On the weekend I bumped into some work colleagues from 2 years back and we had about 60 seconds in order to update each other on our lives. I quickly rattled off how I was now a software consultant, australian Iaido champion, black belt in Jodo and learning japanese.

When I asked them how their life was, their response was a rather sheepish ’still working at y company…’.

Immediately I felt bad for them, they were giving me the impression that their life was in some way inferior to mine. I know this to be incorrect, everyone has the right to choose how they live and have equal access to happiness.

However this conversation consolidated what I have noticed with a few of my other friends. There are two types of people: Active and Passive dreamers.

Which Dreamer Are You?

Those that are passive see their dreams as just dreams, things that they cannot attain. Their thought process goes along the lines of ‘that would nice to have/do but …’. There will always be reasons that the mind can make up to shy away from chasing your dreams.

Active dreamers understand the difficulties that must be overcome and they put in place plans that will enable them to achieve their dreams.

People can switch between the two styles easily.

For a long time I resisted chasing the dream of being fluent in japanese. I rationalised that I didn’t have time to learn a language, that most of my friends spoke chinese so maybe I should learn that instead, many people say that learning a language is very difficult so it’s not worth the effort.

I was very passive if not negative about my ability to chase this dream. Until one day I said to myself, ‘I’ve been considering learning japanese for almost a year, I must want it on some level. I will learn japanese!‘. I locked that decision in my mind and committed myself by signing up for some japanese classes after work.

Once I got home I researched all the information I could find about people who have managed to learn japanese well and how they did it. I refused to listen to the people who said you have to live in the country to learn it because I had made my decision to learn japanese, no matter what my circumstances were. Soon I come across a guy who had taught himself to a high level before moving to japan.

Now I had dedication, motivation, a plan and momentum to turn my dream into a reality. I became an Active dreamer.

The qualities I possessed while I was a passive dreamer of learning japanese were:

• Fear of failure
• Helplessness
• Restricted and Incapable of useful action
• Submitting myself to carry on with my life just as it is, the path of least resistance

When I became an active dreamer I gained the qualities of:

• Burning desire / passion
• Energized living
• Easily excitable
• Determined
• Proactive
• Committed to taking myself to the next level of ability

Looking at the changes in my attitudes it is clear that one is an empowered life capable of achievement, the other is a restricted life that drags on.

Whenever I discover something I want I look carefully at myself and ask which qualities am I currently exhibiting.

Have you been a passive dreamer for too long?

Near the end of the movie it hit me.

You have no Power to Act while watching a movie.

The wonderful things in life are those in which you have the power to interact and create.

While watching a movie you are reduced to less interactivity than even a rock who atleast has an impact on the breeze as it flows.

Life is incredible when you go out there and make decisions.

Whether you are redirecting your finances or breathing in the air at the park, these are the actions in which you have the opportunity to grow and take action.

When you go and take action you discover another half of yourself that you didn’t know existed and find a huge supply of energy.

So right now, pick the next task towards your dreams and do it. Don’t think about, DO IT!

I know at times I’ve had to do tasks that have had the ability to instantaneously transform me into someone struggling to stay awake (Oh no please, not another spreadsheet).

The other day I found a solution.

Work with Your Golden Vision

Know what you want.

Visulise exactly what it is you want, just one thing, one scene, one concept. Really want it, in fact no, imagine how awesome it is that you already have it and how grateful you are to be experiencing it.

Know that everything you do is taking you towards it, one moment to the next and that inevitably you will reach it.

Make the image in your mind so vivid that you can think of the concept and immediately the full experience of the image appears within you.

Then whenever you are struggling with a task, trigger the image into mind and remember that that reality is what you are shooting for.

All of a sudden you will find a renewed source of energy flowing through you.

If you really want it and you believe that you will have it, it will work.

As usual it was busy so I moved my way into the middle of the carriage to stand somewhere comfortable for the next half an hour.

The train I was on was an older one so the usual advertisement segments on the walls were blank.

Looking at these empty spaces I noticed how quite my mind was.

Without the constant stimulus provided by advertising and people rushing everywhere it had naturally quietened down.

It was really nice just standing there looking at this dull grayed out wall, occasional glancing out the window at the fresh green grass.

Nature is wonderful but sometimes all you need is a blank wall. Be sure to take a few minutes to look at one next time you get the chance.

In my last post I talked about Expecting Nothing from Life and Taking Everything.

Today on my way to martial arts I was given a wonderful reminder as I noticed the trees on the side of the road.

Simply. Nature Expects Nothing.

Here were all these cars speeding by, breaking the speed limit just enough that they won’t get caught and then there are the trees. Just sitting there idle, waving in the breeze.

The same goes in the heart of the city. People striding their way through the crowds head down thinking about their next most pressing commitment. Every 20 metres another tree passes by overhead just taking in the light.

The sense of peace and calm that nature exhibits is a wonderful thing to take in.

So wake up and smell the roses, they will be waiting patiently for you.

Life is wonderful by default when you stop trying to put your own spin on it.

The only thing to do in life is to hoist your sail and point it in the direction you want to go. Then row as hard as you can.

Expect Nothing

There are two aspects to this:

• Remove preconceptions about others actions
• Don’t expect that your actions will have the results you expect

Positive thinking is the art of pretending that something happened that either benefited you or will benefit you (putting a spin on your experience). This works great for a lot of people and it sure beats negative thinking but it has its problems.

You cannot know what life will throw at you in the next moment.

Don’t get into the habit of dreaming about the future, wishing things to be a certain way.

Don’t let the past plague your mind, it is not an accurate indicator of what your future will be.

Discard all of this and you will be left with nothing but the reality of what life is. Glorious in its freedoms and infinite possibilities.

Take Everything

You have this moment and every other moment in which to do something.

Make grand plans, goals and visions.

Translate them into actionable steps and start walking immediately.

Life carries on, all you can do is make your mark on it.

Take every bit of input, every breath, every sound, every sight and envelop it.

Choose your direction and walk. Live your life deliberately, it doesn’t matter if the direction you walk needs correcting later, correct in when you need.

Don’t deliberate on what might happen. Take a step and take everything in life.

There is no charge for awesomeness

The thing is, it is so true!

If you just take the time to see, awesomeness will be there.

Here are 3 different ways to experience awesomeness.

Lazy Once In a Lifetime Guide to Awesomeness

Go on a holiday to some wonderfully remote place of nature and do absolutely nothing but laze around for periods of time at the recommended tourist destinations.

Bring no technology, alcohol or other fancy things to distract you.

By forcing yourself to wait around in beautiful places there is a very small chance that you might get to experience the awesomeness of what is around you.

The idea is that your mind gets so bored that it eventually gives up. When this happens you will either fall asleep or realise that ‘hey that place is pretty cool’.

The other thing that could happen is that you will be immediately struck with a wonderful view and your mind will collapse for all of a few seconds, experiencing awesomeness. Then you will probably lose that sense.

Smart Guide to Awesome Living

Drop away your mind and leave it behind.

Thoughts are like a cloud and you will not be able to see awesomeness due to all the fog.

You have to change your mindset from one of the world being the place where you are born, work and die to the place where everything is awesome.

It probably sounds silly to hold a belief that the world is awesome. But it is just as stupid if not more so to hold the belief that the world is not awesome.

Think about that for a moment.

Then you realise that both views are equally invalid or valid. So pick the one that works best… Awesomeness!!!

Using this method you will be far more ready to appreciate the awesomeness around you. It will just be a matter of looking around without using your mind, trusting that life is awesome and then you will realise that life is awesome.

Being Pure Awesomeness

This method takes the last one a bit further. Here you stop seeing awesomeness and you just feel it.

The difference in this way is that you don’t believe the world is awesome, indeed you have no concept of awesomeness.

Yet even without being able to conceptualise the sensation you can feel it in every step and every reflection in the world.

To reach this stage you have to drop the idea of what a rock is. Forget what the sky looks like, see the pavement for the first time.

When you see your friends next time look into their eyes with curiosity, as if you have never seen a human before.

If you can hold your curiosity for a couple of seconds and the other person doesn’t freak out you will discover something amazing.

Underneath the fear, the joy, the anger, the pain, the glee you will see something else, pure awesomeness and you will realise everyone deep down is awesome. You are awesome, they are awesome and before long you will see everything is awesome.

As long as you live you will then know how to see the awesomeness of everything, and be awesomeness.

Recent Standout Awesomeness Experiences

Here are some of my experiences from the last couple of days.

• Seeing a star-filled sky out in the country, followed 3 hours later by a shooting star
• Watching chocolate sauce being beautifully laid out onto a bed of pancakes
• Gazing at the sky as the clouds displayed an ever-changing flavor of rainbow (apparently similar to a circumhorizon in motion)
• Watching as the salads are added to my subway roll
• Inspecting the curls of the waves that gently crash up against the beach sand
• Looking up at the sky in the city as I step off the busy peak hour tram

Providing you don’t take the lazy way to awesomeness, then awesomeness really has no cost.

What are your experiences with awesomeness?

Sometimes you are just not feeling like being involved in your passions, there are two ways in which this strikes. One is a temporary distancing from a passion the other is a permanent move away from the area.

Dealing with temporary lack of passion

There are a few reasons that you might lose passion in a particular activity. Here are some:

• You have forgotten what the reason for you being involved in the activity was
• You never discovered what your core passion was that was inside the activity
• Entropy has been creeping in and you are starting to get lazy

Solving the first two problems involves going back to the techniques I outlined in my earlier posts on pinpointing your passion. Go back and work on these exercises again. Break down the activity that you seem to be loosing passion for and see the elements, then go back to the big picture and start over from the beginning and see what appears. Once you have gone through the exercise have a look at what your results were last time that you did the exercise.

Often you get in the habit of doing an activity and start to forget why. Finding your purpose within the activity is what gives you the energy. Your passion does not exist inherently within any particular activity. Rather the activity provides a means to which you can express your passion.

The third problem of entropy is usually brought on by the first two problems, you just don’t notice it until you are already lazy. What happens is one day you have an excuse not to do an activity relating to your passion. Then a bit later you start to forget about the link between the activity and your passion. Now that your activity has become a bit disconnected from your passion there is little positive energy towards it and entropy sets in further as you skip it more often.

To get out of entropy always requires extra effort. In my post living your passion I specified that you should be involved with your passion every single day. You need to (starting today) do your passionate activities every day without exception. This way you will overcome the entropy. Once you have got back to consistently doing the activity you have to check if you are still passionate about it. So you follow the methods I listed for dealing with the first two problems of temporary passion loss.

Dealing with a passion shift

Believe it or not, sometimes you do need to give up on a passion. One of the most important things to realise, especially if you are involved in personal change is that you do change. The more involved you are with personal change the faster you change and it can be disconcerting for awhile but that is a topic for another post. The fact of the matter is that sometimes things that you used to be head over heels about are no longer interesting to you.

First up, try the steps for fixing temporary passion loss. If after trying these you find that you are not excited then chances are your passion has shifted.

Now you have re-identify your passions. Start over working through the get excited about your life process to discover where your passions have shifted to. It will feel like you are throwing away all the work you have done and starting with nothing. That is correct, but there is nothing wrong with that. It is a absolutely necessary step to bring a new clearer understanding of yourself and your passions.

When you change you have to change to. Don’t get stuck thinking that because you have invested all this effort into something that you have to stick with it. The efforts you previously made where correct for that time in your life. Now it is time to move on to your next stage.

So don’t be afraid to make the change, go forth with fresh excitement and discover what the next stage of your life holds for you.

Well done finding your passion. That is a hurdle that a lot of people never cross. You have unlocked a new wealth of energy and you (if you are somewhat like me) will find yourself eager to get involved. Now comes the next most important step. Fitting your passion into your life.

Be involved with your passion daily

Your passion is what gives you the fire to go through your day with excitement, eager to be involved with life. Your passion is critical to your well being, take care of yourself. To bring the most out of your life you need to bring your passion into your daily life. Depending on what the passion is it may not be practical to do your passionate activity each day. However there are still things you can do to keep the passion in your day:

• Read about your passion (internet, magazines and books)
• Write (offline journal / online blog) about your passion
• Join a online forum and discuss your passion
• Adapt your passion for a different situation (Can’t jog due to the rain? Get a treadmill)

Everyday do something with your passion

You don’t have to spend hours everyday with your passion (as much as you would want to) but I think it has incredible value to make sure that you always have it in your daily life. It could be just 15 minutes, just do it.

For your passion – You Make Time!

We all have busy lives and the number one excuse for not adding a new activity to your day is that you don’t have the time. Yes you have to keep earning enough money to pay the bills and meet your responsibilities. However there is always a way to make room for a passion. After all it is something you want to do!

Here are some ways to make that extra time available:

• Get up earlier – You have probably heard this a thousand times but the lazy ones among us need to realise it is a viable option. I used to sleep 7-10 hours a day, now I sleep 5-8 hours and I can tell you, an extra few hours really is a lot.
• Stop watching TV – Do those TV shows really bring much to your life? Consider getting rid of some.
• Streamline your news habits – Do you read the newspaper (or multiple newspapers), watch the news on TV (maybe multiple times) and have the news on your internet homepage? Streamline your information gathering habits. Pick a single news site like The Age or the Herald Sun (Australian news sites), bookmark it and check it once a day. Quickly click through relevant news categories and scan the headers. Most people can save a lot of time with this.
• Itemise and cull your daily activities – Carry a logbook and right down everything you do when not at work. At the end of the day look over all your activities. Are there any their that you can scrap? Remember you are making room for your passion. So only leave it on your list if it is a must or more important than your passion.

Now that you have made time to be involved with your passion everyday you will most likely find yourself more excited and in general happier.

Last time in Get Excited about your Life we talked about some methods to figure out some areas and activities in your life that you are passionate about. This used a very broad approach focused at processing the tremendous amounts of data we get every day. Now that we have identified some areas that you are excited about it is time to drill down into their core and discover something even more passionate.

Start with your passionate activities/areas

You should use your whole list, for the sake of brevity I’ll use just some of mine which are:

• Teaching people
• Software engineering
• Action movies

Break them down

Break down each area into the components that make the activity. Just come up with a bunch of labels that define what the activity is about and what is involved in the activity. You don’t need to feel passionate about each label just put down whatever comes to mind. Oh yeah, write it down. Here is my breakdown:

Teaching people:

• Pass on knowledge
• Help people
• Make them smile
• Get them excited
• Give them confidence

Software engineering:

• Surmounting complex technical challenges
• Give someone what they want
• Give someone what they need
• Make stuff
• Make things faster and better than before (Improve ways of doing things)

Action movies:

• Heroes overcoming obstacles
• Heroes striving to be the best
• Heroes helping/protecting the less fortunate/weaker
• Heroes being confident in themselves
• Power

Group common elements

Look for common elements and group them together. My grouping is:

1. Help people, Give them confidence, Give someone what they need/want, heroes helping others, Pass on knowledge, Make them smile, Get them excited
2. Make stuff, Make faster and better stuff
3. Surmounting complex technical challenges, Heroes overcoming obstacles
4. Heroes striving to be the best, Heroes being confident in themselves, Power

Summarise

Look at each grouping and try to summarise it in one phrase (or use one from your list). My summary:

1. Helping people get what they want/need
2. Create stuff, particularly useful things
3. Surmounting difficult problems
4. Developing yourself to have freedom and power

Now you can put in front of each summary “I’m passionate about” and say it out loud. When you are writing these and speaking them watch yourself, does it ignite a burning desire? When I read these I feel a rush and can’t help getting excited about them. If only some of them excite you, throw out the rest.

The list defines what you want to be doing in your life. Identifying these items you now want to store them somewhere so you can look back and reflect on them.

Realise a deeper passion

The final step is to find some activity that allows you to be involved with as many of those passions at once. Sometimes this is easy, one of your activities may already encompass them all. But for most of us we don’t know how we can incorporate them into our lives daily. But rest assured now that you have clearly identified them in your mind, you will start seeing things differently and an activity will jump out at you one day. Go back to getting excited about your life and keep looking at all the activities you come across in your life. Your new view will bring new possibilities.

It took me awhile to figure out how to bring those passions together into something I can always be working on. The answer was creating this blog with its focus on helping others in self development, the most difficult problem, which offcourse helps me develop as well.

Did you find a passion?

Next post in the series is Living Your Passion