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Goal-Setting Best Practices: Beyond SMART Goals

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Goals

Article Summary:

This article addresses best practices in goal-setting, including criteria for setting goals, a framework for evaluating a draft set of goals, and a goal-setting checklist. It’s the third article in a four-part series on goals.

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Goals are common in our life and work. But that doesn’t mean we’re good at setting and achieving them. Far from it.

How many goals have we missed over the years? For most people, it’s many. What’s going on?

Here we address what the research says about best practices in goal-setting and offer new criteria to use in goal-setting in two areas: first, in terms of setting individual goals and, second, in terms of evaluating a draft set of goals for quality and coherence.

In our previous articles in this series, we covered “The Benefits of Setting and Pursuing Goals” and “The Most Common Mistakes in Goal-Setting and Goal-Pursuit.” (Our focus is on individual goals—whether personal, professional, or otherwise—and not on goal-setting for teams or organizations, though much of what’s offered here applies in those cases too.)

First we take a quick look at existing goal-setting frameworks.

 

SMART Goals and Other Frameworks

There are different approaches to goal-setting in the literature and in practice. For example, researcher Edwin A. Locke identified five factors (clarity, challenge, commitment, feedback, and complexity), while University of Washington psychologist Frank L. Smoll identified three essential features of effective goal-setting (the “A-B-C of goals”: achievable, believable, and committed). In an MIT Sloan Management Review article, Donald Sull and Charles Sull recommend setting “FAST goals”: frequently discussed, ambitious, specific, and transparent.

The most famous formulation, of course, is “SMART goals,” developed by consultant George T. Doran, who proposed the SMART framework in a 1981 Management Review (AMA Forum) article. Here’s how Doran originally defined this approach:

  • Specific: target a specific area for improvement.
  • Measurable: quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
  • Assignable: specify who will do it. (Note that many people these days use “achievable” or “attainable” instead of “assignable.”)
  • Realistic: state which results can realistically be achieved, given available resources. (Some people use “relevant” here.)
  • Time-related: specify when the result(s) can be achieved. (Or “time-bound.”)

SMART goals are useful but insufficient. It’s a popular and memorable framework but missing several essential elements that are important for setting goals. Also, it doesn’t address how our goals may or may not hang well together. We address both facets of goal-setting in turn below.

Goal-Setting Template

Goals are the desired results we hope to achieve—the object of our effort and ambition. Goals are common in our life and work, but that doesn’t mean we’re good at setting and achieving them. Use this Goal-Setting Template to set your goals properly, based on the research and best practice.

Complete the Template

 

Criteria to Use in Setting Each Individual Goal

We begin with goal-setting criteria. Here are 7 criteria we should use in setting our individual goals:

1. Important to us
Set goals we can commit to wholeheartedly, knowing they’ll summon our dedication and resolve because they matter to us. We can even begin with the question: What’s most important to achieve now (or in the time period of our choosing, whether it’s the next quarter or year)?

2. Authentic
According to psychology researchers Ken Sheldon and Andrew Elliot, we’re happier, healthier, and more hard-working when we’re pursuing goals that are authentic to us and determined by us, not by others. In other words, our goals should be “self-concordant”: consistent with our core values and deeply held interests. A bonus: we experience bigger boosts in happiness when we achieve such goals. (1)

“The more that we choose our goals based on our values and principles,
the more we enter into a positive cycle of energy, success, and satisfaction.”
-Neil Farber, Canadian contemporary artist

3. Purposeful
We must be clear about the why behind our goals: Why do we want to achieve our goals? What benefits can we expect when we succeed? Ideally, our goals flow naturally from our personal purpose, core values, and vision of the good life.

4. Intrinsically motivating
Intrinsic motivation is the inner drive we have to do things out of our interest, enjoyment, or inherent satisfaction, rather than the desire for a reward (extrinsic motivation). According to researchers, intrinsic motivation is generally more potent than extrinsic motivation. When we work on things that are intrinsically motivating, it tends to involve us deeply and feel personally rewarding, pleasurable, and meaningful.

According to researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky in her book, The How of Happiness, “Numerous psychological studies have shown that across a variety of cultures, people whose primary life goals are intrinsically rewarding obtain more satisfaction and pleasure from their pursuits.” (2) Why? Such activities are enjoyable and inspiring to us, making us more likely to invest in and persevere and succeed at them. Also, they’re more likely to fulfill our core needs, such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness (see self-determination theory).

How of Happiness

“If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.”
-Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist

5. Clear and measurable
A big problem with many goals is that they lack clarity and specificity. This dilutes the accountability factor. The clearer we are about what we seek to achieve, the more motivated we’ll be in our pursuit. And goals must be measurable. As the saying goes, we don’t get what we don’t measure.

6. Time-bound
If we don’t indicate the target date for accomplishment, we risk letting progress slip indefinitely and losing motivation. Effectively, our goals have no teeth. There’s no better motivator than a hard deadline.

7. Challenging but achievable
If a goal is too easy to achieve, it won’t inspire a sense of urgency and awaken the arousal systems in our brains. But we should avoid making a goal too arduous, because we’re unlikely to reach it if we don’t think we can. If we believe we might be able to achieve a difficult goal if we put in a lot of effort, that’s a good sign. (3)

It’s also good sometimes to have “stretch goals”—or what authors Jim Collins and Jerry Porras call “big, hairy, audacious goals” or “BHAGs.” These are goals that would really take our breath away if we were able to achieve them. But again, feasibility is important.

“Stretch goals can be crushing if people don’t believe they’re achievable.”
-John Doerr, Measure What Matters

 

Criteria for Assessing a Draft Set of Goals

There’s no shortage of criteria for individual goals out there, but it’s rare to see frameworks for how to assess a draft set of goals and whether they’re appropriate as a collection. Here are three criteria to use for that important analysis. The set of goals should be:

A. Highly selective
As we set goals, we must continually ask: Is this the right priority now? What’s the “opportunity cost”—the cost of the time and energy that could be spent in other pursuits? Ideally, we have only a few goals we’re focused on during a certain period—or a handful at most.

Psychologists note the problem of “goal competition” in which our goals can compete with one another for our time and attention. Essentially, the biggest barrier to one goal may be our other goals.

We tend to be too ambitious and set too many goals. By limiting our goals to the bare essentials, we help focus our energies. (See my article, “The Problem with Lack of Focus—And How to Fix It.”) When in doubt, reduce the number of goals. Less is more.

“We must realize—and act on the realization—that if we try to focus on everything, we focus on nothing.”
-John Doerr, Measure What Matters

 

B. Complementary
We must ensure that our chosen goals hang well together. We want them to add up to a powerful whole. And we should ensure that they don’t work at cross-purposes. Ideally, we look forward to our vision of the good life and think about what goals would move us in that direction.

 

C. Prioritized
We should arrange our goals in order of importance, from most important to least. Doing that will help us know which one to focus on if our goals end up competing for our time or resources.

Also, it’s extremely valuable to have total clarity about what our top-priority goal is. When people fail to achieve their goals, one common reason is overwhelm. There’s great power in having a singular focus—a rallying aim. There’s power in drawing a dividing line between what matters most and, well, everything else. If we don’t identify our top goal, we risk dilution and diffusion.

 

Goal-Setting Checklist

(See my online tool: Goal-Setting Template.)

Goal-Setting Template

Goals are the desired results we hope to achieve—the object of our effort and ambition. Goals are common in our life and work, but that doesn’t mean we’re good at setting and achieving them. Use this Goal-Setting Template to set your goals properly, based on the research and best practice.

Complete the Template

 

Conclusion

Since we’re so accustomed to goal-setting, we may take it for granted and believe we’ve got it down. But if we had a true scorecard for all the goals we set, it would probably reveal a high percentage of abandoned or downgraded goals.

By using these 7 criteria for setting individual goals and 3 criteria for assessing our draft collection of goals, we can dramatically up our goals game.

 

Reflection Questions

  1. How are you doing in terms of these goal-setting criteria?
  2. What changes do you need to make in your goals?

 

Tools for You

 

Related Articles and Resources

 

Appendix: OKRs

Many organizations nowadays use a management framework and goal-setting system called “Objectives and Key Results” (OKRs). This method was pioneered at Intel and is used by many organizations, including Alphabet/Google, Coursera, Disney, Exxon, the Gates Foundation, Intuit, MyFitnessPal, Nuna, and Remind (and many people, including Bono, the lead singer of U2, in his efforts to fight extreme poverty and preventable disease via the ONE Campaign).

In this OKR framework, the objectives are the concrete things we seek to achieve. In his book, Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs, legendary venture capitalist John Doerr recommends that objectives are “significant, concrete, action-oriented, and (ideally) inspirational.” He notes that they’re a “vaccine against fuzzy thinking—and fuzzy execution.”

The key results indicate how we can reach the chosen objectives. Doerr recommends ensuring that KRs are specific, time-bound, aggressive yet realistic, measurable, and verifiable.

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Setting Goals

  • “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” -Michelangelo, Italian sculptor and painter
  • “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.” -Les Brown, speaker and former member of the Ohio House of Representatives

 

References

(1) Sheldon, K.M., and Elliot, A.J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal Personality and Social Psychology, 76: 546-57.

(2) Also, according to a study of job satisfaction based on data from hundreds of workers, the ones who concentrated on intrinsic professional goals were significantly more satisfied with their jobs than those who didn’t. Source: Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., Erez, A., & Locke, E. A. (2005). Core Self-Evaluations and Job and Life Satisfaction: The Role of Self-Concordance and Goal Attainment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(2), 257–268.

(3) More than a thousand studies have shown that setting goals that are challenging and specific (versus easy and vague goals) is linked to increased motivation, persistence, and task performance. According to decades of research on goals by psychologist Edwin A. Locke, a pioneer in the field, setting goals improves performance. Also, hard-to-achieve goals improve performance more than easy-to-achieve goals, and having specific targets in our goals improves their effectiveness. Source: Edwin A. Locke, Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, Volume 3, Issue 2, 1968, 157-189.

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

The Most Common Mistakes in Goal-Setting and Goal-Pursuit

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mistakes in goal-setting

Article Summary:

This article notes the most common mistakes in goal-setting and goal-pursuit. It’s the second article in a four-part series on goals.

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Though researchers have examined goals and goal-setting for more than a century, the practice of setting and pursuing goals is still widely misunderstood and often badly misapplied.

There are dangers of not getting it right. When we don’t set and pursue goals properly, we can experience frustration, stress, burnout, and disillusionment.* In this article, we’ll first address the most common mistakes in goal-setting and then turn to the most common mistakes in goal-pursuit.

 

The 8 Most Common Mistakes in Goal-Setting

There’s no shortage of advice and opinions on setting goals. Unfortunately, much of the advice gets some things wrong or falls short on at least a few key factors.

Given how little training we’re given in goal-setting (if any), perhaps it should be unsurprising that there are many things we’re missing. Here are eight common mistakes:

1. Not identifying and focusing on the most important goal.

2. Getting overwhelmed with too many goals.

When we have too many goals, it risks diluting our efforts. (More on this in my next article: “Goal-Setting: Best Practices.”)

3. Adopting other people’s goals.

We’re social creatures prone to extensive influence from others, but taking on the goals we think we should have or ones that others will admire can take us away from our own aspirations and aims. This mistake often results from the trap of caring too much about what others think.

“…to let another man define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life—
the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.”
-Hunter S. Thompson, letter to his friend Hume Logan

4. Setting goals out of ego.

We may set goals from a place of wanting or needing to attain status or prestige from others if we achieve certain things they value. (This can lead us down the trap of excessive materialism, which can be a drain on our ultimate happiness because of “hedonic adaptation”—our tendency to return quickly to our baseline level of happiness even after experiencing major changes or events.)

5. Setting goals only in one area.

Many people leap right into goals about a promotion or target weight but overlook the importance of setting goals for their relationships, education, or community. Why not set goals in a few different key areas (perhaps choosing from these categories: quality of life, health, relationships, education, work, service, or finances), while also being careful not to have too many goals? Researchers have found that relationship goals tend to bring greater wellbeing than achievement goals.

6. Assuming that achieving our goals will make us happy.

Naturally, many positive emotions tend to accompany goal attainment, from satisfaction or relief to excitement or elation. But the effect is often more short-lived than we imagine. Most goal attainment only changes things temporarily, and we humans have a tendency to adapt quickly to the new normal (again, “hedonic adaptation”). There’s more to life than achieving goals.

It’s often the pursuit of the goal that really engages our motivation (writer Chris Guillebeau calls it the “happiness of pursuit”). Many people struggle with the doldrums or low motivation after achieving a big goal because their animating focus has suddenly disappeared. Also, lasting happiness is much more about close personal relationships, purpose, and contribution than it is about goal attainment or material status.

7. Thinking too much about the end result we’re after and not enough about whether we’re willing to endure the pain and sacrifice to achieve our goals.

Dreaming of marvelous scenarios of goal attainment is the easy part, but only a small fraction of the process. The real question is what we’re willing to do and give up to make our goals a reality.

“The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes you do to accomplish it.
This will always be a far greater value than what you get.”
-Jim Rohn, entrepreneur and author

8. Focusing too much on the goal and not enough on developing the habits, systems, and practices needed to achieve the goal and measure our progress along the way.

We can dream or visualize all we want, but in the end we need to roll up our sleeves and get cracking with the sometimes boring but always important grind of goal-pursuit.

Goal-Setting Template

Goals are the desired results we hope to achieve—the object of our effort and ambition. Goals are common in our life and work, but that doesn’t mean we’re good at setting and achieving them. Use this Goal-Setting Template to set your goals properly, based on the research and best practice.

Complete the Template

 

The 6 Most Common Mistakes in Goal-Pursuit

What do many people get wrong when it comes to pursuing their goals? A lot. Here are six common mistakes:

1. Lowering goals if we fail to achieve them.

It may be tempting to lower the bar after hitting the first hurdle, instead of redoubling our efforts. Ratcheting goals down should not be the knee-jerk response to roadblocks.

2. Letting our goals master us.

Sometimes all the time and energy we pour into accomplishing something devolves into an unhealthy fixation. When that happens, we can lose perspective, rationalize poor choices, and detach from our core values. Letting this happen can result in health and relationship problems or ethical failures and regrets.

3. Investing too much of our identity and self-worth in whether we achieve our goals.

There’s nothing wrong with being committed to our goals. Far from it. But if we judge our identity and worth by whether we always achieve our goals, we’re essentially placing our happiness in unreliable hands because we can’t control all the variables.

Sometimes we get ill, or face a family crisis or unexpected work challenge, or the market turns, or a recession or pandemic hits. At the end of the day, are we only goal-striving machines, or are we worthy of love and respect regardless of the fickle ups and downs of fate? (See my article, “Is Your Identity Too Wrapped Up in Your Work?”) In her book, The How of Happiness, researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky notes that “happiness will come from pursuing goals, and not necessarily from achieving them.”

“We are not devastated by failing to obtain a goal.
We’re only devastated when our sense of self-esteem and self-worth are dependent upon achievement of that goal.”
-William James, American philosopher and psychologist

4. Undermining our intrinsic motivation.

When we try to supercharge our motivation by seeking extrinsic rewards (like praise, awards, or fame), it can sap our interest and enthusiasm, according to researchers, by turning what we previously viewed as play into work.

5. Not updating our goals as we learn more about ourselves and as we grow and develop through life’s chapters.

New experiences and hard-earned wisdom come with each chapter of our lives. And our priorities are likely to change as we go through the seasons of life. Young people, according to the research, are more drawn to goals that involve experiencing novelty and gathering new information or knowledge. Meanwhile, older people tend to be more interested in emotionally meaningful goals and personal connections.

6. Losing steam in our goal-pursuit.

As humans, we often struggle with the future when it comes to our motivational hardwiring. When something is far off in time, and our immediate experience with things involves challenge and frustration, we tend to slack off—at least until the immediacy of a deadline or fear of failing can kick us into gear.

 

Reflection Questions

  1. How are things going with your goal-setting and goal-pursuit?
  2. Which of these mistakes, if any, have you made or are you making?
  3. What will you do about it, starting today?

 

Tools for You

Goal-Setting Template

Goals are the desired results we hope to achieve—the object of our effort and ambition. Goals are common in our life and work, but that doesn’t mean we’re good at setting and achieving them. Use this Goal-Setting Template to set your goals properly, based on the research and best practice.

Complete the Template

 

Related Articles

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Common Mistakes with Goals

  • “Make sure your vision or goal is not an inflated image of yourself and therefore a concealed form of ego, such as wanting to become a movie star, a famous writer, or a wealthy entrepreneur. Also make sure your goal is not focused on having this or that, such as a mansion by the sea, your own company, or ten million dollars in the bank…. Instead of seeing yourself as a famous actor and writer and so on, see yourself inspiring countless people with your work and enriching their lives. Feel how that activity enriches or deepens not only your life but that of countless others.” -Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
  • “Career goals that once felt safe and certain can appear ludicrous… when examined in the light of more self-knowledge. Our work preferences and our life preferences do not stay the same, because we do not stay the same.” -David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

* There are even some situations in which goal-setting can work against us. For example, researchers have discovered that in tasks that require complex thinking (e.g., when we’re solving problems, engaging in creative work, or learning), goal-setting can sometimes backfire. One main reason is that the goal itself can take up so much space in our attention and working memory that we have less cognitive firepower left to generate new ideas and think through new solutions. Essentially, the goal can become a distraction.

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our community. Sign up now and get Gregg Vanourek’s monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!
Sign Up Now

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

The Benefits of Setting and Pursuing Goals

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Article Summary: 

This article defines goals and gives examples of different types of goals, followed by the benefits of setting and pursuing goals. It’s the first article in a four-part series on goals.

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Goals are the desired results we hope to achieve. They’re the object of our ambition and effort.

There are many different types of goals, including the following:

(1) NB: approach goals and activity goals tend to induce more lasting happiness, according to the research.

We can also have goals in different areas, such as career, health, finances, and education.

Goal-Setting Template

Goals are the desired results we hope to achieve—the object of our effort and ambition. Goals are common in our life and work, but that doesn’t mean we’re good at setting and achieving them. Use this Goal-Setting Template to set your goals properly, based on the research and best practice.

Complete the Template

 

The Benefits of Setting and Pursuing Goals

When done well, setting and pursuing goals can help motivate individuals, workers, athletes, teams, and organizations to achieve at higher levels.

Goal-setting works by marshaling motivation and energy to work to achieve our aims. Without goals, we often fail to put in the effort needed to achieve at high levels. There are many potential benefits of goal-setting and goal-pursuit when done well.

Goal-setting can boost our motivation and our sense of purpose, direction, and control. It can help us link our daily behavior with the bigger picture of our important aspirations and dreams—giving us something to strive toward and look forward to.

“There is one thing which gives radiance to everything.
It is the idea of something around the corner.”
-G.K. Chesterton, English writer and philosopher

Goal-pursuit tends to bring structure and a sense of meaning (and, ideally, progress) to our days, while also giving us opportunities to take on new responsibilities, master new skills, and collaborate with others. It challenges us to get organized, use our time effectively, strategize, evaluate, and overcome obstacles.

According to researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky in her book, The How of Happiness, one of the characteristics of the happiest people is that they tend to be deeply committed to lifelong goals and ambitions. Having goals is strongly associated not only with happiness but also with overall life satisfaction. She notes that people who strive for something that’s personally significant to them are far happier than those who don’t have compelling dreams or aspirations.

What’s more, we experience a boost in confidence when we set challenging goals and achieve them. Setting and pursuing goals can boost our energy and lead to greater work engagement, satisfaction, and enjoyment as well as higher productivity and performance. Researchers have established a strong connection between goal-setting and the probability of success.

“Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.”
-Brian Tracy, Canadian-American author and speaker

There are also many benefits of goal-setting and goal-pursuit for teams and organizations. For example, goals can focus us on what matters most, help us find ways to measure progress toward those things, foster alignment, and motivate us to stretch beyond our normal bounds and into the territory of higher performance.

“I’m convinced that if structured goal setting and continuous communication were to be widely deployed, with rigor and imagination, we could see exponentially greater productivity and innovation throughout society.”
-John Doerr, Measure What Matters

 

Tools for You

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Postscript: Inspirations on the Benefits of Goals

  • “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.” -Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist
  • “Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor.” -Brian Tracy, Canadian-American author and speaker
  • “What keeps me going is goals.” -Muhammad Ali, champion boxer
  • “I visualize where I want to be and what kind of person and player I want to become. I approach the game or goal with the end in mind. I know exactly where I want to go, and I focus on getting there. As I reach those goals, I gain a little more confidence.” -Michael Jordan, legendary basketball champion
  • “An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.” -Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish novelist
  • “It is the goals that we pursue that will shape and determine the kind of self that we are to become…. Without a consistent set of goals, it is difficult to develop a coherent self.” -Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Hungarian-American psychologist and author

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our community. Sign up now and get Gregg Vanourek’s monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!
Sign Up Now

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

20 Benefits of Gratitude

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It’s easy to take things for granted. We may appreciate things for a while but, sure enough, we eventually start discounting them. The unhappy result is that we can go through long stretches of our lives without noticing the good things.

The benefits of gratitude show up not only in hordes of modern scientific studies but also in centuries of shared wisdom. All the major religions encourage and celebrate gratitude. And many great spiritual teachers have been powerful exemplars of living with a grateful heart attuned to the wonders of creation.

 

20 Benefits of Gratitude in Our Lives

Feeling gratitude has an astonishing number of benefits. Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky from University of California, Riverside and other researchers have found that gratitude can:

1. Magnify good feelings.

2. Improve our sense of wellbeing, happiness, and overall life satisfaction.

“If you want to find happiness, find gratitude.”
-Steve Maraboli, author

3. Lead to better mental and physical health, including lower blood pressure, better sleep, and a stronger immune system.

4. Boost our energy and enhance our vitality.

5. Bolster our capacity for optimism.

6. Reduce negative feelings like anger, bitterness, self-centeredness, envy, and greed—all of which inhibit our happiness—and curb our tendency to compare ourselves to others.

7. Lead to greater generosity, kindness, and helpfulness (“prosocial” behaviors).

8. Help us form closer and better relationships with friends and—and maintain them over time.

9. Expand our social network, giving us access to more friends and greater social support—while making it less likely that we’re lonely and disconnected.

10. Affect our brains in positive and lasting ways, including an orientation toward enjoying it when other people thrive.

11. Shift our attention away from negative emotions (e.g., fault, criticism, regret) and toward positive ones (e.g., benefit, abundance, joy), making it harder for us to ruminate.

12. Help us cope with and build resilience in the face of stress and traumatic events.

“…it is precisely under crisis conditions when we have the most to gain by a grateful perspective on life. In the face of demoralization, gratitude has the power to energize. In the face of brokenness, gratitude has the power to heal. In the face of despair, gratitude has the power to bring hope. In other words, gratitude can help us cope with hard times.”
-Dr. Robert Emmons, Professor of Psychology, University of California, Davis

13. Help us become more forgiving.

14. Enhance our sense of self-worth. (We feel more capable and confident when we realize how much others have done for us or how much we’ve accomplished.)

15. Reduce our tendency to complain and feel like a victim since it focuses our attention on what we value and appreciate.

16. Help us maintain a broader and better perspective in which we can place our challenges in the larger context of abundance and privilege.

17. Address the problem of “hedonic adaptation,” in which we tend to grow rapidly accustomed to the things we wanted and got.

18. Help our children and youth. According to research, more grateful adolescents and college students show keener interest in school, do better academically, have better social relationships, and enjoy their educational experience more.

19. Help people facing drug and alcohol addiction.

20. Provide some degree of protection against depression and suicidal ideation.

What will you do to start bringing more gratitude into your life, starting today?

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Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

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Postscript: Inspirations on the Benefits of Gratitude

  • “Gratitude is one of the sweet shortcuts to finding peace of mind and happiness inside.” -Barry Neil Kaufman, author
  • “Opportunities, relationships, even money flowed my way when I learned to be grateful no matter what happened in my life.” -Oprah Winfrey, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author
  • “It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy.” -Brother David Steindl-Rast, Catholic-Benedictine monk and scholar
  • “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” -Melody Beattie, author
  • “When you appreciate the good, the good appreciates.” -Tal Ben-Shahar, teacher and writer
  • “Living in a state of gratitude is the gateway to grace.” -Arianna Huffington, Greek-American entrepreneur and author
  • “Gratitude opens the door to the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe. You open the door through gratitude.” -Deepak Chopra, spiritual teacher and author
  • “Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” -Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

How to Craft a Vision of the Good Life

by

Article Summary: 

What is a vision of the good life? Why is it hard to create one? What are the benefits of having a vision of the good life? How to craft a vision of the good life?

+++

Working hard but lacking energy and motivation?
Busy but feeling depleted?
Not sure what you want anymore—or what direction to take?
Feeling overcommitted, juggling too many things?

These are common feelings these days, even among high achievers and committed parents and citizens. The problem is that, if we let them go for too long, things can start unraveling. We begin to see a gap between where we are now and where we’d like to be. And then the gap grows.

These are signs that we’re lacking a clear vision for our lives—or that we’ve lost sight of it. Sometimes, we find ourselves living someone else’s vision.

“Ester asked why people are sad.
‘That’s simple,’ says the old man. ‘They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people’s ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.’” -Paolo Coelho, The Zahir

 

What Is a Vision of the Good Life?

A vision is a bold and vivid picture of a better future. Many organizations have a vision statement. But vision isn’t only for organizations. It’s for us too.

In the context of our lives, a vision of the good life should clearly describe who we want to become, what we want to do, and where we want to go. A vision of the good life is the dream destination of our lives.

“Vision is a clear mental picture of what could be, fueled by the conviction that it should be.”
-Pastor Andy Stanley, Visioneering

In essence, our vision statement is an authentic rendering of how our purpose and core values can play out in the world. A personal vision statement asks:

Who do we want to be?
What do we want to do and contribute in life?
Who do we want to share it with?

 

Why Vision Is Hard

Crafting a vision of the good life can be difficult for many. There are many obstacles that can get in the way.

For starters, we’re constrained by what researchers call “presentism”: Harvard University professor Daniel Gilbert notes that our “imagination cannot easily transcend the boundaries of the present…. Most of us have a tough time imagining a tomorrow that is terribly different from today.”

Many of us have what’s called “status quo bias”: a preference for maintaining our current state of affairs. There’s also the fear factor. It takes courage to confront obstacles and still envision a better future.

Another challenge is the trap of caring too much about what others think. This can direct us toward the vision of others and away from our own vision. Other traps that can get in the way include the complacency of drifting through our lives or settling for just okay.

Take the Traps Test

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Some people resist or struggle with the idea of having a vision of the good life because it sounds abstract and distant. But neither “vision” nor “good life” has to be complicated. A vision, as we’ve seen, is simply a picture of our desired future. And authors Richard Leider and David Shapiro define the good life simply and crisply:

“living in the place you belong, with the people you love, doing the right work—on purpose.”

Keep in mind that vision is different from purpose and goals. Our purpose is our reason for being, and we should think of it as timeless. Our goals are the objectives we want to accomplish, and they’re best thought of in shorter increments (e.g., today or this month or year). By contrast, our life vision is a vivid description of what we aspire to do with our lives. It’s best thought of over a lifetime (or at least a decade). (Obviously, people can choose to have a three-year vision, a five-year vision, etc. if they wish.)

 

The Benefits of Having a Vision

Having a vision of the good life can be catalytic. It can help us:

  • develop a clear sense of direction
  • get recentered when we feel lost
  • put our precious time and energy into what we really want
  • reclaim a sense of agency and control over our lives
  • know where to focus our attention and energy—and which detours to avoid
  • connect the dots between the different aspects of our lives
  • get back in the driver’s seat of our lives
  • make decisions and select which opportunities to pursue
  • set and enforce personal and professional boundaries
  • craft our goals, since they should flow naturally from our vision
  • get our motivation back, even during difficult times
  • boost our confidence
  • help us overcome doubt and fear
  • reduce our feelings of overwhelm because we’re clearer about what matters
  • get help from others because we have a clearer sense of what we want
  • live more proactively and intentionally
  • improve our performance

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

Take the Exercise

 

How to Craft a Vision of the Good Life

There are many ways to approach crafting a vision of the good life. Different approaches will work for different people. Here are some suggested approaches:

Begin by looking back to our childhood dreams. Many of us had dreams when we were younger—dreams, for example, of being an astronaut or an athlete, an author or a ballerina, a teacher or a firefighter. Many times, those dreams don’t so much point to the profession we actually choose as they do contain certain clues about our deeper make-up as a person—clues like wanting to explore, be active, create, make beauty, or help others.

Get in the habit of thinking more about the future we want, including who we want to be and how we’ll go about making it happen.

Think not just about big accomplishments but also about what we’d like everyday life to be like. Think about our normal days in the future. A vision of the good life isn’t only about aspiration and accomplishment. It’s also about peace and joy.

Look inward to capture our authentic essence. Our articulation of where we want to go should be grounded in who we are. Many people don’t look inward before projecting outward.

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.
Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”
-Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist

Clarify not only the mental picture of our desired future but also how we seek to feel in that desired future. That can include the feeling we want to bring to that future as well as the feeling we want to get in it.

Reflect on our view of the good life. What would living a good life mean for us and those we love?

Ensure the vision covers the important areas of our lives. A well-designed vision paints a picture of our desired destination across all the important aspects of our lives: family, work, health, education, service, community, hobbies, travel, and perhaps more.

Think also about an audacious aspiration for our life—something that’s challenging but would be amazing if we could make it happen.

“Fortune favors the audacious.”
-Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus
Dutch Christian humanist, theologian, and philosopher

Now take inputs from the points above and turn them into a vision statement draft. Start with statements or bullet points, and then form them into a paragraph or a page or two about our vision of the good life. It works best when we think ahead and put ourselves in it, writing in the present tense, noting what kind of person we are, where we are, who we’re with, what we’re doing, etc.

Think about how we’d like to be remembered by loved ones and others at the end of our life. What would be a life we’d be proud of?

Get clear on what would provide the most value to the people we’re committed to serving. How are we best positioned to help, given our strengths and passions, and which groups or causes?

Get clear on the things that provide the most meaning in our lives and build those into our vision, including what’s important to us and what would be worth spending our time on. It’s a good sign if we’d do it even without getting paid for it.

Share an early draft with trusted friends and colleagues and seek their input—and help. Revise it based on their input, but only the input we wholeheartedly agreed with. After all, this is our vision of the good life, not theirs.

Consider working with a coach or mentor to help with the vision crafting process. Often, it’s helpful with an outside perspective.

(See the Appendix for other options if these approaches aren’t working for you.)

 

Criteria to Use in Crafting Our Vision

For some, the vision crafting process will be one of the most valuable things they ever do. Given that, we should have a high standard for the output and a good process for developing it intentionally.

As we craft a vision for our lives, we should ensure that it’s:

  1. Clear and vivid in its description
  2. Aligned with our true authentic essence, unique to us, including our purpose and core values
  3. Unbounded by the status quo
  4. Distant enough that we have to work toward it (a lifetime, or at least ten years in the future)
  5. Broad enough to encompass all the major aspects of our lives (including personal, professional, and relationships)
  6. Motivating and inspiring to us, flooding our heart with palpable emotion and fueling us with conviction

Our life vision should fill us with energy and raise our sights for what we can do with our days on Earth.

Leadership Derailers Assessment

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Some Cautions about the Vision Process

There are many potential pitfalls in the vision crafting process, so some cautions are in order.

Though clear and vivid, our vision shouldn’t be prescriptive. It should be directional but not tactical, not interloping into how we will get there (the realm of strategy and tactics). Also avoid making it vague and generic. Someone who knows us well should recognize us clearly in our vision.

Our vision can change over the years, and that’s okay. But if we’ve done it well, it shouldn’t change too often. That would be jarring and confounding.

Our vision statement doesn’t have to be perfect. View it as a draft—as a work-in-process that can and should change over time.

Watch out for too much focus on ego or material possessions in our vision. We know those are false friends destined to disappoint in the final analysis. Better to focus instead on connection and contribution.

Our vision is worthless without action. What’s the point if it just sits in a drawer? We’re wise to read our vision statement regularly (e.g., every month or quarter) and get to work on making it come alive.

 

Making Our Vision a Reality

It’s unrealistic to expect that we’ll travel a linear path to realize our vision. Stuff happens. Circumstances change. But we’re wise to hold fast to our vision and keep working to bring it to life.

“A vision without a plan is a delusion.”
-Neil Kurtz, CEO of Golden Living

We’re especially wise to clarify what knowledge and skills we need to develop now to be able to live into that desired future—and then block out time to get them.

We should start taking action now on things that will bring us closer to our vision—and do that every day.

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
-Epictetus, ancient Greek Stoic philosopher

 

Conclusion

In the end, our lives are short. Many people find themselves late in life with deep regrets. Why not set a marker now for how we’ll live and then pursue it with abandon?

 

Reflection Questions

  1. Do you have a vision of the good life?
  2. To what extent are you clear about what a good life would be for you?
  3. Is it informing the choices you make and actions you take on a regular basis?
  4. Are you moving toward it?
  5. What’s stopping you?

 

Tools for You

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

 

Related Articles

 

Appendix: Other Options for the Vision Process

The visioning process is challenging for many. What works for one person may not work well for another. With that in mind, here are some other options for the vision crafting process:

Start with a “mind map.” Take a blank sheet of paper and a pencil, then write the word “Vision” in the middle of the page. Then add words, phrases, or images all around the page with things that may be included in your envisioning of a good life. Don’t edit. Just write or draw.

Use a vision board. Gather an array of photos, images, inspirational quotes, or other symbolic representations of your idea of a good life. Place them on a large poster sheet that can be displayed prominently in your home or office as a visual reminder of what you’d like your life to be like.

Consider drawing your vision of the good life. (Some way want to start with this.) The point isn’t artistry but rather creative symbols that represent your deepest aspirations. Have fun with it. Aristotle observed that “the soul never thinks without a picture.”

Consider journaling as a place to start to gather ideas. Sometimes starting more informally with private thoughts can help break the logjam of self-consciousness.

Clarify how you define success in different areas of your life, including both personal and professional. Build the most salient aspects of your desired success into your vision of the good life.

Write a letter from the future. Imagine yourself at the end of your life, having lived a good life. Write a letter from that future version of you to the you of today, describing what life is like, who you’ve become and what you’ve done, and how it feels.

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Vision

  • “There is no favorable wind for the sailor who doesn’t know where to go.” -Seneca, ancient Roman Stoic philosopher
  • “I’ve seen the promised land.” -Martin Luther King, Jr., minister, activist, and civil-rights leader
  • “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” -Proverbs 29:18
  • “I learned to organize my life around my dream, rather than try to force my dream into my chaotic life.” -Sonia Choquette, spiritual teacher and author
  • “See things as you would have them be instead of as they are.” -Robert Collier, author
  • “Connecting with one’s dreams releases one’s passion, energy, and excitement about life…. The key is uncovering your ideal self—the person you would like to be, including what you want in your life and work.” -Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee, Resonant Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence
  • “…people stop dreaming because they got caught up in the hustle and bustle of surviving. And once we stop dreaming, we start to lead lives of quiet desperation, and little by little the passion and energy begin to disappear from our lives.” -Matthew Kelly, The Dream Manager
  • “All mean dream: but not equally. Those that dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.” -T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph
  • “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old. They grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” -Gabriel Garcia Marquez, novelist
  • “The happiest people in life operate out of their imaginations and dreams, not their histories.” -Ed Mylett, The Power of One More
  • “Everyone is inspired by those who follow their dream.” -Maria Nemeth, Founder and Director, Academy for Coaching Excellence
  • “Be strong on vision, but flexible on detail.” -Jeff Bezos, founder and executive chairman, Amazon
  • “Despite the myth of the heroic visionary leader, there is little about developing and pursuing a vision that should be a solo endeavor.” -Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek, LIFE Entrepreneurs

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

The Power of Integrating Our Passions into Our Life and Work

by

In the world of personal development, passion is one of the things that’s most misunderstood. “Follow your passion” is common advice.

But is it right?

The answer may surprise you.

 

What Is a Passion?

Our passions are the things that consume us with palpable emotion over time. They’re the things we love so much that we’re willing to suffer for them. Researchers have defined passions as strong inclinations toward activities we value and like or love, and in which we invest our time and energy. (1)

Author and coach Curt Rosengren calls passion “the energy that comes from bringing more of you into what you do. In essence, passion comes from being who you are.” Our passions are connected with our intrinsic motivation (our impulse to do something because of the inherent satisfaction of doing so and not the desire for a reward for it)—and with our innate talents and abilities.

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Not Feeling Passion at Work

We can have passions in different domains of our lives. What are the signs of passion at work? The signs include loving our work, wanting to talk often about what we like about our work, or finding ourselves working extra hours even when we don’t have to, mainly for the inherent satisfaction.

To what extent are people passionate about their work?

According to the data analysis team at Zippia, only 20% of U.S. workers are passionate about their job. Around the world, according to the 2013 State of the Global Workplace report by Gallup, only 13% of workers are passionate about their work.

 

 The Benefits of Integrating Our Passions into Our Life and Work

There are powerful benefits to integrating passions into our life and work, according to researchers. For example, doing so can:

  • boost our motivation and engagement
  • increase our productivity and persistence
  • enhance our focus and creativity
  • help us achieve our goals
  • motivate us to keep learning, growing, and developing in that area
  • help us be more resilient in the face of challenges
  • lead to more happiness and fulfillment
  • help us avoid burnout
  • lead to much higher job satisfaction, according to a meta-analysis that reviewed data from nearly a hundred different studies (2)
  • lead to better work performance, according to a meta-analysis of sixty studies conducted over the past six decades
“Passion is the driver of achievement in all fields.”
-Sir Ken Robinson, author and advisor on education in the arts

Passion is also contagious. People pick up on our enthusiasm, and it can inspire them to find and work in their areas of passion as well.

There’s also a flip side to this: there’s much lost when we don’t have passion for what we’re doing. When we’re not living and working with passion, we’re much more likely to lack enthusiasm and “phone it in.” Over time, this can put us on a downward trajectory.

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

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Confusion about Passion

Passion can be tricky because it often gets confused with other things, including hobbies and interests. Passion is related to these things, but there are important differences.

  • A hobby is something we do for pleasure or relaxation and not as our main occupation.
  • An interest is a feeling of wanting to be involved in something or to learn more about it, or something that attracts and holds our attention.
  • A passion, as noted above, is something that consumes us with palpable emotion over time.

A key difference, then, between passions and hobbies and interests is the degree to which we’re emotionally invested in the activity. And this can change over time. A hobby can turn into a passion, and vice versa.

 

How to Know What Our Passions Are

To determine our passions, we can take assessments and/or observe our own experiences and ask ourselves questions like the following:

  1. What things bring me joy?
  2. Which subjects interest me the most, continually drawing me in?
  3. What would I keep doing enthusiastically even if I didn’t get paid for it?
  4. What am I continually curious about?
  5. What things do I get excited about doing or discovering?
  6. What fills me up with energy and makes me come alive?
  7. What activities do I lose myself in, losing track of time?
  8. What problem(s) do I feel compelled to solve?
  9. What am I curious about or fascinated with?
  10. Is there something I long to master?
  11. Is there a person, group, place, or cause that I feel compelled to help (e.g., youth, my hometown, endangered species, the planet)?
  12. What lit me up when I was a child?

We can also ask for feedback from others (e.g., family, friends, colleagues, mentors) about what they observe about our passions and how we can integrate them into our life and work.

Finally, we’re wise to experiment and explore possibilities—to try things.

 

Passion and Grit

Angela Duckworth, University of Pennsylvania Professor and co-founder of the Character Lab, notes that a passion isn’t about just obsession. It’s also about consistency over time—about how steadily we work on certain things with sustained and enduring devotion.

In her book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, she writes that a passion isn’t just something we care about and enjoy intrinsically, but something we care about “in an abiding, loyal, steady way.” She ties passion to what she calls “grit,” which is a combination of “passion and perseverance for very long-term goals.”

 

Passions Can Develop and Deepen over Time

Professor Duckworth notes that passions tend to be developed more than they’re discovered. In other words, there’s an important time dimension that tends to proceed with certain components, including interest, experimentation, discovery, development over time, practice, purpose, and persistence.

It begins, she notes, with interest—with intrinsically enjoying what we do. She notes that interests are typically “triggered by interactions with the outside world” and experimentation, and not discovered through introspection or analysis. Then, she writes, “what follows the initial discovery of an interest is a much lengthier and increasingly proactive period of interest development. Crucially, the initial triggering of a new interest must be followed by subsequent encounters that retrigger your attention—again and again and again.” In other words, the fire will go out if not tended to.

For the passion to blossom, it should be an activity that we practice—with “the daily discipline of trying to do things better than we did yesterday”—ideally leading to mastery.

For the passion to ripen, she reports, it should be connected to our purpose (our reason for being), with a conviction that our work matters. That means not only connecting to our personal interests but also to how we can serve or contribute to the wellbeing of others.

For us to maintain a passion, we must persevere with it through the inevitable challenges and setbacks.

In a nutshell, Duckworth recommends focusing not on following our passions but on fostering them intentionally and systematically over time.

“…here’s what science has to say: passion for your work is a little bit of discovery,
followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening.”
-Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

Take the Exercise

 

How to Integrate Our Passions into Our Life and Work

It’s one thing to know what our passions are (which isn’t straightforward for everyone), while it’s another thing to integrate them into our life and work.

For one thing, there are practical challenges. We live in the real world, with bills and mortgages to pay and retirements to save for. So, for starters, many people have given up on this game from the get-go. That’s understandable, but it warrants a second look.

Here are 8 steps we can take to integrate our passions into our life and work:

  1. Of course, we must begin by knowing what our passions are. (See above.)
  2. Challenge beliefs that aren’t serving us well. For example, reconsider a belief that that it’s not realistic to have passion in our life or to be passionate about what we do for a living.
  3. Evaluate how much time we’re operating in the area of our passions. Are we in the passion zone frequently, or rarely?
  4. Set goals that align with our passions. For example, if we have a passion for learning, we can set a goal of reading one nonfiction book every month or taking a new course every year.
  5. Decide what actions we’ll take and habits we’ll adopt to operate more in the areas of our passions. For example, we can choose one or two things that we do regularly as part of our morning, mid-day, or evening routine. Calendarize them and evaluate how it’s going regularly.
  6. Determine what we’ll do to reduce the amount of time we’re working on things outside our passions.
  7. Find others who share our passions and engage with them often.
  8. Connect our passions with our purpose, including ways we can serve others.

In this process, it may also be helpful to have a coach or mentor because we may not have clarity about our passions or how we can use them more.

As we go forward, we must remember to be patient. It can take a while to right the ship.

 

Myths and Misconceptions about Passions

There are many myths and misconceptions about passions. For starters, the idea that following our passion(s) will automatically lead us to success is prevalent and even a bit of a cliché.

It’s not wrong, but it’s only partly true.

It’s not enough to follow our passions. In this competitive world, our passions need a business model. We need to do things that others are willing to pay us for. And not all passions are well-suited to being our primary occupation that brings in our required income.

Many people don’t know what their passion is—and they may be intimidated by the thought. For many of us, our passions don’t come to us in a flash that’s crystal clear and that instantly changes our lives. Many of the people Angela Duckworth interviewed told her they spent years exploring several different interests, and the core passion wasn’t recognizable at the beginning.

In his book, Deep Work, Georgetown University computer science professor and author Cal Newport notes the flawed thinking that “there are some rarified jobs” that fuel passion—”perhaps working in a nonprofit or starting a software company—while all others are soulless and bland.” He argues that we don’t need a rarefied job; rather, what we need is a rarefied approach to our work. More on that below.

Some people may not want to have their passion incorporated into their job, as it may risk soiling it or leading to burnout. Also, we don’t necessarily have ONE PASSION. We can have many, and they can change over time.

There’s also a lot of confusion about the interplay between passion and purpose. For starters, many people use these terms interchangeably. Big mistake. A passion, as we’ve seen, is something that consumes us with palpable emotion over time. By contrast, our purpose is why we’re here, our reason for being. Stanford University professor William Damon defines it as “a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at the same time meaningful to the self and consequential for the world beyond self.”

Ideally, we bring them closer together, tying our passions to our purpose and in the process redirecting our passions toward something more meaningful and significant.

“What ripens passion is the conviction that your work matters.
For most people, interest without purpose is nearly impossible to sustain for a lifetime.”
-Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Our passions, like pretty much anything in life, are at risk of dwindling over time. We can exhaust them or burn them out if we’re not careful. Two things can help here. The first is purpose. By connecting passions to purpose, we’ll attach them to a renewable source of energy. The second is novelty. Creatively finding new ways to use our passions—and with new people and different settings—will help keep the fire burning.

 

Mindsets about Passion

In his book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport points out that “When it comes to creating work you love, following your passion is not particularly useful advice.” He explains:

“The conventional wisdom on career success—follow your passion—is seriously flawed. It not only fails to describe how most people actually end up with compelling careers, but for many people it can actually make things worse: leading to chronic job shifting and unrelenting angst when one’s reality inevitably falls shorts of the dream.”

The idea here is that if we have unrealistic standards about what work will be like, we’re likely to become disappointed and perhaps even cynical. Part of the problem, Newport notes, is that we have this fantasy of a perfectly right dream job waiting for us out there. We only need to find it. This is often naïve. People may have a dream job for a while, but things have a tendency to change, with new managers, organizational transformations, industry shifts, and changes in our own lives. Great work is more of a mindset and pursuit than it is a destination.

Newport distinguishes between two different mindsets about work. The first is the “passion mindset.” The idea here is that if we do what we love, the world will make us succeed. This mindset (which is common) is focused on what the world can offer us. The problem: it’s too simplistic, and it’s misleading.

The second is the “craftsman mindset” (a craftsman is skilled at a certain trade, perhaps working skillfully with his or her hands to make things with exquisite attention to quality and detail). This mindset is focused on what we can offer the world, not on what the world will do for us.

Newport urges us to adopt the craftsman mindset, not the passion mindset—and get good at something. Really good. And really good at something via developing “rare and valuable skills.” With this mindset, we can build up “career capital,” which will give us a strong base for crafting a career of great work that’s also generous with freedom and autonomy, ideally tied to a compelling purpose.

Leadership Derailers Assessment

Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. A critical and often overlooked tool for your leadership development.

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Conclusion

In the end, it’s not so much about following our passions as it is about discovering, developing, and deepening them over time—and creatively integrating them into our life and work.

Ideally, we know not only our passions but also use our strengths (the things we’re good at, based on our innate talents, knowledge, and skills) to serve groups or causes we’re motivated to support in line with our core values. That’s a powerful approach to living honorably and living well.

 

Reflection Questions

  1. What are your passions?
  2. To what extent are you integrating your passions into your life and work (relationships, health, work, education, community, activities)?
  3. What more could you do?
  4. Is there anything preventing you from doing so and, if so, what will you do about it?
  5. What will you do differently, starting today?

 

Tools for You

 

Related Articles

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Passions

  • “Allow yourself to be silently guided by that which you love the most.” -Rumi, 13th century poet and Sufi mystic
  • “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” -Steve Jobs, co-founder, Apple
  • “If there is any difference between you and me, it may simply be that I get up every day and have a chance to do what I love to do, every day. If you want to learn anything from me, this is the best advice I can give you.” -Warren Buffett, legendary investor
  • “Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.” -Oprah Winfrey, media entrepreneur, author, and philanthropist
  • “One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don’t choose your passions; your passions choose you.” -Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO, Amazon
  • “Paul and I, we never thought that we would make much money out of the thing. We just loved writing software.” -Bill Gates, co-founder, Microsoft
  • “I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for the joy, you can do it forever.” -Stephen King, writer
  • “People who are connected to their passion can be spotted from a mile away.” -Mark Shearer, Executive Vice President, Pitney Bowes

(1) In the academic literature, researchers distinguish between “obsessive passions” and “harmonious passions” in what’s called the “dualistic model of passion.” With obsessive passions, we’re consumed with an activity and have a hard time letting it go. It can lead to conflicts between this activity and other important things in our life—and potentially injury, burnout, or other adverse consequences (e.g., when we keep dancing even when we’re injured). The problem occurs because we tie things like self-esteem or social acceptance to the activity, so we persist at it rigidly and develop uncontrollable urges to continue engaging in it.

With harmonious passions, by contrast, we freely accept the activity as important to us and engage in it willingly but don’t attach contingencies to it and don’t feel compelled to continue it. We’re able to leave space for other important things in our lives. Such passions lead to higher work satisfaction and don’t lead to those kinds of conflicts—or to burnout. Source: Vallerand, Robert & Paquet, Yvan & Philippe, Frederick & Charest, Julie. (2010). On the Role of Passion for Work in Burnout: A Process Model. Journal of personality. 78. 289-312.

(2) Mark Allen Morris, “A Meta-Analytic Investigation of Vocational Interest-Based Job Fit, and Its Relationship to Job Satisfaction, Performance, and Turnover,” PhD dissertation, University of Houston, 2003.

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

The Power of Knowing and Using Our Strengths

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Many people are disengaged at work and not energized and thriving in their lives. One major reason is that they’re not using their strengths—the things they’re good at—regularly.

According to data from Gallup’s global client database, most people aren’t using their strengths every day at work. See the chart below.

Source: Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, Strengths Based Leadership (Gallup Press).

Many of us are either working in areas of our weaknesses or focused on fixing our weaknesses instead of leveraging our strengths more in what we do. For example:

We’re doing things we’d rather avoid—perhaps things that bore us or make us feel weak or incompetent.
We keep trying things but don’t get traction on them and don’t seem to improve much.
We’re working on things even though we know others who are much better at them than we are.
We feel drained by the things we’re doing.

Could it be that we’re thinking about things the wrong way—focused on just doing what we’re told or what’s in front of us, or on shoring up our weaknesses to avoid looking bad, instead of actively crafting our work and activities in line with our strengths?

In their book, Living Your Strengths, Albert Winseman, Donald Clifton, and Curt Liesveld note the following:

“If you’re like most people, you have grown up with the ‘weakness prevention’ model. You’ve been told that to become strong, successful, or truly serve…you must ‘fix’ your weaknesses.…That thinking is just plain wrong.…
the evidence is overwhelming: You will be most successful in whatever you do by building your life around
your greatest natural abilities rather than your weaknesses.”

Enter strengths.

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What Is a Strength?

Strengths are the things at which we most excel. According to English consultant and author Marcus Buckingham, “Your strengths are those activities that make you feel strong.”

In Living Your Strengths, Winseman, Clifton, and Liesveld define it as follows: “A strength is the ability to provide consistent, near-perfect performance in a given activity.” They conceive of a strength as a powerful, productive combination of innate talent, relevant knowledge, and skills.

“The fundamental building block of any strength is talent.
When you enhance a talent by adding the right skills and useful knowledge, you have created a strength.”
-Albert Winseman, Donald Clifton, and Curt Liesveld, Living Your Strengths

Let’s look at the three components of a strength in turn:

Talents, they write, “are naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied.” Examples include a natural tendency to make people laugh, tune into others’ emotions, or thrive under pressure. These talents naturally exist within us as our inborn predispositions (unlike knowledge and skills). We do them instinctively and derive satisfaction in the process.

“The man who is born with a talent which he was meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it.”
-Johann Wolfgang Goethe, German poet, novelist, and scientist

Knowledge is what we know—whether factual or experiential knowledge. We can acquire knowledge through various means, from reading and courses to conversations and challenges. Ideally, we have a learning mindset and continually look for new ideas and methods.

Skills, they note, “are the abilities to perform the steps of an activity.” Examples include preparing seminars, presentations, or lesson plans. When we focus on developing our skills, we can boost performance significantly.

Talents, knowledge, and skills are the fundamental building blocks of strengths, but there are other relevant factors that influence their development. Such other factors include practice, coaching, repetition, and feedback. When we do things repeatedly and get targeted guidance and feedback on how we’re doing, we can really amp up our performance.

In his book, Strengths Finder 2.0, consultant and author Tom Rath notes that there’s incredible room for growth when we focus on developing our natural talents. He says it’s not realistic to be anything we want to be, as the saying goes, but we can be a lot more of who we already are. By building on our innate talents and interests, we can make incredible strides and thrive.

 

The Benefits of Knowing and Using Our Strengths

There are tremendous benefits to knowing and using our strengths in our work and daily lives, according to researchers. For example, knowing and using our strengths can:

  • enhance our confidence and help us overcome self-doubt (and keep our negative self-talk in check)
  • boost our motivation and engagement dramatically (1)
  • increase our productivity
  • give us more clarity about how we’re likely to succeed
  • help us achieve our goals
  • set us up for more opportunities for advancement
  • make us happier and more fulfilled
  • help us avoid burnout
“Burnout doesn’t happen when you are working long hours on invigorating activities. Long hours may tire you out, but they rarely burn you out. But fill your weeks with the wrong kinds of activities, activities that weaken you,
and even regular activities will start to burn.”
-Marcus Buckingham, Go Put Your Strengths to Work

There’s also a flip side to this: there’s much lost when we don’t use our strengths. When we’re not operating in our strengths zone, according to Rath, we’re much more likely to be disengaged at work. We may even dread it. We’re more likely to have more negative interactions with colleagues, treat customers poorly, and achieve less.

Personal Values Exercise

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The Signs of a Strength

Unfortunately, we tend to take our strengths for granted. In some cases, they’re so much a part of our daily lives that they’ve become invisible to us. We’re not aware that others may struggle with the things that come easily to us because we’ve been swimming in our strengths for so long.

So, what are the signs of a strength? In his book, Go Put Your Strengths to Work, Marcus Buckingham identified four signs of a strength, using the acronym SIGN (Success, Instinct, Growth, Needs):

Success: the things we do that make us feel successful. We’ve received recognition or praise for these things.

Instinct: the things we find ourselves drawn to, even if we’re not sure why. We’d like to do them every day, and we may volunteer for them spontaneously.

Growth: the things that were simpler for us to pick up and develop over time. We don’t have to try very hard when we do them. Also, we stay focused on them naturally and lose track of time when doing them.

Needs: the things that fill an innate need of ours and that leave us feeling powerful, fulfilled, and restored instead of drained. We feel a need to do them, and they give us a lot of personal satisfaction.

In sum, our strengths make us feel successful, draw us to use them, are relatively easy for us to develop, and fill a need of ours. We also feel energized while using them.

 

Signature Strengths

University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association, writes about what he calls “signature strengths,” which he defines as “strengths of character that a person owns, celebrates, and frequently exercises.” They’re essential to who we are, and they tend to give us the following:

  • rapid learning curve as they’re first practiced
  • feeling of excitement while using them
  • sense of authenticity (“This is the real me”)
  • desire to learn or find new ways to use them
  • feeling of enthusiasm and invigoration rather than exhaustion while using them
  • desire to pursue projects that revolve around them

To determine our strengths, we can take assessments (see the resources at the end of this article), ask those who know us well (perhaps via a 360-Degree Assessment), and/or observe our own experiences and ask ourselves questions like the following:

When have I achieved success, and what strengths did I use in the process?
What things do others come to me for help with because I’m good at them?
How have I overcome significant challenges, and what strengths did I use in the process?

 

How to Leverage Our Strengths in Our Life and Work

Here are nine steps for leveraging our strengths effectively in our life and work:

  1. Know what our strengths are.
  2. Clarify how and when our strengths help us with our most important work.
  3. Measure how much time we’re using our strengths (e.g., over the past week).
  4. Set goals for how much time we’ll do so in the future (e.g., over the next week).
  5. Decide what actions we’ll take to use our strengths.
  6. Create a plan for how we’ll develop our top strengths further with new knowledge or skills.
  7. Determine what we’ll do to reduce the amount of time we’re working in areas of our weaknesses. (It may not be possible to eliminate it altogether.) An important caveat: though we should generally avoid working in areas of weakness for us, that doesn’t mean that we should ignore our weaknesses. Knowing our weaknesses can be valuable.
  8. Seek colleagues who have different strengths and who compensate for our weaknesses.
  9. Continually seek ways to leverage our strengths in service of worthy endeavors that we’re passionate about.

It may also be helpful to have a coach because we’re often blind to our strengths. Others can often see our strengths more clearly and help us figure out ways to develop and use them more effectively.

 

How Leaders Can Leverage Strengths for High Performance

Strengths are also relevant for leaders and organizations. They can be a powerful performance booster. To begin with, leaders should know and use their own strengths in their work.

“I’ve never met an effective leader who wasn’t aware of his talents and working to sharpen them.”
-Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander

Next, managers should pay close attention to strengths in people selection and advancement as well as in job and team design. The team overall should have a well rounded and complementary set of strengths. For example, a founding team in a startup can map out the skills of its current team members as well as the skills gaps it’s looking to fill with new hires. See the table below.

Third, leaders should ensure that all team members are using their strengths as much as possible.

“While there are many good levers for engaging people and driving performance… the master lever is getting each person to play to his strength. Pull this lever and an engaged and productive team will be the result.
Fail to pull it and no matter what else is done to motivate the team, it’ll never fully engage.”
-Marcus Buckingham, Go Put Your Strengths to Work

 Finally, leaders should invest in the development of the strengths of everyone on the team (including themselves).

Leadership Derailers Assessment

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Conclusion

We’re all born with certain talents and interests, and we’re all drawn to certain activities and endeavors. If we can discover what we’re good at and build our life and work around those strengths, we can feel more engaged and energized, and we can thrive. And what if we applied our strengths toward a purpose or calling and used them to serve others in meaningful ways? That would be remarkable.

 

Reflection Questions

  1. What are your core strengths?
  2. To what extent are you using your strengths (at work, home, etc.)?
  3. Are you using them every day?
  4. How could you use your strengths more?
  5. What will you do differently, starting today?

 

Tools for You

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

 

Related Articles

 

Additional Resources

  • Tom Rath, StrengthsFinder 2.0 (including an online assessment)
  • Albert Winseman, Donald Clifton, and Curt Liesveld, Living Your Strengths
  • Marcus Buckingham, Go Put Your Strengths to Work
  • Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, Strengths Based Leadership (including an online assessment for a personalized leadership guide)
  • Clifton Strengths Assessment
  • VIA Survey of Character Strengths

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Strengths

  • “Liberating and expressing your natural genius is your ultimate path to success and life satisfaction.” -Gay Hendricks, psychologist and author
  • “Herein is my formulation of the good life: Using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of your life to being abundant gratification and authentic happiness.” -Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness
  • “A leader needs to know his strengths as a carpenter knows his tools, or as a physician knows the instruments at her disposal. What great leaders have in common is that each truly knows his or her strengths—and can call on the right strengths at the right time.” -Dr. Donald Clifton, psychologist and researcher

(1) According to Tom Rath in StrengthsFinder 2.0, workers who can focus on their strengths every day are “six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general.”

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

On Spirituality and the Good Life

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Article Summary: 

How spirituality and the good life are related, including the benefits of having a spiritual practice and examples of it.

+++

We all want to live a good life, but are we living in such a way as to make it likely? In many cases, the cultural influences around us aren’t helping. Think about it.

How many of us feel anxious and stressed much of the time? To what degree are we influenced by cultural messages and forces related to consumerism and materialism, status and ego, fear and greed, manipulation and division? How many of us feel time-starved and struggle with numbing or workaholism? These are common traps, and they take us away from a life we’ll be proud of.

“The disastrous feature of our civilization is that it is far more developed materially than spiritually.
Its balance is disturbed.”
-Jean-Paul Sartre, French novelist and philosopher

When we focus on material circumstances, what happens when things change for the worse, as they’re wont to do? What happens when we’re shaken up with a health scare, relationship wound, or job loss? Do we really want to let our happiness depend solely on how things are going in our life, given that change is inevitable and that we all experience ups and downs regularly?

Enter spirituality. To some, it’s a loaded word, because it comes with baggage. But to many, it’s a powerful centering practice that adds depth, richness, and meaning to their lives, whether through prayer, worship, meditation, or other means.

Those who avoid spirituality for whatever reason may want to give it a second look, because it can be an important and powerful part of human experience.

“If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.”
-Thomas Merton, American Trappist monk, theologian, mystic, and social activist

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

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What Is Spirituality?

Part of the problem is that there’s no widely accepted definition of spirituality, and many people conflate it with religion or dogma. We can think of it very simply as having to do with the human spirit, as opposed to material things. Here are some ways to think about it:

“Spirituality is the measure of how willing we are to allow grace—some power greater than ourselves—
to enter our lives and guide us along our way.”
-Mastin Kipp, author of Daily Love: Growing with Grace
“Spirituality is the process of living out a set of deeply held personal values,
of honoring a presence greater than ourselves.”
-Peter Block, author
“Spirituality for me is recognizing that I am connected to the energy of all creation, that I am a part of it and it is always a part of me. Whatever label or word we use to describe ‘it’ doesn’t matter. Words are completely inadequate.”
-Oprah Winfrey, media entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

Many people view spirituality as an age-old quest for inner peace and liberation, for awakening and enlightenment. It can include a search for self-transcendence—or rising above and beyond our ego (what some people call “ego death”).

Spirituality tends to involve asking fundamental questions (e.g., Who am I? Where do I come from? What’s my place in this vast universe? Is there a higher power? What, if anything, gives life meaning?). For many, it entails a recognition of our interconnectedness, and perhaps a quest to reach a higher level of consciousness or experience a sense of oneness with all.

Spiritual routines can range from daily practices to weekly services to personal prayer or faith. They tend to evolve as we age, grow, and have different life experiences.

For some, spirituality is about faith and forgiveness, or ministry and service, or peace and joy. For others, it’s about a search for meaning and purpose, appreciation of truth and beauty, or reverence of the sacred. It can entail connecting with nature, the cosmos, or the divine. And for some people, it’s about mystery, miracles, and revelations—or deeply held aspirations for heaven or nirvana. For most, compassion and love are at the heart of it.

Paul Anderson, University of Minnesota professor emeritus, noted in a scholarly article that the word “spirit” comes from the Latin word spiritus, meaning “breath,” and is defined as “the vital principle or animating force traditionally believed to be within living beings; one’s essential nature.” The definition of the word “soul,” Anderson wrote, is comparable: “The animating and vital principle in the human being, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion.”

Author and social forecaster Patricia Aburdene noted five hallmarks of spirituality: meaning or purpose, compassion, consciousness, service, and wellbeing. According to her, “The quest for spirituality is the greatest megatrend of our era.”

“We suffer when we don’t find ways to allow the concerns of the soul to manifest into our lives.”
-Rabbi Mordecai Finley

 

The Difference between Spirituality and Religion

Some people equate religion and spirituality, but that’s a mistake. They’re related but not the same. Here’s how the Dalai Lama described it:

“Religion I take to be concerned with faith in the claims of one faith tradition or another, an aspect of which is the acceptance of some form of heaven or nirvana. Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, ritual prayer, and so on. Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit—such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony—which brings happiness to both self and others.”
-Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, in Ethics for the New Millennium

It’s been said that religion is an institution while spirituality is an experience. The way many people think about spirituality today often includes a sharper break from traditional religious institutions than in the past, and spirituality sometimes comes with an interesting blend of things (e.g., humanistic psychology and mystical traditions, or yoga and workplace wellness).

“Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.”
-Ram Dass, psychologist and spiritual teacher

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The Benefits of Having a Spiritual Practice in Our Lives

Spiritual practice—and living in accordance with deeper truths and our highest values—can transform our lives by bringing us a sense of unity, interconnectedness, awe, mystery, abundance, eternity, unboundedness, lucidity, tranquility, liberation, transcendence, flow, and presence.

“The spiritual life is not a special career, involving abstraction from the world of things. It is a part of every man’s life; and until he has realized it, he is not a complete human being, has not entered into possession of all his powers.”
-Evelyn Underhill, English Anglo-Catholic writer and pacifist

A deep and lasting spiritual practice can help us realize that we’re whole regardless of the circumstances we happen to find ourselves in—and that we don’t need anything from anyone or the world to be and feel whole. A healthy spiritual practice can:

  • be a source of hope and comfort in hard times
  • provide a sense of meaning
  • give us inner peace
  • enhance our ability to cope with anxiety and stress as well as with difficult conditions or experiences
  • give us a state of expanded awareness and a more pure form of consciousness
  • lead to a clearer and more accurate understanding the nature of the world and universe as it really is, not as we’re conditioned to view it
  • give us a better sense of perspective and help us look beyond ourselves and our petty preoccupations and concerns
  • help us make sense of our life experiences and tribulations
  • help us tap into our inner strength and resilience
  • connect us with a spiritual community that provides not only solace and support but also companionship and joy
  • help us discover our purpose and core values—and build them into our daily lives
  • help us stop reacting so negatively to external events and stop being triggered by the same people and situations over and over
  • help us drop the yoke of judgment—of constantly judging ourselves and others
  • enhance our happiness and fulfillment
  • fill us with a deep and lasting joy
“…scientists have found, again and again, that those with a spiritual practice or who follow religious beliefs tend to be happier than those who don’t. Study after study has found that religious people tend to be less depressed and less anxious than nonbelievers, better able to handle the vicissitudes of life than nonbelievers. A 2015 survey by researchers at the London School of Economics and the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands found that participating in a religious organization was the only social activity associated with sustained happiness—even more than volunteering for a charity, taking educational courses, or participating in a political or community organization. It’s as if a sense of spirituality and an active, social religious practice were an effective vaccine against the virus of unhappiness.”
-Bryan Walsh, “Does Spirituality Make You Happy?” TIME, August 7, 2017

 

Examples of Spiritual Practices

Some people have never been exposed to spiritual practices, so they don’t know where to begin. Others may have had negative experiences with religious institutions (often involving shame or guilt) that they wish to avoid. So, it’s important to understand our options.  Here are some common spiritual practices:

  • Praying
  • Worshipping at a religious service
  • Meditating
  • Experiencing nature—even just walking and being present with the sights and sounds around us—and savoring it
  • Reading things that engage our heart and soul
  • Creating things (via art, music, writing, film, dance, etc.)
  • Being in community with others where we feel each other’s presence, engage in deep dialogue with trust and vulnerability, and avoid judging or trying to fix each other. (Author Parker Palmer notes that “inner work, though it’s a deeply personal matter, is not necessarily a private matter: inner work can be helped along by community.”)
  • Serving others and giving back
  • Engaging in spiritual contemplation (e.g., reflection on the divine)
  • Practicing yoga
  • Fasting
  • Journaling
  • Chanting
  • Practicing silence and/or solitude
  • Engaging in rituals (e.g., christening, bar mitzvah) or services (e.g., funerals)
  • Embarking on a spiritual retreat or pilgrimage

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

Take the Exercise

 

Spirituality and Connection

Connection and connectedness are fundamental aspects of spirituality. In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, researcher Brene Brown writes, “The heart of spirituality is connection.” To her, spirituality is “recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives.”

Martin Buber, an Austrian-Israeli philosopher, once observed that “When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.” “True compassion,” wrote Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön, “does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings.”

“We’re all just walking each other home.”
-Ram Dass, psychologist and spiritual teacher

 

Spirituality and Ego

One of the challenges with modern living is that, if we’re not careful, we can get to caught in our ego, which causes us to focus excessively on things like material possessions, image, or success—all of which lead only to fleeting pleasure for most. In this way, our ego keeps us from living from our heart and soul.

In his book, Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul, spiritual teacher Deepak Chopra distinguishes between the nature of the ego and the soul. The ego, he writes, tends to be rejecting, critical, opposing, clinging, agitated, resentful, selfish, conflicted, and judgmental. By contrast, the soul is accepting, approving, cooperating, detached, calm, forgiving, selfless, peaceful, and nonjudgmental. He notes that the ego and soul have two very different visions of fulfillment. See the table below.

The ego’s vision of fulfillment:

The soul’s vision of fulfillment:
I have everything I need to be comfortable. I am everything I need.
I am serene because bad things can’t come near me. I am secure because I have nothing to fear in myself.
Through hard work, anything can be achieved. The flow of life’s abundance brings me everything.
I measure myself by my accomplishments. I do not measure myself by any external standard.
I win much more often than I lose. Giving is more important than winning.
I have a strong self-image. I have no self-image; I am beyond images.
Because I’m attractive, I win the attention of the opposite sex. Other people are attracted to me as soul to soul.
When I find the perfect love, it will be on my terms. I can find perfect love, because I have discovered it first in myself.

A key part of spirituality is living more from our soul and less from our ego.

“When the ego dies, the soul awakes.”
-Mahatma Gandhi, Indian lawyer and transformational leader

 

Conclusion

For many people, spirituality is an essential aspect of living a good life. There are many different spiritual traditions and practices. For many of us, a disciplined spiritual practice can be powerful and transformative as we take the focus off ourselves, give thanks, stand in reverence, and come back to our true nature, wholeness, and divine source.

 

Reflection Questions

  1. Are you too caught up in the hustle and bustle of modern life?
  2. Do you have a spiritual practice that enriches your life?
  3. What more will you do to live from your heart and feed your soul?

 

Tools for You

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

 

Related Articles

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Spirituality

  • “Little by little, wean yourself. This is the gist of what I have to say. From an embryo whose nourishment comes in the blood, move to an infant drinking milk, to a child on solid food, to a searcher after wisdom, to a hunter of invisible game.” -Rumi, 13th century poet and Sufi mystic
  • “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French priest and scientist
  • “But you are not your bank account, or your ambition. You’re not the cold clay lump you leave behind when you die. You’re not your collection of walking personality disorders. You are Spirit, you are love, and even though it is hard to believe sometimes, you are free. You’re here to love, and be loved, freely.” -Anne Lamott, writer, teacher, and political activist
  • “The ultimate source of happiness is within us. Not money, not power, not status. Some of my friends are billionaires, but they are very unhappy people. Power and money fail to bring inner peace. Outward attainment will not bring real inner joyfulness. We must look inside.” -Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
  • “One of our problems today is that we are not well acquainted with the literature of the spirit. We’re interested in the news of the day and the problems of the hour…. When you get to be older, and the concerns of the day have all been attended to, and you turn to the inner life—well, if you don’t know where it is or what it is, you’ll be sorry.” -Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
  • “Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it.” -Harold Kushner, rabbi, author, and lecturer
  • “As we become more obsessed with succeeding… we lose touch with our souls and disappear into our roles.” -Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness
  • “Everyone has a calling, which is the small, unsettling voice from deep within our souls, an inner urge, which hounds us to live out our purpose in a certain way. A calling is a concern of the spirit. Since a calling implies that someone calls, my belief is that the called is God.” -Dave Wondra, executive coach
  • “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” -Matthew 6:19-20
  • “God takes our willingness and leads us mysteriously down the path where our deepest longings will finally be met in relationship with him and others.” -John Burke, founder and lead pastor of Gateway Church
  • “The deepest desire of our hearts is for union with God. God created us for union with himself: This is the original purpose of our lives.” -Brennan Manning, author and priest
  • “We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. We have to recover our original unity.” -Thomas Merton, American Trappist monk, theologian, mystic, and social activist
  • “Fulfillment is not a matter of self-improvement. It involves a shift away from the ego’s agenda, turning from externals to the inner world. The soul holds out a kind of happiness that isn’t dependent on whether conditions outside are good or bad.” -Deepak Chopra, spiritual teacher and author
  • “…our purpose for being alive is fulfilled by moving more and more deeply into our spiritual hearts and experiencing the presence of love.” -H. Ronald Hulnick and Mary R. Hulnick, Loyalty to Your Soul
  • “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” -Romans 12:2, King James version
  • “My religion consists of a humble admiration for the Superior Spirit who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds….” / “There has to be something behind things, something deeply hidden.” -Albert Einstein, German-born theoretical physicist
  • “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass, God is waiting.” -Warner Heisenberg, German theoretical physicist
  • “The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshiped in the cathedral or the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate, and beautiful.” -Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
  • “Amidst all the mysteries by which we are surrounded, nothing is more certain than that we are in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed.” -Herbert Spencer, English philosopher and psychologist
  • “Invoked or not invoked, God is present.” Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit. (Latin inscription over the entrance to Carl Jung’s home in Switzerland)
  • “God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.” -Dag Hammarskjöld, Swedish diplomat
  • “And then the knowledge comes to me that I have space within me for a second, timeless, larger life.” -Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet and novelist
  • “Man’s aim in life is not to add to his material possessions, but his predominant calling is to come nearer his Maker.” -Mahatma Gandhi, Indian lawyer and transformational leader
  • “…the kingdom of God is within you.” -Jesus Christ to his disciples in Luke 17:21
  • “…spiritual truth is diametrically opposed to the values of our contemporary culture and the way it conditions people to behave…. The collective disease of humanity is that people are so engrossed in what happens, so hypnotized by the world of fluctuating forms, so absorbed in the content of their lives, they have forgotten the essence, that which is beyond content, beyond form, beyond thought. They are so consumed by time that they have forgotten eternity, which is their origin, their home, their destiny.” -Eckhart Tolle, spiritual teacher and author
  • “Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” -C.S. Lewis, British scholar, writer, and lay theologian
  • “…underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is.” -Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
  • “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” -St. Catherine of Alexandria, princess, scholar, and Christian saint
  • “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.” -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French priest and scientist

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

The Importance of Service in Living a Good Life

by

These days, it’s easy to become self-involved. So much is coming at us so quickly. We live in a world of speed and busyness in an age of social media, celebrities, and influencers.

These cultural influences are strong, pulling our egos toward a certain way of living that can become superficial and materialistic. We can be obsessed with climbing professionally, with chasing success. And we can take all that we have for granted, as we’re so focused on chasing more.

This may keep us occupied (if not overloaded), but it’s not a recipe for good living. In all the chase, with all its focus on success, we can miss out on one of the great gifts and joys of life: serving.

Service is a remarkable thing because it allows us to help others while also helping ourselves.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

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The Benefits of Serving Others

There are many benefits of serving and helping others, according to the research. Here are some of the main ones:

Helping others feels good. Researchers call it a “warm glow.” Even small acts of kindness can bring emotional rewards to the helper. (1)

“I don’t think there’s anything as wonderful in life as being able to help someone else.”
-Betty Ford, activist, former U.S. first lady, and founder, Betty Ford Center

Service is a powerful contributor to our happiness, fulfillment, and overall life satisfaction. According to a large and growing body of research, helping others is often associated with and can lead to higher levels of happiness. Volunteering leads to a boost in our mental health and happiness, especially among people who volunteer more often (e.g., at least once a month), and people who volunteered in the last year were more satisfied with their lives.

Service can help our life and work be more meaningful. And it can help us discover our purpose and core values.

Serving others can help us discover who we are. It’s an important part of what I call “discover mode”: learning about who we are (including our core values, strengths, passions, and aspirations) and what we can do in the world.

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
-Mahatma Gandhi, Indian lawyer and transformational leader

Helping others can help us transcend our egos. When we’re helping others, it’s hard to remain preoccupied with our own petty dramas.

Serving people can help us feel more grateful for what we have. We may begin to glimpse how fortunate or privileged we’ve been. It may give us a sharper perspective.

Serving others can be a powerful source of motivation. If we take the time to discover our core values and excavate our convictions, we’ll find that we long to contribute to some people, groups, or causes. We have a lot of energy to activate if we’ll only get started on it.

Serving other people with commitment and skill can help boost our confidence. As we help and have impact, we develop a greater belief in our capacities and conviction that we can add even more value.

Helping others builds our character. It may help us develop generosity, humility, empathy, trustworthiness, responsibility, loyalty, and even moral excellence.

Helping people can help us heal from deep wounds and traumatic experiences. There’s an intriguing expression: “When you feel sad, serve.” Too often, we get lost in our own wallowing and don’t see how readily we could change the dynamic if we’d only reach out and try to help someone else.

“…if you’re hurting, you need to help somebody ease their hurt. If you’re in pain, help somebody else’s pain. And when you’re in a mess, you get yourself out of the mess helping somebody out of theirs. And in the process, you get to become a member of what I call the greatest fellowship of all, the sorority of compassion and the fraternity of service.”
-Oprah Winfrey, media entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

Serving people can bring us out of isolation and back into relationship and a sense of belonging in community. This could include spiritual communities that promote service or a focus on something larger than the self.

Serving others can help us create new or stronger friendships. We can befriend the people we’re serving or the people we’re serving alongside. These can become some of the most important relationships in our lives.

Helping others can warm up our cold hearts. Our hearts sometimes take a beating in today’s world. Our heart may be asleep, closed, or cold from pain, suffering, or isolation. Enter the warm glow of serving others.

Service can help us redeem some of the wrongs we’ve done and some of the pain we’ve inflicted on others. Let’s face it: we’ve all made mistakes and hurt people, including our loved ones. Too often, those are the ones we’ve hurt the most. Service can be an agent of redemption in our lives.

Helping others can have positive effects on our own health. According to the research, it can lead to lower stress and inflammation, reduced pain, healthier hearts, and even protection against anxiety, burnout, and depression.

Service can be inspiring and contagious. When people see someone serving others, it summons their better angels and makes them want to join in or follow suit. As this phenomenon spreads, it can help uplift communities.

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

Take the Exercise

 

How to Go About Serving Others

Service doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it’s often best when we keep it simple, heart to heart. Still, here are a few tips for going about it:

Developing self-awareness can be a great place to start. If we know our strengths, we can look for ways to use them when serving others, giving us a double win because it feels good to use our strengths on something important. The same holds true for our purpose, values, and passions.

If we pause to consider how we’re uniquely or powerfully qualified or positioned to help some people, groups, organizations, or causes—based on our knowledge, skills, experiences, or even our wounds—it can help us target our service efforts more effectively.

When we take time to discover what people, groups, or causes we feel called to serve, it can elevate our motivation and make it more likely we’ll stick with it.

 

Pervasive Service

In our book, LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives, Christopher Gergen and I wrote about something that intentional people who integrate their purpose and passions do well: “pervasive service,” which is “an ethic of contribution as a defining feature of our lives.”

Can we build service into our daily habits? Can we creatively find ways to serve—in ways big and small—our spouse or partner, family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, workplace, and community? What if we walked around with our helping antenna up, scanning for ways to respond to needs around us?

Service and giving shouldn’t be relegated to an occasional good deed—or to an annual tax write-off.  What if we looked to bring them into each of our days—thus adding up to a lifetime of contribution? Viewed this way, service can become an organizing principle of our lives, a habit that permeates our personal lives and work and community endeavors.

Ideally, our acts of service evolve into deeper commitments that ripen us and enhance our inner life.

“There are occasions and opportunities for service that will vary throughout anyone’s life. The initial gate is that you understand that that’s a piece of being a full person. It’s a matter of saying yes to the opportunity when it appropriately appears. Every day is a preparation for serving something.”
-Buie Seawell, attorney and professor, University of Denver

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Some Cautions about Service

As with many things in life, there are some important nuances and even potential traps here.

First, let’s not make this about giving and expecting something in return. Not everything has to be transactional or come with an expectation or obligation. That just cheapens it.

Second, serving others doesn’t make us better than them. We all have dignity and potential. And we all have ups and downs and our unique context and challenges.

Third, there’s an ego risk that can come with serving. Let’s not let serving morph into a savior syndrome, and let’s not become self-righteous and smug about it.

Fourth, let’s watch out for the trap of being too focused on others—and giving ourselves away in the process. As the flight attendants wisely advise, let’s put on our own oxygen masks first. (See my article, “Are You Focusing Too Much on Others’ Needs.”)

“If takers are selfish and failed givers are selfless, successful givers are otherish: they care about benefiting others, but they also have ambitious goals for advancing their own interests…. Selfless giving, in the absence of self-preservation instincts, easily becomes overwhelming. Being otherish means being willing to give more than you receive, but still keeping your own interests in sight, using them as a guide for choosing when, where, how, and to whom you give.”
-Adam Grant, Give and Take

 

Conclusion

Service, while remarkable in its own ways and often uplifting, as we’ve seen, doesn’t have to be grandiose and world-changing. Our little acts of contribution can make a real difference day to day and add up over time to big sums.

So, yes, let’s dedicate ourselves to worthy and mighty causes, if we can. Let’s follow in the footsteps of great servants through the ages, if we can. But let’s also focus on what’s right in front of us: Raising our kids as best we can. Holding the door open for someone. Being kind to people we encounter on the street. Thanking the barista with a kind word and a smile. Stopping to see if someone needs help. Giving someone a ride. Checking in on a friend or colleague.

We’re likely to regret it if we don’t build service into our lives. If we do serve and serve often, it’s a beautiful gift both to the world and ourselves—and a way for us to honor the lives we’ve been given.

 

Reflection Questions

  1. To what extent are you helping and serving?
  2. What more could you do?
  3. What will you start with, right now?

 

Tools for You

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

 

Related Articles

 

Related Books

  • Tom Rath, Life’s Great Question: Discover How You Contribute to the World
  • Billy Shore, The Cathedral Within: Transforming Your Life by Giving Something Back
  • Adam Grant, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success
  • Stephen Trzeciak and Anthony Mazzarelli, Wonder Drug: 7 Scientifically Proven Ways that Serving Others Is the Best Medicine for Yourself

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Serving Others

  • “Life’s most urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • “It is high time the ideal of success should be replaced with the ideal of service.” -Albert Einstein, German-born theoretical physicist
  • “Service is the very purpose of life. It is the rent we pay for living on the planet.” -Marian Wright Edelman, activist for civil rights and children’s rights
  • “…taking care of others, helping others, ultimately is the way to discover your own joy and to have a happy life.” -Dalai Lama
  • “Not everybody can be famous. But everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato or Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • “…the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” -Albert Schweitzer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician
  • “…when you choose the paradigm of service, looking at life through that paradigm, it turns everything you do from a job into a gift.” -Oprah Winfrey, media entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author
  • “A growing body of evidence suggests that the single greatest driver of both achievement and wellbeing is understanding how your daily efforts enhance the lives of others.” -Tom Rath, Life’s Great Question
  • “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” -John F. Kennedy, former U.S. president
  • “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted, and behold, service was joy.” -Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet, writer, and social reformer
  • “Every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long…. I’d like for somebody to say some day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others…. I just want to leave a committed life behind.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • “The old… should, it seems, have their physical labors reduced; their mental activities should be actually increased. They should endeavor, too, by means of their counsel and practical wisdom to be of as much service as possible to their friends and to the young, and above all to the state.” -Cicero, De Officiis

(1) Serving others is a form of what researchers call “prosocial behavior” (including giving money to charity, volunteering, sharing food, donating blood or an organ, or otherwise voluntarily helping others). Researchers have discovered that people derive pleasure from helping others. Lara B. Aknin and Ashley V. Whillans found that it matters how people go about helping. Looking at the evidence on helping using self-determination theory, Aknin and Whillans discovered that prosocial behavior is more likely to lead to happiness when people have autonomy and choice over who and how they help, when they see the impacts of their help, and when they have opportunities to connect with people while helping. (Source: Lara B. Aknin and Ashley V. Whillans, “Helping and Happiness: A Review and Guide for Public Policy,” Social Issues and Policy Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2021)

“Human beings are exceptionally prosocial.
Not only do we go out of our way to help other people, but we often feel good when we do.”
-Lara B. Aknin and Ashley V. Whillans

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

Journaling: Benefits and Best Practices

by

We humans have been journaling, writing diaries, or otherwise writing down our thoughts, feelings, and experiences for centuries. It’s a practice that dates back to the ancients. And it’s a tool that’s been used by pilgrims, explorers, soldiers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and artists.

People journal for different reasons. Some people journal to engage in deeper reflection, while others do it to help manage stress or process difficult experiences. Some journal as a way to reinforce their strengths or accomplishments; others focus on gratitude. Many therapists, counselors, and coaches recommend journaling, and many teachers assign it in schools.

Those who journal are in excellent company. People known to have engaged in some form of journaling include: John Quincy Adams, Marcus Aurelius, Lewis Carroll, Winston Churchill, Marie Curie, Charles Darwin, Joan Didion, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Anne Frank, Benjamin Franklin, Arianna Huffington, Thomas Jefferson, Franz Kafka, Frida Kahlo, Martina Navratilova, Anais Nin, Sylvia Plath, Seneca, Susan Sontag, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Queen Victoria, Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington, Oscar Wilde, Oprah Winfrey, and Virginia Woolf.

“I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone,
and I hope you’ll be a great source of comfort and support.”
-Anne Frank’s first entry in her journal, 13th birthday, June 12, 1942
Anne Frank writing at her desk at school, 1940

Different Types of Journaling

There are different types of journaling. One common form is “expressive writing.” It involves writing continuously about an issue in our lives, including our deepest thoughts and feelings. According to James Pennebaker and Joshua Smyth, authors of Opening Up by Writing It Down, it can include different variations, including writing about a problem we’re facing, journaling about our worries and concerns, or doing a word association around a certain word (e.g., “stress”).

Another common form is “gratitude journaling”: writing about positive experiences that we’re thankful for.

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The Benefits of Journaling

Hundreds of studies over several decades have documented an impressive array of benefits deriving from journaling. For example, it can help us:

  • discern the lessons and patterns of our experiences
  • understand our experiences and feelings in new ways
  • get a clearer sense of our progress over time
  • remember the good things we experience, which can otherwise be easy to forget
  • become more self-aware
  • boost our confidence
  • remain more mindful of our thoughts and feelings

Journaling also comes with a large number of mental and physical health benefits. For example, it can help us:

  • cope with stressful events
  • reduce anxiety
  • regulate our emotions and ease our distress when we’re struggling with difficult feelings
  • reduce the frequency of intrusive thoughts
  • improve our mood
  • enhance our psychological wellbeing
  • make sense of our personal history, of the events and experiences that have shaped us (1)
  • cultivate a greater sense of purpose and meaning
  • have a lower risk of depression

According to the research, journaling is associated with lowered blood pressure, better sleep, and fewer stress-related doctor visits and less time spent in the hospital. It’s also associated with improved function of our immune system, lungs, liver, and memory as well as reduced symptoms of chronic diseases. In addition, it can help with recovery from traumatic events, in part because it allows us to process our experiences and emotions.

Journaling can also benefit our brain and cognitive capacity.

“The practice of writing can enhance the brain’s intake, processing, retaining, and retrieving of information… it promotes the brain’s attentive focus … boosts long-term memory, illuminates patterns, gives the brain time for reflection, and when well-guided, is a source of conceptual development and stimulus of the brain’s highest cognition.”
–Judy Willis, board-certified neurologist and teacher

At work, journaling is associated with less work absenteeism and less time out of work following job loss. And at school, it’s associated with higher grades. Journaling can help us address many of the common traps of living, including overthinking, self-doubt, negative self-talk, drifting, settling, and more.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

 

Journaling is not only inexpensive and straightforward to engage in but it also avoids the need for having people there to listen every time we want to get something off our chest. The pages are always there for us, and they never interrupt or misunderstand. As Anne Frank once wrote, “Paper has more patience than people.”

Benefits come not only from journaling itself but also from going back and reviewing what we’ve written some time later. This review process can help us recapture forgotten stories or experiences and see patterns.

Note that there can be downsides of journaling for some people—or of journaling in certain ways. For example, it’s not always a pleasant experience, since it sometimes involves dredging up painful feelings.

 

How to Journal: Best Practices

When it comes to how we should journal, there’s of course no single formula. Different people will approach journaling in different ways. The key is to find what works for us. Still, here are some tips:

Remember that journaling is for us and us alone, not for an audience. If we’re self-conscious as we write or concerned about judgment from others, it can reduce or eliminate the value of journaling.

Start small. For many, it’s best to begin with only a few minutes on a manageable topic (e.g., a recounting of the day or a single incident).

Try journaling in different ways. Try writing in a bound journal or spiral notebook. Or try using a digital writing app or voice recording app. (Note, though, that writing by hand comes with real benefits that can easily outweigh the slight loss of speed compared to typing or speaking.) Experiment and see what works.

Try different frequencies. There’s a debate about the ideal frequency of journaling. Some people swear by the practice of daily journaling, in part because it builds a healthy habit, while others warn against the monotony that can come from having a regular cadence. In the end, we should find out what works for us and do that.

Find a quiet and peaceful space without interruptions and distractions. Going deep into our thoughts and feelings requires focus and concentration.

Choose a time of day that works best—the time when our thoughts and reflections flow most naturally. Many people swear by morning journaling. Others prefer to wait until they feel inspired or troubled.

Be sure to include both feelings and thoughts. This helps us avoid unhealthy rumination and makes it more likely that we’ll see patterns and themes. Start with expressing feelings first and then move on to thoughts and thinking patterns.

Be forthright in expressing exactly how we feel without any editing or filtering.

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
-William Wordsworth, English Romantic poet

Bear in mind that journaling may bring up painful feelings or some anxiety, and that’s okay. Feel free to take a break and come back to it later. Keep in mind the strong potential for long-term benefits if we stick with it.

“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.”
–Natalie Goldberg, writer

Don’t get caught up in written rumination—in rehashing difficult things over and over. That can actually be counterproductive.

“One of the interesting problems of writing too much, especially if you’re going through a difficult a time, is that writing becomes more like rumination and that’s the last thing in the world you need.”
-Dr. James Pennebaker, social psychologist

Feel free to draw in the journal. We don’t have to limit ourselves only to text. But researchers advise against drawing only, as it can lead to worse moods.

Try journaling prompts, especially if we’re not sure where to begin. Examples: things that bring us joy, what we’re feeling or noticing right now, people who or places that make us feel the happiest, dreams we have about the future, or what deserves our best attention now.

“…one thing journaling has taught me is that the mind is a surprising place, and you often don’t know what it may be hiding until you start knocking around in there. In other words: Writing in your journal
is the only way to find out what you should be writing about.”
–Hayley Phelan, “What’s All This About Journaling?” New York Times, October 25, 2018

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

Take the Exercise

 

Journaling for Leaders

Many leaders have noted how journaling has helped them become a better leader and grow as a person. These days, many leaders are time-starved and deluged by inputs and information, so having a simple process that facilitates thinking, reflection, and analysis can be powerful.

Leaders can use journaling to process difficult events, think through important decisions, prepare themselves for upcoming challenges, vent their frustrations, or document their journey and see progress and patterns. And they can use it to reconnect with their inner voice when they’re flooded with outside inputs.

Journaling can help leaders be more mindful and present with their colleagues—and empathetic toward their struggles. It can also help them make better decisions and unearth important insights about vexing situations, including innovative ideas that may otherwise have been lost. Importantly, journaling can serve as a pressure valve that allows leaders to process difficult emotions and release some of the stress and pressure associated with the job. Finally, it can help steel them for tough battles ahead.

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”
-Anne Frank

 

Journaling for Creativity and Innovation

British entrepreneur Richard Branson keeps notebooks full of questions as part of his creative process. Journals can be a great tool for entrepreneurs to capture their ideas about new products and services to launch, based on observing customer problems and spotting market gaps.

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, advocates a distinct form of journaling as a way to recover our creativity and reconnect with our own inner spiritual guide. With her “morning pages,” as she calls them, she advocates writing three pages of strictly stream-of-consciousness, longhand writing every morning—simply writing down whatever comes to mind, jumping from topic to topic, no matter how banal or bizarre—until the three pages are filled. She explains:

“Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included… Nobody is allowed to read your morning pages except you…. Morning pages are nonnegotiable. Never skip or skimp on morning pages. Your mood doesn’t matter…. If you can’t think of anything to write, then write, ‘I can’t think of anything to write.’”

 

Conclusion

With our busy lives and frenetic work schedules, journaling can be a great way to slow down and reflect, reawakening a rich inner life. There’s a reason so many different types of people have been doing it through the ages.

“How noble and good everyone could be if, at the end of each day, they were to review their own behavior and weigh up the rights and wrongs. They would automatically try to do better at the start of each new day and, after a while, would certainly accomplish a great deal. Everyone is welcome to this prescription; it costs nothing and is definitely useful.”
-Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

 

Reflection Questions

  1. Are you using journaling as a practice for personal development, emotional expression, gratitude, creativity, or leadership?
  2. If you’ve tried journaling before but not kept up with it, will you give it another try using some of the tips above?

 

Tools for You

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Take the Test

 

Related Articles

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Journaling

  • “Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain.” -Jack London, novelist, journalist, and activist
  • “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” -Louis L’Amour, American novelist and short story writer
  • “Write hard and clear about what hurts.” -Ernest Hemingway, American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist
  • “Writing is medicine. It is an appropriate antidote to injury. It is an appropriate companion for any difficult change.” -Julia Cameron, American teacher, author, and artist
  • “Listen. The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.” -Dag Hammarskjöld, Swedish economist and diplomat

 

Resources on Journaling

  • Nancy J. Adler, Leadership Insight Journal
  • Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity
  • Hal Elrod, The Miracle Morning Journal
  • Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
  • Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic Journal
  • James Pennebaker and Joshua Smyth, Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain
  • Five Minute Journal (app)

 

Appendix: Why Does Journaling Work?

Based on a large body of research over time, we know that journaling comes with many benefits. It’s less clear, though, why that’s the case. Here are some of the most likely reasons why it’s so beneficial for so many. Journaling:

  • helps us get distance from painful or confusing experiences, seeing them in a fresh light without the pressures of the moment
  • can facilitate emotional release of unconscious conflicts
  • helps us avoid the problem of stuffing our emotions down (it’s healthy to acknowledge, express, and label our feelings about difficult events)
  • facilitates the process of mentally organizing our experiences, allowing us to examine root causes and formulate a coherent story
  • helps us uncover new insights about ourselves and the way we’re suffering or experiencing the world
  • can lower our emotional inhibition
  • gives us a heightened sense of control over our emotions and our lives
  • involves a powerful combination of both recording and processing, of both remembering and reflecting
  • can provide a sense of emotional catharsis

(1) Northwestern University psychologist Dan McAdams notes the importance of “narrative identity,” an internalized story we create about ourselves. It helps us form a coherent story of our lives, which in turn can help us view our lives more holistically and positively.

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!