Month: June 2012

Find Your Path via Alignment

Steve Pavlina, at his website, StevePavlina.com (Personal Development for Smart People), covers a lot of deep and practical approaches to growing as a conscious human being. To find your purpose in life, he first advises you come to terms with your actions and beliefs, not what you think you believe or think you should believe. This is your context. If you want to change your context to a more empowering one, you first have to accept what you’ve got for a world view and what you really value.

I’m going to skip a few steps and get to something really juicy. He proposes the concept of living congruently, where each aspect/category of your life (work, family, fun, spirit, etc.) is in alignment because they follow the same set of values. In this sense, you are also living with clarity because once you’ve identified values that ring true with you, all aspects of your life work together towards your life purpose, the big example being what you do for work is also something you enjoy.

To get to this point, your answers to the following four questions should ideally be the same.

  • What SHOULD I do?
  • What MUST I do?
  • What CAN I do?
  • What do I WANT to do?

Align the answers to these questions, and you have alignment in your life.

Find Your Path via Unique Ability

The concept of ‘Unique Ability’ by Dan Sullivan was introduced to me via watching/listening to the DVD program ‘On Being A Man’ by David DeAngelo. David mentions this as one way to find your heart-centered purpose / path / mission in life. Just by going over how it’s defined here has seriously helped me confirm mine.

  • It Is A Superior Ability – other people notice it and value it
  • You Love Doing It – and want to do it as much as possible
  • It Energizes You – and others around you
  • You Keep Getting Better At It – there are always possibilities to improve

The next two posts will cover other sets of questions that have aided in uncovering my vision for myself, strategically critical as a Product Owner.

OK, so let’s read those four bullet points again.

Now… did you feel that? That click? That slight internal shifting of realization?

You know your unique ability. You know what it is.

Can you accept it?

Create & Connect, Supply & Demand

I just finished writing up my notes from ‘The $100 Startup’ by Chris Guillebeau. One of the points he stresses is the sequence of creating something of value, followed by connecting with people to share it.

The thing of value is something in which you are skilled, or is fully engaging, or elicits your passion, or is a combination of the three (ideally, no?). The connecting is sharing, or teaching, or somehow helping others, specifically helping others feel better (or less worse, he actually goes into this a little bit). And yes, this thing you’re sharing should also be what some others would want – go find your target market (…he later goes into it not mattering how many people don’t get it, but how many people do…).

This reframing of ‘Supply & Demand’ I find more… welcoming. Can you feel the humanity? You are no longer in a flea market.

Party A: Cool-looking old books, here! Man, do these suckers smell great, and they look damn vintage, too. You don’t even have to flipping read them – impress your friends when they check out your mantle!

Party B: Why, hello there, good sir! I was just passing through and recalled that my bookshelves do seem a little peckish. I will have five. And here, take some Shillings. There. Good day to you.

To ‘Create & Connect’ connotes effort and is more personal. Somebody created this thing. Somebody put time and energy and focus into making this thing, and now that somebody – me – I’ve manifested something that once wasn’t, and I want to make a connection with you. That’s right – I’m looking you in the eye – hey there – shake my hand. (Let’s bond over the possible commonality that is this thing I’ve created and you’re buying. Have you seen my mantle?)

Yes, ‘Supply & Demand’ allows for much easier plotting of curves on 2-D graphs, but ‘Create & Connect’ adds a human factor to the concept of exchanging value. You might make a friend. Hell, maybe a fan.

Profitability of Profit

Again, from ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ by Tim Ferriss, I found this gem:

Profit is only profitable to the extent that you can use it. For that you need time.

Much later in the book, we have:

Stuff lingering on the brain from work ruin free time with preoccupation; time without attention is worthless, so value attention over time.

This last quote stresses the necessity of being in the now. You are not really free if your body is on the beach and your head is at the office. So to get the most out of your ‘Out of the Office’ experience, you’ve got to reattach your head to wherever you’ve decided to put your body. You’ve escaped for a week – you might as well enjoy yourself! This leads me to a couple of rather mathematical scenarios… bear with me. If we had a finite amount of attention and a variable amount of time, we have:

  • Scenario 1 – You take a lot of time off, but your attention is rarely there. (Low density of enjoyment per time)
  • Scenario 2 – You take a little time off, and your attention is completely there. (High density of enjoyment per time)

It would seem way more efficient to figure out a way to fully ‘be in your body’ to be fully free during your time off, whether it is an extra long weekend… or 5 minutes. Thus, if you’ve got time to play, and you’re a-gonna play, y’might as well play hard: profit from your… profit.

Ha – who would have thought that, “Work hard. Play hard,” can take on a very Taoist “be in the now” meaning.

Legacy

Lately, my focus has been on setting the Product Owner piece of my own ScrumOfOne, and one fun way to think about my vision is as if it were my legacy.

Merrill B. Lamont III
1982 – 2084
Here lies awesomeness manifest. Did you know he discovered Lamontanium? Oh yeah. That was this guy. You’re so reading his tombstone right now, you lucky person, you. (Go ahead. It’s OK. Touch it.)

This of course appeals to the bio part of my biomedical engineering background; children are genetic legacy, no? It makes a little more sense when thought about memeticly.

Great artists are remembered for their art. Great scientists are remembered for their discoveries & inventions. Great sharks are remembered for their catchy John Williams themes. Great businessfolks are remembered for their comb overs, or because their name is on something/everything.

All this requires taking something to a state of mastery, moving beyond good to great. Geez, so how does that happen? In a way, we re-derive spending more and more time on fewer and fewer things. Fine, so how do I decide which things? Evidently there are a number of ways, but however that vision pans out, it could well be my legacy.

Have fun with this: What’s your legacy?