Posts tagged Natural Abilities
The Five Rules For A Really Great Life
Nov 13th
You know how some people seem to live the most extraordinary lives? They love what they do for work. They are in happy relationships. Each day is valued and treasured.
What do these people know that helps them live this way?
They know themselves – they know their talents, strengths and passions – and build their lives around these attributes. They know the Five Rules For A Really Great Life.
Before I share the Five Rules, let me tell you why these rules are so important. Life is ours to invent – it is the greatest gift we receive. We are born with a blank canvas and all the supplies needed to create our masterpiece. These supplies show as our hardwired gifts – our talents, strengths and passions. They are unique to each of us. They allow us to be good at some things and not others; we love some things and not others. And when we discover these attributes and build them into our lives, we create customized, high-impact, happy lives. We find our fit – we play to our greatest abilities. We are happier. We are more productive. We have greater impact.
So if we had a set of rules that would help us achieve this, we would have greater success in inventing an extraordinary life – in creating our masterpiece.
Here are my Five Rules For A Really Great Life, summarized from my new book, The Greatness Zone – Know Yourself, Find Your Fit, Transform the World:
1. Learn what you are good at and play to your strengths. What comes easily and naturally to you? What makes you feel capable and competent? What do you seem to know a lot about? What are your strengths? When someone introduces you, how do they describe you? When you know what you are good at, build your work and life around it. This builds your confidence, plays to your natural abilities and helps you move from good to great. Choose work and things in life that allow you to do your best work.
2. Discover your passions and build them into your life. What could you do all day and never get bored or tired of? When you have time, what do you choose to do? What gets you fired up!, excited and energized? Include as much of these passionate things in work and life. The more excited and enthusiastic you are, the more energy you bring to what you are doing. Studies show that those who are both good at what they do and passionate about doing it, commit the extra work and effort to move from good to great. Disciplined achievement is required to excel at things – and a deep passion for the activity increases the focus, energy and commitment to practice enough to become exceptional. As we all know, we do so much better at the things we love to do.
3. Define what makes you feel successful and use it to guide your decisions. What is your definition of success? What makes you happy? How do you trust what you feel and think instead of what others tell you? We each must learn to listen to our own internal “value voice.” A value voice is our definition of what is important and meaningful to us. Many times the people around us share their sense of what is important. But to live an exceptional and great life, we must realize that our definition of success must truly be ours – to identify the things that matter most to us. Defining happiness for yourself is one of the most difficult components of discovering and living in your greatness zone.
4. Know your world; stay current and connected to fact. What is going on in your world? Who needs or values your areas of greatness – what you do best and what you are passionate about? Where are the value areas for you? Your value in the world is in the context of the world. When you know the true you, you can find the places (in work and life) that need what you do best. You find your fit. This allows you to play to your greatness. You are most effective. You have the greatest impact. You are the happiest. Fit matters.
5. Define your Greatness Zone; then stand out, be authentic, and make your impact. Where is your best fit? Where is your greatness zone – that place that lets you be good at what you do, love doing it, meets your definition of success AND adds value to the world? Your greatness zone is that place where you get to be your best in your world. You play to your greatness. You are bold, authentic and confident. You choose wisely about what matters to you and you create your happiness each day. You customize your life for the things that matter to you. You own your life. You get to be you.
As I like to say, and it is my own personal belief, someone greater than you thought you should be you – so be you – and be it in a great way. Discover your Greatness Zone – then work and live in it. Life is not a dress rehearsal; we have today. Choose to make it extraordinary by playing to your greatness – by being in your Zone.
And when each of us lives our greatness (that means we stop living in an average way), we bring this greatness to our world. We transform our world. And the world needs what we do best – it needs us to move from average to great. It needs us to invent it each day with our very best. This is how our world develops; this is how we help it develop.
So, you are a life inventor, and everything you need to have an extraordinary life you already have. It is up to you to learn about yourself – to discover your talents, passions and strengths – then build your life around them. This allows you to be authentic and align yourself to your core. This allows you to access your greatness. Life is so much better in the Zone…
Happiness is an Inside Job
Sep 11th
Know where to look. In Eckhart Tolle’s bestseller, The Power of Now, Tolle tells of a stranger who walked past a beggar one day, as he held out his tattered baseball cap and muttered, “Spare some change?”
The stranger stopped, looked, and asked the beggar, “What’s that you’re sitting on?”
“Oh this?” he responded. “Just an old box I’ve been sitting on as long as I can remember.”
“Have you looked inside?” asked the stranger.
“Why should I?” objected the beggar. “There’s nothing in it. As I said, it’s just an old box.”
“Why don’t you look and see?” encouraged the stranger.
Reluctantly, the beggar stood, turned, and slowly stooping over, he opened the box. When he looked inside, to his consternation, he discovered a fortune of priceless gold and silver coins.”
Most people look outside for what could only ever be found inside. And, where they look is likely to be anywhere. But, some of the more common places are these:
1) Pleasure is one place, which explains how most people have learned to endure the work week. They do so by thinking about what they’re going to do on the weekend. They’re the pleasure seekers who mistakenly think that the stress they feel comes from outside just as they mistakenly think that their freedom from it lies outside of themselves, too.
According to the New York Times, researchers have determined that, while fewer heart attacks occur on weekends, there is a day of the week wherein most of the heart attacks do occur. What day is that? Monday. The researchers have postulated that people so dread the work week that, when Monday comes, the stress they feel manifests physically.
2) Lots of people mistakenly think their happiness is in finding and holding the right job or career, or having the right profession. This is not to minimize the importance of matching your interests and natural abilities and talents with a profession that compliments them, as well as cultivates them. But, whatever fulfillment or happiness you may find in a career will eventually come to an end, just as everything else does. One day, you’re going to retire. What will you do then?
3) Closely associated with the right profession are the promotions that many feel will award them everything they need to be happy. “If I could just get that promotion, the recognition, win the sales awards, get published,” and so forth, “I’ll be happy.” Again, any joy you feel, and most promotions come with some measure of it, could only ever be temporary. The excitement with the promotion, like everything else, will wane and, eventually, disappear. Then, what? Another promotion?
4) Possessions may be the most common place in our culture people look for happiness–in the stuff they accumulate and acquire. The cars, houses, fashions, and so forth. It is true, when you put on a new suit, you feel good. When you drive a new car, it smells new and looks terrific and evokes the envy of others–all important aspects to my own illusory happiness. But, all too soon, the car smells and looks similar to all other cars. When this happens, the discontentment returns and the cycle of insanity starts all over.
5) One of the biggest myths in our culture is that people think, “If I could just find the right partner and marry the right person, I’ll be happy.” Happiness, however, cannot be found in another person or relationship. Since when did your happiness become someone else’s responsibility?
There was a couple who couldn’t get along. Every day they disagreed, argued, called each other names, and, as a consequence, threatened divorce on more than one occasion. But, being the good churchgoers they were, they had been raised to believe divorce was never an option. So, they remained in misery, made threats almost daily, but never followed through on separation.
One morning, she had all she could take and so snapped.
“Something’s going to have to give here!” she shouted at him at breakfast.
“Oh yea,” he responded. “So what are you going to do?”
“I think,” she hesitated and then started again. “I think we should just pray that God would take one of us…and…and…and then, I’ll go live with my mother.”
Happiness is an inside job. If you want it, you’ll have to go to the one and only place where it can be found – inside yourself. There is nothing outside of you that can do for you what you could only ever do for yourself. Happiness is not something you will ever find in life; it’s an attitude you bring to life. So, do what virtually every spiritual master, including Jesus, suggested: If you want to know where happiness is, it is inside of you. Make it your spiritual practice to go within – to meditate, or call it prayer, if you prefer, but spend time in the quiet place of your heart, and there tap into the infinite and natural reservoir of your own innate happiness.
