In the part IV of the Career Lover series, we’ve addressed the Practicality issue of pursuing your passion by talking about 3 strategies to convert your passion into a money-making venture . No matter which strategy you choose, your level of success as a Career Lover will depend on the amount of value that you create; This is the main focus of Part V of the Career Lover Series.

Value creation is often an abstract and difficult concept to understand, simply because the definition of value varies from people to people - what is valuable to me may be worthless to you. As such, trying to create value is like trying to hit a moving target; there’s nothing definite to work on.

This is where I believe the following definition of value will help: value is anything that someone is willing to pay money for.

Although this definition doesn’t remove the subjectivity, it gives us the guiding principle - to create value, you must serve someone else’s needs or wants. Identify the product/services that you provide and find people who need it. As such, they are more likely to pay for it. These people are your target audience, your potential clients.

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I’ve gotten quite a bit of feedback from the last article on discovering your passion . One common feedback sounds like this “Hey, Lawrence, it’s all great, this passion thing. But you know, I need a job; I have mouths to feed.”

This is a valid concern. As such, in this part of the series, I like to suggest 3 strategies that you can consider to monetize your passion.

CREATE VALUE WITH YOUR PASSION

The key to monetizing your passion is to create value with it. In doing so, we can address the practicality dimension.

Naturally, the next question is, “What is value?” In the context of this discussion, value is anything that someone is willing to pay money for:

• As an employee, your value is the job that you do. Your employer is willing to pay for your time to get things done.
• If you are self-employed, your value is the products or services that you provide/sell.

Becoming a Career Lover is actually no rocket science. It’s based on a surprisingly simple principle “do what you are passionate and good at, and have people pay you for it. “

Depending on your circumstances, this simple principle may or may not be easy to apply in reality. In the rest of this article, I will describe each strategy and highlight the pros and cons for each. Depending on your specific circumstance, passion and talents, you may find one strategy more applicable than the others.

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The Career Lover Series is inspired by people going through the motions at their work. They have no fire, no passion. They just show up, put in their time, and go home.

More than half of our lifetime is spent at work. It’s such a shame. What a waste of life…

We pursue a job for various reasons. More often than not, money is one primary consideration; likewise for me. I’ll be kidding if I say just go out there and pursue a job that you love, regardless of how little it pays… no, that doesn’t work.

So fine, money is important, I understand.

But still, I want to argue that money is not the sole consideration. Each day, I continue to hear stories of people whose are not happy because they see their job as that - simply a job. As such, I continue to advocate that we should pursue our passions.

JUST WHAT THE HELL DO I LOVE?

Having said that, I know that it’s not easy to find your passion. Although I preach about this all the time, my passion hasn’t always been that clear to me. When I was younger, I thought that I understood myself very well. It’s logical, isn’t it? If I don’t know myself, who will? Yet, over the years, I’ve learned that it’s really not easy to understand oneself:

• When I signed up for computer studies, I thought that I loved computing. Wrong. Turned out that I love continuous learning.
• After school, I joined the Army, I thought I loved to be a soldier. Wrong again. I actually love leadership.
• Tired of the Army, I left and joined the corporate world. I thought that I wanted to be a business leader. Yet, I’m wrong again. I simply wanted more freedom to manage my time.

On hindsight, I didn’t understand what I really love.

As such, I can really understand when some people give me a puzzled look when I tell them to do what they love. They probably don’t have a clue what it is they truly love! It’s not easy to know what you want - the things that you REALLY want in a job.

If you don’t know what it is that you truly love, don’t fret. You’re not alone, and definitely not the minority. It takes a little trial and error, a little fine-tuning to nail down that dream job.

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It’s time to return to the Career Lover series. Before we go further into The Career Lover Series to discuss about value creation and the practicality aspects of being a Career Lover, there is one point I like to discuss - why it’s dangerous not to do what you love.

Fact is, you may already know that it is best to do what you love. There are already many books and seminars with gurus professing that they achieve great success because they love what they do. If this is the case, why is it that the majority of us are still not doing what we love?

The reason is simple - it’s procrastination .

It’s no surprise. There are many things that we know we should do, but yet we still don’t do them:

• We should exercise more.
• We should give up smoking.
• We should spend more time with our family.
• We should do what we love.

There is a reason for our procrastinations. It is simply a lack of urgency to move out of one’s comfort zone - there isn’t a pain or pleasure strong enough to justify immediate actions.

Likewise it’s the same with doing what we love. Many of us know we should do it and the benefits it’ll bring. Yet many of us are procrastinating. One reason I mentioned in the introduction to this series is because people lack a practical means of translating their passion into a means of livelihood. This is an area which I hope to address in Part IV and Part V of this series.

For now, I like to address 3 common excuses people adopt to postpone doing what they love. I call them killer procrastinations. These are dangerous misconceptions that may cost you much in the long run. In addressing these 3 killer procrastinations, I hope to provide a stronger impetus for you to take actions to purse what you love.

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(Photo by aloshbennett)

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, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run–in the long run, I say–success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.
-Viktor Frankl

Before we talk about how to become a Career Lover and aligning three dimensions of Passion, Talents and Practicality, I feel that it is important to clarify one important concept - success.

Ultimately, you want to be successful in your work and life. But do you really know what is the success that you striving for? What if the success that you’re working so hard for does not provide lasting happiness or satisfaction?

OUR MINDSET OF SUCCESS

When we speak of successful professionals, we’ll often come up with names like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jack Welch, Ray Croc, Andrew Carnegie etc…

All these successful people have the following commonalities:

• Wealth - much more than they ever need in their entire lifetime.
• Fame - the media talks about them, everyone knows who they are.
• Status - highly respected, aspired and sought-after.

As such, the society has unknowingly associated success with attributes of wealth, fame and status. Even Merriam-Webster defines success as:

the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence.

WHAT IF YOUR LADDER OF SUCCESS IS LEANING AGAINST THE WRONG WALL

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(Photo by icadrew)

It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

- Viktor Frankl, Holocaust Survivor and psychiatrist.

In the Money Mindset Series, I have brought up the issue of doing meaningful work and how good money management actually facilitates a freedom of choice to pursue careers that we are passionate about.

That same discussion gave me the idea to start a new series - a series about how to pursue our dream career in the modern, practical world.

This blogging journey has helped me to discover meaning in my work and a passion for expressing my thoughts through writing. I hope to share my new insights into the benefits of doing what you love, and how you too, can do the same thing…

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(Photo by Darkle Doodah Dagbar )

Can money buy happiness? If money can really buy happiness, how much would it cost?

Of course, there’s a lot of things that money can’t buy. Saying money can buy happiness does sound superficial. Perhaps to some, money and happiness are two concepts that should not even be talked about together. Well, that’s exactly contrary to what I think - money and happiness has A LOT to do with each other!

In this last part of Money Mindset Series, I like to sum up by talking about money and its relations to two important areas of our life: career and relationships .

Before I carry on, I like to qualify that I’m not the mercenary sort who believes that having lots of money equals having happiness. I do agree that money cannot buy happiness. However, in our world today, money has a lot of influences on other areas of life which leads to fulfillment.

The chart below shows the positive influence that you will have on career and relationships when you manage your money well. I will elaborate on them next.

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(Photo by rollerboogie)

In the first part of the Money Mindset Series, I highlighted some money mindsets that may be hindering our financial success and living a balanced life. In the rest of the series, I will take some common mindsets and expand on them. In part 2, I like to address the following common mindsets with regards to work and money:

• I have to work really, really hard to get rich.
• Striving for wealth won’t allow much time for anything else in life.
• I love my family, so I should work really hard to provide for them.

THE OLD SCHOOL MONEY THINKING

The old school money thinking teaches us to study hard, get good grades and get a well-paying job. Next, work hard and wait for the annual increments. If you are good at your job, there may be promotions every 3 to 5 years. With this concept, your income will increase over time as shown in the chart below. It definitely looks like a good idea, having the security of guaranteed income every month which is increasing every year. It does seems that good life is ensured with this approach… or is it?

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(Photo by adesigna)

I started this blog with the intention to provide my insights on living a balanced life through personal development. Over time, I have crystallized this mission into the three-legged stool concept.

The diagram shows a three-legged stool: my depiction of a balanced life. Each leg of the stool is a key pillar needed for life fulfillment as follows:

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(Photo by raysto)

In his article Tackle Any Issue With a List of 100, Luciano shows us how to tackle any issue with a list of 100 possible solutions.

Today, I like to share a list of 100 great personal development resources to improve your Career, Relationships and Money - in accordance with the aim of A Long Long Road. So, here goes:

CAREER AND WORK

Work In General

1. Should You Report Sexual Harassment in the Workplace - well, the title speaks for itself.
2. Should I Report Ethical Misconduct At Work? - we all may face this judgment call in one point or another in our career. Should we report it?
3. Why do Some People Consistently Inspire Others to Follow Their Lead? - some qualities of great leaders to inspire you.

Career

4. Telework is Good for You - teleworking can really help to strike the work life balance, when done properly.
5. How To Stop Being So Afraid Of Changing Careers - changing career may be a very scary thing, but it’s can also bring a lot of happiness and fulfillment if done correctly. So how do you take this brave step?
6. Exploring Career Choices - what are the career choices to a great life? This articles shows you the considerations to help you think it through.
7. Accessing the Hidden Job Market - other than the normal job agencies and classified ads, there are other hidden channels to seeking a new job. Here are some tips about hidden job market.
8. One Critical Factor That Will Make Or Break Your Career - no matter how great you are at work, you will not be professionally successful without this.
9. What Is Most Likely To Help You Reach The Top? - a similar theme to the previous post.
10. Top 5 Reasons to Quit a Job - common reasons to quit your job, and dealing with them.
11. How to Sell Yourself (and Why Your Career Depends On It) - it’s true, no matter how great you are at your job. Nobody’s going to know about it until you do a little self-marketing. Here’s some tips to do it correctly.
12. 10 Tips for a Successful Meeting With The Boss - when meeting with your boss, you need to be prepare to save his/her time and leave a good impression. Here’s 10 tips to help you along.
13. What To Do When The Recruiter Calls - we all faced this at one point or another in our career, a recruiter. Here’s how to handle the recruiter.

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