The Ripple Revolution (tm)

Posts in category Energize your career

How to make your work more meaningful

October 2, 2014 Written by Curt Rosengren

One of the key ideas underlying the Ripple Revolution is that it’s not just about giving and giving until you burn out. It’s about creating an ecosystem in your life that feeds and energizes you as well.

Most of us spend a huge amount of our lives at work. Given that, it makes sense to take a specific look at how to make that a conscious part of the ecosystem we cultivate.

Over on my Wild About Work blog, I recently wrote a series on how to make your work more meaningful. The series starts by exploring the basic question, “What is meaning?” The answer to that is the foundation for exploring a variety of ways to experience a greater sense of meaning in your work.

Meaning is one of those squirrelly ideas that can have as many definitions as people you ask, so I came up with a simple, flexible definition that takes that into account:

Meaning = Work that matters (and YOU decide what matters!)

Really, it’s as simple as that. From there, the series explores a variety of ways that work might matter that you can explore to bring more meaning into the picture. Each of these areas has one or more blog posts diving deeper into the opportunities to experience more meaning.

  1. Know thyself: Practice the art of internal awareness
  2. Know thy world: Practice the art of external awareness
  3. Find the difference you’re making
  4. Find a difference to make
  5. Cultivate relationships and community
  6. Look for learning and growth
  7. Put it in the context of a big picture vision
  8. Shape your perspective
  9. Make your work a spiritual practice
  10. Make your work an authentic expression
  11. Find the meaning – all day, every day
  12. Recognize what your work facilitates

The key in unlocking the door to the fullest feeling of meaning your work has to offer is a shift from looking for meaningful work to looking for ways to experience meaning at work.

The first is an either/or affair. Either you have a job that feels obviously meaningful or you don’t. The second offers a bazillion opportunities to recognize and take hold of ways to experience meaning, regardless of your actual job.

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Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

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Heart-based living, Making a difference

Beware the Dream Job Syndrome: How to increase your career passion potential

October 30, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

Do you want to exponentially increase your potential for finding passion in your career? Then avoid this one simple mistake – defining passion too narrowly!

For most people, pursuing their passion means following their dream to be an artist, or a writer, or an organic farmer, or whatever. For many, for a variety of reasons both valid and imagined, those things remain out of reach. And so the idea of experiencing a passion-packed career gets relegated to pipe dream status.

After a dozen years of helping people create careers that energize and inspire them in my Passion Catalyst work, it’s clear to me that most people have far too narrow a picture of career passion, and that limits their options. I call it the Dream Job Syndrome.

How to increase your passion potential

How do you expand your picture? Start with my definition of passion:

Passion is the energy that comes from bringing more of you into what you do.

It’s doing the kinds of things, in the kinds of ways, in the kinds of places, with the kinds of people, etc. that naturally energize you.

What I’ve found is that everybody has underlying themes that tend to be there when they feel energized and engaged – underlying reasons why they love what they love (for example, a big one for me is “exploration & discovery”).

Feeling passion in your work is actually about experiencing those underlying themes. I think of them as fuel cells we can hook into. Looking at it that way, that dream job is really just a vehicle for experiencing those energy sources.

And that’s where the passion potential expands, because there are a lot of other jobs that will let you experience those underlying themes as well.

If you define your passion as cooking, your options for a career are limited specifically to things where you can cook. But if you identify the underlying reasons why you love cooking, you can in turn ask, “OK, what kinds of careers would allow me to experience those things.

You might love the aesthetics, or perhaps understanding how the different elements interact and work together to get the result you’re looking for. Or maybe you love creating on the fly with whatever is on hand. All of those things could be experienced in different ways in other jobs.

So don’t limit yourself. Passion is much closer than you might think. And it all starts with understanding why you love what you love.

(Check out my post How to find career passion for more insights on finding a career that lights you up.)

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Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

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Personal development, Uncategorized
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How to find career passion

April 1, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

Next time you’re stuck in rush hour traffic, look at the person in the car in front of you. Then look in the rear view mirror at the person behind you. Statistically speaking one of them is coming home from a job they’re unhappy with.

Year after year, studies have shown that over half the people in the US work force are dissatisfied with their jobs. There are countless reasons for that, but one of the biggies is that people simply don’t realize that work they love is more within reach than they think.

For the last twelve years in my Passion Catalyst work, I have helped people identify and create careers that light them up. Whether you feel frustrated and stuck or have been having a great ride and want to make sure it continues, here’s how I approach it.

Foundation: Passion defined

Everybody and their dog talks about passion, but what exactly is that? My definition is:

Passion is the energy that comes from bringing more of YOU into what you do. 

Simply put, it’s being who you are. Doing the kinds of things, in the kinds of ways, in the kind environment, etc. that naturally energizes you.

Simple, right? Just be who you are. How hard can that be? Well, here’s the rub. If I told you to “just bring more of you into what you do” in your career decisions, how easy would that be? Most people could tell you if something feels off, but they don’t have the level of clarity on “who they are” to be able to use it to guide their decisions.

Ask what you love. Then ask why.

To get the level of clarity needed to consciously, consistently, and continually energize your career, don’t just ask what you love. Ask why.

If you ask most people what they’re passionate about, they’ll give you some kind of noun. Travel. Cooking. Software programming. Whatever.

The trouble with making career decisions based on what you love is that it’s not the whole story. What goes unspoken is, for example, “I love travel BECAUSE  ____, ____, and ____.”

So two people can both say they love travel, but they might be responding to two completely different experiences. Person A might love the exploration and discovery, and the newness, and never knowing what’s around the next corner. Person B might enjoy that well enough, but what they really love is the planning and preparation, and logistics, and problem solving based on the preparation they did.

Two completely different experiences. Without insight into why they love what they love, Person A might say, “I know! Since I love travel, I’ll get a job organizing tours.” And within a week they’re ready to jump off a bridge because it’s all about planning, logistics, and organization, with very little of what really energizes them about travel.

Find your Passion Factors

So how do you apply this to your own life? Here’s what I have my clients do. Make a list of things that have lit you up over the course of your life. Work or play, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the things on the list are things that have left you feeling energized and engaged.

Once you have done that, pick one and ask why you love it. What is so fun about it? What is so energizing? So engaging?

Once you have the first round of reasons why, go back to each of those reasons and ask why again. Why is that so  fun? What is it about that that energizes you?

The idea is to reverse engineer what you love to identify the underlying reasons why. Challenge yourself to go down at least four levels of asking why (there is a lot of insight you will leave on the table if you just give your first response reasons and leave it at that).

As you do this for multiple items from your list of things that light you up, you’ll start to see common themes emerge. For example, when I explored my Passion Catalyst coaching, my genealogical research, and my travel photography, one of the huge common themes was exploration and discovery.

So for me, exploration and discovery is an underlying theme that tends to be there when I feel energized and engaged.

Create your passion compass

Create your passion compass by putting all the underlying themes you have identified in one place. Think of it as an internal compass that points the way to where to find the energy.

Remember the definition of passion? Passion is the energy that comes from bringing more of YOU into what you do. Now you have a way to consciously, intentionally make decisions to do that. Your passion compass is essentially a snapshot of who you are, specifically as it relates to what energizes you.

The basic concept is simple. To find career passion, look for a career path that is chock full of those underlying themes. It’s basic logic. Here are these underlying themes that tend to be in place when you feel energized. Here’s a job that is characterized by those themes. What are the odds you’ll feel energized by that job? Pretty danged good!

Putting your passion compass to work

You can use that passion compass in numerous ways.

Refine your current job

You can use your passion compass to refine your current job, bringing more of what energizes you into the picture and reducing what doesn’t.

Do an “energy audit” of your current job. How well does it stack up against the underlying themes of your passion compass? Where is it in synch? Where is it out of synch?

Once you have done that, you can explore how to bring more of what energizes you into your current situation and minimize the ways your job is out of synch.

Brainstorm new career directions 

Use your passion compass as a point of departure for brainstorming potential career ideas. What are the potential career paths that would allow you to experience those underlying themes?

Evaluate decisions

Your passion compass can be a tool to help you make energizing career decisions. Say you’re looking at a potential new job. Looking at it through the lens of your passion compass you could ask, “How well does this job stack up against these underlying themes?” You could do the same thing for decisions as small as whether to volunteer for a project at work and as big as whether or not to change to a particular new career path.

Bottom line, the more you know about what energizes you, the more ability you have to consciously, intentionally bring it into the picture. You can use that insight to sculpt your current situation, evaluate job choices, and decide on new paths entirely.

And it all starts with asking why.

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Join the Ripple Revolution TM

Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

Time for a career change? Start with The Occupational Adventure Guide

Personal development
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How to energize your career (starting right now!)

February 14, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

How energized do you feel in your career? How energized do you want to feel?

Whether you’re on fire in your work or feeling frustrated and stuck, you can start taking action right now to inject more energy into your career. It’s not rocket science, and you don’t have to quit your job to pursue that dream of being a rock star/ballerina/elephant trainer to do it.

Think “energy management”

It all starts with the way you look at it. The energy you feel in your work (or your life in general) isn’t the result of one big broad brush stroke. It’s the cumulative result of many separate elements, things that either give you energy or deplete it.

For example, you may love diving into creative projects, but feel your energy immediately sag when you think about budgeting (or vice versa). You may love working with a team, but at the same time feel depleted when you don’t get enough uninterrupted time to just sit and focus.

That’s good news if you want to energize your career, because it’s a lot easier to work with smaller chunks than with that broad brush perspective (in fact, managing your energy at the broad brush level is next to impossible – no wonder so many people feel stuck and overwhelmed!).

Maximize the Gain-to-Drain Ratio

There’s a simple concept I use when I do energy management work with my Passion Catalyst clients. I call it “maximizing your Gain-to-Drain Ratio.” It’s both deceptively simple and reliably effective.

The Gain-to-Drain Ratio is a fraction, Gain over Drain (see a deeper explanation). You want as much of what gives you energy (the Gain) and as little of what depletes your energy (the Drain) in the picture as possible. Simple, right?

Another way to think about it is that the overall energy you feel is the sum total of the energy gain minus the sum total of the energy drain. The more energy gain you have, and the less energy drain, the more net energy you’ll feel overall.

Do a Personal Energy Audit

The first step in maximizing your Gain-to-Drain Ratio is being aware of the details of what is actually happening. To start, do a “personal energy audit.” Take a look at your work and ask two questions: “What energizes me?” and “What drains my energy?”

Variations on those questions might include:

Gain

  • What about this gives me energy?
  • What about this is fun?
  • What leaves me feeling engaged?
  • What feels rewarding about this?
  • What do I feel drawn to experiencing more of?
  • What do I look forward to?
  • What leaves me feeling confident?
  • What feels in the groove with my natural way of working?

Drain

  • What about this drains my energy?
  • What about this is a drag for me?
  • What about this do I dislike?
  • What do I wish I could avoid?
  • What leaves me feeling tired and flat?
  • What leaves me feeling insecure and uncertain?
  • What leaves me questioning my abilities?
  • What feels counter to my natural way of working?

Make changes

The purpose of the personal energy audit is to break it all down into discrete chunks. With that granular level of detail, you can start to make choices and take action to bring more of what energizes you into your work and decrease the amount of what drains you.

When you have identified specific Gains you can ask, “What can I do to bring more of each of these into my work? How can I build on these? Where are the opportunities moving forward that would involve more of these?”

When you have put your finger on the Drains you can ask, “How can I eliminate each of these? If I can’t eliminate them, how can I reduce them? What can I change moving forward that would involve less of these?”

So for example, the person I mentioned above who realizes that they love working with a team, but also needs the focused solo time might look for more opportunities to collaborate, but also commit to carving time out of their schedule where they have no interaction. That could be shutting their office door, leaving the office altogether to camp out at a coffee shop and work, or just donning headphones and hanging a sign on their cubicle wall that says, “Focused and undistracted right now – please come back at 3:00.”

Options for reducing the Drain

It helps to look at reducing the Drain from several different directions. These questions are a good place to start.

  • What can I eliminate this altogether?
  • How can I change how I do this so that it is less of a Drain for me? Is there any way you can make how you approach doing something that is more in line with how you naturally do things, or that makes it more fun?
  • How can I change my story about this? Sometimes there is nothing you can do to change something that drains your energy. When that is the case, you have one last option – changing the story you have about it. If something irritates you, leaves you with steam coming out your ears, or has some other negative effect, ask yourself, “What other story could I tell here?” If part of what is draining your energy is a persistent story that things “should” be different than they are, you might consider shifting that story. As Byron Katie says, “When I argue with reality I lose – but only 100% of the time.”

Add energizers

When you have gone through all of the Gains and Drains you identified in your personal energy audit, you have one more opportunity to bump up the Gain in your work. Look for ways to incorporate energizers that have nothing to do with your work itself.

If you get energized by interacting with people but don’t have enough of it in your work, for example, you might start instigating a group lunch hour. Or you might make it a habit to get up once an hour and move, taking a brisk walk or doing some stretches. You might decide to incorporate watching inspiring videos on YouTube into your lunch hour routine.

Make a list of possible energizers, and start incorporating them into your day.

It will be better!

None of this is a magic wand. If you truly have a crap job, it’s probably still going to be a crap job after doing all of this. But it will be better! Even if it’s only 20% less draining/more energizing, guess what? That’s 20% more energy than you had before you started! And that’s energy you can put into your continuing to work toward positive change – maybe even look for a new career.

And even if you already feel energized by your work, taking this approach can both help you make it even better and make sure that it stays that way.

So give it a shot! Take a look at the Gains and Drains in your work and start taking a conscious approach to managing your energy. You have nothing to lose, and nothing but energy to gain.

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Join the Ripple Revolution TM

Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

Time for a career change? Start with The Occupational Adventure Guide

Change, Energize your life, Overcoming obstacles, Personal development
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