Career & Purpose

24 Jul

Posted at 08:17h in Announcements, Career & Purpose by

When Small Projects Become Huge

Have you ever started a "small" project that ended up requiring about 10 times more energy than planned? Seems like that's more and more the story of my life these days ... A few months ago, I set out to make some improvements to one of our flagship courses, Live Off Your Passion. I thought it would be a "quick" update that would take about a week. Three months later, as of about 7 this morning, it's finally done. And between you and me (and Liz, Glen and Cherilyn, who put a ton of sweat into it), I am damn pumped about how it turned out! The changes ended up being so dramatic that we're even changing the name up a bit to "Live Off Your Passion Guided-Discovery," but we'll get more to that in a second ...

11 Jul

Posted at 11:45h in Career & Purpose, Entrepreneurship, Life on Your Terms Interviews, Self-Guided Education by

What kind of future will you create

"Notice the sparks. Follow them. The next big thing may be the small thing right in front of you." - Darren Rowse

Rule #1: Put All the Crazy People in the Same Room (or River)

Last Friday morning Chelsea and I grabbed some fresh Portland coffee, walked down to the Willamette River, stripped down to a bikini and board shorts (I was in the shorts) and hopped in a couple inner tubes with about 618 other friendly folks. A few minutes later we broke the Guinness World Record for creating the longest human floating chain (old record was 542 in Viareggio, Italy in 2008). Hat tip to Tyler of Advanced Riskology for orchestrating the seemingly impossible feat. It was fitting that the first official event of the World Domination Summit involved hundreds of people sloshing around in a river for a few hours wearing next to nothing. Something tells me that little vulnerability exercise wasn't a coincidence. Also wasn't a bad way to meet a few new friends. And it set the perfect tone. For those of you unfamiliar, WDS is an annual gathering put on by Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Non Conformity. The event's core theme is "How do we lead a remarkable life in a conventional world?" This year 3,000 people from 30+ countries descended on Portland, Oregon to share in that vision. Their stories were proof of what's possible.

11 Jun

Posted at 18:03h in Career & Purpose, Productivity by

draw you line in the sand make a change

“When you really want something to happen, the whole world conspires to help you achieve it.” ― Paulo Cohelo, from The Alchemist

Image credit

Today I pose a challenge.

This small act that might change everything. You see, without a deadline many of us are nothing. We think and think about the things we want to do, like the dreams we have and the changes we know we need to make. Yet nothing happens. They remain in our future. They eat away at us - the things we wish we could do, but never actually take the action to make a possibility. And we wonder why we're disappointed they haven't happened yet... You're probably thinking of one right now. But why do we wait? We wait for the perfect time - which never comes. We wait until we're ready or when the next step feels certain. Unfortunately, that never happens either. How perfect is the timing of becoming a new mother or smoking your last cigarette? That's what I thought. But then again, perhaps that means it was right all along. Yet sometimes the smallest shifts can get us to take action on the things that have held us up for a lifetime.

29 May

Posted at 08:07h in Career & Purpose, Communication & Rapport, Emotions & Happiness, Entrepreneurship, Health & Energy! by

Supportive friends make you live longer

Image credit.

"The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself."

- Mark Caine

Today's post goes hand-in-hand with our online presentation on: How to Find & Meet Inspiring, Passionate & Supportive People In Your Hometown. You can see the recording here.

Onward...

Is Your Community Helping or Hurting You?

The goal of Live Your Legend is to provide the ideal environment and resources for making your impact on the world. Everything we do is to serve that purpose for you all. By now we should all know that the people around us shape who we are. They will either mold you to change the world or cause the world to collapse on your shoulders. In order to do anything meaningful - be it lose 50 pounds, run your first marathon, or do the work and make the impact only you are capable of making, you must have a support network that helps make it possible. So I want to challenge you to ask what may turn out to be some hard questions.

07 May

Posted at 08:17h in Career & Purpose, Emotions & Happiness, Health & Energy! by

love your work to live a long life

"Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease." - Hippocrates

The Health Benefits of Loving What You Do.

I believe doing work you love will change the world. But a lot of people still spend their lives filled with stress, anxiety and despair about how they spend the majority of their working and waking hours. As many as 80% of the world lives this way (although I'd like to think our Revolution here is beginning to push that number down). Yet despite the constant pain and frustration, we find reasons to push off change one more day. One day turns into a year, which turns into forever. But as we're about to see, there are serious risks in putting off the change you know you so badly need to make. The biggest risk of all? Life. Yes, there is real scientific and medical proof that doing work you don't enjoy will actually shorten your lifespan.

30 Apr

Posted at 18:48h in Career & Purpose, Emotions & Happiness, Popular Posts, Timeless by

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." - Sir Isaac Newton

Learning from Masters

TED is one of my favorite organizations on the planet. What their 2- to 18-minute-long talks and videos have done for the distribution of ideas, disruptive thinking and creativity is something I'll never fully be able to get my head around. I credit TED videos for much of the inspiration and ideas that have come to life through Live Your Legend - and just about everything else I do. They've helped me launch businesses, run ultra marathons, connect with world-changers and even kept me from having a breakdown from time to time... Aside from ideas and inspiration, I believe a good TED Talk is one of the fastest ways to start surrounding yourself with passionate world-class experts. That is priceless. I often watch at least a few videos a week and always have some saved on my iPad or iPhone for bus rides to the office, flight delays, whatever. The list below was very hard to make, as I've seen hundreds of talks and so many deserve our attention. So please look at this list as merely a starting point. Every one of the below videos have had a profound effect on my career and approach to the world - and for our purposes today I've only chosen the ones that cover the various steps of making the transition to doing work you love. Why more people aren't taking advantage of this stuff will forever baffle me. If TED hasn't been a part of your daily life before now, I hope that one of the people below will cause that to change. These are some of the best story tellers in the world (a skill that one is never done mastering). Pick one for now and follow up with the rest throughout the week. Enjoy the show... and share your own favorite talk in the comments so we can keep learning!