?

You tell me, what would excite you more, someone buying you a birthday gift which is totally in line with expectations, or that friend giving you a gift with no other reason than the fact that they saw something that they thought you’d love and bought it for you?

Actually, let me take this one step further. What if we scrapped buying each other reciprocal birthday presents (except maybe for special birthdays) and just took on the practice of giving spontaneously?

What do you think?

I’m in the middle of reading Seth Godin’s latest book called Linchpin. I highly recommend it. This post is not simply a book recommendation though, I wanted to share a quote from the book that I hope will be both inspiring and through-provoking. Here’s what he says:

Everyone, every single person, has been a genius at least once. Everyone as winged it, invented, and created their way out of a jam at least once.

If you can do it once, you can do it again.

Art, at least art as I define it, is the intentional act of using your humanity to create a change in another person. How and where you that are is a cultural choice in the moment. No one wrote novels a thousand years ago. No one made videos thirty years ago. No one Twittered poetry three years ago.

There’s no doubt that certain sorts of are are easier to create. A warm smile to a stranger on an airplane at the right moment is an artistic endeavour that’s fairly easy for most of us to muster. Directing an Academy Award-winning film, on the other hand, is reserved for a select few. I’ll accept the fact that great novelists are born and made. But I don’t believe that you need to be an outlier to be an artist.

I’m not so interested in pushing you to become a brilliant filmmaker. I’m very passionate about exploring why you are so afraid about creating art that is actually within your grasp.

It is so easy to see ‘art’ as something that others do. How often do we all hear people – ourselves – say, ‘I’m not an artist’? Who says so?

Why not take some time this week to think about the ways in which you are an artist? What are the ways in which you could use your humanity – your passions, skills, abilities, and strengths – to create positive change in the people around you?

It’s been a while. Due to everything that’s been going on – from redundancy to starting a new job – there have been no updates since the end of September. I’m not going to be back posting on a daily basis for now, but I am going to be back posting frequently. And definitely more frequently than once every six weeks!

The last month has been a really great time of acclimatising with my new job, settling in with the team I’m working with, and just generally finding my feet. It really feels like a good fit though and moves me into an area of work that is much more in tune with my passions. Sometimes it takes something bad (redundancy) to open up doors that might never have been pursued otherwise. All in all, I feel like I’m in a much better position than I was previously.

And that inevitably brings me back to the theme of gratitude. I feel so fortunate on so many levels with the way things have worked out and I have not ceased with my thankfulness. That said, gratitude is something that has to be there regardless of whether everything has worked out yet or not. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I was equally as thankful before as got the job as when I got it. There is ALWAYS something to be grateful about. And thankfulness is something that needs to permeate every aspect of our lives.

I can’t prove it, but I suspect that thankful people are more successful people. Thankful people have more opportunities open up for them. Our attitude will always come through; people can sense it. And thankfulness is a sign of humility which is one of the highest qualities we can ever attain.

I’ve been thinking about confidence these last few days. Where does it come from and how do we get it? What makes one person full of confidence and another consumed by timidity?

I’m sure there are many answers to these questions. These are not the sort of questions that have one simple answer. That said, the ‘answer’ that I’ve found myself keeping coming back to has been that of self-awareness.

The more fully we know ourselves – our strengths, our weaknesses, our passions, our motivations – the more we find confidence permeating our beings. The more comfortable we are within our own skin – rather than trying to be like someone else – the more confidence we have.

So perhaps a question for those of us who are struggling with a lack of confidence is to ask ourselves whether we have taken enough time to know ourselves.

Change. It’s that thing we all seem to have a love / hate relationship with. Most of us recognise that things need to change and yet, at the same time, almost everyone has one part of us who is at least a little bit resistant to it.

Something that I’ve discovered though is that the less change happens, the harder it is to embrace it.

If an organisation changes nothing for five years and then, suddenly, out of the blue announces a whole series of changes, then there is going to be opposition. Everyone has become comfortable with the ways things are.

And perhaps ‘comfort’ is the key word here. If we allow things to become too comfortable then inevitably people will react more fiercely to change. Why? Because it breaks them out of the their comfort zone.

I am of the school of thought that change for changes sake is a good thing. Now, of course, if there are good reasons for changing something then that is much better than having no reason. But even if there isn’t, I’m convinced that it is still necessary to make changes.

My reasoning behind this is simple. For people to more readily embrace change, change needs to be part of the organisations culture. People need to be accustomed to things changing regularly. And then, when bigger, more necessary changes need to be implemented, it will be easier to push through because you have a change expectant organisation.

What do you need to change?

Today’s post is by regular guest author Dale Swinburne. (Catch up on parts 1, 2, 3)

Each of us has incredible potential. We have been created to live a full life according to Chip Anderson. We’ve been walking through his Aliveness Theory as he charts for us the stark comparison we could experience in our lives as opposed to the lives we settle for.

As we allow the negative voices in our lives (see previous post) to dictate to us who we will become we begin to sink into, what Chip called, deadness. At first we start changing who we are. We try to become what they want us to be so that we will be worthy to receive their acceptance and love. As this pattern of living continues our pandering to their desires becomes perfected. We identify more with the mask we present to the world around us than we do our shrinking selves.

But as the descent to deadness continues a desire to control instead of being controlled continuously grows. Soon the desire to control the world around you is what drives you. You live behind a wall of denial driven by addictions to power and prestige. We have sunk into a level of living that denies the truth about ourselves. We deny our emptiness and our loneliness by treating the world around us as if we were God. We make demands of our context that they recognize our supremacy. When they don’t, we lash out in retribution and when they do we take it as evidence that we are God. Believing our own deity deception we then convince ourselves that if we are God then we are alive.

But we aren’t alive. We are walking dead. When we’ve gotten this low our defenses against the truth about ourselves are so thick it is only the fortunate that will see the truth that they are dead and empty inside except for the loneliness, the rage, the self contempt, and the pain.

It is a very bleak picture. A picture that is self perpetuating. But Chip Anderson’s theory isn’t the “Deadness Theory” it is the “Aliveness Theory” and it is what captivated him in his life work. It was exhilarating for him to watch somebody go from deadness to life.

So how does this process get turned around? Chip called the pivotal moment, where the momentum in someone’s life started flowing towards life and away from deadness, a “Big Arrow Experience”. A Big Arrow experience is an experience that provides a context that doesn’t require facades or addictions in order for you to feel accepted.

Chip poured his life into introducing Gallup’s StrengthsFinder into the lives of thousands of people, introducing it to over 100 universities and colleges. The StrengthsFinder assessment lets us know the 5 areas we are most talented in. It is usually a very affirming moment. You are told in which five areas you can achieve real excellence. As Chip participated in this moment over and over he saw the Aliveness Theory taking effect. The assessment was a Big Arrow experience. It told people that regardless of your defenses, your pain, your isolation, your deadness, you are unique and gifted. At this affirming moment it was as if an arrow pierced all of their defenses and all of their control and embedded itself right into the core of the person and said “You are valuable – no conditions.” For many it is a statement they haven’t heard in many, many years and it birthed a renewal of life inside of them.

But this is just the beginning of the process back to Aliveness. Chip taught about the process of feeling the Big Arrow awaken your true self but also the keys becoming a Big Arrow yourself.

The title I’ve given this post is simply a sentence that I read this morning that really resonated with me. It ties in nicely with the previous post where I talked about the importance of dreaming.

It is very easy to focus on what we do not have. We become consumed by our needs, whether they be physical, material, emotional, or spiritual. And they end up constraining our imagination.

Too many us end up having our futures limited because we have allowed our circumstances to overwhelm our imaginations. You see, if we cannot imagine something, then we have no chance of ever seeing it come to pass. We end up becoming the things that we think about. We gravitate towards the things that consume our minds. If all that we think about is our problems, situations, and circumstances, then we have no way out into a brighter future.

Give yourself permission to look up, look ahead, and unleash your imagination. If you cannot conceive it in your mind then there is little to no chance of it ever coming to pass.

Imagine.