What fires you up?

Posted on October 14, 2011 by

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I have the opportunity to listen to a lot of podcasts at work and they tend to fall into two categories — business/entrepreneurship and personal development.  One key topic to both categories is to be your authentic self do what you love.

I’ve never wanted to be anyone but me, an impressive feat for an introvert, but I have trouble with the second part.  I live life on a very even keel.  I don’t get too high and I don’t get too low.  Do I have hobbies and interests?  Of course, I do.  Am I passionate about them?  Do they fire me up?  Well, no, not really.

I’ve been asked many times by many people what fires me up.  I don’t really have an answer.  The only times I can recall being fired up, it isn’t in a good way.  It’s all anger.  If this is true for me, it’s probably true for others and  it begs the question:  Is “What fires you up?” the wrong question to ask an introvert?  There are plenty of things that I could see myself happily doing day in and day out and never think twice about whether it was the right thing to do.  Does that make me passionate about it?  I don’t think so.

I recently read the results of a study that challenges the results of several others that say extroverts tend to be happier than introverts.  This new study basically indicates that extroverts are far more likely to choose answers at the extremes of a particular question.  Introverts tend to save the extreme answers for the extreme situations.  For example, you will probably never hear me say “This is the best ice cream in the world!”  The odds are pretty good that some ice cream somewhere is better than this stuff.  Good or bad, the experiences of my life fall on a continuum of satisfaction/happiness/joy/fun/etc. and they all get compared to previous events and hopes of the future.  The extroverts seemed to get some satisfaction from answering on the outer reaches.  Oddly enough, the introverts were as likely to avoid the extreme answers as the extroverts were likely to choose them.  As long as that’s the case, I guess extroverts will always appear happier.

Is there a better question for introverts to ask themselves to find their core purpose in life than “What fires you up?”  Does this concept strike a chord with you?  Is it totally foreign?  Leave your comments below!

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What’s the greatest compliment you’ve ever received?

Posted on October 12, 2011 by

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I read a few new blog posts yesterday and while perusing the comments, I had a thought.  What’s the greatest compliment you’ve ever received?  On many popular blog posts, you get several (or dozens or hundreds) of comments that all basically say “Nice post.”  What if each of those commentators spent a minute or two to compose a real thought and then decide if they need to share it or not?

I love getting comments on my blog posts, but I’m happiest when some element of humanity is shared.  I love reading about common experiences and differing opinions.  If it really was a nice post, what about it touched you?  Is there anything I can do you bring more value?  Did it raise new questions?

To answer my own question, the greatest compliment I’ve ever received was “Thanks, that was helpful!”  To be helpful means I’ve changed a life.  It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering to be important.

Next time you choose to leave a comment (on this site or others), please share how the post changed you.

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Current Hard Work Update — October 10, 2011

Posted on October 10, 2011 by

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Well, I crossed another item off of my Current Hard Work list and made progress on a couple more.

We installed our railing for our new front steps.  We started last week (click here for last week’s update) and finished on Saturday.  We modified the design a bit.  We started off with a PVC railing with top and bottom rails and square spindles.  After preparing to add the spindles, we thought it looked too closed off, so we left the bottom rail and spindles off of the railing and it looks much better.  We’re not required to have spindles because there is no dropoff on either side of the stairs, so it works out.  We saved some time and we like the result.

I also spent some time rearranging pages on this site.  I want the page structure to make sense and be easy to navigate.  Now all the recipes and cooking tutorials are sorted, which should help you find something you’d like to make.

The last thing I worked on this past week is I posted new content 3 times.  I want to create content and post it on this site at least 3 days a week so I know I’m sharing all I can.  The challenge is going to be in my consistency.  There’s no shortage of things to write about.  I just need to do it.  Most ideas I have to write about never seem to make it into a post, so I need to come up with a better method of capturing these ideas so I can use them later.

If you’d like to join the Hard Work Network, click on the “Current Hard Work” in the right sidebar.

What methods do you use to capture your ideas?  Maybe you can help me with this!

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Uncomfortably Comfortable

Posted on October 7, 2011 by

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The worst week of work I’ve had in a LONG, LONG time is finally coming to a close.  I won’t go into details here.  They’re not important anyway.  I have finally made the decision that it is time for me to “explore other opportunities.”  On some level, I’ve known for two years but I kept finding myself getting reeled back in by the next big project or the potential for new growth in business.  All I’ve ended up doing is wasting those 2 years.  My skills have stagnated and I had become too comfortable with the low-level misery to be willing to give up the pay and benefits.  After all, I have a mortgage to pay and a household to support.

I’ve been like the hound on the porch wimpering because he sat on a nail but isn’t motivated to get off of it.  Well, the time has come to get off that nail and get back to growth and a healthy work situation.

I’d like to take the leap and go into business for myself, but I’m having trouble isolating what kind of business that would be.  The most natural move would be into web design as I’ve been doing it *GASP* since the 90’s.  I’m well versed in WordPress and less so in Joomla, and both are far better than the way we used to do it — hand coding HTML.  I also have a pretty extensive eBay auction background.  I’d love to help you with either of these.

I’m a bit of a website snob these days and I have a hard time tolerating poor design (which makes me cringe every time I see the current header of this site).  The area that I see really needs some help is the restaurant industry.  Either a restaurant has a fantastic, well-executed site or it is completely awful or even non-existent.  I think I could really help some people in what is truly a cut-throat industry.

Please pray for God to help me with my vision of the next steps of my work life.  If you have any suggestions or encouragement, I’d gladly accept it.

 

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What are you not going to do today?

Posted on October 5, 2011 by

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Dan Miller, author of 48 Days to the Work You Love and No More Dreaded Mondays, says “Be extremely intentional about the use of your time; decide in advance what’s important.”

I think it’s as important to decide what you are not going to do as it is to decide what you are going to do.  I find that I get suckered in to too many groups and activities that don’t match my personality or interests.  This usually happens for one of two reasons.

First, sometimes I feel like I’m the only option they have.  There’s a small pool of talent in some of these groups, so the work has to fall onto someone’s shoulders — it might as well be mine.  The problem with this is that I’m not going to do as well as someone who is actually gifted in that area and I’m probably not going to give it enough time or effort because I’d rather be doing something else.

The second way is that I haven’t planned what I would be doing at the time instead of this opportunity.  I get asked something like “Are you busy on Tuesday night?” and my answer would be “No, not really.”  At this point, I feel like I don’t have an alternative to saying yes.

This is the wrong mindset.  There is always an alternative.  If I have decided ahead of time that I’m not going to participate in anything relating to Project ABC, then it is easier to say (honestly) “I’m not interested in working on this project.”  There doesn’t have to be any guilt or second-guessing.  Just complete honesty.

Be proactive and decide what you are not going to do today to free up your time to truly live within what you ARE going to do today.  I think you’ll find yourself more satisfied and more productive.

 

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