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“Creating Successful Leaders”

Category Archives: Changing Your Life

April 12, 2013 The Difference Between Skills And Passions When It Comes To A Great Job

In his book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport makes a startling observation: “When it comes to creating work you love, following your passion is not particularly useful advice.”

How can this be? Don’t passions lead to great careers? That’s the common thinking, but Newport found that this is actually a dangerous way to search for a rewarding career. Your passions don’t always translate well from what you’re interested in to what you do for work, for one thing. For another, how can you know what a career will be like if before you’ve tried it? An aspiring musician may be passionate about music, but can they honestly say they’ll be happy with music for a career? Of course not; after all, I don’t think any of us have ever had a job that perfectly met our initial expectations of it.

Newport isn’t saying that being passionate is a bad thing. He’s instead warning us not to put too much confidence in our passions as the sure way to a rewarding career. It’s the other way around, in fact, as he explains:  “Passion is a side effect of mastery.”

It turns out that  current research (the Self-Determination Theory) has pointed to three main components that make you more motivated in your work:

Autonomy – the feeling that your actions throughout your day matter, and that you have control over your own work

Competence – knowing that you’re good at your work

Relatedness – connection to others in your place of work

These three ingredients, according to the Self-Determination Theory, enable you to achieve mastery in your work, and from there passion and happiness will naturally result. 

That’s right: rewarding careers are created through finding, refining and pursuing your skills, not your passions.

It may take a while longer to enact this principle, but I think Mr. Newport is onto something. We too often give “passion” too much credit when it comes to finding a great job and growing in it.

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Reference:

Newport, Cal. So Good They Can’t Ignore You. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2012.

 

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March 27, 2013 Happiness Leads To Success (And Not The Other Way Around)

We tend to think that if we get that job, if we get that promotion, if we find our true love etc., etc., etc., then we will finally be completely, permanently happy.

But this is not true!

Shawn Achor, founder of Good Think Inc., explains why the success-then-happiness formula just plain does not work:

“Every time we hit a success, our brain moves the goalpost of where success is.”

You’ve surely experienced this for yourself. You got a job, for instance, and were elated…for a moment. Then your brain instantly went to the next step. “Okay, you got the job, but are you prepared for the job? Do you have all the resources needed to excel in the job? Is this even the right job for you? Will it lead to better opportunities?”

And in this way you went from feeling accomplished to feeling anxious, all in the blink of an eye.

You can see why grounding your happiness in your successes can become a problem.

The solution to this, although it may be much harder practiced than preached, is to reverse the order of success and happiness. Says Achor:

“If you reverse the formula by pursuing happiness first, you wind up with greater happiness and success.”

The science behind it all? As Achor explains, happiness releases dopamine in the brain. This chemical both leads you to seek out more happiness, and also “turns on every learning center in the brain,” thereby making you three times as creative. As we know, creativity tends to lead to success.

At first I thought this whole reversal of the formula thing sounded a bit too simple to be true. But it’s simplicity is what makes it a challenge to enact in real life. Our culture reinforces the idea that success is the answer to happiness all the time. We treat celebrities like royalty, because they have all the things society tells us give us happiness. At the end of almost any Hollywood movie, the protagonist overcomes a great obstacle and rides off into the sunset, where we are to assume that their success will give them contentment for the rest of their days.

Okay, so success doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness. But how do you reverse the formula?

“As I’ve come to see it, happiness is a work ethic…Happiness isn’t something that happens to you. Happiness is created.”

1. Journal. Your brain works in patterns. If you focus on negative aspects, your brain will form a worldview of negativity, which will become your default setting. By taking time out of your day to write down a few positive things in your life, you will slowly retrain your brain to see the positives. You’ll be happier.

2. Serve, Give, Love. Unhappy people are almost always turned inward. We are social creatures, made to interact. Although it may sound like the worst possible thing to do when you’re at your unhappiest, reaching out to others, serving your community, and building other people up will give you a greater sense of meaning and self-worth.

3. Pause. Our instinct when we are stressed is to push ourselves harder. This actually neglects the underlying problem by giving us an excuse in the form of a distraction. Force yourself to stop and be still. Perhaps this is the time for you to journal. Let go of your troubles, even if for a moment.

Achor, Shawn. “Scientific Proof That Happiness Is A Choice.” Accessed March 27, 2013. http://www.nextavenue.org/blog/scientific-proof-happiness-choice

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February 27, 2013 Take Another Look At Your Weak Points

The fact is, you have strengths. But you also have weaknesses that can get in the way of your goals. I’ve talked a lot about the importance of finding your strengths and developing the skill of being able to plug these into the world around you.

Today, I want to address your weaknesses.

Remember in high school, when your counselor encouraged you to be “well-rounded?” “Pick up an instrument if you’re an athlete,” they said. “Take up painting if you’ve never done it before.” Essentially, they prompted you to flesh out your world and your experiences.

At a certain point, whether we were in high school or college, we honed in on our strengths. We polished them, trained to be able to apply them and, as a result, our focus was taken away from other potential strengths.

I want to talk about the areas in our lives that we’ve abandoned during our drive toward our strengths. It is true we have strengths and weaknesses, yes, but this does not mean that we shouldn’t expand into other areas of interest.

And I don’t mean just pick up another hobby. Hobbies are great, but I’m thinking a bit bigger here. I’m thinking about treading into the dangerous waters. The places you’ve avoided because they were places that made you uncomfortable.

These are the places that truly test you and spurn growth. Staying attached to one strength or skill-set has its advantages, that’s for sure. You can become one of the best at whatever it is you do well. But in the meantime–and this is the downside–you lose a greater perspective of the world. This one life on this Earth contains an immense amount of opportunity, so why would you stick to one bitty corner the whole time?

You know by now that you’re not good at everything. But that doesn’t give you license to simply throw your hands up and say, “This isn’t my strong point,” every time you encounter a situation that plays to your weak points.

This week, consider things you aren’t so good at, and give them another try. You may surprise yourself; the story goes that Einstein failed math in grade school.

Keep on growing!

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