Monthly Archives: March 2013

Your One Wild and Precious Life

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Camping-in-New-Zealand

At 42, my friend Sarah is not rich, but she does earn a very good salary as a human resources manager for a residential care corporation. Her closet is full of new clothes, she owns a nice house, she drives a new car and she can afford a two week vacation.

By all accounts, Sarah should be happy, right? Wrong.

Sarah’s job is one of those high stress, everything-needs-to-be-done yesterday type of jobs. Like a lot of people, Sarah longs for the weekend and her two week vacation every year.

Remember the days when giving your employer a highly productive eight or nine hours a day meant that you were a dedicated employee? Sarah often gives up her lunch hour, comes in on Saturday’s, and answers her cell phone and email after hours. She is expected to arrive at work before 8 a.m. and often leaves well after her family should be having dinner together. Sarah often feels compelled to apologize for leaving work before 6 p.m. She is just trying to meet the minimum expectations of her employer.

To say that Sarah in unhappy would be an understatement.

Oh, but did I mention that she makes a great salary?

“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.” – Buddha

No one sets out to be miserable and well off. Quite the contrary. TV commercials and magazine ads would have us believe that money, and all the goods and services it can buy, is precisely what it takes to achieve the elusive state of ‘happiness’.

So earn and spend is what we do. But are we really any happier?

ManpowerGroup recently released a new snapshot survey that underlines the dissatisfaction among American workers. At a time of high unemployment, lackluster job growth and major uncertainty in world financial markets, many employees feel stuck and unhappy in their jobs.

ManpowerGroup ran the survey between April 16 and May 15 of 2012 and collected responses from workers in the U.S. and Canada. Only 19% said they were satisfied with their jobs. Another 16% said they were “somewhat satisfied.” But the rest, nearly two-thirds of respondents, said they were not happy at work. Twenty-one percent said they were “somewhat unsatisfied” and 44% said they were “unsatisfied.”

What about you? Does your income exceed you level of bliss? If so, you may be suffering from a case of “Affluenza”. Producers of the PBS program by the same name, describe the disease as:

  • The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Jones.
  • An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream.

As I hear Sarah speak of her current situation, I can’t help but wonder how it affects her health, her relationships and her resolve to offer her best to the world. I have spoken to Sarah many times about her current situation and how she is going to change it. She is hopeful but she has to come up with a strategy to overcome the following:

  • She dreads her 10 – 12 hour work days and longs for a change
  • She often feels that there is no way out and this is just how it is
  • She occasionally numbs herself with TV, food, alcohol, the internet or some combination of them all
  • She’s willing to work hard but she’s desperate to do something more meaningful
  • She’s already so busy and overwhelmed with work and family obligations that it’s hard for her to see other options
  • She’s scared to give up her salary, benefits and ‘job security’ for something unknown
  • She has forgotten what she’s really capable of and what she is meant to be doing
  • She has lost touch with what her unique genius is and how much its really worth to the marketplace

Despite all of these obstacles, Sarah has set aside time during the week to experiment with creating income from a skill that she absolutely loves. And you know what? She is now getting paid to teach people music and she is more excited than ever!

Your One Wild and Precious Life

I recently came across this quote in a line from the poem The Summer Day by Mary Oliver. The poem closes with this line:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Many of the people that I know are increasingly realizing that this is their one life and every day is an opportunity to really live it or to just get by.

What does this mean to you?

What do you really want to be doing with your life?

I believe that these are two of the most important questions we can be asking ourselves.

Here are some examples of family, friends and acquaintances that are either moving in the direction of their desired lifestyle or they are already living it:

My wife, Jill Knouse, walked away from her high paying, high stress job in financial services to pursue her love of yoga. She started down this path eight years ago and she is now one of the most sought after yoga teachers in Portland, Oregon. She has also created her own unique yoga business that leverages her core strengths and talents to teach new yoga teachers how to sharpen their skills and become amazing yoga instructors.

My friends Dakota and Chelsea are making preparations to travel the Western U.S. in a converted Sprinter van. They will experience the West in a way that few people ever will. They will be visiting some of the most scenic natural environments in the world and exploring them on their terms. Something that could never be done with two weeks of vacation!

My friends Rob and Heidi are pursuing their love of fitness and extreme sports by training for and participating in one of the most grueling physical endeavors imaginable. They will take part in the Lake Tahoe Ironman Triathlon later this year. For those that don’t know, this is a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and a 26.2 mile run. Talk about setting big goals!

Other friends are planning a sabbatical to spend six months visiting their favorite countries abroad. They realize that their life is happening right now and they want to experience it in a way that will allow them to follow their inspiration now rather than waiting. My guess is that this experience will open up new doors that they never would have imagined.

A guy that I am just getting to know has taken his passion and knowledge of physical fitness, weight training and yoga to become a fitness blogger, certified personal trainer, and yoga teacher in Portland, Oregon. Johnny Nasello found himself in his first post-college desk job and started noticing some changes in himself that he was not particularly proud of. For the first time in his life, he started to develop body fat around his mid-section and he decided that it was time that he did something about it. He didn’t know it at the time but that decision changed his life and he left his corporate job to start JohnnyFit.com.

Pat Flynn used to have a 9 to 5 job, which he really did enjoy. He was working at an architecture firm and loving the line of work he was in. He had no plans to leave, but unfortunately he was laid off. It turns out that getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened to him.  He started the Smart Passive Income Blog and used his real life experiences to show people how they can make a great living online. Pat has been publicly tracking his income from his online business and last month he created $51,475.50.

The Choice is Yours

As you can see from the examples above, making a living is starting to take a backseat to having a life. I’m not saying that you need to quit your job to pursue something else. Far from it. I’m encouraging you to think about prioritizing your life in a way that allows you to live it to the fullest. For some, this will mean taking a sabbatical to pursue travel and adventure while they are young. For others it may mean leaving a corporate job to discover what you knew you should have been doing all along.

Is the thought of making a big change scary? You bet. But facing your fears is always more exciting than remaining in a miserable state of predictability.

My goal from the start of this blog has been to encourage you to wake up inspired and fall asleep fulfilled because you’re fearlessly giving your gifts to the world.

One final thing…..take five minutes and watch this video of two people that may be much like yourself. They took a journey. And it changed them. Forever!

http://vimeo.com/36519586

And I ask you the same questions that the man in this video asks:

Is it possible to be happy with this life?

Did you enjoy your story?

In gratitude,

Michael

The Best Time of Our Lives

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lghotshots

I’ll bet you didn’t know that I used to be a fire fighter! The picture above is of the La Grande Hotshots Fire Crew – a team that I was proud to be a part of during the summers of my college years.

We have all had experiences that have shaped our lives and determined how we see the world. For many of us, these experiences happen during high school or college – those years when we feel most alive and connected to our peers. For others, our best days may come from a shared experience with a close-knit group such as a sports team or the military. Others find glory through extended travel abroad or at a job they were especially proud of.

I am very proud of the summers during college where I worked as a ‘Hotshot’ for the U.S. Forest Service.

What is a Hotshot? It’s a cohesive unit of specialty firefighters that attack at the hot and/ or complex section of a forest fire. In short, it was some of the hardest and most rewarding work that I have ever done.

Why was this hard work so rewarding? I suppose it was because I was part of a team that was constantly challenged and we rose to the challenge together. Whether it was going 48 hours with no sleep or hiking for hours and hours to reach a fire, I can always remember feeling a huge sense of accomplishment after the challenge had been conquered.

What is it that makes these seemingly challenging times so rewarding? I think it’s because they represent a time of rapid discovery and advancement. We do more than we think we are capable of doing and our threshold for what is possible changes forever.

But what happens after the ‘glory days’ have ended? For many, we put them aside and move on to something else. This often looks like getting a ‘steady job’, getting married and starting a family, buying that new flat screen TV, saving up for the annual two-week vacation.

While all of these things are noble endeavors, are they really what we want for ourselves or are they unconscious decisions based on the expectations of our peer groups, families, or our culture?

And if a previous live event (like my good ol’ Hotshot firefighting days) were really so great, shouldn’t they provide the motivation for greater challenges? What would the future be like if we applied the lessons we learned and went on to something else that was even better?

What if we were to say to ourselves, “Wow, that was so incredible to have that experience. Since my glory days were so transformative, I’d better make sure I find a way to have more of them somehow.”

Here’s a novel idea: wherever you are in life, however old you are, begin thinking about every day as a new possibility to live as if it were the best time of your life.

If you are serious about continuing to have the best time of your life, answer these questions right now and share your thoughts in the comments:

  1. Which of your life experiences were the most inspiring and rewarding?
  2. How can you leverage these experiences to really get what you want out of life now?
  3. Based on your experiences, what can you offer the world that no one else can?

Whatever your answers to those questions are, you can likely find the beginnings of your quest to live a full life and make the world a better place for others.

If you like the idea of having more glory days, and you don’t want to retire from the sense of being fully alive, you need to work towards a meaningful idea of your own. And the best time to get to work on it is right now.

Now, I’m off to Lake Tahoe to try and reclaim some of my glory skiing days!

In Gratitude,

Michael

Create a Life with Meaning and Money

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Happiness

We’ve covered a lot of ground over the last few weeks.

We’ve talked about getting on your feet financially.

We’ve discussed embracing simplicity and setting priorities around the things that are most important to us.

And last week we reviewed how to make space in our lives to expand and create something brilliant.

Now it’s time for the final step in the series of getting paid to make a difference.

STEP 4: Begin Experimenting and Pursue Your Meaningful Idea

Before I jump into this topic, I gotta make sure that you have cleared a specific time in your day to pursue your greatness. It’s so easy to allow life to get in the way of pursuing great ideas. This I know because I’ve been there. I’ve made the mistake of opening email first thing in the morning and all of a sudden, an hour is gone! I’ve told myself that I will get to it after work, only to find myself too exhausted to do anything meaningful.

If you haven’t committed to setting aside time to pursue something meaningful, my advice is this.

Commit to waking up two hours earlier in the morning, and going straight to your computer with a cup of coffee or tea. Getting up one hour earlier isn’t going to cut it for most people. Try to sneak in two. I know the prospect of waking up that much earlier sucks, but isn’t the prospect of making money doing something you love, worth it? I’ve tried everything and this is the best time for busy people to work, because the world hasn’t woken up yet and started placing their demands on you. This time is stress free, peaceful, and all for YOU.

With time in your day you can now begin experimenting intensively with potential sources of meaning, passion, and purpose outside of work. Anything from artistic endeavors to starting a charity.

Many people are content to leave things here. They have a career that pays the bills and they also have time during their day or week to pursue meaningful ideas outside of work. There’s really not much downside to this path. It works. Worst case, you have a day job that pays the bills and you get to explore your passions (for starting a charity, learning a language, writing poetry) on the side.

For Those Who Want More

If your current field, industry, company, or organization does not reflect your deepest sense of purpose and meaning, then you’re going to need to take things a step further and begin aligning your money with your meaning. With new hours in your day/week gained from Steps 1, 2, and 3, it’s time to begin experimenting with things that might one day become both a source of meaning and a source of serious income outside of your current job.

This might mean starting a small business on the side, moonlighting in a second “start-up” career, or finding ways to earn money from your artistic and creative passions.

Whatever it may be, if you want to make a living from it and leave your current job, you’re going to have to dive deep into the area of expertise that interests you. You’re going to have to wrap your own passions, talents, skills and purpose – the things you care most about and are best at – into a package with fundamental marketing, sales, and networking skills.

If you know how to do that, you will get paid very well and you’ll be living in your passion and your purpose.

A major pitfall in this journey is that we are so conditioned to thinking of money and meaning as separate, that we overlook creative ways that we can bring them together. If you dig deep enough, you will find endless ways to combine your creative skills, passions, visions, and dreams with the already existing worlds of business and online commerce.

I’m not going to say this will be an easy or risk free task. However, once you begin researching and mingling with others that are living this way, you will have plenty of examples and inspiration to draw from.

Here are some of my favorite resources on how to align your meaning with your money:

These are all examples of people that have mastered the art of taking various components of their skills, desires, talents, and dreams and have put them together to create a thriving business. This is proof that we can make money by pursuing what interests us and create something meaningful in the process.

Are you ready to combine money with meaning? If so, you’re in luck because that’s where we’re headed in a BIG way! It’s going to get a little crazy and a little nutty around here as I move closer to rolling out a new web site and a new web TV show dedicated building a business that combines money with meaning.

That’s all for this week. See you again next week as we dive further into the art of making a living through meaningful work.

In Gratitude,

Michael

Create Room for Expansion (so that you can create something brilliant)

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expansion

We covered steps 1 & 2 for moving in the direction of getting paid to make a difference.

Step 1 was all about getting on your feet financially. This is a critical step for launching a meaningful idea that can make a difference in the world. When you have a steady flow of income and the bills are covered, there is much less pressure around making your big idea work.

Step 2 was about embracing simplicity and setting priorities around what’s really most important. When we begin to remove the fluff from our lives, it opens up room for those things and experiences that make us feel most vibrant and alive. And then it becomes easier to focus on what really matters most.

Step 3 for Getting Paid to Make a Difference: Create Room for Expansion

Step 3 is all about expanding your life in the direction that is most inspiring to you. I’m not just talking about pursuing the things that give you fleeting moments of pleasure. I’m talking about making room to experiment with your biggest and brightest ideas.

See, once you are on your feet financially, the next step is to get a little playful and creative about ways that you can use your skills, talents and experiences to offer big value to the world.

This is the phase where you begin to wonder ‘what if?’

And then begin experimenting with finding ways to blend your meaning with ways to make a living. Finding a comfortable meeting ground for your meaning and your money is going to require a fair amount of experimentation. And experimentation takes time and it takes money. And it takes room to fall and to fail.

Having the financial stability gained in Step 1 makes it a lot easier to start taking some measured risks in your life. For example, I have a job in the software industry that I happen to enjoy and it pays the bills. Outside of my day job I use mornings and weekends to write this blog and soon turn it into a full-blown web TV show. I am going to be interviewing people from all over the world that have succeeded at creating a six-figure businesses doing what they love.

Do I have all the steps in place or know how this will turn out?

Nope!

Am I excited about this project?

Hellz yeah!

The point is that I am using some of my discretionary time and income to follow my desire and create something meaningful that brings value and education to people. This is an experiment that I’m passionate about because I’m fascinated with creative entrepreneurs and I am genuinely interested in the steps that they have taken to create their dream lifestyle. So I figured, what better way to learn than talking directly to the peeps that have figured it out. And then creating a platform where I can share this with others via my own blog and web TV show.

Another example is my wife, Jill. She worked in financial services while she began developing her yoga teaching and massage skills. She began experimenting by taking a yoga teacher training program and eventually going to massage school. Fast forward a few years and she is happily teaching yoga, leading yoga retreats to tropical locations, and now has her own yoga mentorship program for new yoga teachers. See how all this all unfolds?

It’s just so different – and better – figuring out how to make a difference in the world and find meaning in your life when your bills are covered and you have a secure roof over your head. Its way less stressful than trying to do it when you feel pressure to make money. And once the hurdle of supporting yourself is achieved, you’ll be much less likely to go down a path that leads to financial burden or stress.

Now, one problem that you may encounter once you’re financially stable is that the time it takes to create that financial stability in your life is so great, there’s nothing left for anything but your job. This is where Step 3 comes in.

Freeing up time and space

You will need to free up time and space for experimenting with innovation, creativity, making a difference, and finding meaning. One of the ways which I ensure that I have creative time for myself is to get up earlier and get one thing done towards my meaningful project.

Almost every day I get up between 5:30 and 6:00 so that I can have quiet, dedicated time to think, write, research and create. I determine the single most important task that will move my idea forward and I spend at least an hour engaged with that task.

I tend to have more creative energy in the morning so this is when I make time to work on my project. I often spend some time in the evenings as well but the point is to set aside time to experiment with your ideas and stick to it. Do you realize that if you did this for an hour in the morning for a year, you will have accumulated over 350 hours of experience towards learning something new or creating something meaningful?

What if I work a demanding corporate gig?

If you’re working 70 hours a week at a corporate job, there will be very little space left for anything else.

In this case, you should begin looking for creative ways to pursue flextime, working at home, telecommuting, and working from your laptop. These ideas just aren’t that foreign anymore. At the company I work for, over 70% of the employees have home offices and spend at least a couple of days a week working from home. It has been proven that this saves companies money as a result of reduced sick days and happier, more productive employees.

As an example, one of the requirements that I had set when looking for my current job was to have a flexible schedule and to be able to work from home. When I was networking to find this job, I told people that these requirements were non-negotiable and that I am most productive and effective in that arrangement. And you know what? I got just exactly that! And I am exceptionally productive and very good at what I do as a result.

I’m not here to say that you storm into your boss’ office on Monday and demand that you be allowed to work from home. What I am saying is that there’s really no excuse for not creating some flexibility in your workday now if you want it. The only excuse might be your own fear and lack of imagination – and those just aren’t good enough!

Next Steps

  1. Decide when you will set aside time to pursue your meaningful idea. This could be anytime but make sure it is during a time when you have the most energy. For me that’s first thing in the morning but for others it may be 11:00 at night. Just make the space and then we’ll talk about what to do with it next week.
  2. Extra credit. While you’re at it, make space for exercise or movement. There is no single better way for me to feel physically, mentally, and emotionally balanced than going for a run, doing yoga, or even going for a walk. Make time for this every day and it will change your life!

Create room for expansion in your day and pretty soon you’ll be filling that time with brilliant experiments that will move you closer to a life of meaning and money.

In Gratitude,

Michael