Comments (19)

By Phil, March 1, 2010 2:37 pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes 48 seconds

Do what you love?

Click here to subscribe.  You’ll get two articles on making the most of life and work delivered to your inbox each week.

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)

Comments (11)

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.

Comments (2)

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!

Comments (1)

By Phil, October 21, 2009 4:44 pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes and 8 seconds

As I’ve turned my attention to Thinking Big for the next decade, I’ve encountered some interesting challenges.  Getting excited about the possibilities that lie ahead has seen me encounter some of my old friends – fear, anxiety and reality.  I’ve heard the little voices in my head popping up to try and persuade me “you can’t do that”, “don’t be ridiculous” or “that’s impossible”.  The fear of failure and the embarrassment that comes with it nearly stopped the Big Thinking in its tracks.  Luckily, I was drawn to the wise words of Rudyard Kipling in his poem, If.  Here are some key lessons:

1 If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too.

Kipling’s first lesson is to believe in yourself.  If you believe in your ability and your vision wholeheartedly, you’ll increase your chances of success.  It will help you to remain focused in your actions and to deal with the skepticism of others.  Starting with the mindset that everything is possible is a very powerful assumption for Thinking Big.  Kipling adds that it is understandable that others might doubt you, and not to dismiss them for that – however it is vital to trust yourself.   Building up our self-belief by taking action helps to lower our fear of failure.

2. If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same;

Kipling’s famous line rings true for Thinking Big.  The path to realizing your goals may not always be smooth.  We all face kinks in the road, and days when everything seems to go wrong.  Kipling advises remaining calm and focused at these times.  The genius of this advice is to take the same approach when amazing triumphs occur.  Getting off the emotional rollercoaster ride is a key to staying focused and that helps us to achieve our goals.  We can only control our actions, not the results of how we act and this maxim reminds of us this.  If we give 100% and accept the results, fear of failure can start to fade away.

3. If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,?’ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch;

Kipling reminds us to stay humble regardless of our trajectory and surroundings.  Thinking Big may lead to huge changes in our life as the journey progresses.  Kipling suggests staying true to ourselves and being authentic in our relationships to others.  His advice is not to keep our virtue and humility intact as we progress on life’s journey.  This reminder has helped me to manage my anxiety over Thinking Big.

4. If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;

Kipling hits on one of the keys to Thinking Big – the ability to dream without letting the dream take over.  A dream or vision can provide huge motivation and focus, yet life has a sense of humour and the unexpected is never far away.  A fixed dream can become a rod for our backs, or even worse blind us to the possibilities in a situation.  Kipling teaches us that we have to be focused, yet flexible in our approach to life.

5. Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

Kipling reminds us again that if we follow our dreams and retain our composure, then anything and everything is possible.  Thinking Big isn’t easy but If we can stay focused, act with humility, believe in ourselves and manage our expectations then amazing success is possible.

If you enjoyed this article, click here to subscribe to Less Ordinary Living.

Comments (0)

By Phil, October 9, 2009 11:15 am

Reading Time: 1 minute 4 seconds

I’ve found myself talking a lot about Thinking Big recently.  One metaphor that keeps coming up for me is the Story of the Orchard.  In the past I’ve thought big, but never acted big – I’ve lacked the confidence to believe in my vision.  It is natural to have doubts over a grand vision and there are always people on hand to knock your ideas and run you down.  Finding the self-confidence, dedication and patience to stick with the plan is a real challenge.

This story is about a farmer who had a run down field at the back of her house.  The farmer told her friend that one day that field would grow the best fruit in the county.  He laughed at her, “Ridiculous, that land is a disaster and it always has been – totally infertile and covered in weeds.  What a waste of time!”

Through the heat of the summer, the farmer toiled in the sun to pull out the thick-set weeds.  Sometimes she just wanted to pack it in and hide in the farmhouse.  When the land was cleared, she had to pick out the huge rocks and stones in the soil one by one.  It was backbreaking and her friend came by to remind her that she was wasting her time, every day.  She ploughed and fertilised the land, breaking several plough blades on hidden rocks along the way.  The thought crossed her mind “I am ridiculous” but she pictured the golden apples and strove on.

The farmer invested a good portion of her savings in the best seeds and cuttings she could afford and planted them.  She tended the young plants diligently.  The first year, there was a severe frost and most of the young plants were killed, however a few survived and that summer she got some beautiful strawberries.  She decided to give it one more go and follow her dream.  As the years went by, the sun and rain helped  the plants become mighty trees.  Before too long, the trees were groaning with sweet luscious fruit – much more than the farmer could ever use.  She shared the fruit with the whole county and particularly her friend who had mocked her on every occasion.  Before long, everyone was taking cuttings and seeds to grow their own fruit and no-one could contemplate not having an orchard.

This story shows that when you think big, everything is possible.  The key is to believe enough in your thoughts and overcome those around who think you are crazy.  Having a clear vision and plan is important.  Even more important is being patient and grateful and seeing potential challenges as part of the overall success.  In the end thinking big can yield fruit for you, those around you and even change the world that you live in.

So keep on exploring how you can think big, and also act big.  Also if you enjoyed this, please do subscribe by clicking the envelope icon to the right. You’ll get every new post delivered to you and you’ll support me in thinking big to get 1,000 subscribers to Less Ordinary Living.