The million dollar question is: How to find my passion ? And my simple answer is: CREATE it ! Yes, this is no mistake. You don’t need to search for it, discover it or find it. Your passion, purpose, reason for being or life contribution can actually be created ! Sure, you will need to spend a bit of work on knowing and understanding yourself. But from there PASSION IS A CHOICE (just like happiness is a choice) ! All you need to do, is to decide that you WANT to live your passion, that it matters to you.

There are lots of techniques to get you in touch with what brings you alive and what you feel passionate about. In my workshop “Discover Your Life Purpose & Love Your Life” I use the major one’s. But you could start with taking 15 minutes for yourself answering 3 simple questions:

“What do I love doing (even if I got no money for it) ?”
“If I could anything I wanted to do and money/time/family would be no issue, what would I do with my life ?”
” What did I use to enjoy as a child ?”

Answer each question with 10 lines at least. Don’t stop until you have filled all 10 lines. Then have a look at your answers. Anything you had lost touch with lately ? Anything that gets your hear beat faster ?

How could you get more of that into your life now ? What if you CHOSE AND DECIDED to put these passions into the centre of your life ? How would your life be different ?
What changes would you have to make ? And if you made them, what (or who) would you have to say “NO” to from now on ?

Now commit to ONE ACTION for the coming week that will have you live (one of) your passion(s). Then learn from it. Stay conscious about how you feel and what impact this one action has on you and those around you. Then decide to do it again until it becomes your life and who you are !

CHOOSE TO LIVE YOUR PASSION.

A poem from Celaleddin-i Rumi Mevlana

Passion makes the old medicine new:
Passion lops off the bough of weariness.
Passion is the elixir that renews:
how can there be weariness
when passion is present?
Oh, don’t sigh heavily from fatigue:
seek passion, seek passion, seek passion!

Former Soviet dissident author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had unique insights into the best and worst aspects of capitalism and communism. “Self-limitation is the fundamental and wisest step of a man who has obtained freedom and it is also the surest path to its attainment.”
English philosopher Bertrand Russell captured the concept elegantly: “To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”

Isn’t it true that our pursuit of more and more has in fact made us more unhappy, unhealthy and exhausted ? There are plenty of studies to prove it. Emotional distress is a disease of the affluent world !

Yet, our most fundamental needs as human are to feel secure, to be part of a community, to feel competent and to feel autonomous and authentic. So in these nerve-wrecking times, with many of our savings being wiped out, it is high time to preserve our mental health and remember what truly matters to us:
The things that truly enhance our lives – family, friendships, good neighbours and health – have one thing in common: They can’t be bought. Having and working towards them is REAL WEALTH, a wealth no financial crisis can ever take away from us.

Worries are the anti-thesis to happiness. They distract you from enjoying life and the NOW – the only time to experience happiness. Here is why ALL worries are wasted:

40% of worries are about events that will never happen
30% of worries are about events that have already happened
22% of worries are about trivial events
4% of worries are about events we cannot change
4% of worries are about real events on which we can act
(and these are also wasted because we can control them)

Next time you find yourself despairing, ask yourself these questions:
1. Have I got enough air to breathe ?
2. Have I got enough food for today ?
3. Am I going to survive ?
If the answer is YES, things are already looking up !

So often, we magnify things out of proportion. The worst thing that could happen is probably very inconvenient, but not the end of the world.

Have a look at the story of the man who phoned Dr. Robert Schuller. Here is the how the conversation went:

The man said, “It’s over. I’m finished. All my money has gone. I’ve lost everything.”
Dr. Schuller asked, “Can you still see ?”
The man replied, “Yes, I can still see.”
Dr. Schuller asked, “Can you still walk ?”
The man replied, “Yes, I can still walk.”
Schuller said, “Obviously you can still hear of you wouldn’t have phoned me.”
“Yes, I can still hear.”
“Well,” Schuller said, “I figure you have got about everything left. All you have lost is your money !”

To overcome the worry trap you need to trust that you are meant to learn things. Rather than shying away from things, take more risks. You might learn something.
Start by being grateful for what you have.
Seek growth, not perfection

So is wealth measured in money or abundance in all areas of life ? The advertising of a financial service organization a friend showed me recently, really spoke to me when it said: “Wealth is not measured in millions, it is measured in a feeling called freedom.” What I like about this definition is that it puts money in its place as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. So is it the feeling of freedom, that defines our wealth ? I think there is some truth in this.

When you have enough money to cover your basic necessities (what that is exactly is entirely different topic), you are free ! You are free to choose how you want to live, which experiences you want to have in your life, whether you want to follow what your environment expects of you (e.g. making more money and upgrading your house, your car, your branded clothes and your private banker) or whether you want to follow your heart (and maybe have money come in as a side product). Of course, every choice you make automatically means a choice against something else, so it requires courage to stand up for one’s choice. But choice you have. Choice is freedom.

You may have sensed it by now, there is something intensely subjective here about the feeling of freedom. Some people have much much more money than covering “basic necessities” and still don’t feel free. They feel slaves to their possessions and commitments. Others have very little and feel free. Who is wealthier ?

If some people manage to (and hence it is possible to !) really feel free with just covering the basic necessities and if feeling free means wealth, shouldn’t we all work on reducing what we define are our “basic necessities” in order to get to wealth faster ? Studies show that the opposite is happening. When a television set or a car was not defined as being “basic necessity” decades ago, several TV’s and cars are now seen as basic necessity my many. Yet, studies also show that despite increased numbers of luxuries available to households in the developed world, happiness has not increased. So is it time for a paradigm shift ? Wealthy with less rather than more …?

I would like to offer another different view on wealth and this is my absolute favourite. The wealth of a person is the sum of that person’s experiences. I love this definition because in difference to money, experience is the only thing nobody can ever take away from you. The more of them you have and the more diverse they are, the more you learn, develop and grow as a person and that truly must mean being wealthy. People worry a lot about money, the money they don’t have but also the money they have: they worry about losing it, protecting it, insuring it, investing it safely. People worry about money being taken away from them again. Money (beyond basics necessities) does not make you free, it builds you a golden cage of responsibilities. Experience can’t be taken away. Once you’ve got it, you have it FOREVER ! It is forever yours. And the more you have, the richer you become. Accumulating experiences (rather than money) makes you free: free of worry (there is nothing to lose) and makes you rich as an individual. The saying “a wealth of experience” hasn’t been invented for nothing.

The majority of people assess their success by external factors such as the approval of others (boss, neighbours, friends etc), the money they earn, the wealth they have accumulated, the job title they carry, or the medals they win. If my clients become aware of WHOSE judgement of their success they are accepting (who sets the salary structure, who decides about promotions etc) they often realize that it is a very small group of people, just a handful around them at work or at school, in the neighbourhood or the leisure club, and by no means everyone. When asked who would NOT see them as successful, they are also always able to name specific people.

At this point, they become aware, and question themselves why they place certain people’s judgement about them and their success above that of others. The breakthrough comes when they realize it is THEIR CHOICE. They are then empowered to decide whether they want to continue having their success judged by the same small group of people. Most of my clients say NO. They point out that they don’t even like some of those people and are not looking up to their bosses or neighbours or whoever else … That is when they make a powerful conscious choice about who should be judging whether they are successful or not. In most cases it is their loved one’s and always “themselves” ! At that point my clients experience tremendous power. They are in charge, setting their own success measurements. And these look very different.

From then on, they measure their success by how well they live according to their values, how true they stay to themselves, how authentically they are living, how meaningful their work is to them ! If they have found their purpose, they measure it against fulfilling it. Success is not just about HAVING anymore: having a job title, salary, wealth, status symbols, influential friends etc. Suddenly, success is about BEING and the DOING that comes from being who you want to be. Success becomes intensely personal.

You cannot know anymore whether the CEO of a major company is more successful than the unemployed single-mother. It is up to them. And is up to YOU to decide how successful you are ! No one can tell you, no one can judge your success other than you – unless you let them and accept their standards. Now you will say “But part of the fun of being successful is being recognized for it ! Wouldn’t I lose all the fun of it ? What’s the point in being successful if nobody notices ?” Of course people will notice ! But in a completely different way. First of all, those, who know you most closely, will know and see your success. Secondly, those further away from you will notice whether YOU see yourself as successful or not. People unconsciously take their clues from your way of speaking, walking, interacting and holding yourself. All of these things give away clues about what you think about yourself. So believe in your unique way of being successful, and let it show. If it feels difficult to you, start by acting “as if” you are sure about your unique perception of success. People who appear confident come across as successful !

In NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) we call this “perception is projection”. NLP has proven that we all see the world differently, no two people have the same view of the world, so everybody’s reality is different even the reality of the exact same thing.

Why is that ? Because we are bombarded with more than 2 Million bits of information every second and each of us take only a fraction of that (plus or minus 7 bits) into our conscious mind. How do we do that ? We filter the information. Have you have ever been to a party with a friend and found that you loved the experience while your friend had a miserable time ? You have both been to the same party ! Or have you moved to a new town or city and found it difficult to settle, while another person moved to the same place at the same time and found it all easy ?

Why is this so ? Because we have different filters, so we take in different parts of the experience and we focus on different things. If you look for the negative in everything even in the good things, you can find it (you might remember those people who always point out the one bad thing in the great stuff that just happened). The opposite is also true. Look for the good in every challenge or indeed disaster that is happening in your life. You will find it too ! This is also known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let me share with you an experiment which was done in the classroom to find out why the best pupils always stayed at the top and worst always stayed at the bottom. Why did the weaker one’s not catch up ? The teacher’s perception of these students (a self-fulfilling prophecy) had a lot to do with it. Two classes were handed over to two separate new teachers (A and B) who had no prior experience with the pupils. Both were briefed on previous performance and ranking of their new pupils, but teacher B was told that 3 students (who were all weaker students) had recently shown exceptional results in a test to measure academic potential. None of this was true. Sure enough, though, those 3 students improved phenomenally during the next school year, while the ranking in class A stayed the same. How was that possible ? Every time the 3 students in class B gave the wrong answer or did not perform as expected, the teacher actively explained it as being an exception to the rule or them having a bad day, because this information did not fit what he believed about the students. If the other weaker students did not perform, he classified it as expected and typical behaviour. Additionally he also reacted very differently to the 3 “special” students. Showed more patience and motivated them more through verbal and non-verbal messages. Such is the power of projection, the power of getting what you believe or focus on.

This is powerful stuff because YOU can choose what you are looking for ! You choose the filter ! You can choose to look for the flaws, the negative or you can choose to look for the good or the learning in everything. I am not sure what you are going for, but I am going for the learning and the positive.

The Law of Attraction has been working for you already, although you might not have been aware of it. Hence it is not a new phenomenon in your life. However, you might not have consciously used it to your advantage yet. In fact, it might have worked against you so far….
Do you often have negative thoughts and negative feelings ? Do you think about the things you DON’T want ? By thinking about them, and feeling angry, annoyed and depressed, you are attracting more of that into your life. Very likely, this is making you more annoyed and depressed which in turn brings you more of it. Nasty cycle, heh ! Break out of it and focus on what you do want. Here is how the process works (and it is really simple !):

1. Be grateful for what you already have.
Focus your mind on all the great things you already have and own. On all the great people in your life. Start a list, you will be surprised, how much will be on it. This will put you in the right frame of mind.

2. Think about what you do want.
Create a picture in your mind about what you want, visualization is a powerful tool to hold the thought. Then make the vision as real as possible, see yourself in it, see yourself smile, enjoy it. Notice everything around you, the environment, the things, the people. Notice the feelings you have when you have achieved what you want. Indulge in it. Really ! Indulge and enjoy it to the full. You will feel fabulous.
To make this even stronger, create a collage of magazine pictures and drawings which reflect your dream, the feelings and ideas. This is called a dream board. So, go on make a collage with different pictures reflecting the material things and feelings you want to have. Cut out pictures from magazines, print them off the internet or use anything else which makes good material for your board. If you can write your thought down, do that. Be specific about what, when, where.

3. Keep thinking the thought regularly.
Set a time every day for you to get in touch with that thought. A great way is to look at your dream board, which you should hang up in a prominent place in your house. Don’t put it in a dark hallway ! Put it somewhere where you see it everyday. And if you have it written down, read it every day.

4. Look out for signs.
Don’t think there is anything mysterious or magical about this. If you CHOOSE to filter the information in your life, such that you want to catch the things that help you achieve your vision, then you will. So become more AWARE. Look out for anything that might help you. Ask yourself after every meeting with friends or business contacts. How is what I have heard helping me with my vision ? Don’t worry if you can’t find the answer immediately. Simply by fine-tuning your receptors to pick up what you need, you will be ready for the opportunities when they arise. If you choose not to pay attention, however, you won’t hear the bell when opportunity rings!
Let me ask you this the other way round. If you are not sure what you are looking for, because you have not defined what you want. How are you going to recognize the opportunity when it comes ? It will simply pass you by.

5. Act on the opportunities when they present themselves.
Finally, grab the information you get, the opportunities you see and follow up on them. There is huge power in action and with every action you take – even the ones you choose to classify as unsuccessful – you will learn something new and perhaps meet someone else who will help you. Your self-esteem will grow, because you have tried ! You will be proud for having tried. Self-esteem comes after action, not before. If you choose not to act, you choose not to have what you want, or to stay where you are.

6. Trust the process and trust yourself.
Believe that you will be successful. If an action does not immediately give you a result, it is only a failure if you give up at that point. If you learn from it and try something different, you will eventually succeed (Edison failed close to 10,000 times and asked how he could cope with so much failure, answered that he had not failed, that instead he had learned almost 10,000 ways not to create a light bulb and had invented a few other things as side products along the way.)
As you keep believing, the Law of Attraction will help you with your endevour. Be aware, though, if you only want to test the concept or if you doubt the process, you might not be able to generate the strong positive feelings described above. Instead your feelings will be full of resistance and doubt.
What do you have to lose anyway ? In the very worst case you will be as well off as you are now. And it costs nothing other than your commitment to the Law of Attraction to take part. Worth a try, isn’t it ?

So is this the same as positive thinking ?
Not really. First of all, the Law of Attraction works for negative thoughts in the same way. What you think will be attracted to you. Secondly, and most importantly, positive thinking alone is not enough to attract the Success or Money you want. You need to think clearly and precisely about what you want AND feel the feelings you would have once you achieved it. It is the feelings which matter. They are also your barometer for how well you are on track.

How can I make myself feel something ? Aren’t feelings the result of events out of my control ?
You might not have been aware of it yet, but you are always in control of your feelings. This is one of the most difficult concepts to grasp and one that is beyond the topic of this article. However, here is a simple proof. Right now, think of the worst moment in your life, can you see what you saw at the time, hear what you heard and feel what you felt ? Now, think of one of the best moments in your life, really think yourself back into that moment, notice how your facials muscles relax, notice what you saw at the time, what people said and how it felt to be there.
If you really went through this exercise, you will have felt two completely different feelings within a matter of seconds. How was that possible ? Well, you created it. You chose to have those feelings because you chose to think about those events from your past. Remembering past events is just one way of influencing your current emotions. Choosing how to look at those past events is another. If someone cuts you off in traffic, you can choose to take it personally and get really angry, start shouting etc. or you can choose to believe that this person is in a terrible hurry, maybe had some bad news etc and shake your head and keep smiling. Your feelings depend on the meaning you give the event, not the event itself.

Common Mistakes & Watch-Outs

1. Be specific in what YOU want. Don’t just ask for money. You might find a penny on the street. Ask exactly for what you want, when you want it. And make sure what you want is about YOU.
2. State your goal in positive terms. Think about what you do want, not about what you don’t want or you will get more of THAT ! “I want to get rid of my debt” gets you more debt, because it is debt you are thinking of.
3. Feel about what you want as if you already have it now. When you visualize your wants and dreams, feel into what you would feel if you had it already (just do “as if”). If you only intensify the desire to have it in the future, your dreams will stay in the future (“I am enjoying my house on the beach” rather than “I wish I had a house on the beach”)
3. Suspend your dis-belief. Choose to believe. What do you have to lose ? Worst case, you are back to were you are right now. Sounds like a bargain to me !

TRY IT OUT ! Many people throughout history from Winston Churchill to Henry Ford have used the LAW OF ATTRACTION to their advantage.

If you would like to work on this with a coach, contact Callum or Silke on coaching@developandgrow.com for a free coaching sample session. You can also use the contact form by clicking here.

A clever system whereby the security man at the gate logs your car’s registration number and your time of entry into the car park, is the norm. I was given the usual paper parking receipt to confirm my time of arrival. As a frequent visitor to the hotel I was aware of the three hour rule, by which the parking facility is free for 3 hours if the user has the parking receipt stamped by the staff of the cafe or restaurant visited.

Having completed my meeting, I dutifully had my receipt stamped by the waitress, paid my bill, collected my briefcase and jacket and headed for the car-park. I am usually very careful with the parking receipt and was certain that it was safely in my trouser pocket. I placed my briefcase and jacket in the car, and drove out of the car park.

I drew level with the security guard at the exit and to my dismay realized the duly stamped receipt was no longer in either trouser pocket. I grabbed my jacket and sifted through each of its pockets to no avail. A quick look through my wallet confirmed that I was receipt-less. As the hotel charges AED 10 per half hour of parking a bill of about AED 50 or approximately USD 15 was staring me in the face. As was, the chagrin of the other drivers whose cars were starting to queue impatiently behind mine.

In true Dubai style a few were already beeping at my seeming selfishness at holding them up. I pulled my car over to the side and allowed the other drivers to pass. Under a barrage of disapproving stares, I checked my wallet for the AED 50, that would allow me to leave. As circumstance would have it, I did not have the cash on me. By this time the very polite and usually patient security guard had realized that either he was dealing with a complete numpty or perhaps I was trying every known trick to get off without paying. His sympathy towards me was clearly in the decline and the mounting antagonism showed clearly on his face.

Just as he demanded in no uncertain terms that I re-park, visit the cashline in the hotel and arrange to pay the parking fees, another more senior security man in a suit joined him.

It took the second security man a few seconds to appraise himself of the situation. He looked intently at me through his sunglasses and said the words “Sir, please you can go”. I couldn’t believe my ears. “Are you sure?” I replied, by now already psychologically prepared to visit the cashline. “Yes Sir, please you can go.”
“Thank you very much” I said and then he continued
“Sir, three years ago, there was fight near the hotel lift, with drunk guests, you stay at hotel. You help me when guest hit me, late at night time, do you remember.”

I did indeed remember. Prior to living in Dubai, I used to visit on business. The preferred hotel of my company was the Emirates Towers. I had stayed there frequently over a period of three years. I clearly remembered the night when a colleague and I had finished dinner at about eleven in the evening and were waiting for the lift in the lobby.

Two very inebriated individuals were at the far end of the rank of lifts arguing loudly in a mixture of English and Arabic with on of the hotel security men. He was quite obviously preventing them from access to the upper storeys of the hotel, due to their drunken state. As we saw the lift lights in front of us light up, indicating its arrival on the ground floor, I saw one of the men strike the security man full in the face. My colleague and I moved fast to help, and grabbed the two drunks, a number of hotel security guards were there almost immediately and the two were well and truly secured.

I asked the struck security guard how he was and than told the security supervisor what I had seen happen. The next morning I received a kind letter of Thanks from the hotel for my help and left Dubai to head home to London, thinking no more of the incident.

Three years down the line, there was the very same man in front of me. What amazed me, was his ability to both remember and acknowledge my very minor part in the event that had occurred in the hotel lobby over three years ago. I was overcome with a feeling that was very hard to define. In retrospect I can sum it up as a mixture of humility and emotion stirred by the true kindness of this man. Here was the law of reciprocity very alive and very personal indeed. Not only had I been rescued from a difficult situation, but my own learning had been enhanced in the belief that what we do daily, the acts of love and kindness we commit, do come back and help us in our lives.