personal development

But Daddy, I don’t play a sport

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My daughter read my post about losing yourself in the game and said, “But, Daddy, I don’t play a sport. I can’t lose myself in the game.” After I stopped laughing, she really wanted to know how she could “lose herself in the game.”

I explained to her that games are just examples of activities we do where we can wholly commit to what we’re doing and lose ourselves. We can use any type of activity that we care about to get us to that state.

We talked about what she loves to do (she’s 11). Summer said, “Well I love to pretend, sing, dance, play the piano and act.”

I talked to her about how she enters a whole different world when she pretends. I’ve seen her running along the creek and talking to herself while doing karate attacks on imaginary villains on our trampolene. She definitely gets lost in the game. She loses all track of time and isn’t thinking about anything else except what she’s doing right at that moment.

My wife chimed in that she loses herself when she’s in the middle of teaching her first graders a compelling lesson.

Sometimes I lose myself when I’m learning a new song on the guitar, or reading, or doing my radio show, or playing basketball.

What are you so passionate about that you can lose yourself in the game? What do you do that takes you so deep that all you think about is right here, right now?

 

personal development

“Lose yourself in the game.”

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kentucky

You’ve experienced it before, haven’t you? When you are pursuing your passion and everything else disappears? You’re so focused and in the flow that you lose track of time? All the other problems you worry about fade away. You’re almost not even thinking consciously about anything, you’re just doing. Everything that you’ve worked so hard on is all coming together and now it’s time to play.

It’s a great feeling.

I thought of that when I saw Kentucky Coach John Calipari interviewed during the half time of the championship game. Love him or hate him, he had some great advice for his team.

He was asked why a couple of his players were struggling. He said they were young and nervous.

“…See, when you get that anxiety it’s hard to be aggressive and so I just told them ‘We’re going to win this thing – we’re down two buckets – if you play with energy and lose yourself in the game.’”

But, Greg, Kentucky lost the championship game. Yes, thanks for reminding me and ruining my point.

Actually, the win isn’t the point. The point is to pursue your passion with everything you have and enjoy the ride. UK wasn’t expected to even be in the championship game. They kept pursuing their passion, losing themselves in the game and good things kept happening.

When’s the last time you lost yourself in the game? When’s the last time you had that joyful feeling of being in the zone? When’s the last time you followed your passion with abandon?

Lose yourself in the game.

personal development

But I’m not sure I’m good enough

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Ever feel like that? I do. It’s natural to question our worth. We have to fight the tapes in our head playing negative messages and start playing the supportive ones.

It’s easy to feel like you can’t do what other successful people do. You think, “I’m not as smart as they are. I don’t have the connections, the talent or the money they have.”

The reality is most successful people started out as average people. They found their purpose and worked hard at it. I love real stories that show those truths to us in a way we can connect to…

 

I’m not that smart and I don’t have the education with all those letters after your name

H.J. was a poor farm boy. But he had a love for all things mechanical. If you needed something taken apart and put back together so it would run like a top, he was your guy

At the young age of 15 he built a steam engine. He was about average in school and decided to quit at 16. He decided it was time to make it on his own. He worked a couple different jobs and got married.

His love for mechanical things continues. He found work as an engineer at the Edison Company and worked his way up to Chief Engineer. Not bad for an uneducated kid from the sticks.

But H.J. had a goal to start a company of his own. He took a big risk to go out on his own. He failed. He felt horrible letting down his wife and children. He could have just given up and gone back to his stable job working for someone else. Instead, he learned from his mistakes and tried again.

This time he got some investors to put up a lot of the money. Things went bad again. The investors kicked H.J. out and brought in some other people to run the business.

Two tries, two failures. Maybe it was time to give up. Maybe H.J. just didn’t have what it took to run his own company. He was already 40. If it was going to happen, it would have by now, right? But he still had that passion inside. He knew what he was supposed to do with his life. So, he tried again.

Third time’s the charm right? Not exactly. His business was not doing well. The investors didn’t like a strange idea he had of a new way to make his products more efficiently and less expensively. He almost ran out of money. He had to bring in some of the investors as owners to keep things afloat. But then things started clicking. Sales took off. H.J.’s idea worked and he was able to sell his products for a profit at a price that most Americans could afford. He became one of the richest men in the world.

Henry James Ford revolutionized the auto industry, not because he was a genius, or because he had an Ivy League education, or because his parents bankrolled him, or because he knew the right people. He was able to do it because he pursued his passionate purpose and never gave up.

Quotes from Henry Ford:

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

“The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.”

“There is no failure except failure to serve one’s purpose.”

 

personal development

Improve your ideas by forgetting them – remembering – and expanding them

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As I’m finishing up my book on finding and pursuing your Passionate Purpose I’m reading over my notes, research and rough drafts and I’m discovering something really cool.

I forgot a bunch of ideas I’ve had. Thankfully, I wrote them all down. Reading over them is like a gift.  It’s almost like some other person wrote some of my notes. Then I start to remember and that sparks even more ideas.

It’s an interesting paradox. Forgetting my ideas has helped me create even more ideas. It’s as if my subconscious has been working on the old ideas I forgot and was just waiting for me to bring them back.

Here are some of the things I was reviewing today that sparked new thoughts and ideas for my book, blog, and videos that I’m working on.

work

Hope this helps you with your ideas.

GK

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My new book is a work in progress

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I’m finishing up a book I’ve been working on for a long time. It’s gone through a few iterations. I started out writing about The New American Dream. That led me to focus on helping people find, and pursue, their Passionate Purpose. The ultimate goal is to use the process to live the extraordinary life you were meant to live and enjoy.

Here’s a sample from the introduction. Let me know what you think about it.

I’m still working on the title of the book. Here are my ideas:

Go. (Find your passionate purpose. Make a plan. Take action.)

Pursue Your Passionate Purpose (How to get where you’ve always known you want to go.)

 

Why Are You Reading This?

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. –Mark Twain

Stop.

For a second stop, think, and really answer this question:

Why are you reading this right now?

Your life will, or won’t change, based on your answer.

You spent your hard earned money to buy this book and you are now investing your even more valuable, limited time to read it. You expect to get something out of it.

What do you want? Why?

Maybe we are a lot alike. You have this feeling deep inside you, that you were made for something better. You’re in the midst of an existential crisis where you realize this is it. This is your life – right now. You don’t get a dress rehearsal or a do-over. You get one shot at it and it’s not going the way you want it to go. You want more out of life. You can’t stand the idea of being average, mediocre or just getting by.

You’re tired of just settling, tired of putting aside your dreams, tired of accepting the conventional wisdom that life is hard and only the lucky few really enjoy it.

You want to break free from the opiates of our society that are keeping you from achieving the success that somehow you know you were born for. You’re tired of distracting yourself with television, surfing the web, checking your Facebook and twitter accounts and your smart phone to see if your virtual life is better than your real one.

You want to break away from the 95% who half-heartedly go to work every day to earn a living. You want to do what you are passionate about and make a life.

You understand that every day that goes by is gone forever and you have a limited amount of days. So, you don’t want to just get through the day, you want to wake up looking forward to what you’re going to get out of the day. You want feel like a kid on Christmas morning every day because you can’t wait to start the next part of your life.

The idea of just taking life one day at a time as something to survive has always seemed defeatist to you. You want to create a life worth living one precious moment at a time.

You want to enjoy every part of your life. You believe God created you for a reason. You want your life to have meaning. You want to make a difference. You want to have an impact on the world and on the people you love. You want to leave a legacy. You want to live with a Passionate Purpose™.

You want to dream big and enjoy the whole journey while you pursue those dreams and fulfill your destiny.

You want to be excited about your career, your romantic relationships, your family, your physical body, and your spiritual development.

But you want even more than that.

You want freedom. Freedom to control your own time, schedule, work, vacation and life. You want to travel the world with the people you love. You want to generate abundant amounts of income so you can do all you’ve ever dreamed of, take care of your family and give to help others. You want to reach your full potential and suck the juice out of every part of your life so that when you die everyone at your funeral says, “Wow, that dude lived.”

Oh, is that all?

I hope you want all that and more. Isn’t that why you are reading this?

What if I told you, you can have all that – depending on how you answer my question?

Why are you reading this?

If you are reading it hoping to get motivated and maybe get a couple of neat ideas, that will be fun and interesting for you. But it won’t change your life. It won’t get you what you really want.

The only way to get the results you want and change your life forever, to live with Passionate Purpose™ and to enjoy the extraordinary life of your dreams is to convince yourself that you have to do it.

Not that it would be nice, or fun, or kinda neat to have all that. No. You must have it. To not have it you would experience tremendous pain.

Convince me. Convince yourself.

Why? Because the first step to changing is making sure you truly want to change. That core belief that you can’t keep living this way and that you must change is what will sustain you through all the work you will need to do in order to create your new life…

personal development

What time is it?

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What are you thinking about right now? Are you thinking about something in the future? The past?

I do that way too much. Sometimes I can’t get out of my head to focus on the moment. I’m so focused on what I want for the future that I sometimes miss what’s happening right now. Or, I replay what I should have done and kill myself over the mistakes I’ve made.

The reality is the past is done and the only way to get to the future we want is by changing what we are doing in the present.

I just finished a book by Dan Miller, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, and it had a good way to stay in the moment.

Change the way you think about some common questions:

Q: What time is it?

A: Right now

Q: Where are you?

A: Right here

When you really think about it in the big picture of the Universe of time and space, those are the most accurate answers. They also refocus us on what we can experience and do. We can only take action in the present.

OK, that’s starting to sound kinda kooky, but it works for me. Let me know if it helps you.

G