دنبال کردن اغراض نفسانی

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PURSUING PASSION

You know over the years I received a lot of questions about how to find your passion and purpose and not once have I ever been asked to help somebody think about their passion. That’s because finding your passion is an active process and you’ll find that the five second rule is an incredible tool as opportunities to explore your passions and deepen them are going to start to appear. What typically stops people from “finding their passion” is that they can’t get out of their thoughts and actually move into action. When you use the five second rule to 54321 and push yourself to start exploring and also to lean into opportunities as they appear, you’re gonna be shocked at where it leads. Now in this chapter we’re going to talk about how you move into action, but I can’t help but want to tell you about something that you can find on my website right now that I don’t talk about in the book. If you go to my website, Melrobins.com, you’re gonna find courses and there’s a course that I just finished taping yesterday. This is not a joke. I just finished taping this yesterday before we came into the studio to record this book and talk to you. And it’s a course about passion. Not about the stuff that we’re to talk about in this book, in this chapter, but it’s actually about what passion is.

And the fact is that most of us think about passion as something that’s outside of us. And the truth is when you hear passion, I just want you to think energy. I want you to think that passion is a state of being. It’s not a thing. It’s a state of being where you feel energized and excited and you want to dig in and learn more that you lose track of time. And so if you’re at a point in your life where you actually feel really lost because you don’t know what your passion is or you want to explore more of the needy intellectual side of passion and how you just fundamentally turn it on in yourself, head over Melrobins.com and check out that course. I am incredibly proud of it. I literally rewrote it seven times because passion can be one of these topics that is a throwaway and you get a bunch of generic advice and nothing changes. This is a course that digs deep and there’s a lot of free material on the website that you can find as well. You don’t need to buy it. But I just wanted to call that to your attention. What we’re going to talk about in this chapter is when you figure out the things that you want to pursue and explore, that make you feel energized, how you do that? How do you create a life where you spend more of your time doing things that energize you? Well, it begins with giving yourself the permission to explore. I know it sounds really stupid but let’s talk about it because you know these things that sound obvious, are often much deeper than you realize.

How do you explore? What do you do? Let’s say you’re interested in something. You’re passionate or so you think about something. Well, you’re gonna hire the best guide you can find and it’s free, your curiosity. Your curiosity is how your instincts get you to pay attention to what your heart really cares about. If you can’t stop thinking about something, make it a new hobby. Do not try to make money at it. That is the wrong way to start at something. I hate it when people like approach passion and they start by saying, you know, build a business around. First, let’s just make it a hobby, okay? So pay closer attention also to envy. If you find that you’re jealous of someone else, don’t run away from that feeling. Dig in. Explore it. Be curious about it. What aspect of this person’s life or work or skills or creative pursuits are you actually jealous of? This may give you a clue into what you really want for yourself.

The next thing that you’re gonna do is you start to explore. You’re paying attention to curiosity. You’re paying attention to jealousy. I want you to push yourself to take some simple steps to dig in deeper. Read about it. Watch video tutorials. Talk to people. Take the class. Write a plan. You’ll be surprised what happens over time if you decide to take something that you’re curious about and turn it into a hobby. Because one of the things that I know that’s true about things that you’re truly passionate about is that you would do anything to learn more about it. It’s a sunny weekend, beautiful day, your friends are going to the beach, but if you’re passionate about cooking and Gordon Ramsay’s in town and he’s giving a course about it; you’re not gonna be at the beach. You’re gonna be at that course because this is something that energizes you. Your passion could be photography. When Chris first discovered the five second rule, 4 years ago, you know what he did for a living? He was the CIO at a bank. That’s a big job, by the way, chief information officer, all kinds of responsibility when you have that job. And by the way, he still is the chief information officer at a huge bank. But he used the rule to allow himself to start exploring for real, something he was really curious about, and that’s photography. He’d always loved photography and loved going to photography exhibits, he loved buying books about photography, he had a fancy camera. But he had never allowed himself to truly step in and start exploring it as a hobby.

He used the five second rule to force himself to take a class, to start to shoot for friends. 4 years later, the guy has been on the cover of two magazines. He’s won multiple awards. He’s launched a side business and he is now a professional photographer on the side while is also the CIO of a bank. It’s awesome. See, your curiosity will lead you to learn more about something. I mean maybe you’re interested in launching a gourmet food business. Doesn’t matter if you’ve never done it before. I mean, one of the things that’s so cool about the world that we live in, is you’ve got so many resources at your disposal. I mean, you’ve heard of YouTube, right? There’s a video tutorial on everything these days. You curious about going into beauty school and that’s wrong word for it, but you want to become an asset stationary, you want to become a hairdresser, you want to become a makeup artist go to YouTube. You can get all your training right there. It’s absolutely unbelievable. Take Eric for example, so Eric lives in Cambodia and I’ve been fortunate enough to spend a bunch of time in Phnom Penh, in particular. Wi-Fi is not that great, but you can still get YouTube. He had an idea. He wanted to start exploring an export business. So here’s what he wrote. He was just curious about it. You know, he’s going about his life over in Cambodia and it keeps kind of popping into his head. So what don’t lean in to it? What do you got to loose? You got this thing that you keep thinking about, get it out of your head. Get curious.

He writes: I currently live in Cambodia and have been here almost 2 years. I came here after a divorce to teach English as well as to learn to be content being myself. Lately, I’ve felt very homesick yet my gut had told me that if I returned to Atlanta Georgia where I’m from, I would regret it. Good for you Eric, for listening to that. I’ve had an idea of wanting to start a business exporting some rare food items from here that are not available in the US and should be as I want to share these wonderful ingredients from this lovely country with people in the US. I have a great friend in Atlanta that actually runs a gourmet food wholesale distribution company that sells many comparable niche items. I have a product. I have a way to distribute the product, yet I have no idea how the heck do you start and run your own business. Since I learned the rule, I’ve purchased and already read half of a book. What do you suppose it’s called, guys? Starting your own import-export business. I bet there’s a dozen books about it. He’s also watched several YouTube videos. For the first time in my life, I have an idea that I’m passionate about, that could actually become a business. See, this is so important. Will he launch the business? Who knows? Who cares? The more important thing is by leaning into an idea and getting curious about it and giving himself the permission and the push to explore it. Did you hear what he said? For the first time in my life I have an idea I’m passionate about. You can feel his energy. That’s how you discover your passion. You 54321 and explore the things that you’re curious about.

Now, the next phase because you know, there are lot of you that are already in that category. I know what I want to do. How do you keep going? Well, this is the next phase. It’s all about building momentum. Because it’s gonna start with that instinct and the curiosity. It always does. First, you take a class then the class leads to a certification, then the certification leads to a conversation, then conversations lead to opportunities, then small opportunities lead to larger opportunities. Maybe you’re gonna want to share something, for example, that you’ve learned, in the class that you’ve taken with people at work. So you use the rule to approach your boss or the head of HR to ask permission to give a little brown bag lunch on what you just learned about and then suddenly guess what’s gonna happen? As you start to go from exploring, to explaining what you’re doing. That’s when momentum kicks in. And trust me, you’re gonna curse me because as things actually start to happen, you’re going to need courage. You’re gonna need to trust yourself. Because what you’re going to be doing is you’re going to be exploring what you find, that’s fascinating and then as you start explaining it out in the world, things are gonna take off. That’s exactly what happened to Joe.

Now Joe is a banker in London and she’s a fabulous example of how something tiny, tiny tiny like taking a class, just because you’re curious about a topic, how something that small can grow into something remarkable, like an entirely new career. Now this story is an unbelievable example of how exploration leads to momentum and how it all begins with something really small. So Joanne writes: I did a presentation on limiting beliefs and an introduction to our maps of the world of my team meeting of 8 people. I was nervous, but I did it as I recently qualified as a Master NLP practitioner and I wanted to share what I had learned. When the presentation ended, my head of function walked up to me, this is the head of function at the bank, and said this is what you should be doing. You could make a career doing this. To say I was buzzing after this and the other feedback I got made me feel awesome. I mean, it was an understatement to say that I was buzzing. I got brave and decided to put the five second rule in action. So I went to my laptop and I typed an email to one of the largest women’s network in the UK, managed by Lloyds banking group, my bank; it’s called breakthrough, to offer my services. I think I actually posted something on your Facebook page this morning. Long story short, they came back and said they would love to have me do a presentation at their event in Scotland. Fast forward a couple weeks to Tuesday last week in a very nervous me was, I’ll be honest, cursing you Mel and the five second rule as I was terrified, but I did the presentation in Scotland and you know what? I was so good we have a waiting list of people who couldn’t make it due to the line being blocked out, timing of the first session and word-of-mouth on how good it was. So I’ve been asked to run a second session. I’ve also been approached about jobs and people are asking me to help them work through their limiting beliefs and coach them with their goals and outcomes. All of this happened because of the five second rule and sending one email. This stuff works and I tell everybody to give it a go and see where it gets them, maybe even where they want to be.

It’s so true. When you follow, follow your instincts; and her beginning instinct by the way was to take a single class in the practice of NLP. That’s what began all this. And that one class awoken something in her. The same thing happened for my husband, by the way. He’d been practicing yoga for years and he always had this lingering curiosity about what it would be like to take a teacher training. And he would never let himself just sign up because he would stop and think about it. Then he think I’m too busy, or I don’t have time or I don’t want to teach anyway, instead of just honoring that instinct. So he 54321 and signed up about six months ago. Guess what, he not only found the time, he’s actually teaching his first yoga class as a certified instructor next Friday. And I’ll tell you what, he is cursing the five second rule. He’s excited and he’s terrified. But the momentum has kicked in.

Finally, what’s gonna happen? Just like you kind of heard with Joe, and what’s gonna happen with Chris, is as you then start doing this thing that you are passionate about; remember passion, passion is not to teaching yoga, passion is not leading classes in NLP, passion is not running a professional photography business. Passion is the thing that you feel. It’s the energy. It’s the engagement. It’s the excitement as you’re doing those things. And as you practice these things that make you feel passionate you’re going to get busier and busier. And you know, you’re going to be confronted just like Joe, I am sure is going to be very confronted. When do I quit my job as a banker and step into this full-time? When do I retire as a CIO and become a full-time photographer? When do I take on a full-time teaching schedule as a yoga instructor? When do I launch this export business for real? You see, there’s no magic formula for when to pull the trigger and turn one of these projects, these hobbies into a passion driven career or a major life change. It will require planning. I know that this is a book about five second decisions, but when you’re talking about making a decision, about the thing that’s gonna produce income, you do need to take some time and do some slow deep thinking. You gotta crunch the numbers and make sure you understand how much you need to make in order to justify this decision. Because nothing will suck the passion that you feel out of a hobby more than pressure to make money at it.

So this is something to think through, to plan through and if you’re anything like the rest of us, you’re probably gonna torture yourself for a while until you can’t stand straddling both your present life and the future one that you’ve already kinda started through this exploration and that momentum that’s building around. Now, Michal had a major passion that she wanted to turn into a company and she had been wanting to do it for years, years. Well, she just 54321 and pushed herself to announce the start of a new business. It’s really exciting. And now she has a reason to not hit the snooze button anymore. See, this is how this all kind of builds on. It starts with you pushing your ass out of bed when the alarm rings and carving out time to figure out what’s important to you and organizing your day around getting some progress done on those, and then as you fire up your instincts and you now have a little bit extra time, you’re gonna start exploring things that you’re curious about. And then as momentum kicks in, you’re gonna find the courage to actually make some even bolder moves. She writes: I used the five second rule today to announce the start of my new business of horse and rider portraits. I’ve been wanting to do it for years but have just held back. I cannot wait.

I’m so excited for her. And the reason I’m excited is because we all deserve to wake up and feel a sense of engagement and enthusiasm about what we want to do today. Just like Michal, if you’re thinking about making the leap like her, make sure to be intentional about how you ask yourself the question. Let me give you an example. Ask the Heart First question, “Am I ready to commit to this?” Don’t ask the thinking question, do I feel ready to commit to this. Because as you know you’ll never feel ready. The moment you answer yes to the question, “Am I ready”, then you can use the rule to give yourself that final push. Now even when you’re ready, it’s not enough feel good when you do it. Just ask Todd. Now, Todd is in Australia and he’s known for a very long time exactly what he’s passionate about. What brings him energy. What makes him feel engaged. It’s physical education. He loves the subject. He’s always dreamed, for as long as he can remember, of teaching it, and having his own personal training business. Now, as a highschooler, he knew that he wanted to pursue a degree in physical education, but his parents were way more conservative. They don’t know anybody in physical education. They don’t know that you can have a great business life, running your own personal training business. They were like, oh no no no no no. You’re going to college, you’re getting a professional degree. We’re not paying for physical education. They pressured him. And Todd buckled. And now he’s pursuing a professional degree. You think he’s passioned about it? Ofcourse not. He doesn’t feel energized, he feels drained and depleted. So four years later, Todd is now a senior in college. He’s getting a dual major split between law and business. His heart is never been in it, never been passionate about.

You know how you can tell if you’re depleted about something, not for you. If it energizes you, totally for you. So why did he stay in the major? Why do any of us do anything? Because of fear and because of his feelings. The thought of disappointing his parents, it was overwhelming. Like nothing will put a pit in your stomach more than the idea that look on your mom or dad’s face when you know that they are just so disappointed in you, every single day, every single day for 4 years. You know what he thought about? He thought about withdrawing. He thought about leaving that university. He thought about going to a different college and getting that degree in physical education but just like the engineer. Because he was thinking, he was paralyzed. I mean, when walking into the registrar’s office and filling out the paperwork to withdraw, that’s easy. Facing the disappointment of your parents on the other hand, that can crush your soul. So for almost 4 years, you got this guy Todd sitting in classes in Australia, wanting to withdraw but terrified. No idea how to face the parents. The five second rule, that’s how he finally did it.

So Todd was sitting in a class entitled law as 5513. Sounds horrid, doesn’t it? He was listening to a lecture on advanced taxation law, shoot me. I know… Hey look, you may be listening and that just is like, if I could study advanced… Great, that’s your passtion, go for it, not me.And then he realize, this is it. This is what he wrote to me: I can attest you the dislike I had for such a program. I wanted to withdraw from the moment I started. But what is perhaps more disturbing about this entire situation is that I had literally allowed myself to study a degree up to the final year before I decided I was entirely and completely done with hating my life. You see, Todd could see the future. And when you’re living a life where you don’t feel any passion and you start to project ahead, at a whole life with no passion; that is a wake-up call. That is a moment of power. That is a instincts firing up and saying holy cow, get the parachute on and get out of this plane, man. Save your life. He could see the future. This is what Todd saw. My parents would then send me off to do my Masters and along I would go, living my life for everyone but myself. He described the instinct to act in the five second decision that made it happen. I realized I need to just start. I need to withdraw. I need to gather up my books and stood up in the middle of class and left. That’s what he did. One decision changes everything.

I said at the beginning of this book, you are one decision away from a totally different life. Whether that decision is to chase down the CEO of Cisco Systems. Or that decision is to get up out of class and withdraw from a program that you just can’t stand. Or it’s to walk across the bar and say hello to somebody that you feel drawn toward. One decision changes everything. Todd’s body was shaking, but he was moving in the right direction. He went straight to the registrar’s office where he unenrolled from the University. He then got in the car and drove two hours south of Brisbane to the Queensland University of technology where he then applied for the degree of his dreams. That fateful Tuesday morning was two years ago. Todd is now 24 years old and halfway through his teaching degree and he has never had this much fun in his life. He’s been accepted into the honors education program for the next year and as he puts it, I found my purpose. This is in fact exactly what I was supposed to be doing all along. As first parents person, of cource they were disappointed, they’re parents. That’s what we do. I can tell you, I have three kids. That’s my job. I cheer you on and then I get disappointed and then I love you anyway. When he initially told them that he didn’t want to be a lawyer, of course they were disappointed because that was their dream, not his. But I’ll tell you what, they were way more disappointed by the fact that Todd had been scared to tell them and have been unhappy for so long. And I think that there’s an interesting lesson there about the people that love you, and that is that, yeah, people may have expectations about what it is that you’re supposed to be doing and how you’re supposed to be doing it, but at the end of the day, what the people who love you want most is for you to be happy, truly.

Finally, the most important piece is learning how to have faith. You know, I often say that you can make anything happen in your life if you do the work and if you give up your timeline. I really mean that. That you can create anything as long as you give up your timeline for how and when it’s supposed to happen, how you want it to happen. One of my favorite books is the international bestseller, The Alchemist. If you haven’t read it, please buy it listen to it. Do yourself a favor. I literally read that book once a year. It’s one of the best-selling books of all time. It’s been translated into 80 languages and I have recommended it to people for more than a decade. And as I was writing this book, I bought myself a brand-new copy to keep me inspired and to remind me of the main message in that book, which is the whole universe conspires to help you when you follow your heart.

When I cracked open the 25th anniversary edition of that book that I’d read dozens and dozens of times, I was blown away by a story in the forward of the book. I had no idea that when the alchemist was first published in Paolo Coelho’s native country of Brazil, it failed, miserably. This is what he wrote: when The Alchemist was first published 25 years ago in my native Brazil, no one noticed. A bookseller in the northeast corner of the country, told me that only one person purchased a copy, the first week of its release. It took another six months for the bookseller to unload a second copy. And that was to the same person who bought the first. And who knows how long it took to sell the third. By the end of the year was clear to everyone that The Alchemist wasn’t working. My original publisher decided to cut me loose and cancel our contract. They wiped their hands of the project and let me take the book with me. I was 41 and desperate. But I never lost faith in the book or ever wavered in my vision. Why? Because it was me in their, all of me, heart and soul. I was living my own metaphor. A man sets out on a journey dreaming of a beautiful or magical place in pursuit of some unknown treasure. At the end of his journey, the man realizes the treasure was within him the entire time.

41, and desperate? I got chills when I read that line. That’s how old I was when I discovered the five second rule and that’s exactly how I felt. What I’ve come to realize is, there is no expiration date on discovering and expressing the treasure that’s inside of you. As Coelho wrote in the forward, it starts with the belief in yourself and that belief is grounded in the courage to push yourself. He continued to write in that forward: I was following my personal legend and my treasure was my capacity to write. And I wanted to share this treasure with the world. I started knocking on the doors of other publishers. One opened, and the publisher on the other side believed in me and my book and agreed to give The Alchemist a second chance. Slowly, through word-of-mouth, it finally started to sell-3000, then 6000, 10000-book by book, gradually throughout the year. Well, that book became an organic phenomenon and the rest is now history. It’s one of the best-selling books of all time. It’s considered one of the 10 best books of the 20th century. When interviewers ask Coelho whether or not he knew it would be a success, this is what he had to say: the answer is no. I had no idea. How could I? When I sat down to write the alchemist, all I knew is that I wanted to write about my soul. I wanted to write about my quest to find my treasure. You see, the answers are inside of you. If you have the courage to listen. You are like some other people and like no other person. You have something remarkable to share with the world. It starts with listening to what’s inside of you and ends with the courage to go where it leads.

Follow it.