No Matter What … Don’t Forget That YOU MATTER!

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Pete Brand

Have you ever found yourself holding back from pursuing what you want in life because you’re questioning your significance?

What about when you’ve stopped short of giving your two cents because you’ve felt as though your thoughts couldn’t possibly matter?

I’ve seen so many people who seem to sleep walk through life because they’ve somehow come to believe they simply don’t matter! I’m sure you’ve noticed the same thing as people slip into depression or simply can’t find the motivation because they just don’t believe they are destined for greatness.

I’m here to tell you that YOU MATTER! Not only do YOU MATTER, but so does everybody else who inhabits this planet!

I’ve had recent events that have occurred in my life that have made me realize how important it is to let others know that they matter, and I’d like to encourage you to notice the “small accomplishments” other people around you make. As you notice these seemingly “small accomplishments,” take a second to imagine how different it would be if those acts weren’t taken.

Whether it is the waitress delivering your breakfast with a bright cheery smile on a day that you don’t feel so smiley yourself, or when your 14 year old takes time to ask how your day went and they actually care about the answer. There are thousands of individual acts people take each day which have an impact your life. Make sure you take the time to recognize these acts, and most importantly tell that person that they matter!

If you are intentional about recognizing these efforts you’ll have the power to improve their mood, their day, and ultimately can impact their life in a positive way. These may be the two most important words you could ever share with someone, and you just never know when they might just need it the most.

The video below is one of the most amazing messages I’ve seen in a long time, and I promise you it could possibly be the most valuable 19 minutes and 48 second message you’ve heard. It might possibly change your life like it has mine!

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10 Ways to Generate Income From Your Passion

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Pete Brand

Have you made the decision to follow the plan I laid out in the post on how to kickstart your passion focused career in 21 days?

Have you consistently spent at least one hour each day focusing completely on your area of passion?

I’m sure you’ve realized that, although it’s a simply plan, there are quite a few challenges that you’ll face along the way. If you haven’t, I’d highly encourage you to read my last post which will help you navigate through the obstacles and show you how to stay on your path to an improved quality of life.

One of the questions that I’m sure has been looming in your mind is, “It’s great studying and diving into my area of passion, but how the heck is that going to make me money? ” Well, although I’m not encouraging you to begin working on those monetization ideas just yet, I wanted to weigh in and show you at least 10 ways you can generate income from your passion.

I believe that at this point in your journey, this will help keep you on course so you can begin to see there is a “financial light” at the end of the tunnel. The following are some ways you can capitalize on the time spend delving into your passion.

Blogging

There are quite a few ways to earn revenue through blogging about the topic that you’re passionate about. Once your readership grows you’ll have opportunities to make money by selling advertising space, earn money from adding Google Adsense to your site, join and promote affiliate offers, or even by offering to sell access to your expertise through speaking opportunities, information products or a number of other avenues. I won’t get into the weeds on any of these tactics here, but the bottom line is blogging can unlock a world of revenue that would surprise you.

I understand you might be intimidated by the idea of becoming a blogger. You may think because you are a bad speller, or because you did horribly in English literature class when you were in high school that you could never become a blogger. I’m here to tell you none of that matters! If you’ve truly identified your passion your head will be swimming with information and thoughts on your topic and spilling that information and those thoughts onto your blog platform will be just fine. Nobody will care about your grammar or spelling as long as they are entertained and informed by your words.

Teaching / Tutoring

Once you’ve begun diving into your true passion and devouring as much information as you possibly can, you’ll soon find yourself with an extremely high level of understanding on the topic. You’ll also position yourself as an important information source to others who share your passion. Depending on what your passion is, there could be numerous opportunities for you to share that knowledge through teaching or tutoring. It won’t matter if you teach virtually using the Internet as your platform, or if you choose to rent a room each month and conduct a 3 hour teaching seminar, you can definitely create income.

Don’t worry about whether you believe you can teach right now. All of us have insecurities over things we’ve never tried before. You’ll find that if you’re focused on your true passion the excitement and enthusiasm you have for that topic will shine through and your confidence will far outweigh any pre-existing insecurities you have about teaching other people.

Providing Services

Does your area of passion provide you an opportunity to provide services to other people? If you passion is copy writing, you could offer editing services. If you passion is marketing, you could offer brainstorming assistance or marketing plan reviews. If you are absolutely obsessed with making cute little dogs out of coat hangers and yarn, you could offer the completion of that task as a service to other people who want those items but don’t have the time or patience to create them on their own.

Creating Videos

Once your brain is packed full of information about your area of passion this can be an excellent way to get that information out of your head and onto a medium that can be used to help other like-minded people. The amount of knowledge and skills necessary for this type of revenue generating opportunity is minimal. You’ll just need to break your areas of knowledge down into manageable chunks, set up the camera, and begin sharing. You’d be surprised how many people turn to the Internet for information on everything. The nice thing is that surprise will be accompanied by dollars landing in your bank account. :)

Selling at Passion Related Trade Shows

If you’re area of passion has related trade shows focused on your niche, this is an excellent place to translate your knowledge and authority on the topic into revenue. Whether it’s selling those yarn and coat hanger dogs, scheduling time for valuable advice sessions, or building interest in a coaching program you’re looking to offer. These are great places to get in front of a whole bunch of people who have similar passions. Once you’ve got their attention, you can turn that into dollars.

Writing Articles or Books

While on your journey of diving into your passion you could begin to track the effort you’re making and develop a step-by-step process that others who are in the beginning stages of their exploration could follow. You can easily accomplish this through either articles or books. The beauty of the Internet is that you can get these books or articles published without involving a magazine editorial person or impressing a publishing company. You can publish it on your own either digitally, or as a real book. Once you’ve done that, you can easily promote it to other people who would find it useful. AGAIN … you don’t need to be so concerned with grammar or spelling. Heck, you can find someone else who has a passion for writing to edit it for you if you’re that concerned.

Create an Association

If you get fired up over a particular topic you can be confident there are thousands or even millions of other people who share that excitement. Why not be creative and develop an association for your passion peers to join. It will take some work but if you build in enough benefits for joining and build a solid structure, this can be an amazing revenue source. I know one individual who began an association for people who were passionate about carrying concealed weapons. He charged less than $50 per year for a membership and ended up creating a revenue stream of over $3,000,000 in his first year. If you have a difficult time believe you could be that successful, that’s ok. What if your association only created $100,000 of revenue. Wouldn’t that be a nice way to monetize your passion?

Volunteer / Work for Non-Profit

Money isn’t everything and certainly doesn’t guarantee happiness. I believe that if you’re spending your time immersed in your area of passion, you’ll find many more benefits than a big fat paycheck can provide anyhow. There is an abundance of non-profit organizations which are focused on almost everything these days. The one thing they all have in common is they all need volunteers and workers who are willing to work within the constraints of a small budget. Even if you simply picked up a part time job and were only paid minimum wage, I’m sure the fulfillment could help to supplement the low pay.

Sell Through A Local Business

Are you an amazing bird trainer? Perhaps you could create a “how to train a parrot” course and offer it for sale through your local pet shop. Chances are there is a local store, or many, that you could team up with to provide something your joint passion seekers could use. This will help the store by helping them meet a demand they may not currently be meeting, and also helping them reach people they may not be currently reaching. You’ll also make a new friend who I’m sure will be happy to spread the word about the great things your doing for that segment of the audience.

Take A Class and Start Over

If you’re just completely fed up with the career you’ve been pursuing and you’d feel more confident being fed the knowledge on your area of passion from an academic person to ensure you’re receiving the best, accurate, and most thorough information … go to your local college and get enrolled. I recently visited my uncle who recently retired and he’s been taking classes related to one of his passion areas and he’s learning how to build a glider airplane. He’s taking welding classes and others so he can complete every piece of the process.

This is only the beginning of the list of things you can do to generate income from your passion. Depending on the point your at in the exploration stage, it may be premature to choose any of these paths. I just want you to know they exist and you’ll certainly uncover more as you progress through the process. If you can think of other ways that I’ve missed, please leave them as a comment below.

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How to Kickstart Your Passion Focused Career in 21 Days

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Pete Brand

Have you known what your passion is for a long time, but struggled figuring out what to do or how to get started?

Do you have a number of passions but can’t figure out whether you should pursue a couple of them to make sure you find something that’ll keep your interest?

Regardless of where you’re at in the process, the most important thing for you to do is to simply GET STARTED! Think about all the times you’ve said, “Some day I’m going to _________!” Have you realized that that “some day” never comes? The reason most people don’t do anything to improve their situation is because their either scared of failing, or they legitimately don’t know where to begin.

The only way for you to achieve the greatest successes in life is to experience an amazing amount of failure. The tension created by failure is one of the only things that forces us to back up … re-evaluate the situations … choose a different direction and move forward again. Stopping when you meet the first bit of resistance is like resigning your life to that of little happiness and will eventually lead to many regrets!

I’d encourage you to change the way you position the prospect of failing in your mind. Realize that the reward you’ll receive for many failures is much success. So instead of being afraid of failure … embrace it! The pain of regret you’ll experience by not taking steps to achieve happiness by pursuing your passion, will be far greater than not succeeding the first, second, or tenth time!

If you’re in a position where you simply don’t know where to begin, I can help! The following are the steps you should follow if you’d like to either test something you believe is your passion, or to begin to build a strong foundation for your passion focused business in just 21 days.

The first step is for you to make a commitment to spend one hour each day, for 21 straight days, focusing on your passion.

You should be very intentional about scheduling this time and stick to your schedule. I’d encourage you to set a timer and keep your head down and your complete focus on your work. When you’re doing something new and uncomfortable, you’ll most likely have an internal struggle that will lead you to find things that distract you. If you set a timer you’ll eventually lose the urge to repeatedly check the time to see if you’ve reached the end of your hour for that day.

The following is a list of the activities you should be doing for your one, life changing, hour each day:

Write about your passion. You should start a brand new journal and work on filling it up. Write about what you like about your passion, what comes easy to you, and where you’d like to improve your skills. Spending this time alone getting these thoughts out of your head will allow you to begin to identify your strengths and eventually will help you identify opportunities to transform those strengths into a passion focused career.

Research others who are effectively using your passion in their lives. The Internet is a wonderful thing, and if the person you identify is actively using social media you may have the opportunity to get a good look inside their days and begin to translate that knowledge into your own plan. Success leaves clues, so make sure you pay attention to everything you can find on this person so you can make your path easier. There’s no reason to create a new path if there is already a nicely manicured path for you to follow.

Teach your passion to someone else. I don’t know about you, but I’m the type of person who loves to share the experiences, good or bad, with other people. Whether it was a trip that I took and had a phenomenal time, or if I find a shortcut that helps reduce the amount of time necessary to complete a tedious task. You’ll find that as you continue to focus on your passion, you’ll find it very difficult to not want to share it with people you come in contact with. During this 21 day period, keep your eyes open for people with similar interests and try to identify opportunities to share your knowledge with them, and see if you can gain additional information in the process. The best way to master something is to teach it.

Read about your passion. Today we have a tremendous opportunity to gain unlimited information on any topic online. It doesn’t matter how obscure you think your passion may be, there is a good number of people who share that passion and those people are actively creating new content on the topic every single day. Sure there are some passion areas that will have less content than others, but this is where opportunity lies! If your area of passion is sparse in content, you can take steps to position yourself as the leading expert in that area. Do your best to consume as much of this content as possible over these 21 days and you’ll get an excellent view of how crowded your passion area is. You’ll also gain an excellent understanding of what the hottest topics of discussion are and what information isn’t being covered very well.

Study different methods of participating within your passion area. This will help you identify different opportunities to pursue your passion as a career. Is there a non-profit organization you could work with? Can you find speaking opportunities to share your knowledge with other people who share your passion? Are there opportunities to create an information product that you sell online? Spending time focusing on this will surely help you identify ways to operate within your passion area so you should have multiple options.

Create a vision board of what your life will look like when you’re only pursuing your passion. You may be looking at this task and think that it sounds extremely cheesy. I can’t blame you because it certainly wasn’t comfortable for me the first time I did it. I firmly believe that people find this cheesy because they are afraid they’d never be able to achieve it, or it could be any one of the other reasons I mentioned in my last post 8 Reasons Why It’s Difficult to Find Your Passion. It really doesn’t matter what the reason is. The benefits you’ll receive from doing this will be amazing and it has the potential to transform your life. I could get into all the psychological reasons on how this works, but I’ll save that for a later post. :)

If you’re ready to make the commitment for the next 21 days and spend one full hour each day doing ONLY these tasks, I can assure you that you’ll have a firm foundation and an excellent idea of the direction you’ll want to go in. For the sake of accountability … If you accept this challenge, and you’re serious about investigating the opportunities to pursue your passion as a career, please let me know by leaving a comment below. I truly hope you accept the challenge, and want you to know I’ll do whatever I can to help you stay true to your commitment! :)

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8 Reasons Why It’s Difficult To Find Your Passion

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Pete Brand

Have you tried every trick in the book to identify your passions, but feel like you’ve made no progress?

Are you beginning to think you’ve totally lost your passion and that’s why you can’t find it?

Answering the question, “What is your passion?” can be just as challenging as answering the question, “What are your hobbies?” when you’re a parent with little children in your house.

My response was always…

“Hobbies? … what hobbies?!?!?! I am too busy running the kids around and making sure I keep them alive to have hobbies!”

Well, just because there are reasons preventing you from identifying your passion, doesn’t mean you’ve completely lost it. You can certainly awaken it from it’s state of ”hibernation” if you approach finding it with the right mindset. Just like any issues we’re experiencing in life though … we first need to admit we have a problem before we can get better.

The following are 8 reasons you may be having a mental block when it comes to identifying your passion. I believe that if you identify the reasons you’re having a tough time, you can begin to re-position that difficulty in your mind by realizing it is simply an excuse and not some monumental obstacle.

Your insecurities are stronger than your dreams. All of us deal with insecurities in life and unfortunately too many people allow those insecurities to control their lives instead of taking control and making the decision to move past them. It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to make strong forward progress if you’re constantly hesitating or second guessing your decisions.

If you’d like to overcome this obstacle, take some time to figure out exactly what your dreams are. If you’ve allowed life to beat you down to the point where your dreams are too small, work on getting them bigger and find a big enough reason to get out of your comfort zone and overcome those insecurities. People who stop dreaming, start dying. Don’t do that! :)

You’re too afraid to brag about your skills. When you were growing up and excited about a first time accomplishment and excitedly shared it with one of your friends, did your parents say something like … ”Honey, people don’t like braggers.” ?

There’s a big difference between bragging and simply being passionate about something you’re skilled at. If you’re constantly talking about yourself and your accomplishments without adding any value to the person your speaking to … then you’re bragging. If you are talking about your accomplishments to gain credibility that’s not.

I understand there is a very fine line between both, but that’s where self awareness comes in. Just be sure the conversation ultimately ends with you delivering value and that the content isn’t solely centered around how great you are, and you’ll be fine. I’m sure your parents would agree.

You don’t believe that YOU MATTER or that you can make a difference. Whether you believe it or not, everyone has the ability to make a difference in the world. Yes, even you! Whether it’s as simple as picking a piece of paper off the ground and throwing it in the garbage, or as large as talking with someone who’s horribly depressed and you say something that ultimately prevents them from doing something permanent … you definitely make a difference in this world. Don’t allow yourself to fall into the trap of thinking otherwise!

You believe it is selfish to be focusing on your own happiness. There is absolutely no way of maximizing the contribution you can make within your passion area, or your life without spending time focusing on your own happiness. If you have this thought process just ask yourself the following question:

“If I don’t focus on your own happiness, who will?” You’re right … NOBODY! It is impossible to do great things with your life if you aren’t happy. Unhappiness leads to depression. Depression leads to paralysis and non-activity. The most important thing you can do in your life is to make sure you focus on doing whatever it takes to be happy, as long as that doesn’t mean doing it at the expense of somebody else.

Your too busy maintaining your chaotic, unhappy life. Seriously?!?! Why the heck would you want to spend your time and energy attempting to maintain something that brings you no joy? Change isn’t easy for anyone, but it’s something that is necessary if you ever want to improve your situation in life. Don’t be too busy being miserable to have any time left to become happy.

You think it’s wrong to do what you love. Many people fall into this trap because they’ve bought into the “back to the grindstone” mentality. Work has traditionally been associated with pain. Society constantly reinforces this message in movies and everywhere else we look. You don’t have to buy into that BS!

Perhaps you’ve heard the famous saying “If you do what you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” Well, it’s true. Quit buying into the garbage that society has been cramming down your throat, and find your passion so you can begin to associate work with happiness. I promise you’ll love it!

You’re afraid because the last time you pursued your passion, you failed. This reason should get you excited since every successful person in history failed many times before they finally emerged victorious! It’s impossible to improve without identifying things that don’t work along the way. The next time you fail, instead of getting down, get excited that you’re one step closer to succeeding!

You’re afraid if you identify your passion that you’ll actually have to do something. If this is the reason you’re using to not identify your passion I’m not sure there’s anything I can say that’ll motivate you. The beauty is when you finally do find your passion you won’t have to worry about finding the motivation to “do something.” When you TRULY find your passion, the energy and motivation will be in abundance.

I hope this post has allowed you to see how ridiculous it is to allow these things to prevent you from finding your passion. I’m hoping that knowing these reasons aren’t valid, will help push you over the edge, allowing yourself to find your passions. If you can re-approach the exercises I mentioned in my previous posts now that you’ve cleared the “mental hurdles.” I promise to give you step-by-step guidance on how to take the first steps into turning your passion into a career in my next post.

If you have other reasons preventing you from uncovering your passion, please leave a comment below. I promise not to ridicule you. I’d just love to know other reasons I’ve missed. :)

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7 Questions To Help Determine Whether It’s Your Passion Or A Short Term Obsession

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Pete Brand

Have you ever seen or done something that immediately gets you fired up and gains all your attention?

Did you find yourself losing your enthusiasm a couple weeks, or days later?

If so, you may have fallen victim to a short term obsession. I believe a large number of people who find themselves in unhappy career situations fall into this trap when they’ve made a decision to take action and improve the quality of their lives.

This can bring about paralyzing frustration since they were most likely unhappy with their career for a long time before they found the gumption to make a move and improve their situation. Then, after identifying their passion, creating a plan, and investing extra effort into making that passion a career … they lose steam after only a couple weeks.

Many of these people will give up and simply accept their fate and continue to live a life of unhappiness with their career. If this is you, I’d encourage you to PUSH ON! There is no reason to stop pursuing an excellent quality of life when you encounter your first obstacle. Your life and ultimate happiness is worth much more effort than that!

There are some simple steps you can take to help prevent yourself from falling in this trap. If you’ve read my previous post, 10 Ways to Identify Your Passions , and you’ve gone through all 10 steps, I’m guessing you have several things you’ve listed that you feel you’re passionate about. The longer the list, the better your chances will be to identify one or more things that will certainly bring happiness to your for years to come.

The following are some questions you should ask to help determine whether you’ve truly found a passion, or if it’s just a short term obsession.

Does it make you feel good about yourself? This, in my opinion, is the most critical question you need to ask yourself. Chances are, your current career isn’t making you feel that great about yourself. Especially when each morning when you wake up, you’re reminded that you’ve “sold your soul” to a career that brings you very little, if any, pleasure. I don’t believe it’s possible to feel good about yourself when you’re spending a large portion of your life doing something that brings you little fulfillment and joy.

This question will also prevent you from chasing the “almighty dollar.” Quite a few people make decisions to pursue careers simply due t0 the potential of making big money. That’s fine if it aligns with your life goals and your passions. If it doesn’t … you’ll find yourself in a situation similar to the one you just left. Whatever you do, make sure the passion you choose to pursue makes you feel good about you!

Would you do it for free? This is an excellent question to help ensure you aren’t selling out. Make sure you spend some time thinking about this one though. Fight the urge of simply saying “yes” and move on. This is extremely important if you’re choosing to turn your passion into your career because it’s very likely you will be doing it for free for some time before you begin to generate income. If you’re truly “ok” with that, there’s a pretty good chance it might be a true passion.

Do you lose track of time when you are focusing on it? I’m sure you’ve had many times where you’re at home on your computer searching for more information on a topic that you love! You know you’ve got a couple hours of “free time” before your afternoon meeting so you dive it. Before you know it, you look up at the clock and it’s already been four hours and you’ve missed your meeting!

Now, I’m not encouraging you to forget your schedule or to blow off meetings, but it is important to have a passion that seemingly sucks you in and won’t let you go. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “If you do what you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” Work is typically associated with pain and boredom. You’ll never associate pain or boredom with your TRUE passion … unless of course, your passion is having people smash cinder blocks on your body with sledge hammers. :)

Do you talk about it to anyone that will listen? I absolutely love it when I’m having a conversation with someone, and something they’re interested in comes up. You can see their eyes light up. It’s as if you flipped their switch to the “On” position and their personality immediately changes as they excitedly share their thoughts and feelings about the topic.

This is where self awareness comes in very handy. You don’t want to overwhelm them by turning into a “Chatty Kathy” doll and blather on incessantly to the point where you scare them away. If you do consistently find yourself in this situation though … chances are you may have found your true passion.

Do you get excited about the opportunity to teach it to others? This question goes hand in hand with the previous question and can be an excellent outlet for your strong desire to “over-share,” as long as you are sharing it with someone who has asked to be taught. I personally believe providing other people with the knowledge to do something is extremely rewarding. I also believe that if you possess knowledge that other people are seeking, you should be excited help them. If you don’t feel that way about what you think is your passion, you may want to look further.

Would you like to spend more of your time doing “it”? This is a question where your response must be a strong “YES!” If you feel you’re spending all the time you’d want to, “it” isn’t your passion. People who are unhappy in their careers aren’t plotting to find ways to spend more time doing that. Make sure you have a genuine desire to spend more time doing “it.” If you’re feeling a bit “luke warm,” chances are you haven’t found “it.”

Does it make you excited to get out of bed in the morning? Nobody likes waking up in the morning with an upset stomach, feeling exhausted, and re-hitting the snooze repeatedly because you’re dreading facing your day at work. If you’re pursuing your true passion, you’ll never find yourself struggling with these symptoms. You’ll find yourself waking up before your alarm goes off and you’ll spring out of bed excited to face the day. I’m sure you’d agree this is a much better way to spend the limited time you have here on this planet. :)

Please don’t rush through the process of identifying your passion. It’s definitely worth the time and energy investment to evaluate your passion areas so you can avoid heading down the wrong path. If somehow you do, and end up losing steam … DON’T GIVE UP!

Try something else you believe you’re passionate about. Making the decision to quit pursuing happiness is the worst, most painful decision you could ever make!

If you have any other questions you feel someone should ask when evaluating their passion, please leave a comment below and share it with us. Also, if you’ve done an exercise like this in the past, let us know how it’s worked for you.

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10 Ways to Identify Your Passions

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Pete Brand

Have you ever been asked what you’re most passionate about and found yourself stumped?

Do you find yourself unhappy and hoping there is more in life, but unable to figure out what?

The last few posts I’ve written have been heavily centered on the mental side of turning your passion into a career. I’m sure there were things you read and it felt like you were being “called out” or as if it was written exactly for you.

I’m hoping this helped you realize you’re not the only person dealing with that stuff. I’m also hoping that you realized that if there are other people dealing with the same stuff, that there must be ways to overcome the challenges you’ve been facing. If that’s the case, and you’ve begun working on changing your way of thinking, you’re ready for the next step … Identifying your passion!

The following are 10 things you can do to help identify your passions:

What do you currently love doing? This is a question that may be extremely easy for some people, and for others it will be like pulling teeth! I’d encourage you to think as hard as you can and make it a goal to come up with as large a list as possible of things you love doing at this point in your life. Is it cooking? Is it traveling? Do you love playing video games? It’s not your job to determine whether you can make money at it right now. You should simply write down as many things as you can come up with.
What are you the best at? You might be thinking this question is redundant, but it’s not. You’d be surprised at how many people are amazing at the things they do for work, but just because they excel at a certain task or occupation, doesn’t mean they are passionate about it. I’d agree that things you excel at are most likely things you are currently, or were at one time in your life, passionate about. It’s important to identify where you’re most proficient since if you apply those skills to an area you ARE passionate about, you may change your tune.
Is there something you wish you pursued earlier in life? When we are young, we believe we can accomplish anything and typically come up with all types of things we’d like to accomplish. If you can’t remember back that far, or wonder if that still holds true with younger people today … just go ask someone in Middle School what they’d like to be when they grow up. It’s amazing the goals we can set before we’ve been beaten down long enough to give up on our dreams. Try to put yourself in the mindset of when you were in middle school. What did you want to that you never pursued?
Where would you like to be a year from now? What would you love to be doing? Spend some time alone with a blank sheet of paper and an open mind. Consider where you’d want to be a year from now if money and time weren’t an issue. What would you love to be doing at that point? If nothing else this exercise will help you begin to dream again and if done right, you can set yourself on a path to make that situation you imagined actually happen! Don’t ever allow yourself to stop dreaming!
Ask your friends what they would consider your natural skills or strengths. The saying, “I can’t see the forest through the trees,” is extremely applicable when it comes to getting to know our own strengths and weaknesses. Although it may be difficult for you … it’s not tough at all for your friends. The challenging part is putting yourself out there and asking them, “What is the one thing you think I am best at?” The risk of putting yourself out there is ABSOLUTELY worth it if it can bring clarity to your unique abilities and passions.
Reflect on the past week, month, and years and identify the events and activities that made you happy or excited. You’ll want to do this with a blank sheet of paper and write down every event or activity you can think of. Once you’ve completed your list you can look at each of the things you put on the list and ask yourself, “What about this event/activity brought me the most joy or excitement?” If you find yourself providing consistent answers to many of these items, you may be getting close to identifying that passion!
Identify your professional hero. Who is the person you look up to most in the professional world? Spend some time talking with this person if you can, or if you can’t, do as much research as you can including possibly talking with people who know this person. Discover what makes this person tick and also what their typical day looks like. If you’ve always wanted to be in the position they’re in, this can help you determine if that is your true passion.
Take an online personality and strength finder test. There are a number of different tests out there but I found this website that has multiple tests and they provide great information. You will have to register to access the tests, but it’s worth it. For the sake of full disclosure, I do not receive anything for passing this link along. I found it in my research and simply found it useful.
Read through a college course catalog. If you’ve been stuck in a rut so long that you just cannot come up with a list of things you’re passionate about, go to a local college (in person or online) and check out their list of available courses. Perhaps you’ll find something that is intriguing that gives you the motivation to break out of that rut and get a brand new start!
Write in a journal every day. This is a creative way of dreaming out your future and including the smallest of details. The first thing you should do is write out what your perfect day would look like. Once you’ve done that do the same thing for the perfect week, perfect month, and then move onto the perfect year. This will help you paint a picture of what’s most important to you and also what gets your juices flowing.

I know you can do it! Avoid the trap of putting it off over and over and never taking the action necessary to identify your passion. This will significantly reduce your ability to live a happy, passion filled life. We only have one shot at life so why not spend that precious time doing what we love?!?!

Please take a minute and leave a comment with any other things you can think of that may help someone else identify their passion. I’d also love to hear how finding your passion has helped bring more joy to your life. If you have a story, please leave that as a comment also.

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People Just Don’t Care! If They Did … It Still Wouldn’t Matter!

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Pete Brand

Have you ever found yourself hesitating to share your point of view during a meeting because you were concerned with what people would think about you for sharing it?

When you walk into a room full of people you don’t know, do you feel uncomfortable and as if people are checking you out and possibly judging you?

I can promise you you’re not alone! There’s a large segment of our population who live with varying degrees of this anxiety, and in fact … I think it is safe to say that every human being has experienced these type of feelings at least a few times in their lives. :)

If you take a step back look at these feelings logically, I think you’ll quickly build a case in your mind proving these feelings of anxiety are completely unnecessary and irrational. The following are a few things that might help give you some perspective.

Everyone has their own issues and insecurities. It’s funny how sometimes we believe we are the only one dealing with those internal voices causing us to second guess ourselves. Everyone else is somehow 100% bullet proof and super confident, and possess the skills to see through us and immediately identify our weaknesses! Seriously? Come on … You’re smarter than that! :)

Do they pay your bills? Remember when you were the most fired up about that new THING and you excitedly told your friend about it and they laughed and said, “you can’t do that!” You were hurt, annoyed, a little angry, but all in all, those emotions caused you to feel crushed. Worse of all it made you begin to question your decision.

Really? First of all you need to get different friends. Secondly, how much time and energy do you think they spent thinking about your idea or even how their words might have affected you once you left? Well the answer is ZERO. They immediately went back to focusing on themselves and their problems. Heck, the reason they tried to steal your thunder is probably because they were feeling pretty bad about their own circumstances.

If this isn’t reason enough to discard their negative sentiment … REMEMBER, they don’t pay your bills! You do, so make decisions for yourself!

There are far too many times we sacrifice our own happiness because we’re afraid of what other people will think or what other people will say. The bottom line is their thoughts are only that … their thoughts, and you’ll never truly know what they are anyway, so why be concerned with them.

We also put far too much weight in people’s words without truly evaluating where they are coming from…

Did they have a negative experience years ago that they’re still sour about?

Did hear a story about someone else who did and they don’t have complete information?

Or did they simply have a rough morning and their looking for someone to take it out on?

Regardless of the reason why, their words have no way of hurting us unless we allow them to. So DON’T! The only person responsible for helping you achieve a life of happiness, is YOU!

If you want to achieve big things, YOU need to take massive action. YOU are responsible for making the decisions that will lead to either success or failure. Surround yourself with supportive, positive people to help guide you, but ultimately, YOU need to make decisions for YOU!

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Don’t Listen To The Voices In Your Head! Six Things To Do To Accomplish More In Life

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Pete Brand

How many times have you been ready to “Go for it,” but stopped because you heard a voice at the last second saying something like, “Don’t be ridiculous, you can’t do that!”

Wasn’t it strange how the voice was so loud and unmistakably clear, but when you looked around you couldn’t find anyone?

The dialogue we carry on in our own heads is sometimes the most destructive and motivation killing stuff! Heck, with friends like yourself … who needs enemies?

These voices are like a mirror reflecting the experiences, thoughts, words, information, and most importantly, the people we hang around. Personally this is very exciting to me and as I think back over the past 20+ years I can almost point to individual decisions I’ve made that have significantly affected the quality of those internal conversations.

I’m not a big fan of dwelling on the past, but when you can look backward for the sake of accelerating your progress forward, I think it can be translated into amazing progress. Some of the events that can be life changing and drastically change those internal voices are as follows:

Avoid contact with negative people. You may notice that I touch on this quite a bit … and I do. I’m sure you’ve noticed that married people look alike, talk alike, have the same facial expressions and so on. You don’t share blood, or DNA, but you certainly take on the qualities of those you hang around most of the time.

If the content of your conversations are overwhelmingly focused on all your problems, aches, pains, or about the things you hate in the world … you’ll attract more of that into your life. After all, that’s what you think about and talk about all the time. The universe will reward you with those things you focus on with emotion.

You can try to chalk that up to some crazy new age garbage, but it’s absolutely true! Trying to disprove it will only cause you more pain. Unless you are a masochist, I’d encourage you to avoid associating with negativity at all costs. It’s not easy to avoid, but it’ll be much easier than dealing with the pain you’ll receive by continuing the association.

Make a decision to only pursue what you are passionate about. This decision will help you avoid lack of motivation, feelings of boredom, and the pain of spending the majority of your life doing something you hate. If you’re spending the majority of your time pursuing what you love, you’ll find it very difficult to be negative very often. Passion causes excitement and can eliminate depression.

Make a commitment to become the best at what you do. Happiness in life doesn’t have anything to do with the amount of money you make, or what your profession is. It’s most important for you to find joy, feel rewarded, and feel as though you are making a contribution to the world.

If you are following your passion and make the decision to be the best at whatever you are doing, your thoughts will center around what it will take to accomplish that, and there won’t be much time to fall back into the old negative, self defeating voices of old.

Listen to personal development material daily. I’d love to think all of us our strong enough to change our lives completely on our own, and there might actually be one or two people out there who can, but it doesn’t make any sense to ignore the lessons other people have taught us through sharing their knowledge and experiences.

I believe we should immerse ourselves in personal development. This will ensure our focus is on getting better and once we train ourselves to continuously move in the direction of becoming the best human being we can possibly become, those voices will begin to change and reflect that focus and positive action.

Look for the positive in everything. This isn’t easy, but with a little practice you will begin to easily identify much more positive than the negative that comes from any event, no matter how horrific the event. I understand many people will attempt to challenge this because it’s extremely difficult to dig through the pain, sorrow, and after effects of some of the horrible things we experience in our lives.

I challenge you to get in the habit of intentionally reflecting on each event in your life, and identifying positive outcomes that have occurred following the pain. Sometimes the positive happens right away, and other times it takes years to materialize, but there is always positive and you’ll definitely find it if you look.

When you hear those negative voices in your head … ignore them, get excited, and move ahead! Many times those self defeating voices occur because we are doing something that we’ve never done before. That move out of your comfort zone will be met with resistance similar to when you stretch a rubber band, and similar to the rubber band, the more you take action that gets you out of your comfort zone, the larger it will expand.

Make the effort to reprogram yourself to get excited when you hear those voices, and be proud of yourself for doing something to ensure you don’t live a life of mediocrity. Do great things and learn to be your own best cheerleader, instead of your own worst enemy!

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3 Ways To Solve Confidence Issues

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Pete Brand

Do you have a goal you’d like to hit but you just don’t have confidence that you can accomplish it?

Does this lack of confidence paralyze you into inactivity, or cause what I like to call chronic hesitation (a.k.a procrastination)?

If you’re in that situation now or have been anytime in the past, you can breathe a sigh of relief. You aren’t strange, in fact; if you’ve never found yourself in that situation, I think you’re strange. :)

Everybody faces confidence issues from time to time. I’m sure you can easily recall one of those times and remember how active your mind was as it flitted through all the little details and no matter how quickly you picked it up, you still felt as though you were stumbling through as you struggled to master whatever it was you were looking to do.

Many people are so terrified of the perceived pain of insecurity that they allow themselves to become completely overwhelmed by the smallest things. It’s as though they are completely incapable of stepping back and looking at everything from a high level so they can see things clearly and develop a plan to navigate through the learning process.

This is especially something that you will experience if you make the bold decision to step out and pursue your passion as a career. The beauty is NOW YOU KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT! You won’t be surprised when you begin to have those insecure feelings. The following are things that you can do to head these feelings off, or at least reduce the time you’ll experience the lack of confidence.

Get Obsessive! The best way to become the great at anything is to gain as much knowledge and proficiency as you possibly can, as quickly as you can. I look at it just like ripping off a band-aid. You can do it slowly, but all you’ll do is cause more pain and for a longer period of time. If you simply rip it off fast … it’ll still hurt but it’ll be over much quicker and it won’t cause you nearly as much pain.

If you’ve got something you want to accomplish, or something you believe you have a budding passion … dive in and GET OBSESSIVE! If you focus consistently and intensely on a topic you love, or on how to accomplish a certain task for an extended period of time, you will find you can accomplish amazing things.

Associate With The Right People. The saying that misery loves company couldn’t be more accurate! One of the worst things you can do is to hang around people who are negative, or aren’t supportive. This isn’t an easy thing to do because sometimes the people that are the worst are those you are closest to.

I know it’s tough but I can guarantee you if you continuously associate with people who are negative or people who are constantly draining your emotional resources, you need to suck it up, and move on. If not, you need to get used to living a life filled with much unhappiness and negativity. You can still love these people, but you cannot subject yourself to that environment for extended periods of time without picking up the same thought process and adopting the same behavior patterns.

The bottom line is if you associate with positive people, they will be supportive of you and will believe in you when you may not even believe in yourself. This will have a direct impact on your confidence level.

Choose Your Words Carefully. Words are extremely powerful whether they are spoken or not. That may sound a bit strange but if you think about it … the way you refer to things in conversations, is the same way you’ll think about things during times of reflection. If you are constantly talking about all the reasons you CAN’T do something, this sentiment will lead to the exact same type of internal dialogue.

It isn’t just saying you CAN’T do something. It’s also saying things like: I’m not very smart, or that you are broke, or that you weren’t very good in school, or you really screwed up once and now you have limited options. These type of thoughts and statements will become self fulfilling prophecies.

If you only do one thing after reading this post, I encourage you to focus on the words you say and the thoughts that occupy your mind over the next couple days. When you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts or making negative, self defeating statements …. STOP and either rephrase it or re-position the way you are thinking about it. If you do this consistently, it will become a habit and you can break the pattern and have a much more enjoyable life.

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4 Reasons You Should Turn Your Passion Into a Career

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Pete Brand

Do you go to sleep at night dreading the next day?

Are you more concerned with making money than you are for your own happiness?

I am amazed at how many conversations I witness where the entire content is filled with complaints about their job. As I listen to the lack of enthusiasm and perceived hatred for the occupation, or company they count on to sustain their lives, it baffles me as to why they’d continue to put themselves in such a horrific position.

Now of course I say that a little tongue in cheek as I completely understand why people continue to put themselves in a situation that brings them no joy. I’ve found it’s one of three reasons.

The first type of person likes to moan and complain about everything. They aren’t really interested in being happy so there’s not much that can be done for them.

The second type has been unhappy for so long they’ve simply become numb to it and after all … they need to pay their bills somehow.

The third type are the people who feel trapped and simply don’t know what else to do. They feel forced into selling out and doing what they hate so they can support their families. I believe this is the stage they stay in for awhile and then shift right into the model above where they become numb and simply give up.

I don’t believe anyone should spend their time working in a career that they hate. You may think I’m strange, but I don’t believe we should EVER work for money! I believe you should NEVER pursue anything as a career that you aren’t passionate about, and when you’ve completely lost that passion you should either take a break, or find another passion to pursue.

I’m sure you’re thinking … “Yeah right! If it was only that easy!” Well, I’m here to you that it absolutely is.

You simply need to make a decision and stick to it. The reward is … you’ll never find yourself being weighted down with negative thoughts and emotions or having to live with the realization that you sold out.

If living with that isn’t enough, the following are four other reasons why you should turn your passion into a career.

You spend more time “working” than you do with your loved ones. When you really break it down you spend more than 25% of your available weekly hours at work. To think that spending that much time being unhappy won’t bleed over and affect the quality of your relationships with your loved ones, is insane. If not selling out isn’t reason enough to do what you love, how about protecting the quality of your most important and valued relationships.
You will be more confident in all areas of your life. It’s not possible to have confidence if you consistently place yourself in an unhappy situation. You’ll never be excellent at something you don’t enjoy and therefore will always be wondering when your “boss” will tire of your sub-par work. Doing what you love and are passionate about will keep your interest and attention. This focus will help your proficiency and ultimately your confidence.
You will never be at a loss for motivation. I don’t know about you but the worse feeling in the world to me was when I used to wake up faced with the daunting task of leaving the warmth of my bed to go do something I disliked for 8 hours. The beauty of pursuing your passion is you’ll NEVER have to search for motivation. You’ll find yourself waking up before your alarm rearing to go!
You will be much more healthy and energetic. The biggest issue with deciding to pursue a career that makes you unhappy is the stress you’ll have to face because of it. The only thing stress causes is disease and death. If you don’t believe me … go talk to a Dr. or do a little research. If you make the decision to ONLY pursue your passion you’ll eliminate a huge portion of your stress and therefore you’ll be happier and your energy level won’t be drug down by depression.

I understand I’ve made some harsh statements in this post but … does it really help to sugarcoat the truth? If you’ve read something here that touches a nerve, I only hope it helps give you a push to make a change that ultimately improves the quality of your life. I’m not saying it won’t be a lot of work, but how much work is it to do what you hate every day? :)

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