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Post written by Leo Babauta . “Follow your passion.” It sounds so easy. So why do so many people struggle to find the career they’re excited to wake up to every morning? Today, I held a free webinar with Jennifer Gresham, founder of the No Regrets Career Academy , called, “5 Shortcuts to Finding Your Passion.” Jen took a thoughtful look at how to “follow your passion” and find your “fire in the belly” with confidence, and shared: How to tell if your passion is career material or just a hobby Anti-passions (and why you can’t ignore them) Why passion isn’t everything The #1 mistake people make when choosing a passion Advice for the extremely passionate (do you have to choose?) Jen and I also answered a ton of questions about finding your passion. Watch the recorded videos here: Leo’s Intro Main Presentation: Jen Gresham Leo Answers Questions

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Editor’s note : This is a guest post from Michael Bungay Stanier of Box of Crayons . You’ll know Michelangelo’s comment about how he worked, so let me paraphrase: “I just carve away anything that doesn’t look like a lion, and I’m left with a lion.” In that statement is the fundamental choice at the heart of Great Work : focus on the No to become clear on the Yes; define the Yes by clarifying the No. I think it’s the essence of doing more Great Work; or at least it seems to be the critical lesson I keep needing to learn. (You do know we teach what we most need to learn, don’t you?) Here are four elusive pairs I’d like to do a better job at saying No and Yes to, and the four experiments I’m going to start to see if I can move in the right direction. 1. Saying No to Control … so I can say Yes to Freedom My very first boss was creative, prolific and a touch insane. I remember one of my early Career Limiting Moves when, in front of the whole company, I clicked into mouth-operating-before-brain mode and joked he needed to have a finger in every pie. I have become that very same person. Pies? I’ve got pies everywhere I look, way too many pies. Or perhaps it’s not enough fingers. But in any case, we – and by that I mean I – have reached a point where it can’t go on. If I haven’t dropped a ball yet, it’s only a matter of time. And hamster-in-wheel is not a job description worth much. I’m inspired by Chris Brogan whose philosophy, as I understand it, is to start something, hand it over and then get the hell out of the way. Here’s the shift in thinking that might make the difference for me. Realizing I am not Box of Crayons but that I only serve Box of Crayons. And I’m going to test that by staring one thing, something I’d normally hold on to, hand it over, move aside and see if it will be the end of the world (which has been my theory to date). How about you? Where has staying in control become your own mind-forged manacle ? 2. Saying No to Popularity … so I can say Yes to Friendship I’m not super obsessed with numbers, and in fact am pretty lousy at metrics. (I mainly go with “Is this the right mix of Great Work and Good Work?” “Am I having fun?” “Are we in the poor house?” I hope for Yes Yes No as the answers.) But the rise of new technology means that one way of spending time is hanging out in the social media mirrored rooms waving at many (Woo hoo! 14,000 people on Twitter!) but never really holding hands, looking into the eyes and having a real conversation with a few. I notice that this week, Gwen Bell is leaving Twitter and moving to Google+, because she feels it’s a place where she can create intimacy, community and digital sanctuary . And Scott Stratten , one of the Twitterati, has said his greatest mistake was to follow back blindly. My shift in thinking is to recognize it as a width vs depth thing, and see if I can find the hunger for the depth. I think it’s there somewhere. I’m going to start taking the Call a Friend option once a day to connect to people I love. You? 3. Saying No to Money … so I can say Yes to Impact For the last eighteen months I’ve been walking a fine line, working on the business that I love and that pays my bills, and working on my Great Work Project , a new book whose sale raises money for an important cause. It has been a constant struggle to give this Great Work the appropriate time and space to come together, and that’s primarily because of the seductive comfort of Good Work. Great Work, because it’s work that truly matters to me, makes me fret, gives me sweaty palms, and invites all sorts of doubt and self-sabotage. Good Work on the other hand is the relatively simple task of rolling up my sleeves and getting things done, having some fun and making some money along the way. And yet, Great Work – unsafe and uncertain as it so often is – is where I hang out on the edges of my own competence and ambition, learning what’s possible for me and for the world. Great Work is also where I can most easily invite other extraordinary people in to help me create the meaning and impact I’m hungry for in my life. The shift in thinking is to remember (and remember and remember) that Great Work projects take time and need time, and your calendar never lies about what really is most important to you. And the experiment for now is to look again at “the bottom 10%” of what I do, to see if I might say No to that in some way, to say Yes to Great Work. What is it for you? Where might you trade money (or time) for meaning? 4. Saying No to Plans … so I can say Yes to Now Truth is, I’m unlikely to ever say No to plans. I love them – which is one reason at least that I hang out with Charlie Gilkey , who’s a master at them. I’ve got plans for the week, the month, the quarter, the year. When in doubt, I pull out a piece of paper and start sketching out a plan (which, it must be said, often looks exactly like the plan I’d done two weeks earlier and then “filed” somewhere safe and forgotten about.) But it’s time to plan a little less. Leo has been talking about No Goals for a while, and (following in his footsteps as I so often do) I am becoming aware that the price I pay for planning is that I spend more time in the future and less time in the here and now. For instance, the last few months I’ve been deep in the planning of today’s book launch. The price I’ve paid is that summer has slipped by largely unnoticed. I haven’t stopped enough to feel the heat of the sun on my shoulders, to hear the ice clink in my drink on the deck, to give myself up to the swing of the hammock. And as I write this now, the first of intimations of Fall are here and I know I’ve missed a season that I won’t have back. The shift in thinking is to realize that planning comes at a cost. A price I’m willing to pay, but perhaps to pay less these days. My action is to not fill up the final months of the year, but to try to wander a little in the white space that’s there. Got any non plans? Yes is too easy But a strong Yes is hard, and say a strong Yes to the things that really matter is harder still. So rather than starting with the Yes, start with the No. Get to the heart of the choice you want to make, then design your own experiments to see what might be possible. ? Michael’s Great Work Project is End Malaria a collection of essays on Great Work from 62 brilliant people and where $20 from every book sold goes to Malaria No More.

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Post written by Leo Babauta . I’m often asked how you can start doing work you love — how you can make a living doing something you’re passionate about. I don’t profess to have all the answers, but the answer for me has been fairly simple: Do one thing really well. People want a more comprehensive answer than that, but in my experience, if you learn to do this, the rest will follow. I write about simplicity. That’s all I do. Over the last 4 1/2 years of writing Zen Habits I’ve found success by focusing on that alone, and stripping away everything else that gets in the way. I’ve removed comments, I don’t do much social media (except for fun), I don’t do much email, I don’t sell ads, I don’t do consulting. I write about simplicity. By doing this one thing over and over, I’ve gotten much better at it. Good enough, anyway, for people to want to read my work, and as the audience for my work has grown, so have the opportunities to make a living in a non-spammy way. The ways I monetize (print books, ebooks, online courses) are less important than how I’ve grown the audience. Do one thing well. It’s really that simple. Narrow down what you do, and do it repeatedly. Learn, grow, improve, read, watch, do it some more. When you’re really good at that one thing, people will want to pay you for it, or to learn how you do it. It takes a lot of focus and practice to get good at doing one thing, but I’ve found that if you truly love it, it’s not really work. It’s play. And I never complain about playing at something I love. — Tweet

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‘There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on.’ ~Robert Byrne Post written by Leo Babauta . The early draft of this post sat in my system for about a week. How’s that for irony? Many of us are good at starting things — it’s the finishing that we need help with. The truth is, it might seem funny that my post on “How to Finish” sat unfinished for 7 days, but I’m actually decent at finishing. I start a whole bunch of articles and books, and let those ideas germinate. When I’m ready to focus on them, I get them to done pretty easily. How? Many people wrote in to ask me to write a post called “How to Finish” after I wrote about How to Start . Reader Anthony Zullo , for example, asked: “You know when you get to the middle of a project, like a novel and start to lose motivation. Well, how do you develop that motivation after you’re half way up the hill but not yet walking downhill yet?” I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll gladly share what works for me. Motivation For me, finishing is all about motivation. If you’re having a difficult time finishing, it’s best to look closely at why you want to finish in the first place. If the task or project isn’t something you want to do, consider the consequences of dropping it. I’ve done this often and it’s a relief when I finally drop something I didn’t really want to do in the first place. If you really do want to do the task/project, ask why. What do you get out of it? Do you love doing it? Is there some benefit you’ll get? Visualize that — it might get you going. If you need more motivation, find a way to give yourself some public accountability. Set a deadline, do a blog post, tweet about finishing. A little positive public pressure can be a good thing. Get Moving In my post, How to Start , I shared a tip for getting going: Make it ridiculously easy to get started. Make the task so small, so easy, you can’t say no — make it just 1 minute long, for example, or even just 20 seconds. Use the same tip for finishing: break your task into tiny little mini-steps, and just get started on each one by making them so easy you can’t *not* do it. And keep doing that, repeatedly, until you’re done. It’s that simple. If you can’t write a whole chapter of your book or report, just write a paragraph or two. Take a walk around for a minute, then write another paragraph or two. Keep doing this until you’re done. Then go out and tell the world you finished. It’s awesome. — tweet nothings — Form a New Habit! I’m creating The Habit Course (with my friends Barrie and Katie), and we’re looking for a few beta testers. If you’d like to test our simple method for creating habits, and you’re willing to fill out a 1-minute report every day of the habit formation, please sign up for the Beta Test ! This Beta Test will be limited to the first 50 people who sign up . Everyone else will be put on a waiting list for when the course starts in May. We won’t spam you.

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Editor’s note : This is a guest post from Courtney Carver of Be More with Less. When I was 16, I wanted more. When I was 24, I wanted even more than that. So, I worked harder, earned more, spent more, to have more, only to owe more. I was exhausted at the end of the day and tired when I woke up most mornings. I ate on the fly, fell behind, ran late and could never catch up. Sound familiar? I thought everything I was doing was for a better life. I thought what I was doing was normal and right. I had become so used to bills in the mailbox, and feeling rundown, that I didn’t know anything was wrong. So, how did I go from wanting more, more, more to craving less ? I would love to tell you that I woke up one morning a changed person, but that’s not the way it went down. Even though I had begun to make small changes, I needed a wake up call … and it had to be really loud. On July, 7th 2006 I was diagnosed with relapsing remitting Multiple Sclerosis. That was my wake up call, and to say it was loud is an understatement. The diagnosis was nothing short of traumatic. I didn’t have enough information to take action. I only knew enough to be really scared. I had so many questions. Could I still ski with my family? Would I be able to help my daughter with homework? Would I even be walking in a year? No one had the answers to those overwhelming questions, so I had to focus on what was most important: my health and my family. Nothing else mattered. If I had moved forward with these big questions and fearful thinking, my daughter and husband would have been so worried. I realized that if I started thinking differently, so would they. My questions went from, “What is this disease going to do to my body and mind?” to “How am I going to reverse MS?” The answer to my question was change. Small shifts and big change were necessary to become the best possible version of myself. When I started making changes in my life, I didn’t know that they would lead to minimalism, but they did. In fact, while the changes I made were fighting MS, they were also redefining my whole life. The changes I made are not all essential in the life of a minimalist, but they are all essential to my minimalist lifestyle. What I did to change my life: I became a vegetarian. Research shows that MS patients, and people dealing with other autoimmune conditions that eat fewer saturated fats and “inflammatory foods” maintain better health. (I would challenge that this goes for most everyone.) Giving up meat was one of the best ways I could really “do something” about my new diagnosis. I stopped eating meat to achieve better health. When I started my vegetarian journey, I started reading. I read about raising animals for meat. I read about factory farming. I learned about the impact of our actions on our bodies, animals and the earth. By really opening my eyes and heart to how meat was put on my plate, I lost my appetite for it. I was motivated by health and changed with compassion. I fell in love with yoga. Practicing Yoga gives me strength, flexibility, focus, peace of mind and freedom from fear. I want to keep my body strong, and my mind calm and focused so I can effectively fight this disease and take care of my family. While I am in search of less, I want to be more sensitive and loving, more adaptive and more resilient. Yoga gives me that, too. I got rid of my stuff. While I always felt compelled to put something on an empty surface, I have come to love an empty space. It takes living without it to realize how clutter affects your life and takes away from your freedom and creativity. I am reminded of that every time I walk into my kitchen and instead of seeing a cluttered counter, I see sunlight streaming in from the kitchen window. I am still letting go of my stuff and feel lighter everyday. I decided to live without debt. You may not think that your bank account can affect your health, but considering money can cause great stress, and stress can make you sick, it only makes sense that poor money management equals poor health. My husband and I made the decision to be debt free, and paid off our last debt this summer except for our house. What will we do with our money now that we don’t have any monthly payments? Whatever we want. I hung up the phone. I do not use my phone when I’m driving anymore. I don’t text at red lights or make calls on the back roads. I can remember too many times where I would arrive at a destination and not remember how I got there because I was so involved in a phone call. Admitting that I had essentially been risking my life and the lives of other drivers wasn’t easy, but it was necessary to make the change and the commitment to be phone free in the car. Another benefit is that now, when I pick my daughter up from school, she has my full attention. She doesn’t have to compete with business or other phone fueled distractions. I am there for her. I redefined better . As I mentioned before, all of my bad habits came from wanting something better, something more. In the changes I’ve made, I have redefined what better means to me and my family. The health and happiness of my marriage and family comes before everything else. My husband and I have decided that “more” isn’t the answer for us. Now at 41, forever changed, and virtually symptom free, I am becoming me. I know I haven’t figured it all out but am content. I don’t make as much as I used to. I didn’t take a big vacation this year or make any big purchases, but there is no doubt that I am happier. Less speaks to me. Less lets me love more deeply and less lets me really be me. My wake up calls have become more subtle, but because I have the time and space to pay attention, I hear them loud and clear. When I first started to practice doing less and being more, I discovered Zen Habits. It was another wake up call, but it sounded like a whisper, “You can do this. You can change.” It is not a coincidence that Leo Babauta’s story of change changed me. I was ready to listen, ready to change. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that less is enough. Of course, I am still learning, still changing and still a work in progress, but now it is my turn to inspire change with my story. Read more from Courtney at her blog, Be More with Less , or follow her on twitter . — ang Twitter .

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