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The Biggest Mistakes New Graduates Make

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Dear new graduate: Congratulations and hats off to you! You’ve come a long way and reached a major milestone in your life.

Maybe you’ve been so busy finishing assignments and getting to graduation that you haven’t taken much time to think about what comes next. (If so, you’re not alone!)

With that in mind, here are some of the biggest mistakes new graduates make:

❌ Putting too much pressure on yourself to have it all figured out right away.

❌ Committing too early to a career path without vetting it deeply and remaining open to new and better possibilities.

❌ Not clarifying what’s important to you when it comes to work. (In addition to pay, for example, what about opportunities for learning and growth, a vibrant culture, chances to work with great people, or meaningful work?)

❌ Not doing nearly enough vetting of the organizations you’re considering working with (including their values and culture, your manager, and career path). (See my article, “How to Find a Great Organization to Work For.”)

❌ Accepting other people’s definition of success instead of defining it for yourself.

❌ Living someone else’s life.

❌ Defining yourself by comparison, as opposed to by your own core values and guiding lights.

❌ Defining self-worth by your accomplishments.

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.

Take the Assessment

 

❌ Spending your best years and trading your precious life energy on dubious things.

❌ Succeeding at something that doesn’t really matter to you.

❌ Not taking stock of your quality of life regularly.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
-Socrates, ancient Greek philosopher

❌ Chasing status and prestige in your work because of how it will make you look in the eyes of others. (See my article, “The Powerful Pull of the Prestige Magnet.”)

“An easy way to pick the wrong career is to put your image above your interests and identity. A motivating job isn’t the one that makes you look important. It’s the one that makes you feel alive. Meaningful work isn’t about impressing others. It’s about expressing your values.” -Adam Grant, organizational psychologist

❌ Assuming that “climbing the ladder” is the point of work. (See my TEDx talk on LIFE entrepreneurship and “climbing mode” versus “discover mode.”)

❌ Viewing your career as a race against your peers. (See my article, “Feeling Behind? It May Be a Trap.”)

❌ Focusing too much on material comfort and financial gain and not enough on happiness, love, personal growth, and spiritual depth. (See my article, “Beware the Disease of More.”)

❌ Assuming that worldly success will fill you up.

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

 

❌ Giving too much of yourself or your time away to unreasonable bosses or unacceptable circumstances.

❌ Staying too long in a job that’s not a good fit or with a bad manager.

❌ Letting your life get overly full and cluttered, with not enough white space.

❌ Letting work consume too much of your life.

“…the problem isn’t how hard you’re working, it’s that you’re working on things that aren’t right for you.
Your goals and motivations aren’t harmonizing with your deepest truth.”
-Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity

❌ Not honoring your commitments to those you belong to.

❌ Losing touch with your close friends.

❌ Playing it safe in your career and not taking enough risks early on while you have more time, freedom, and flexibility—perhaps playing small out of fear.

“So many of us choose our paths in life out of fear disguised as practicality.”
-Jim Carrey, comedian and actor

❌ Thinking you’re done learning now that you have a degree.

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

 

❌ Falling into bad habits that will cause you to waste a lot of time or drift away from your values.

❌ Not taking charge of your free time, perhaps because you’re so drained from work.

❌ Letting yourself become cynical and jaded. (See my article, “Guard Your Heart.”)

❌ Making decisions or taking actions that aren’t in line with your core values and top priorities.

❌ Not giving more of yourself to others.

❌ Neglecting opportunities for fun and adventure in your life.

❌ Not daring to put your own distinctive stamp on your workplace, community, and world.

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

 

Conclusion

When it comes to navigating the early chapters of your career, it’s easy to focus on what other people expect of you and get lost in what our larger culture values. But it’s far better to get busy becoming who you really are.

It’s easy to get caught up in playing the short game instead of the long one—with a broader perspective on what’s important in life and what would be a life well lived.

Before you get too busy with the hustle and bustle of life and work, take the time to get to know yourself well—including your core values, strengths, passions, and vision of the good life. And learn to trust yourself as you craft a life you’ll be proud of.

Wishing you well with it—and let me know if I can help.
–Gregg

 

Tools for You

Strengths Search

We all have core strengths–the things in which we most excel. Take this self-assessment to determine your core strengths so you can integrate them more into your life and work.

Find Your Strengths

 

Related Articles & Resources

Postscript: Inspirations for New Graduates

  • “Big career decisions don’t come with a map, but all you need is a compass. In an unpredictable world, you can’t make a master plan. You can only gauge whether you’re on a meaningful path. The right next move is the one that brings you a step closer to living your core values.” -Adam Grant, professor
  • “One of the things is putting pressure on having that perfect solution lined up. While we should dream big, sometimes we need to make smaller moves and small experiments to build confidence and gather data and grow more organically in a new direction. In reality, what works is getting anchored in existing strengths and experiences and have a general feeling of success. There is no real way to know the answers up to the front of what to pursue next in our careers unless we’re running small tests and learning from them.” -Jenny Blake, author and podcaster
  • “One of the best pieces of advice for young people is, Get to yourself quickly. If you know what you want to do, start doing it.” -David Brooks, The Second Mountain
  • “The deepest vocational question is not ‘What ought I to do with my life?’ It is the more elemental and demanding ‘Who am I? What is my nature?’” -Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
  • “…the secret of career satisfaction lies in doing what you enjoy most. A few lucky people discover this secret early in life, but most of us are caught in a kind of psychological wrestling match, torn between what we think we can do, what we (or others) feel we ought to do, and what we think we want to do. Our advice? Concentrate instead on who you are, and the rest will fall into place.” -Paul D. Tieger, Barbara Barron, and Kelly Tieger, Do What You Are
  • “Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.” -Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha)
  • “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.” -Stephen R. Covey, educator and author
  • “Go to work for an organization or people you admire. It will turn you on. You ought to be happy where you are working. I always worry about people who say, ‘I’m going to do this for 10 years’ and ‘I’m going to do 10 more years of this.’ That’s a little like saving sex for your old age. Not a very good idea. Get right into what you enjoy.” -Warren Buffett, investor
  • “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” –Steve Jobs, co-founder, Apple
  • “Shadow Career is the term used to describe people who go on an alternative path from their true dream because they’ve given up on themselves.” -Dr. Benjamin Hardy, Be Your Future Self Now
  • “I don’t have a problem with what you do, that’s your choice. What I have a problem with is you lying to yourself about why you’re doing the things you’re doing. You have a choice.” -Jerry Colonna, co-founder and CEO, Reboot
  • “In our time, we workers are being called to reexamine our work: how we do it; whom it is helping or hurting; what it is we do; and what we might be doing if we were to let go of our present work and follow a deeper call.” -Matthew Fox, Episcopal priest and theologian
  • “We spend far too much time at work for it not to have deep meaning.” -Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
  • “Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue… as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.” -Victor Frankl, psychologist, author, and Holocaust survivor
  • “…God is calling you to serve Him in and from the ordinary, material, and secular activities of human life. He waits for us every day, in the laboratory, in the operating theatre, in the army barracks, in the university chair, in the factory, in the workshop, in the fields, in the home and in all the immense panorama of work. Understand this well: there is something holy, something divine, hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.” -Josemaria Escriva, Conversations
  • “Unhappy is he who depends on success to be happy. For such a person, the end of a successful career is the end of the line.” -Alex Dias Ribeiro, former Formula 1 race-car driver
  • “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” -Mark (8:36)
  • “Discovering vocation doesn’t mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond your reach, but rather accepting the treasure that you have been given. But make no mistake about it, well-meaning people around you—friends, family work associates, and others—will push you to run someone else’s race.” -Nicholas Pearce, pastor and professor
  • “Today I understand vocation quite differently—not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice ‘out there’ calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice ‘in here’ calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.” -Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
  • “…I (like many others) felt a wrongness in the world, a wrongness that seeped through the cracks of my privileged, insulated childhood…. Life, I knew, was supposed to be more joyful than this, more real, more meaningful, and the world was supposed to be more beautiful. We were not supposed to hate Mondays and live for the weekends and holidays…. We were not supposed to be kept indoors on a beautiful day, day after day.” -Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
  • “Your career is like a garden. It can hold an assortment of life’s energy that yields a bounty for you. You do not need to grow just one thing in your garden. You do not need to do just one thing in your career.” -Jennifer Ritchie Payette, author

 

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) 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!

Thriving Amidst Chaos and Uncertainty: 12 Tips

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Are you facing chaos and uncertainty in your life and work now? Finding it hard to manage things or lead? You’re not alone.

You may have noticed a few disruptions lately:

  • economic instability (including tariff uncertainty and supply chain disruptions)
  • political polarization and the erosion of democratic norms
  • technological disruption (including AI risks, scams, deepfakes, and more)
  • geopolitical conflicts (including wars in Ukraine and the Middle East)
  • climate change and extreme weather events

Such disruptions come and go, but if you let them, they can have brutal impacts on your life, work, and leadership. Chaos and uncertainty can cause:

  • anxiety and stress
  • bad decisions
  • lost energy
  • blocked creativity
  • damage to your health
  • harm to your relationships
  • burnout
  • lost perspective
“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back.” -Paolo Coelho, Brazilian novelist

Can you keep a level head despite all the challenges? Can you maintain your quality of life?

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.

Take the Assessment

 

Can You Become a Clutch Player?

One way to think about this comes from the world of sports. “Clutch players” are those who consistently perform well when there’s a lot on the line. Think of athletes known for performing remarkably well even under high pressure:

Biles, Bolt, Borg, Brady, Curry, Federer, Gretzky, Hamm, Jokic, Jordan, Jeter, Kobe, LeBron, Messi, Montana, Navratilova, Pele, Ronaldo, Serena, Steffi, Tiger, Wambach

Like these greats, how can you stay calm in the storm?

 

How to Thrive amidst Chaos and Uncertainty

Here are 12 major things you can do to thrive in life and work amidst chaos and uncertainty:

 

Develop a Routine

Routines help you maintain a sense of normalcy. They give your life a rhythm and sense of stability even during jumbled days. Keep a consistent sleep schedule and exercise schedule, take regular breaks, and set clear work spans.

 

Lean on Good Habits

What helps get your mind off work? What energizes you? What restores and replenishes you? Is it walks? Reading? Hiking? Meditation? Prayer? Gardening? Yoga? Music? Lean on your good habits and you’ll find that they help you weather the storm.

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

 

Take Care of Your Health

Your health should be a non-negotiable top priority. You’ll need it all the more when things are in disarray. Don’t neglect these essential health practices:

  • Exercise & Movement: commit to daily movement—whether it’s a walk, stretch, or workout—to ground your mind, release stress, and reclaim a sense of control. It’s deeply restorative on many levels.
  • Food & Nutrition: nourish your body with a diverse array of natural foods to boost your energy and fuel your mind with essential nutrients and hydration.
  • Sleep: have a calming bedtime routine and stick to a consistent schedule, giving your mind and body the reset they need to face each day’s challenges. Poor sleep will only dampen your mood and prevent you from responding effectively to difficulties.
  • Getting Outside and Being in Nature: step outside—even briefly—to clear your head and notice the beauty around you. The natural rhythm of things. Go on walks, hikes, runs, bikes, or park, lake, or beach visits. And why not with a friend?

 

Connect with Friends and Loved Ones

Spending time with a trusted friend or colleague can raise your spirits and help you see challenges from a new perspective. The same is true for mutual support groups. (See our article, “The Power of Small Groups—And How to Run Them.”) Healthy support systems are like strong roots that keep you grounded, especially when life feels uncertain. Resist the temptation to shrink back into a cocoon. Loneliness and isolation are insidious.

 

Focus on What You Can Control

Uncertainty often triggers anxiety. You may feel like you’re losing control or unable to cope. Redirect your energy to things within your influence—like your schedule, mindset, habits, and responses.

 

Return to Your Safe Harbor

What are the things that ground you and bring you back home to yourself when there are stormy seas?

  • Do you have a clear sense of your purpose—of why you’re here and why you get up in the morning?
  • Are you aware of your core values—what’s most important to you and your core beliefs—and are you upholding them in your life?
  • To what extent are you using your strengths in your life and work?
  • Are you integrating your passions—things that consumes you with palpable emotion over time—into your life and work regularly?
  • To what extent are you engaging deeply with your faith or spirituality (e.g., through prayer, worship, contemplation, sanctuary, nature appreciation, fasting, or other practices and traditions)?

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

 

Have a Bias toward Action

Avoid the trap of analysis paralysis. It’s likely to accelerate your anxiety. Choosing action over endless deliberation helps you regain momentum through the power of progress. Even small steps forward build confidence and reveal new learnings or possibilities.

 

Maintain Perspective

Rise above the fray and see the bigger picture to avoid getting lost in the weeds of confusion and setbacks. Recall that challenges are only part of the journey and not the whole story.

 

Keep Growing and Giving

Continue learning new skills. Reflect on what life may be teaching you. And don’t stop giving to others in ways large or small. When you remain committed to growth and generosity, you can shift from feeling powerless to purposeful.

 

Reframe Challenges as Growth Opportunities

Reframe things from difficulties or defeats to challenges or opportunities. Chances to learn and grow. Watch how managing your mindset can build your confidence and fuel your motivation.

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

 

Keep Your Hope Alive

Despite all the chaos and uncertainty, can you maintain a powerful and abiding hope that you’ll be okay and that things will get better if you stay the course and do your best? Why not choose hope and faith over resignation and despair?

 

Take Full Responsibility

Things may be tough for you now, and you may not have much visibility into how things will work out. Even so, are you taking full responsibility for the choices you make and for the conditions of your life—regardless of what has happened and why? It’s still your life to lead as you see fit.

 

More Things You Can Do

Beyond the major things above, there are also smaller but still impactful things you can do to help navigate the chaos and uncertainty. For example:

 

Conclusion

In the midst of all the chaos and uncertainty around us, you have more power than you think. Power to survive and thrive. By leading yourself well and engaging in renewal practices, you can create order and stability from the inside out. These practices don’t stop the storms, but they help you stand strong through them.

Will you be unstable and unmoored or resilient and ready for whatever life brings you? The choice is yours. Here’s to thriving amidst chaos and uncertainty. Wishing you well with it.
–Gregg

 

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 Thriving amidst Chaos and Uncertainty

  • “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it and join the dance.” -Alan Watts, British philosopher
  • “In life itself, there is a time to seek inner peace, a time to rid oneself of tension and anxiety. The moment comes when the striving must let up, when wisdom says, ‘Be quiet.’ You’ll be surprised how the world keeps on revolving without your pushing it. And you’ll be surprised how much stronger you are the next time you decide to push.” -John W. Gardner, public official and political reformer
  • “Having a readily available sanctuary provides an indispensable physical anchor and source of sustenance. Too often under stress and pressed for time, our sources of sanctuary are the first places we give up.” -Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky, leadership authors
  • “At a deeper level, we need ‘sanctuary’ in our lives: places and practices of peace that restore our hearts. Places of quiet and tranquility. Together, renewal and sanctuary can lead to serenity. Beyond the striving, beyond the chase, beyond the willfulness, there is an acceptance, a yielding, a comfort with the present moment and a willingness to see things for what they are and ride with the flow of life. The serenity beyond the stress and struggle.” -Gregg Vanourek, “Ten Keys to Self-Leadership”

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our rapidly growing community. Sign up now and get monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

Sign Up Now

 

+++++++++++++++++

Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) 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 Problem with Complacency

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Complacency is one of the most dangerous and devious traps we can fall into. It lulls us into a false sense of comfort, blinding us to the risks we should be addressing and the growth we could be pursuing. Whether it’s our health, relationships, career, or leadership, complacency keeps us stuck instead of moving forward.

Examples abound. For instance, a worker might stay in a role she’s outgrown, missing out on more challenging and fulfilling opportunities. A manager may ignore early signs of conflict among team members, allowing tensions to escalate. A husband might stop expressing appreciation for his wife. Sure enough, she starts to feel unseen and undervalued.

 

The Signs of Complacency

When you’re complacent, you start to take things for granted and slip into routines that make life feel monotonous. You stick with what you know and slowly stop pushing yourself.

Are you taking the easy way?
Resisting change?
Avoiding risk?
Do you feel your drive dulling and your spark dimming?

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

 

The Problem with Complacency

Over time, this will deflate your ambition and lead to drifting and settling in life. Comfort and satisfaction aren’t bad. They’re actually essential parts of a fulfilling life. But if you have too much of them, you may stop growing and dreaming. And you may no longer be in pursuit of what truly matters. Complacency can be a silent threat to your well-being, growth, and performance.

Here are 8 downsides of complacency, along with the deeper problems they cause:

1. Complacency can sap your motivation. When you become too comfortable, you stop feeling the urgency or desire to strive for more. Without motivation, you stop reaching for your potential and stagnate.

2. Complacency can lead to inaction when action is warranted. It lulls you into believing everything is fine, even when you need a change. As a result, you miss critical moments when decisive steps could make a difference.

3. Complacency can prevent you from making needed improvements. You may ignore areas where growth or progress is possible because you feel things are “good enough.” This mindset keeps you from evolving and advancing.

4. Complacency can dilute your initiative. You start to settle and no longer believe that better outcomes are possible or worth pursuing. Over time, it drains the life out of you as you lose more and more hope.

5. Complacency can lead to mediocre or poor performance. By not challenging yourself, you operate below your capabilities. You begin to accept average as your standard. In the process, you start losing your credibility and the respect of others (and yourself).

6. Complacency can lead to missed opportunities. You fail to prepare and position yourself for what’s ahead. You miss your window of opportunity. Exciting rewards elude you.

7. Complacency can derail your career. In fast-moving environments, staying still equates to falling behind. Without adaptation, you lose your edge and risk becoming irrelevant or overlooked. You become a casualty of change and disruption.

8. Complacency can lead to living by default, to not really choosing the life you’re living. Are you letting life happen to you instead of shaping it? This can lead to a sense of dissatisfaction and regret. To a life far from the one you really want.

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.

Take the Assessment

 

Conclusion

The complacency trap can quietly steal some of your most valuable assets—the drive to grow and achieve and the deep fulfillment that comes from putting yourself on the line and attempting hard things. It’s a subtle danger because it’s natural to seek peace and comfort.

But between passive ease and frantic striving lies something powerful—a place of purposeful living, meaningful action, and arousing adventure. That’s where you can thrive—pursuing what matters and making a difference while cherishing the time you’ve been given.

Wishing you well with it—and let me know if I can help.
–Gregg Vanourek

 

Reflection Questions

  1. What are you complacent about?
  2. How is it undermining you?
  3. What will you do about it, 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

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Complacency

  • “Never be passive about your life… ever, ever.” -Robert Egger, social entrepreneur and activist
  • “The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it. Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now.” -Leo Babauta, founder, Zen Habits
  • “Complacency keeps you living a comfortable life… not the life you desire. Challenge yourself to do something different. Then, notice the new charged quality of your life.” -Nina Amir, writer
  • “Just floating along from one year to the next, accepting things as they present themselves without question or intention, is a surefire recipe for dissatisfaction and despair in later life. Living the default life is… living a life that isn’t really of our own choosing. It’s living a life that inevitably gives rise to questions like ‘Where did all the time go?’ ‘How did my life pass so quickly?’ and ‘Why did I squander my one precious opportunity for living?’” -Richard Leider and David Shapiro, Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old? The Path of Purposeful Aging
  • “The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities.” -Benjamin E. Mays, activist and rights leader
  • “There is no passion to be found playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” -Nelson Mandela, South African anti-apartheid activist and politician
  • “Complacency is a blight that saps energy, dulls attitudes, and causes a drain in the brain. The first symptom is satisfaction with things as they are. The second is rejection of things it as they might be. ’Good enough’ becomes days today’s watchword and tomorrow’s standard.” -Alex and Brett Harris
  • “So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” -Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our rapidly growing community. Sign up now and get monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

Sign Up Now

 

+++++++++++++++++

Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) 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 Problem with Avoidance

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Avoidance is a natural coping mechanism that can protect us from danger. But when it’s overused, as in putting off difficult tasks or dodging hard conversations, it can backfire and make things worse.

It’s a common phenomenon. A manager avoids dealing with a worker’s toxic behavior because it’s a high performer. A worker avoids asking for a raise because it’s uncomfortable. A husband ignores growing signs of his wife’s dissatisfaction. A wife settles for a lack of connection and intimacy. Both partners feel unappreciated but never express their needs.

When you’re in avoidance mode, you’re deliberately steering clear of thoughts, feelings, or situations that are unpleasant, difficult, or threatening. For now, you may be reducing your discomfort or anxiety, but you’re sure to pay a price for it down the road.

There are many things you might be avoiding. Conflict. Uncertainty. Difficult people. Uncomfortable emotions. Troubling health signs. Mounting debt and hard conversations about money.

Your avoidance may bring short-term relief, but over time it often causes more harm than good.

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

 

The Problem with Avoidance

Here are some of the main repercussions of avoidance and why they matter.

Avoidance leaves the core problem unaddressed. Nothing actually gets resolved. The issue remains, often metastasizing.

“What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.”
-Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist

Avoidance can aggravate anxiety. Why? Because delaying action usually invites further trouble. As you lose control, your anxiety rises.

“Avoidance coping causes anxiety to snowball because when people use avoidance coping
they typically end up experiencing more of the very thing they were trying to escape.”
-Alice Boyes, PhD, author, The Anxiety Toolkit

Your avoidance frustrates others. They may feel ignored or dismissed, and they’ll resent having to deal with the fallout alone.

Avoidance often invites new conflicts. When you sidestep things, unresolved issues tend to resurface in other areas. So, it can bring more tensions into relationships, including resentment.

Avoidance can generate a vicious circle. The more you avoid, the harder it becomes to face things. You end up reinforcing a bad habit while allowing negative consequences.

Avoidance can become a way of life. You can become the kind of person who avoids hard things. That will limit your growth and impair your capacity to deal with challenges. And this will drive good people away.

Avoidance undermines your confidence and sense of power and agency. You end up taking a passive role instead of intentionally and boldly crafting your life and work.

Avoidance feeds your fears. It gives them power over you and makes you defensive and overly cautious. A recipe for mediocrity, or worse.

“It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run but, it will never make you less afraid.”
-Dr. Harriet Lerner, clinical psychologist

Avoidance can lead to numbing behaviors. Things like binge-watching, over-eating, over-working, or drinking. When doing things like this in excess, you’re taking refuge in distraction. Avoidance is a form of escapism.

Avoidance can inhibit your personal growth and prevent you from living up to your potential. When you duck challenges, you prevent yourself from developing problem-solving skills, emotional strength, and resilience.

Avoidance leads to complacency. Are you overly reliant on familiar routines? Falling into a rut?

Avoidance leads to missed opportunities. Difficult tasks, though often stressful, often lead to valuable experiences, connections, and surprising and substantial rewards.

Avoidance can lead to painful regret. Will you be haunted by “what ifs” in the future, and will you lament missed chances or unresolved problems? These can weigh heavily on you over time.

 

Conclusion

Though avoidance is natural, it often makes things worse. It fuels frustration, anxiety, conflict, and bad habits. Your confidence plummets, and your sense of agency dissipates.

What if you started addressing things head on, taking the bull by the horns? One decision, one action at a time, you can change the trajectory of your life.

Wishing you well with it, and let me know if I can help. (And for starters, check out my article, “How to Stop Avoiding Things: 17 Practices.”)
–Gregg Vanourek

“Avoidance is the best short-term strategy to escape conflict, and the best long-term strategy to ensure suffering.”
-Brendon Burchard, author

 

Reflection Questions

  1. What are you avoiding?
  2. How is it undermining you?
  3. What will you do about it, starting today?

 

Tools for You

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) 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!

Purposeful Aging–Still Growing and Giving

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Article Summary: 

People today are living much longer, yet we still have the old narrative about aging as decline. We need a new narrative focused on purposeful aging. Excerpts from my conversation with best-selling author, Richard Leider, in the wake of the publication of the 4th edition of The Power of Purpose: To Grow and to Give for Life, with David Shapiro.*

+++

Gregg Vanourek: 

Richard, I’ve always been fascinated by your Inventure Expeditions, where you’ve taken groups of people to Tanzania. Tell me about them.

 

Richard Leider: 

I started in 1983. I was on the board of Outward Bound. We climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for them. I fell in love with Tanzania. It wasn’t just the animals; it was the people and the place.

I started to go back and lead my own trips there in 1985, and I led them every year until COVID hit. I’m planning on going back. My co-leader, who runs a safari company there, and I are looking at what we’re going to do next.

Sitting around the fire with elders over there for decades, I’ve learned a lot about what it means to be an elder and what it takes to survive. The hunter-gatherers I sit around the fire with have survived for 75,000-plus years. How? It’s not through competition and outwitting and outmuscling the other tribes. It’s through sharing, through purpose—and what they do as elders sitting around the fire.

The wisest of the elders sits the closest to the fire. What that means to me is that they have the wisdom to help younger people figure out how to make a difference and how to survive and thrive in the future.

 

Gregg: 

It sounds like there’s a real ethic there of connecting across generations and of elders being honored and sharing wisdom in ways that many of us have lost in this society, where we have more mobile lives, and many narratives about aging that are negative.

You wrote about this in your last book, Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old? The Path of Purposeful Aging, with David Shapiro. It’s an excellent book. What else can people in modern societies learn from the Maasai tribe and other things you’ve learned from your time in the Serengeti?

Richard: 

I’m a faculty member of the Modern Elder Academy, which Chip Conley created in Baja, Mexico and in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Chip said, What we really need are “menterns”: people who are both mentors and interns. I love that concept.

A mentor is somebody who can give something to younger people. And an intern is a learner. So, wise elders don’t just sit around the fire and pontificate. They’re also learners.

The future belongs to the learners, not the knowers.

I consider myself to be a learner. I know stuff and I can share what I know. But even more than that, I’m a learner. I’m learning all the time. I’m learning from you. You and I have shared ideas together, and we’ve learned from each other. I can mentor you, and you can mentor me. And I can learn from you, and you’re going to learn from me. It’s that combination, I think, that’s required right now in this world.

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Gregg: 

You and I are both very interested in the good life. We’ve talked about this before. In college, I took a philosophy and religion course called “Theories of the Good Life.” We studied it, and I wrote my own essay on what my view of the good life is. And my other philosophy professor encouraged me to live the big questions of life.

I think it was in your book, Repacking Your Bags, where you and David Shapiro gave a powerful definition of the good life: “living in the in the place you belong, with the people you love, doing the right work, on purpose.” Something like that. Can you say a little bit more about the place equation: living in the place you belong? How does place show up in a good life?

 

Richard: 

Place is where you live. Many people move to a warmer place because of the weather. And it’s great for a period of time. But what they really wanted was relationships, work, and purpose. We want health and money.

I talk about the three Ms. When you look at the good life, if you step back from it, there’s money, medicine, and meaning.

Many people have enough money and enough medicine, by which I mean health, to live a good life. But there’s a drag there. They’re unhappy, or they’re depressed, and it’s often because they don’t have enough of the third M, meaning.

Money, medicine, and meaning are fundamental to the good life. My co-author, David Shapiro, is a philosophy professor. We studied Aristotle, Plato, and others, and we looked at the good life from that period of time to now. That’s how we came up with the four factors of place, people, right work, and purpose as the things that are most essential.

 

Gregg: 

There are so many great thought leaders in this space. Viktor Frankl. William Damon. I want to ask you about Emily Esfahani-Smith and her book, The Power of Meaning. It’s a beautiful book. She says that part of that meaning equation is not only purpose but also storytelling and coherence: as we reflect on our life, we see the patterns that give us a sense of meaning in our lives. Do you think that’s a part of the equation here too?

Richard: 

Absolutely. I ask people, What’s your narrative? I co-created the Life Reimagined Institute at AARP. We looked at, What’s the narrative on aging, and how do we change it? Because in 1900, people died when they lived to age 47. Now the fastest growing cohort in the U.S. is 85 and over, and people are living well beyond that. So, people are living 20, 30, 40 years longer than they did in the past. What’s the narrative for that? Is it just about playing golf, going fishing, traveling, or being with your grandkids? It’s not. There needs to be a new narrative.

 

Gregg: 

My new body of work is focused on the common traps of living: What are the things that inhibit our happiness, our quality of life, our fulfillment? You’ve written about a “default life.” What’s a default life, and how is it negatively affecting us?

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Richard: 

I love that question. The default life is basically what I grew up with, and it goes like this:

Learn, earn, adjourn.

My Dad died at 68, two years after retiring. He had enough money and enough medicine, but I’m not sure he felt he had enough meaning. He worked for the same organization for 40 years, and he retired after that. He was an immigrant, and he had his struggles. He did okay, but then he didn’t, and he died. My mother lived another 10 years to age 78.

Dr. Becca Levy at Yale did a massive study that showed that people who had a positive view of aging live 7.5 years longer than people with a negative view of it. A negative view is like, Oh, this sucks. This is terrible. It’s all about decline.

So, what’s your narrative about aging? Do you think it’s possible that it could be a happier time of life? Or do you see it as a negative? Well, it has to do with health, has to do with place, has to do with people.

 

Gregg: 

What are some other common traps of living that inhibit people’s happiness, quality of life, or fulfillment?

 

Richard: 

The other thing is isolation. It’s fatal. It’s this notion that I can do it myself. I can do it alone, I’m cool, I’ve got it together. Going it alone is an incredibly bad idea. It’s a big trap. How do we get out of that trap?

I’m 80, and my wife is 77. We have a lot of friends and neighbors who are no longer growing and giving. If they’re not growing and giving and they’re not curious, we come home from dinner with them and go, What was that all about? They didn’t ask any questions. They weren’t curious and weren’t growing. They seem to be trapped in the rearview mirror.

I write about the rearview mirror versus the windshield. The windshield is 100 times bigger than the rearview mirror. How do people get out of the trap of the rearview mirror, just looking at the past and how they grew up? How do they let go of that? And how do they focus on the windshield, on what’s right in front of them and where they can go?

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Gregg: 

It makes me think, Richard, that some people are postponing the things that they really want to do. They’re deferring their dreams. And some people are thinking it’s too late to do the things they really want to do.

 

Richard: 

Well, it’s never too late to make a difference in the lives of others. It drives me nuts when people just talk about their bucket list. I have bucket lists. I have things I want to do, but that’s not all my life’s all about.

What’s my life all about? It’s about purpose: Why are we here? What’s the point of this exercise called life? We’re here for a reason.

You get to decide, What’s the point? Why are you here, and why are you leading? What I know unequivocally is that why you lead determines how well you lead. Why you live determines how well you live. I know this from 50 years of study.

 

Gregg: 

The subtitle of your new book, the fourth edition of The Power of Purpose, is “To Grow and to Give for Life.” I’m a big believer in growing and learning and developing. I’m just all in for that. It’s changed my life. It fills me with energy and inspiration.

And I see in you, Richard, an example of that. Here you are not “adjourning.” You’re not only giving but also growing. You’re learning, you’re writing new books, you’re updating your thinking, you’re talking to people. And I see the life it brings to you.

So, I just want to honor you, and thank you for that, for the impact you’re having on people, including deeply on me. Is there anything else you want to say about this?

 

Richard: 

What does growing really mean? Growing means curiosity, being curious about self, about others, about the world, and not just knowing.

As people age, they want to remain relevant, even though they don’t know how to say that. And they want to be visible. They want to have a voice in matters. And that comes not just from age or position or role. It comes from curiosity.

The founder of TED, Richard Saul Wurman, said that the core of TED is curiosity. It was founded based on, What are you really curious about? What do you want to know more about? What do you want to connect with? I think choice, curiosity, courage: those are the three Cs that represent what we’ve talked about here today.

Choice: What are your choices?
Curiosity: What are you curious about?
Courage: What are you courageous enough to make a move on?

* Video conversation between Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider via Zoom, recorded, transcribed by Otter.ai, and then edited by Gregg.

Gregg Vanourek & Richard Leider

Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) 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.

Richard Leider is an internationally best-selling author, coach, and keynote speaker who’s widely viewed as a thought leader of the global purpose movement. His work is featured regularly in many media sources, including PBS and NPR. He is the founder of Inventure—The Purpose Company, a firm created to guide people to live, work, and lead on purpose.

 

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Our passions are the things that consume us with palpable emotion over time. We love doing them and talk about them often. Take this self-assessment to find the ones that resonate most with you.

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Postscript: Inspirations on Purposeful Aging

  • “Retire from your job but never from meaningful projects. If you want to live a long life, you need eustress, that is, a deep sense of meaning and of contribution to worthy projects and causes, particularly, your intergenerational family.” -Stephen R. Covey, educator and author
  • “Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life. It has given me me.” -Anne Lamott, writer
  • “Here’s a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.” -Richard Bach, writer
  • “Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.” -David Bowie, musician
  • “The old … should… 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.” -Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman philosopher and statesman
  • “There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.” -Zora Neale Hurston, author, anthropologist, and filmmaker
  • “Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age…. To my own surprise I burst out with hot conviction.” -Florida Scott-Maxwell, Jungian analyst

“Wholly unprepared, they embark upon the second half of life…. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.”
-Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst

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The Spiritual Side of Purpose

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Article Summary: 

How are purpose and spirituality related? How about calling? Excerpts from my conversation on purpose and spirituality with best-selling author, Richard Leider, in the wake of the publication of the 4th edition of The Power of Purpose: To Grow and to Give for Life, with David Shapiro.*

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Gregg Vanourek:

Richard, I want to ask you about defining moments or phases of your life that have been purposeful. What’s your personal experience with purposeful living?

 

Richard Leider:

Well, I think we’ve all had fortuitous encounters with people in our life who have made a difference in some way, who have awakened us. In 1968, I spent a week with Viktor Frankl, the author of Man’s Search for Meaning. He was in three different Nazi concentration camps. He was a world-renowned thinker at the time with Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and others. Frankl he was writing about logotherapy, about meaning and purpose in life—that we’re here for a reason.

In the concentration camp, he would get up in the morning and give others what I call a “small p” purpose action: a kind word, a hug, a crust of bread, hope for the future. Out of that came Man’s Search for Meaning.

At that point, I was trained as a counseling psychologist, but I said, This message needs to go somewhere. I’m going to do what I can with it. It was a fortuitous encounter. I didn’t have any money, and I was the youngest person in the room. But I was there for a reason, I think. And here we are today.

So, think about your fortuitous encounters. You’ve had your own, I know, with your father, with others, who are wellsprings of wisdom we can learn from.

 

Gregg: 

You’re one of them in my life, Richard. I think part of that story is being awake and alert. These fortuitous encounters may come to us, but if we’re not ready, if we’re not willing to take action and follow up, then they’re lost.

And here we are with the redemption of suffering. The most unimaginable evil and cruelty in the world, and yet Dr. Frankl turns that into Man’s Search for Meaning and logotherapy.

Richard, you wrote a book called Something to Live For. Frankl had this idea during the darkest days of the Holocaust, being away from his family, of: I have something I want to share with the world. It helps him survive and also be part of the community of fellow prisoners, helping each other survive.

 

Richard Leider: 

And the Foreword to that book was written by Richard Bolles. He said, I had this dream that I had a conversation with God that I wanted to go to Earth and do something. And God being a loving God said, Well, you need something to do and give while you’re there, so I’m going to give you some gifts to give while you’re there.

Richard wakes up from his dream, and he can’t remember the gifts that God gave him. But he said, All of us have gifts. We have to figure them out ourselves, because no one gave us the manual.

So, my work has really been about discerning, What are those gifts, and how do we give them in ways that are about a “purpose and a paycheck”? We need to have a purpose, but we also need to make a living. Look at our vocation and our livelihoods as well as our dreams and other things. I think that, a lot of times, people get off-kilter because they don’t know what their gifts, passions, and values are.

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Gregg: 

Different people have varying conceptualizations and practices when it comes to spirituality. For some, it’s a faith tradition and worship. For others, more of a spiritual outlook or way of being. How do you think about purpose and spirituality? Is spirituality part of the equation of purpose and good living?

 

Richard: 

A while back, I took a year off and went to the seminary for a year to study purpose and world religions, and I found that every religion that I studied basically had the same point of view, and that was: The reason you’re here is to serve. I think serving is central to every faith.

The bottom line is, You’re here for a reason, and that’s to serve. And at the end of your life, when you die, you either did that or you didn’t.

“Is purpose spiritual? Yes! …. Purpose is spiritual wisdom embodied….
Unlocking our purpose is ultimately a spiritual path.”
-Richard Leider and David Shapiro, The Power of Purpose, 4th edition

 

Gregg: 

It sounds like that implies part of the journey of living is the journey of self-discovery, of asking, Who am I? What’s my place in the world? What are my gifts, my calling? And then, if there’s a calling, it implies something or someone doing the calling or placing a purpose within you.

 

Richard: 

Well, the call is a felt sense, whether it comes from God up above or it comes from within. The call is people feel like they’re here for a reason, and it comes in different ways, often through a crisis. I’ve interviewed people over the age of 65, as you know, for decades, and asked them if they could live their life over again, what would they do differently? There’s three things that always come up, and that is, if I could live my life over again, I would be more reflective about what matters in life. When are you reflective? It’s usually in a crisis: I get cancer, I get a divorce, I get fired, and then I have to step back and look at what really matters.

Secondly, if they live their life over again, what’s authentic? They want to live authentic lives. People say over and over again, I did what my parents wanted, or what my parents would pay for in terms of my education. And I ask, Well, what really matters? And they’ll say, Work and love. I want to do work that fits who I am, and I want to be in relationships that who fit who I am.

And third, mattering matters. I’ll go to my grave saying this. It’ll probably be on my tombstone. Mattering matters. 100% of the people have said, I want my life to matter somehow. I want to leave my footprint. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It could be just with my family, just with my church, just with my synagogue or temple. But I don’t want to die without some sort of dent.

And so that’s what purpose is all about. Mattering, ultimately, matters. But we all want to do it our own way. In our book, The Power of Purpose, we’re just saying, check it out. Do your homework. Don’t blow it off.

* Video conversation between Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider via Zoom, recorded, transcribed by Otter.ai, and then edited by Gregg.

Gregg Vanourek & Richard Leider

Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) 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.

Richard Leider is an internationally best-selling author, coach, and keynote speaker who’s widely viewed as a thought leader of the global purpose movement. His work is featured regularly in many media sources, including PBS and NPR. He is the founder of Inventure—The Purpose Company, a firm created to guide people to live, work, and lead on purpose.

 

Gregg’s Tools for You

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.

Take the Assessment

 

Related Articles & Books

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Purpose and Spirituality

  • “I believe that we are put on this earth to live our soul’s purpose. To me, that means using our unique gifts and talents to make a positive impact in the world and help create the world we want to see…. We are all born with an inner compass that tells us whether or not we’re on the right path to finding our true purpose. That compass is our JOY.” -Jack Canfield, author
  • “You have to build meaning into your life, and you build it through your commitments—whether to your religion, to an ethical order as you conceive it, to your life’s work, to loved ones, to your fellow humans.” -John W. Gardner, author and civic activist
  • “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 caller is God.” -Dave Wondra, executive coach
  • “I believe there’s a calling for all of us. I know that every human being has value and purpose. The real work of our lives is to become aware. And awakened. To answer the call.” -Oprah Winfrey, teacher, author, and entrepreneur
  • “Purpose is the recognition of the presence of the sacred within us and the choice of work that is consistent with that presence. Purpose defines our contribution to life. It may find expression through family, community, relationship, work, and spiritual activities.” -Richard Leider, author
  • “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” -Isaiah 55:10-11 NIV
  • 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.” -Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
  • “Earlier in my life, I thought the things that mattered were the things that you could see, like your car, your house, your wealth, your property, your office. But as I’ve grown older I’ve become convinced that the things that matter most are the things that you can’t see–the love you share with others, your inner purpose, your comfort with who you are.” -Jimmy Carter
  • “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
  • “We have not come into the world to be numbered; we have been created for a purpose; for great things: to love and be loved.” -Mother Teresa of Calcutta
  • “The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.” -Proverbs 20:5

“God is the one who can tell us the reason for our existence, our place in the scheme of things, our real identity.
It is an identity we can’t discover for ourselves and that others can’t discover for us.
How we have chased around the world for answers to this riddle, looked in the eyes of others for some hint, some clue, hunted in the worlds of pleasure and experience and self-fulfillment for some glimpse, some revelation, some wisdom, some authority to tell us our right name and our true destination.
But there was, and is, only One who can tell us this: The Lord Himself. And he wants to tell us, he has made us to know our reason for being and to be led by it. But it is a secret he will entrust to us only when we ask, and then in His own way and His own time. He will whisper it not in the mad rush and fever of our striving and our fierce determination to become someone, but rather when we are content to put our rest in him, to put ourselves in his keeping, into his hands. Most delightfully of all, it is a secret he will tell us slowly and sweetly, when we are willing to spend time with him.” -Emily Griffin, Clinging

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Unlock Your Purpose–3 Key Elements

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Article Summary: 

Knowing and living your purpose is hard for many. It helps to break it down to the three key elements of purpose. Excerpts from my conversation with best-selling author, Richard Leider.*

+++

Gregg Vanourek: 

Richard, you have something you call the “napkin test.” You’ve written that calling, which you sometimes use as a synonym for purpose, is a function of your gifts and your passions and your values:

G + P + V = C

Source: Richard Leider
“’Finding your purpose’ is misleading, however, because it’s not something we have to go out and ‘find.’ Rather, purpose is revealed when we turn within and unlock it. We’ve already got it—even if we haven’t clarified it yet! But how do you unlock it? By looking in the most essential places—our individual gifts, passions, and values….
Combining our gifts with our passions and values reveals to us purpose.”
-Richard Leider and David Shapiro, The Power of Purpose, 4th edition

What if someone comes to you and says, I don’t have any gifts, or, I don’t have any passions? Say a bit more about how you’d respond to that person who’s really struggling and just doesn’t see it.

Richard Leider: 

I call it the “Got-a-minute school of coaching,” because people say, Got a minute? Can you tell me what I should do with the rest of my life?

I say, Take out a napkin and write down your gifts, passions, and values. And let’s talk about that after you do some work on it.

I’ve interviewed thousands of people over five decades of life. There’s not one person I’ve ever interviewed who doesn’t ultimately own their gifts. They say, Yeah, I really enjoy that, I love that, I’m good at that. So, a gift is the first thing in the formula.

Gregg: 

How do you define a gift?

Richard: 

A gift has four characteristics:

  1. First, it’s something you love to do.
  2. Second, your hand turns to it naturally. Others observe you doing it effortlessly and superbly.
  3. Third, you can’t remember learning it. When asked how you learned it, you might say, I don’t know. I don’t have a degree in that, but I just do it effortlessly and well.
  4. Fourth, you say, I love learning more about it and hanging out with people interested in it.

Ask someone, What’s your gift? Ask what they love to do. They come up with it automatically. They know there’s something there.

I created a tool called Calling Cards. It’s available on Amazon, and it helps people to do a deeper dive into that. Sometimes I use that when I’m working with leadership teams, because people are so starved for that.

Strengths Search

We all have core strengths–the things in which we most excel. Take this self-assessment to determine your core strengths so you can integrate them more into your life and work.

Find Your Strengths

 

Gregg: 

What are passions, the second element?

Richard:

Passions are, What do you want to use your gifts in the service of? What do you really care about? What keeps you up at night? But it’s not about your problems. It’s more about your opportunities. What are you reading and thinking about? What do you care about?

I’m 80, and I wake up early in the morning. The first thing I do is write. What I write about is what I’m thinking about, what I care about, and what I read about. It makes me happy. So, What is it that you care about, that you would love to use your gifts in the service of?

Passion Probe

Our passions are the things that consume us with palpable emotion over time. We love doing them and talk about them often. Take this self-assessment to find the ones that resonate most with you.

Find Your Passion

 

Gregg:

And what about values, the third element?

Richard:

Values are about where you do what you do. So many people have a good job, but they don’t like where they’re doing it. It doesn’t fit them.

The number-one knockout factor in most career research is this: I don’t like where I’m working. I don’t like the people. It’s not a good fit for me. The job is good, but the place is not. That’s why so many people would rather do their own thing, something on their own.

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

 

* Video conversation between Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider via Zoom, recorded, transcribed by Otter.ai, and then edited by Gregg.

Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) 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.

Richard Leider is an internationally best-selling author, coach, and keynote speaker who’s widely viewed as a thought leader of the global purpose movement. His work is featured regularly in many media sources, including PBS and NPR. He is the founder of Inventure—The Purpose Company, a firm created to guide people to live, work, and lead on purpose.

Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider

 

Gregg’s Tools for You

  • Strengths Search to help you identify your core strengths and start using them more in your life and work
  • Passion Probe to help you find the things that consume you with palpable emotion over time
  • Personal Values Exercise to help you clarify what’s most important to you

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

 

Related Articles & Books

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Purpose

  • “Purpose is already within us waiting to be discovered.” -Richard Leider, author
  • “Respond to every call that excites your spirit.” -Rumi, 13th century poet
  • “Your life is an opportunity to give the gifts that your soul wants to give.” -Gary Zukav, author
  • “I believe that we are put on this earth to live our soul’s purpose. To me, that means using our unique gifts and talents to make a positive impact in the world and help create the world we want to see…. We are all born with an inner compass that tells us whether or not we’re on the right path to finding our true purpose. That compass is our JOY.” -Jack Canfield, author
  • “Purpose is a presence within us all the time. It is a constant presence in our lives that merely needs to be unlocked via reflection and action.” -Richard Leider and David Shapiro, The Power of Purpose, 4th edition
“If we lack purpose, we lose connection with our true nature and become externally driven, generating discontent or even angst. Because purpose can be so elusive, we often duck the big question and look for ways to bury that discontent, most often through ‘busyness,’ distraction, or worse.”
-Christopher Gergen & Gregg Vanourek,
LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

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Purpose Demystified

by

Article Summary: 

Many people resist thinking about their purpose, in part due to common misunderstandings about it. Excerpts from my conversation with best-selling author, Richard Leider.*

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Gregg Vanourek: 

Richard, congratulations on your new book, the fourth edition of The Power of Purpose: To Grow and to Give for Life, with David Shapiro. Great to see it doing so well. I want to start at the beginning. Many people, when they think about purpose, might be a little skeptical. They might struggle with it. Some might come to you and say, Purpose sounds a little abstract, Richard. It sounds a bit distant and philosophical. I live in the real world. What would you say to them?

Richard Leider: 

Well, the quick answer is, I talk about “Big P” purpose and “little p” purpose. Big P purpose is what they’re struggling with when they say that. It’s like, I need to save the planet. So, it’s having a cause or being committed to something you care about. Little P purpose is what you do when you arise this morning to make a difference in one person’s life. It can take 10 seconds. You can give a hug, a kind word. There are 1,440 purpose moments in a day. Can’t you find just one purpose moment to make a difference in another person’s life? That is the power of purpose.

Gregg: 

I love it. There are 1,440 minutes in a day, and you can use even just a few of them for little P purpose. You don’t always have to get caught up in Big P purpose.

Richard: 

Yes, Big P is good, but mostly, it’s not what I talk about these days. What I talk about is that people live the lives they need to. As you said, Gregg, I live in the real world. Well, the real world is 1,440 purpose moments.

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

 

Gregg: 

What would be an example of a Big P purpose versus a little P purpose?

Richard: 

Well, my Big P purpose is to help others unlock the power of purpose. That’s how I make a living. It’s my vocation. That’s what I’m known for. But my little P purpose, right now, is what we’re doing to make a difference in one person’s life today—and then again tomorrow.

Gregg: 

And you can do that in so many different ways that are much more accessible. It can be a nice conversation with somebody. Recognizing someone. Thanking the barista. Holding doors open for someone.

Richard: 

Exactly, but you have to be intentional. This is who we are as human beings. It’s in our DNA to be part of a group or community. How do we do that? We do that through what you just said, with the barista, at the gas station or the store. We turn to somebody and say, Oh, you look great, or, Thank you. And out of that comes a felt sense. The bottom line here is that purpose is a felt sense. You feel it because it is who we are as human beings.

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.

Take the Assessment

 

Gregg: 

It sounds like it’s something that, instead of being distant and abstract, you end up living into with your day-to-day actions and mindset. You come back home to that DNA that’s your heritage. You come back into it, as opposed to being separate from it.

Richard: 

Purpose is age-agnostic. It can be young people, it can be mid-life people, it can be retired people. Often, we hear from retired people, Well, I’ve had my career, I’ve done my job, I’ve done my role. And I say, You haven’t done your life. Your life still exists as part of the community. What’s your reason to arise?

“Purpose is age-agnostic. It can be young people, it can be mid-life people, it can be retired people.”
-Richard Leider

Gregg: 

What are some other things that people often don’t understand or get right about purpose?

Richard: 

My favorite quote about purpose is from the American essayist, E.B. White, who says this:

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day.”
-E.B. White

He got it right. It’s about both saving and savoring. You want to savor life. Yes, you want to do the things you love to do and enjoy. You don’t have to be Mother Teresa, or Martin Luther King, Jr., or some Big P purpose person. What you have to do, though, is not just be about you. The dark side of purpose is self-absorption. When we’re around narcissists, self-absorbed people, we don’t like that.

Purpose is always about serving others.

But you don’t have to have your whole life be about that. It can be just a few minutes a day. It’s about the balance between saving and savoring.

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

 

Gregg: 

I think many people can have this mistaken idea that purpose sounds like navel-gazing, that it’s all about me, sitting around thinking, What’s my purpose? You’re saying it’s not. It’s serving. And giving is fundamental to living on purpose. The subtitle of the new edition of The Power of Purpose is “To Grow and to Give for Life.”

Richard: 

One of the examples of that is a story about a man named Ed Rapp. He was one of the presidents of the three big units within Caterpillar Inc., and he was about to become the CEO of Caterpillar worldwide. He was out running with his son, and his son noticed his foot was dragging. Long story short, he was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease).

Ed is from a farm community in Missouri. There were 30 kids in his high school class. He was the first in his family and class to go to the University of Missouri, get a business degree, etc. Here he is about to ascend to the higher levels of leading on purpose, and he has to resign because he’s got ALS.

I talk to him regularly, and he has the Big P purpose and the little P purpose. His Big P purpose is to make a difference with the science and research of ALS. He created an organization, Stay Strong vs. ALS. I think they’ve raised about $20 million. Every day, five days a week, he gets up and he coaches somebody just diagnosed with ALS, someone who’s scared and wants to know, What can I do?

He said, Richard, I get more juice out of that. It’s not going to save my life. I’m going to die from this. But it brings more aliveness to me than almost anything else, that ability to make a difference in one person’s life.

Gregg: 

I love that, and it raises the issue of suffering in the world. Part of the human journey is that we all suffer. Many people today are concerned about the state of the world. There’s a lot of pain and concerning things happening, but purpose is something that can redeem suffering. Ed’s story is also interesting because it’s not this abstract thing. He found purpose in a way that was personal for him, and ways in which he could really connect with the people who are newly diagnosed, because it’s been part of his story—his story of making the best of it and doing good with it. That’s the personal piece.

Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider

* Video conversation between Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider via Zoom, recorded, transcribed by Otter.ai, and then edited by Gregg.

++++++++++++

Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) 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.

Richard Leider is an internationally best-selling author, coach, and keynote speaker who’s widely viewed as a thought leader of the global purpose movement. His work is featured regularly in many media sources, including PBS and NPR. He is the founder of Inventure—The Purpose Company, a firm created to guide people to live, work, and lead on purpose.

 

Gregg’s Tools for You

 

Related Articles & Books

Some of Richard Leider’s books

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Purpose

  • “When we are clear about our purpose, or at least working toward it, our lives come together in powerful ways.” -Christopher Gergen & Gregg Vanourek, LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives
  • “Purpose reveals itself when we stop being afraid and start being ourselves.” -Richard Leider, “An Incomplete Manifesto for Purpose”
  • “If there’s just one habit you can create to help you find your purpose, it would be helping others.” -Amy Morin

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our rapidly growing community. Sign up now and get monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

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The People Who Fuel Your Passions

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Who are the people who fuel your passions—the things that consume you with palpable emotion over time? For me, there are so many.

There are five different types of such people:

  1. passion igniters
  2. passion inspirations
  3. passion pals
  4. passion partners
  5. passion enablers

(And read on to the end for one other important type…)

 

1. Passion Igniters

Your passion igniters are the people who set your passions ablaze in your life. Here are some examples:

For me, I fell in love with soccer in part due to a fiery and intense coach, John Goetz, who led our “Choppers” youth soccer team with gusto.

As the sweeper, I was the final line of defense before the goalie. If a long pass slipped through at half-field on a counterattack and their forward got behind me on a breakaway, I had a brief window to recover before my mark could take a shot. Sprinting at full speed to catch the opposing striker, I would always hear a booming call from Coach on the sidelines:

YEEEEEHAAAAAW!!!

You could hear it for miles. He knew I wouldn’t let the forward get a shot off.

That primal roar always sent a jolt coursing through me. I always found another gear when I heard it.

When I started learning to play the guitar, I had a hard time connecting with the lessons from my first music teacher. Eventually, I found a new teacher, Randy. He offered to teach me anything I wanted to learn. I’d bring him tapes and he’d show me how to rock out on all my favorite songs. That made all the difference. I was all in.

When I was in college, I discovered a passion for learning—and asking the big questions in life—thanks to brilliant teachers like Professor Roth and Professor Smith. Those fires are still burning in me, as bright as ever.

Alexandra, our oldest daughter, discovered a love for dancing when she joined a local dance group led by a talented and committed young dancer, Isabel. With her dance troupe, Isabel focused on spreading the joy of dancing and building community. They work with hundreds of dancers, from young children to young adults, and welcome them into Isabel’s giant and growing dance family. All the dancers perform on stage during their shows, with electrifying music, soaring choreography, and marvelous dancing. I’ll never forget when Alex had her breakthrough moment on stage. Isabel is a passion igniter.

Our other daughter, Anya, fell in love with animals, not just because she loves our own pets, but because her Mom grew up on a farm riding horses. Growing up, Anya spent a lot of time on the farm enjoying the countryside and the companionship of animals. Today, she’s considering a career working with animals.

My brother, Scott, loves to travel. If there’s a fun festival somewhere, anywhere, he’s game. He traces this back to all the postcards we got as children from our parents as they traveled around the world for our Dad’s business career. Scott was intrigued by all the foreign and exotic places. He lived in Japan for several years and now travels abroad often.

My friend, Christine, is a passion igniter for the young women rugby players she coaches, helping them not only discover a love of the game but also of strength and physicality.

Who are your passion igniters?

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

 

2. Passion Inspirations

Your passion inspirations are the people who made you feel that you wanted to explore or do something that you care about deeply. They breathed life into your passions through their example. In many cases, they’re famous.

I love to write. For me, Richard Bach, Paulo Coelho, Annie Dillard, Anna Quindlen, Fredrik Backman, Stephen R. Covey, Parker Palmer, Richard Leider, and Brene Brown have been passion inspirations over the years.

On the leadership front, my Dad was deeply inspired early in his career by Robert Greenleaf, a consultant and author who founded the modern servant leadership movement. It transformed my father’s whole approach to leading and sent him on a quest to find better ways to lead than the ones he experienced as an emerging leader.

If you’re committed to public service and social justice, your passion inspirations may be people like Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai, or Alexei Navalny.

A budding entrepreneur? Maybe Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Ratan Tata, Jack Ma, Oprah, Arianna Huffington, Lori Greiner, or Sara Blakeley inspire you.

For animals and the natural world, maybe it’s Jane Goodall or Sir David Attenborough.

And for acting and performing arts, maybe it’s Meryl Streep, Denzel Washington, Lin-Manuel Miranda, or Cynthia Erivo.

Who are your passion inspirations?

 

3. Passion Pals

Your passion pals are the friends you engage with on your passions, spending time together on the things that light you up.

For me in music, it was my band mates, with countless hours of practice in Patrick’s basement and Rob’s garage. These days, I geek out about books and podcasts with my friend Jamie and my Dad.

Do you have a workout buddy or hiking companion? A movie buff or gaming buddy? How about a foodie who samples new restaurants and dishes with you?

Who are your passion pals?

Passion Probe

Our passions are the things that consume us with palpable emotion over time. We love doing them and talk about them often. Take this self-assessment to find the ones that resonate most with you.

Find Your Passion

 

4. Passion Partners

Your passion partners are the people you collaborate with on passion projects, whether it’s a YouTube channel, photography, genealogy, pottery, or gardening. It can be romantic partners or business partners or both.

My friend Christopher Gergen and I were passion partners in writing a book, LIFE Entrepreneurs, together and building a company around it that helped people live with purpose and passion. In our research for the book, we interviewed 55 people who live intentionally and craft their lives around their passions, strengths, and values. In those interviews, we came across a wonderful surprise: many couples were helping each other do that.

For Paul, that mean supporting his new wife, Simi, as she launched a law firm and started a documentary project. And for Simi, it meant supporting Paul as he launched his new business. As Paul told me:

“This is so great. We’re helping each other with our dreams.”

For Linda and Roger, it meant co-founding a child-care company and launching and running humanitarian relief organizations in Asia and Africa. “For us it has been great,” recounted Linda. “We are extremely compatible. We have an enormous amount of respect for each other, and it adds this extra dimension to our relationship. It’s just incredibly rich to create an organization together.… Through all the very difficult start-up years, we had each other to lean on and celebrate our successes together.… It has really just worked.”

My Dad and I were passion partners on a book project about the kind of leadership it takes to build an organization that’s excellent, ethical, and enduring—what we called “triple crown leadership.” That work led to more writing as well as teaching and speaking together—a true joy.

Gregg with partners and co-authors, Christopher Gergen and Bob Vanourek

Who are your passion partners?

 

5. Passion Enablers

Your passion enablers are the ones who give you the means or the opportunity to do the things you love.

For me, it begins with my Mom and Dad. I think back to all the times my Mom drove me to practices, games, lessons, and events. And the times she served as Class Mom or Team Mom or ran the Little League Snack Shack.

Hanging out with my parents at a cafe

It’s also been my wife, Kristina, standing by me as I navigate my unconventional portfolio of work that includes writing, teaching, speaking, and coaching. And I supported her as she went back to school and changed careers, following her heart into work she loves and that she’s great at.

These passion enablers can include not only parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, and uncles but also managers and colleagues.

Think about the marketing manager who notices that one of her team members loves designing social media graphics and visually rich campaigns but struggles with drafting content. The manager lines up training and small projects to foster this more specialized work.

Consider the astute boss who sees how passionate his direct report is about sustainability and conservation. The boss sponsors and mentors his employee in launching company service initiatives and sees how he not only lights up but also develops his planning, collaboration, and leadership skills.

Who are your passion enablers?

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

 

One More Type: Passion Killers

Unfortunately, there’s one more type: the passion killers. These are the folks who discourage you from pursuing your passions.

They insist you’re not qualified. That you’re not the sort of person who can lead that big project. They tell you how impractical it is and how you should wise up and play it safe. Often, they’re afraid you’ll struggle and fail if you take risks—or more concerned about how your choices reflect back on them. (This can lead you into the trap of living someone else’s life.)

The voices of the passion killers tend to spawn the most insidious passion killer of all: self-doubt.

Self-doubt makes you question your capabilities and potential. It feeds on your uncertainty about yourself and your place in the world. It jumps all over you when you make a mistake or don’t reach a goal. It’s that voice in your head:

Don’t be a fool!
What if you make a mistake?
What will people think?

 

Conclusion

To some, passion sounds like pie-in-the-sky dreaming. Or unattainable. Part of the problem is due to fuzzy thinking. For instance: No, you probably don’t have just one passion. And no, everything won’t turn into butterflies and rainbows if you just “follow your passion.”

Passions are potent, especially when you pair them with your strengths. That gets you a big step closer to authentic alignment—when you’re being true to yourself and there’s a good fit between how you live and who you really are.

Passion is a critical component of this equation. Author Sir Ken Robinson calls it “the driver of achievement in all fields.” And Oprah Winfrey views it as energy, noting you can gain power by focusing on what excites you.

So, if you have people who have fueled your passion, be sure to reach out and thank them. And if you can play that role for others, I hope you step into it with gusto, realizing what a gift that can be.

If you have passion killers in your life, I hope you separate yourself from them—or at least draw healthy boundaries. Life is too short not to feel this amazing energy and see where it takes you.

Wishing you well with it. Let me know if I can help.
–Gregg

 

Reflection & Action Questions

  1. Do you have any passion igniters who have set your passions ablaze in your life?
  2. How about passion inspirations who have breathed life into your passions through their example?
  3. Do you have passion pals who you engage with on your passions?
  4. How about passion partners who you collaborate with on passion projects?
  5. Do you have passion enablers who give you the means or the opportunity to do the things you love doing?
  6. Have you thanked them? Why not reach out—today?
  7. How about passion killers who discourage you from pursuing your passions?
  8. What will you do about them?

 

Tools for You

Passion Probe

Our passions are the things that consume us with palpable emotion over time. We love doing them and talk about them often. Take this self-assessment to find the ones that resonate most with you.

Find Your Passion

 

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

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our rapidly growing community. Sign up now and get monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

Sign Up Now

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) 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 Problem with Not Having Boundaries

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How well have you been setting boundaries lately? Have you been proactively defining how others should treat you? How about establishing limits for yourself that you commit to respecting? Are you clear on what you’re willing to accept or tolerate—and consistent in enforcing it?

Having boundaries is essential for both your personal and professional wellbeing. Boundaries serve to protect you, enhance your wellbeing, and provide a sense of control over your life.

Unfortunately, it’s not easy—at least not for most of us. Setting and maintaining boundaries can be difficult because it often requires saying no, risking conflict, or disappointing others. This is a problem at work, among managers and workers, in relationships (from parents and children to couples), and in many other settings.

According to a 2022 survey, 58% Americans have trouble saying “no” to others. While this is an issue for both men and women, it was women who reported struggling with it more: 65% of women versus 49% of men admitted to struggling with this. (1) My work with people in different countries leads me to believe that this is a universal struggle.

 

The Problem with Not Having Boundaries

Here’s the problem: Not having or maintaining boundaries can lead to many negative consequences for you. (2) Here are ten problems with not having boundaries:

1. Negative emotions. When you don’t have boundaries, it can cause you anxiety, overwhelm, frustration, resentment, and other forms of emotional distress. It can harm your mental health.

2. Overcommitment and a sense of “time poverty.” Do you often feel that you have too many things to do and not enough time to do them?

3. Overwork or workaholism. Without clear boundaries, you may struggle to say no, take on excessive responsibilities, and feel pressured to always be available.

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

 

4. Exhaustion and burnout. Without boundaries, constant demands and lack of rest can drain your energy. Are you feeling not only fatigued but depleted? Like you have little or nothing left to give?

5. Numbing behaviors. Are you falling into the habit of escaping from your thoughts and feelings by doing other things like binge-watching, doom-scrolling, shopping recklessly, or eating mindlessly?

6. Difficulty making decisions. If you’re so focused on meeting other people’s needs, how can you decide what’s best for you, much less prioritize it?

7. Lower self-esteem. Without boundaries, you may place others’ needs over your own, leading to feelings of being undervalued.

“When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated.”
-Brené Brown, researcher and author

8. Strained or unhealthy relationships. It’s hard to have healthy relationships when your needs or expectations are unclear.

9. Higher potential for people to manipulate or take advantage of you. Without proper boundaries, others may exploit your willingness to accommodate them.

10. Losing yourself of self and your control over your life. When you constantly prioritize others’ expectations over your own needs and desires, you might disappear from the picture or at least fade into the background.

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.

Take the Assessment

 

Conclusion

If you struggle with setting and maintaining boundaries, like so many of us do, you might try reframing them: by setting and enforcing boundaries, you create space for what you truly want and need.

Having boundaries frees up your time and energy to live the life you want.

Finally, setting and maintaining boundaries is a continuous process. The issue of boundaries will keep coming up repeatedly in your life and work. Better to face the situation and improve it now.

Handling boundaries well requires ongoing judgment to determine when to stay firm and when to allow flexibility, adjusting as new circumstances arise.

Wishing you well with it. Let me know if I can help.
–Gregg

 

Reflection Questions

  1. Which boundaries have you struggled with?
  2. Why do you think that is?
  3. Is there a pattern involving certain people or situations?
  4. What more will you do to set and maintain healthy boundaries for yourself, starting today?

 

Tools for You

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

 

Related Articles

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Boundaries

  • “Love yourself enough to set boundaries. Your time and energy are precious. You get to choose how you use it. You teach people how to treat you by deciding what you will and won’t accept.” –Anna Taylor, author
  • “Givers need to set limits because takers rarely do.” –Rachel Wolchin, author
  • “Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.” -Josh Billings, American humorist
  • “Setting boundaries is a way of caring for myself. It doesn’t make me mean, selfish, or uncaring (just) because I don’t do things your way.” –Christine Morgan, psychotherapist

 

References

(1) Source: Thriving Center of Psychology October 2022 survey of 1,001 people

(2) As you navigate this process, it’s important to recall that people have diverse needs and will make varying—sometimes vastly different—choices about their boundaries. What works for others may not suit you at all. Therefore, you must set your own boundaries while also supporting others in setting theirs.

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) 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!

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