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By Phil, March 1, 2010 2:37 pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes 48 seconds

Do what you love?

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I’ve developed a sick fascination with the British TV show Masterchef.   In the show 156 aspiring amateur chefs compete for the title of “Masterchef”.  They cook for two judges, an angry bald man and an equally irate Aussie who critique their food and slowly kill their dreams, one by one.

The Impossible Dream

My fascination is not with the food (although the contestant who cooked a tinned peach and tomato bread pudding was pretty special).  It lies with the contestants.  In reality TV, the head-shot is a vital tool for every director.   This is where we hear the ambition, the motivation, the dream.  Here are a few from the series so far:

“I do know what I want to do in life now, my passion is food.  My dream is to run a restaurant in the Scottish Highlands” Andrew (Property Developer)

“I want my life to be completely about food.  I want to do it full time.” Kirstie (Real Estate Broker)

“I’m very passionate about food – its been a hobby up until know and Masterchef will allow me to move it forward” Peter (Police Officer)

“I love cooking and to do that for a living would be a dream.  Masterchef means everything to me” Kerry (Full-time Mum)

Almost every contestant is hoping to make a living from cooking.  I love their passion for food and their huge dreams.  They put their heart and soul into this competition.  Yet at every turn, these lifelong ambitions are crushed.  Only one can be crowned Masterchef.

That Makes Me Mad

The show makes me angry.  When I hear contestant after contestant laying out their dream for a career in cooking I seethe.  “What’s stopping you?” I scream at the screen.  “Just go and do it”.

9 ways to explore your Passion

There are many ways to start making a living doing what you love.  I don’t think that entering a competition with a 1 in 156 chance of winning and no guarantees of success at the end is the best way.

So how could these contestants go about making a living from their passion?  The answer is one step at a time:

1. Do what you love – a lot. Cook, cook, cook for anyone and everyone.  Practice the skill you want to make a living from as much as possible
2. Develop your skills. Go to cookery school.  Learn the basic techniques and advanced skills.  Hone your style, and practice some more.
3. Join groups that share your passion. Find others who love food and build networks with them.
4. Interview people who already make a living from your passion. Start talking to restaurant owners and chefs.  Learn about the profession from those already in it.  Understand what you are committing to.
5. Get experience. Look for an opportunity to cook in a professional kitchen.  Volunteer to clean dishes for free.  Be a sous chef and chop onions all day.  Get into the lion’s den to see what life is really like.
6. Establish your expertise. Blog about food – share your passion with the world and get a following
7. Take small steps to make money. Write a cookbook and sell it online – find a way to make a small living in a risk free way from food
8. Write a business plan – look at the financial realities of being a cook or owning a restaurant and see how that fits with your other values in life.  Get experts and your network to review the plan.
9. Start increasing your commitment. Set up a street stand to sell food, or take a part-time job in a kitchen

None of these actions are too difficult in themselves, yet combined they will help to live the passion.  Following these steps would allow the contestants to test out if this really is the dream they were looking for, and build the skills and experience to succeed.

If you are ready in making a doing what you love, think about how these steps might work for you.  You can start taking action to explore the possibilities and start making the dream a reality.

What is your passion in life?  What would it mean to make a living from it?  What advice can you share on making this happen?  Please share your thoughts with the LoL Community.  Thank you.

Picture credit : Tracy Hunter (Flickr Creative Commons)

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By Phil, January 25, 2010 6:17 pm

Reading time: 3 minutes and 15 seconds

Two powerful ways to boost your focus and improve productivity every day – click here to subscribe and never miss another post

Find your focus - picture: Sergi's Blog

“Its such a perfect day – I wish I spent it with you” – Lou Reed, Perfect Day

Imagine a perfect day of focus.  From the minute you open your eyes, you are energised, in the zone and ready to go.  Throughout the day, you effortlessly work through your top priorities and get them done.  You deflect the interruptions with grace and constructively deal with the challenges that arise.  As you wind down at the end of the day, you feel fulfilled, content and satisfied.  This may sound unrealistic, unobtainable and a little bit crazy, however why not try to get as close as possible to this?

I’ve struggled with finding focus on a daily basis.  I’m a well known procrastinator, particularly when it comes to doing the most important (and for that read scary) things.  Yet recently I’ve found two really powerful techniques that have helped me immensely to move closer to having the perfect day, and here they are:

1. Plan out your day in scrupulous detail

One problem I had with being focussed and effective each day was that I didn’t even know what focus looked like.  To change this, I have taken to setting aside time each morning to create an incredibly detailed plan of attack for the day.  Starting with my prioritized to-do list (I’ll share how to create this later in the week), I work out the key priorities for the day – this includes things from work, my personal life and also how I’m going to take care of myself.  I use my calendar to see how much time I have available to make sure that this is realistic.  I then create an incredibly detailed programme for the day ahead with a blow by blow account of EXACTLY what order I will do everything and the timing for this.  For example today’s schedule looks like this:

8.30am Meditate

8.45am – Send key emails (and I have a list of exactly which ones)

9.15am – Clear out email accounts

10.00am – Go to Coffee Shop – Write four blog posts

12.30pm – Return home

12.45pm – Run – 4 miles tempo run

1.15pm – Post run stretching, shower

1.40pm – Lunch – spaghetti bolognese

2.00pm – Put postings on Linked In

2.30pm – Business Telephone calls (again I have a list of which ones)

3.30pm – Design ideal client experience

5.30pm – Scheduled business call

6.00pm – Do Crossword and relax

6.30pm – Send out personal emails

7.00pm – Cook supper, relax and read

Anyone who knows me will realise that this is the antithesis of my laid back personality.  Yet the remarkable thing is that it is 11.38am and I’m in the coffee shop finishing my second blog post of the day.

I’ve found that knowing what you want to achieve creates a real sense of focus and even if you follow the plan with 80% success, those days feel remarkably productive.  Mapping out your perfect day in obsessive detail is no guarantee of success every time, yet it gets you focused on what is most important and helps to reduce the draw of distractions during the day.  It is easier to get back on track and know what to revert to if you are thrown a curve-ball.

2. Act like you are being audited

This powerful technique came from the Change your Thoughts blog.  The key here is to act as if your actions are being audited each day.  Imagine that at the end of each day you have to justify what you did to a super critical auditor who will make you account for every second.  How easily could you justify what you did today?

To put this technique into practice, start out by “meeting the auditor” twice a day for a week – at lunchtime and at the end of the day.  Each time you meet, you need to justify your time since the last meeting – explain what you have done and what makes that important and useful.  You also have to explain your less productive time – that half hour on Facebook, the twenty minutes in the bathroom, the 3 hours watching TV.  Remember the auditor is not there to judge, only to listen and record.

The objective of this process is not to beat ourselves up, or to take all the fun out of life, it is simply to find focus.  One of my primary values is to take better care of myself and develop inner peace and happiness.  For me, finding time to meditate, run, read and simply relax and get quality time is justified and I can look the auditor in the eye with good conscience.   However, if I goofed out on the important deadline that I had and didn’t make an important call to go running, that is harder to justify.

Over time, your inner auditor will become internalised.  You’ll feel them looking over your shoulder as you start your game of Tetris and go back to finishing your spreadsheet.  It will become easier and easier to justify your time at the meetings as you find your focus improving.

So the perfect day may not happen every day, however using these techniques you can get closer to a focused and effective day to day existence.  As with all personal change some days will be better than others and you’ll need to be kind to yourself when the less good days come along.  However with persistence and patience you’ll find the Perfect Day may just be possible.  Let me know how your perfect day is, by commenting.

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By Phil, November 17, 2009 2:54 pm

Before we start, thanks for reading Less Ordinary Living and I hope you find some inspiration.  I’m Thinking Big to get 1,000 subscribers for Less Ordinary Living (currently 72), please click here and subscribe to never miss a post.  Thanks to every one of you for reading. Enjoy!

Reading time: 3 minutes and 2 seconds

We’re all human and change can be tough.  Its easy for us to get stuck in a rut, or in our comfort zone – and this can lead to our good intentions and Big Thinking dying on the vine.  Nasty things like fear and emotion can sometimes block us from action.

Getting unstuck and out of a rut is challenging.   I always start out by taking baby steps.  For example, looking at my personal vision and goals, my first step is to identify my most urgent goal.  Currently this is getting more involved in my community and building out my network of friends.  My goal in 5 years time is to be a leader of a community organisation, and to be an active member of a two other groups focused on areas of personal interest.  The next question is – what can I do this week to move forward with this?

I’ve learned that to successfully achieve goals like this I need to take two parallel tracks – taking actions in the world around me, and working on what goes on between my two ears in my internal world.  To achieve my goal I came up with the following plan that covers both areas:

1. Actions in the outside world – I’ve already researched community groups that interest me on the internet and identified an organisation called Slow Down London and a local running club.  I’ll commit to calling a representative of Slow Down London to find out more about how I can be involved.  I’ll also commit to going to the running club next week to see how I enjoy it.  Making these real life commitments and keeping them moves me towards my goal and vision.
2. Actions in my inner world – Although I’m a sociable and outgoing person, I have always avoided joining groups and societies.  Something inside me has held me back from this for all of my adult life.  I’ve been meaning to attend this running club for nearly a year now and haven’t done it.  To successfully achieve the goal in a sustainable way, I need to understand more about this and overcome this issue, or the initial actions I take will probably quickly fade away.  I’ll commit to observing the thoughts and emotions that come up this week as I take my first steps.  Perhaps I’ll identify a fear of rejection if I turn up to the running club and no-one talks to me the first time.  I know that I have a tendency to think I can do things better than anyone else (I’m wrong of course), and get frustrated in group situations, so I’ll look out for that feeling.  I’ll record the thoughts, emotions and stories I’m telling myself about groups, and spend time analysing them to see what is working for me and what isn’t.  I’ll come up with different ways to think about clubs and different stories to tell.  If I commit to this and work hard at it, it should make it easier for me to happily commit to clubs and societies in the future.

I know that joining a new group is hard for me and the physical action of doing so will help.  However, unless I can get my head straight, it will never get any easier.  So taking the first step, actually involves taking two steps and each is vital.  At the beginning, I said that making change is hard for us, and this explains why.

So how can you take your first step?  Follow this simple process to design your actions this week:

1)   Identify your most pressing challenge or area that you want to work on (for me, my community)

2)   Identify the specific area for development (for me, involvement in community groups)

3)   Design some specific actions to take that are realistic over the next week.  Remember that great journeys start with a single step, so don’t overdo it

4)   Think about how your thoughts, emotions, fears, beliefs and stories might be impacting your ability to be successful.  Determine to observe these over the next week without judgment and write these things down.  When did you feel fear and what was behind that?  What stories did you tell about yourself (I’m not good with new people) that might stop you in your tracks.  Consider which thoughts might be holding you back and analyse them – is that story, fear or emotion realistic?  How could you think in a different way or tell a different story that would be more helpful in achieving your goals?

This approach was difficult and frustrating when I first tried it, however over time and with practice it has become more instinctive.  If you can stick with it, you’ll find it gets easier to take the actions in the external world as you remove the mental and emotional blocks you’ve built up.  Week by week you’ll start to get unstuck and make steady progress towards living your vision and achieving your goals.

So now you have the three steps that I use to think big and make it happen– creating a vision, setting a 5 year plan, and taking external and internal steps to achieve this.  The world is your oyster, so think big and make the most of your life!

For the rest of this year, Less Ordinary Living will focus on making the most of 2010, so please subscribe to make sure you don’t miss a post!

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By Phil, November 12, 2009 10:58 am

Reading time – 2 minutes 58 seconds

What could life look like in 5 years?

What could your life look like in 2015?  In the second part of this three part series on Thinking Big, the focus is on creating a clear picture of how your life could be in five years time (for music lovers, this post was inspired by the song 5 Years Time by Noah and the Whale)

What were you doing in 2005?  What was life like back then?  What were the most important things in your life?  What did you want your life to look like at the beginning of the next decade?  One thing I’ve found for myself is that life was a lot different 5 years ago.  A lot has changed, a lot has happened and I’ve learned many lessons (some easy, some pretty tough).  I also know that creating a plan back then, along with a certain female country singer has helped me to make the most of my life.

Five years ago, I was very happy in my personal life and quite dissatisfied with my professional life.  I was an accountant and couldn’t get excited or see the meaning in the work that I was doing.  My department was struggling and shipping people off to anywhere projects could be found for long periods of time.  At one point, I found myself in Minneapolis, working 14 hours plus a day, seven days a week, doing a repetitive task.  I was out of shape, bored and missing my wife and friends back home.  One night I drank most of a bottle of red wine, and found myself weeping into my pillow whilst listening to Sheryl Crow.  It was time to change and start thinking bigger.

In 2005, I started to think about what life could look like in 5 years time.  I realised that I couldn’t change everything overnight, but I started to formulate a picture of what my ideal personal and professional life could look like in 2010.  Professionally, I knew that I wanted work that I enjoyed, that allowed me to work with interesting people and most importantly was meaningful.  Personally I wanted to be a happier person, be able to react more calmly to life’s ups and downs, and to have enough time to enjoy life.

I started to get specific on each part of my life – career, family, health, financial, my community and my spiritual development.  Some of the areas were easier than others to think through and visualise.  I started with the question, what would be ideal in this aspect of my life in 5 years time?  When I got stuck, which I did with the career question, I then asked how could I find out?

To answer the career question, I started to look around me at people who seemed to enjoy their careers.  I asked them about the reality of their work – what they enjoyed and what made it meaningful for them.  I also looked internally and started to ask myself important questions – what are my values, what gets me excited and passionate, what are my strengths, what DON’T I want from my career.

It took me a fair amount of time to work through each area and come up with an answer to the question of what would be an ideal situation in 5 years time.  It wasn’t always easy to do and I was lucky to have support from a coach, my mentors, friends and family when I got stuck.  Once I had the questions answered I’d developed a blue print for what life could be.

So, your challenge is to think about how life could be ideal at the start of 2015 in each of the following areas; your career, your family situation, your heath and mental wellbeing, the community you live in and your support system, and your spiritual understanding.  Use the vision you created in the first post to help guide this process.  I won’t pretend that this is easy or won’t take time.  Get support, think it through, do some research, don’t get put off and think big about the possibilities.

So how does my life now compare to the plan I created in 2005?  Well first, it certainly isn’t everything that I’d visualised.  A lot happened between now and then including some unexpected and delightful opportunities.  I used my vision as a compass to set the rough direction, rather than a map that had to be followed.  However, I have found incredibly meaningful work, a much better balance in my life, more peace and the ability to react to external circumstances with more calm.  Without Sheryl Crow and my 5 year plan I know that a lot of this wouldn’t have happened.

In the final post, the subject is taking action to start Thinking Big.  Subscribe here to make sure you don’t miss it!

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By Phil, November 10, 2009 3:11 pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes and 53 seconds – Value: Priceless

Find your vision

The next three posts on Less Ordinary Living, are about Thinking Big and creating a powerful, clear vision for the next decade (and beyond).  At the end you’ll have a no-holds barred plan for the future, which will help you make the most of your personal and professional potential, and feel happier and more confident.  Please take part over the next three posts and encourage all your friends and family to do the same.

I’ve been trying to think big over the last few weeks and the biggest challenges I’ve faced are my own thoughts and emotions.  I’ll suggest a big dream like running a marathon and raising money for charity and… BOOM – I start thinking about how hard the training will be.. POW – I feel afraid that I might fail and let all my sponsors down.  It’s easy to think ourselves out of the life we’d like or to get afraid of failing.

A technique I’ve found particularly helpful in overcoming these challenges is to create a vision of the future.  Most of us like to daydream and start imagining what life could be like.  We create an image of a life where we are fabulous happy and have time to do all the things we’ve always wanted to.  I’ve found that if I can grant myself permission to dream for half an hour without any critical thoughts I can really start to think big.

Visualisation is an incredibly powerful tool in preparing for the future.  Professional sportspeople use visualisation to prepare for a big race or tournament.  Neurological studies have found that the same parts of the brain fire in the sportsperson’s brain when they visualise as when they actually compete.  So visualising helps us practice the future and train our minds to focus on what we want to achieve.  I’m trying to take time to visualise my vision as much as possible and finding it helps to quieten some of the negative thinking and fear that arises.

One exercise I’ve found particularly helpful for this process is the Party.

In this exercise you find somewhere comfortable and set aside 30 minutes.

• First, you make an agreement with yourself that you’ll allow yourself to dream without judgment or fear.
• Now close your eyes and start to imagine that you are at your 90^th birthday party and are surrounded by the most important people in your life.
• Everyone has gathered together to celebrate your life (so far!) and to talk about you.
• Start to imagine who is at the party, where it is being held and take a minute or two to walk around and just soak it all in.  Don’t worry if it takes a while to see it – that is natural.
• Once you are ready, let the toasts begin, as the most important people in your life talk about you
• Some people might talk about the amazing things that you’ve done in your life – how you travelled the world, gave your time to a charity, were a loving family member or parent.
• Others might recall some of the great times they spent with you – the parties, the holidays, the projects, the businesses they worked on with you, or just the quiet times.
• Others will talk more about the kind of person you are – your best qualities – kindness, love, compassion, dynamism, sense of humour.
• Take some time to enjoy the party and listen to what everyone is saying – what are the most important things that are coming through about you.
• Once you’ve heard everything you need to hear, call the party to an end by thanking all the guests and being grateful for their role in your life.
• Now take a little time to write down the key ideas in a notebook or journal – think about some of the key achievements, the good times and importantly how you applied your best qualities.

This exercise helped me to really get an understanding of the vision for my life.  It clarified my priorities, identified a few really key things that I’d like to do, and helped me to work out what kind of person I’d like to be today.  I’ve used it several times to firm up my vision and to get a clear picture of the life I’d like to lead.

So, step one of the Thinking Big process is to create your vision of the future.  Don’t feel you need to get out your crystal ball and get every detail right – and don’t feel that this will tie you to achieving the exact vision you create.  The vision is guide for how to act each day and the direction to take – but just a guide.  Often life will create opportunities we couldn’t even have dreamt of.   As your vision develops, spend time with it and learn to quieten the doubts and any negative emotions that arise.

Congratulations – you have taken the first step to creating your vision for the future.  Next time, we’ll look at how to plan for the next five years.  Take a minute to subscribe by clicking here to make sure you don’t miss the next two parts.