Everyone says to find a job you love doing. That you are passionate about.

I agree that the best jobs are the ones that align with your values and passions.

But you should never leave a job just because you are not happy with it.

Sound contradictory?

A Job is a Job

A job is simply a set of physical or mental tasks that are undertaken in order to receive remuneration.

In other words, a job is what you do to get money or some other emotional benefit.

A job is neither good or bad, it is the same as walking down the street.

You choose if you are happy at your job or not.

Read that sentence again.

Understand that you Choose to Hate your Job

If you hate your current job then ask yourself the following questions:

• How would you describe the negative emotions/thoughts you have towards your job?
• What are the activities that bring up these negative emotions?
• Who makes me feel bad about working and what is it that they do or say that makes me feel this way?

When thinking about it you discover that what you truly hate is the emotions that you experience while you are at work.

So the solution to deal with a job you hate is to first understand why this job raises the emotions that it does.

A while back I wrote on How to Not Hate your Job in which I talked about how I went from being totally stressed out at work to actually having fun while doing the same job.

I hated my job because I couldn’t deal with the stress of highly strung bosses and upset customers. Once I realised that the stress was what I hated about my job I took steps to learn how to deal with it and consequently the same situations no longer hurt me.

I no longer hated my job, rather I used it as a tool to learn about myself and to create a better life.

This is why you must understand why you ‘hate your job’ before you try to change it.

Make Change Based on Understanding Yourself

No job will bring you never ending happiness.

Happiness comes from inside yourself, a job is just where you get to express it.

Once you have gotten through and released your hate towards a job you can start working on discovering more enjoyment in your work.

Look at the things that are most enjoyable both in your life and in your workplace. Try to spend more time doing those at your job.

If you find that you cannot bring those aspects you enjoy into your job then now is the time when you can start looking for a job that aligns more with your passions.

Now you choose a new job based on what you want, not on running away from what you think you hate.

We make better choices when we understand ourselves.

photo credit: batega

There are so many self development tools around that we can make use of to improve our lives.

The first mistake many of us make is to only read about tools and never try them.

The second mistake is to learn all about a tool by studying it in depth but postponing its use until we feel we have mastered it.

The third mistake is to gain information from using a tool but then not act upon the information we have gained to change our lives

I want to talk about the second mistake I caught myself making.

Learn tools through use

Over the last 9 months I have been steadily memorising kanji in my quest to learn Japanese. I am up to number 1828 out of 2042 ‘everyday use’ kanji.

Through how I was introduced to the topic I made the assumption that I should learn all of these kanji before I began trying to read.

Now I realise that not only could I accelerate my learning/memorisation process by trying to use what I’ve learned so far by reading, but I would also be getting closer and closer to my goal of understanding japanese by trying to use it.

By reading, I see the kanji more often, even if I have to use a dictionary on every single one. But I also start getting used to the sentence structures and which kanji often appear next to each other in words.

So when you start learning about a tool, start trying to apply it in your daily life. This way you start developing a personal experience and understanding about the tool and learn it faster. Not to mention benefiting from it.

Self Development is a path full of ups, downs and new experiences that we have not dealt with before.

I was watching a news report on people who have gone through psychotic episodes and died after going through self development courses, which reminds of a message I should give to everyone undertaking work on themselves.

Learn how to see and understand yourself first.

While I would be stupid to say I know what goes through peoples minds I do know how easy it is for one thought to lead to the next and snowball into obsession or worse.

If you cannot keep track of your thoughts and emotions then you should not be trying to manipulate them.

When you begin working away at yourself to resolve issues and improve yourself, you become a lot more open. With this freedom you have to also take on more responsibility to actively look after yourself.

If you tear down a bunch of resisting thoughts and emotions that stop you from expressing your opinions then you have have to replace them with an awareness that evaluates what you are going to say and do.

Tearing away your defenses should not be done if you have no plan as to how to manage the new found space.

Whenever psychological space is created it gets filled with something different, you must be able to watch and be aware of what it is, lest you be swept away by a whirlwind.

So watch yourself. Discover how the mind and the emotions work within you, how they come, go and interact with each other.

I would like to hear how other people prepare themselves to work on themselves.

Every day in our life is full of critical moments.

From approaching potential partners and managing your friendships to conversing with clients.

Just before every action there is a flash in the major centers of the body, generally the heart and the mind.

These flashes can result in either a compulsion to act or create an inhibition to proceed.

While I say slay them both and act from clarity here I want to talk about tackling those flashes that inhibit us.

Because people that are often paralyzed by these often have trouble following through with important decisions in their lives and consequently become trapped in their same old prison.

Strategies for Freedom from Hesitation

Continual Awareness

In order to break free of what holds you back in that second when you think you have already committed yourself, you must be able to sense it in that precise instant.

These flashes cannot be seen by the eyes, you have to develop an internal sense.

Just as when someone attempts to grab your wrist and the hairs detect something allowing you to turn free, your internal sense enables you to break free of internal paralysis before it can seize you.

To develop this sense requires that you discover the difference between how your body and mind feels when it is being propelled by a train of thought or emotion compared to when it is clear and tranquil.

The quickest way to discover this is to sit quietly and close your eyes for about 10 minutes. Notice your thoughts bouncing around in your head and most importantly notice the silence in between them. Now ask yourself:

“What is present during the silence between thoughts?”

You are not looking to answer this in words, rather you want to ask this question to help you explore and feel this silence more.

Once you have sampled it you need to look for it in daily life in each moment. Just pause to feel what exists between thoughts.

The same applies to your heart. Watch how emotions feel in your chest and what it feels like when none are acting.

When you can tell the difference between when you are clear and when a thought/emotion has entered then you have a foundation that will enable you to take control of yourself and your life.

Weapon of Choice

Choose your own form of self confidence. Choose an activity in which you can practice dominating yourself. You want to develop a trust in your own abilities.

I practice martial arts, the esoteric nature of solo katas provides a good practice ground for burning through your enemies.

Meditation and prayer are other techniques that help develop the confidence required to know you can handle any thought or emotion that arises.

Once you know how your tool works you have to practice using it on a day to day basis as any little thought appears. Such that when it comes time to encounter a larger hesitation you can switch it on at will.

Decision Preparation

When it comes to actions that we have time to consider and make decisions about there are some fundamental understandings that can help you lessen the grip that any cause of hesitation can put on you.

1. You will never have perfect and/or complete information for making decisions

Don’t put off action just because you might be wrong in your assumptions about other people. You cannot know for sure how someone will respond to you. Take off the gloves and present yourself to the world.

2. There is no tragedy you cannot recover from

It may seem like there is the possibility of undesirable results from your planned action. But the mind will always make things seem catastrophic when there is nothing to stop you from moving on from whatever happens.

3. Doubt creates the D in Self-Destruction

Do not second guess your decisions. If you have come to a decision through a logical analysis and after weighing your options decided upon an action then you have no reason to doubt your decision to act.

The food that doubt thrives on is the fact that we are stuck with incomplete information. In the case of interacting with other people it is worse because not only do we have limited information but what information we have is actually just our interpretation of the words and actions of another person. Such things are easy for a thought to manipulate to make a case against our action.

If you allow doubt to exist in your thought process it will lead to the destruction of your action.

A method I have been using to nullify persistent doubts is to first realise that a doubt is just another possibility like your other conclusions. Then you consider both the doubt and your other conclusions and assign them each a percentage possibility of being true. Now doubt has no power as is it just another possibility. Next you choose the one with the greatest possibility of being true and act upon its basis.

Understanding these elements will leave you more confident to discard any thought that may doubt action in the critical moments.

Now go for it and burn with fire through the world.

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

Our lives are defined by the things we do, not what we think.

Our actions are only limited by what we believe to be possible.

Therefore it is critical that we are always expanding our horizons in order to discover all the things that we could possibly be and do if we knew they were possible.

Now you can go and read wondrous stories of all the incredible feats that humans have done, but in let me do some of that for you:

1. Bring Food and Aid to people in Need
2. Ensure an Entire Country is Educated
3. Land on the Moon
4. Learn a foreign language
5. Make a Homemade Helicopter
6. Invent the Refrigerator
7. Play the Mario Theme with a Remote Control car and Wine Bottles
8. Make someone Smile Wholeheartedly

What is more important than reading is to push your own boundaries

It is nice to know what others have been capable of but it is more valuable to know that you are capable of anything.

Call it self-confidence, call it inner strength, call it anything you want as long as it entails something you can build in yourself.

When I started martial arts I had no idea about my ability, but I felt internally I could learn any physical skill. But really I couldn’t care I just wanted to learn. My first few weeks showed me how incapable I was of the task. Yet a few years later I’m still training and am the current Australian Iaido champion for my grade (aka beginner).

Starting my study of Japanese was (and is) equally daunting. It is like sitting in a room as a baby understanding nothing, a shock to the system of anyone who thinks themselves an accomplished individual. Eight months later and when I go to do something that would involve saying ‘excuse me’ I have to discard a few japanese equivalents before I remember the english words.

Last week I decided to only drink water as an experiment to see what it was like not drinking soft drink. Now I know for sure that when my mind says that soft drink would go down really now that water can go down equally well.

Try something new.

No matter how small or large, experiment.

After you have be doing this for awhile you will start to develop an attitude of always being able to try.

Then one day you may come to realise that all human achievements and successes are simply due to time and effort, nothing else.

photo credit: rachel_thecat

There are two ways to change your life.

One is to light a fire under yourself and launch yourself out of a cannon with radical change in an area.

The other is to slowly build momentum in a direction much like a wave swelling up as it crosses the ocean.

This tool is about building momentum and ensuring continual change.

Tool for Continual Change

Like all good tools, it is a simple one.

Take a sheet of paper and divide it into 3 columns.

Problem, Solution and Done

Have about 14 rows so you can use it for 2 weeks and then stick it on your wall.

At the end of the day or when you get home after a days work, sit down and stop for a few minutes.

Think about one thing that has been bothering you or just doesn’t feel right in your life. Write it down in the ‘Problem’ section.

It doesn’t have to be the biggest problem in the world. I’ve written things like:

• Progress is slowing learning Japanese
• Procrastinating about which project to start
• Don’t have a good consistent place to store ideas and tasks

That being said they can be life changing issues, some of my bigger ones were:

• What is my plan to decide if I want to live in Japan
• If freedom is so important to me, how does my study of Japanese fit in?

My point here is that you can put down anything that you feel like would be better if something changed about it.

Now walk away and do something else.

When you come back to the room have a look at the sheet of paper. If any ideas of how you could  make an improvement on a problem occurs then write them down in the ‘Solution’ section.

Take action on your solutions through whatever task organisation process you use.

At the end of every week put aside 30 minutes to review your problems and solutions. If any solutions are complete, tick the ‘Done’ section. If any problems don’t have a solution put a bit of thought into them or call a friend to discuss.

Do this everyday and at the end of a year you will look back and be amazed at all the positive changes in your life.

Key Actions

1. Print out a 3 column (Problem, Solution, Done) sheet and stick it on your wall.
2. At the end of each day, write down a new problem point that jumps to mind.
3. Periodically when you pass the sheet think of solutions to problems. Take Action.
4. At the end of the week review your sheet and see if you can fill in any missing solutions and mark off successful actions.