Click here to view the original talk on TED.com

Having spent the weekend in Melbourne visiting some friends and exploring the Screen Worlds: The Story of Film, Television and Digital Culture exhibit at Federation Square, I was both inspired and keen to get back to creating new content for the site.

Following my usual routine of checking out what was new on TED, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Sir Ken Robinson had presented a new talk.

For those of you that don’t know him, Sir Ken Robinson has been an advocate for encouraging creativity in schools and revamping the education system to help children discover and develop their natural gifts and talents in order to ultimately discover and pursue their passions.

This talk is a follow up from his first talk on TED back in 2006 which is also worth watching.

Related posts:

1. The Paradox Of Choice – A Talk by Barry Schwartz
2. [Video] Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation
3. Exercise 4.4: Dealing with Negative Self Talk

photo credit: jeffgunn

There is a restaurant that I go to with Cecil every now and again whenever I want African food or more specifically, Ethiopian food.

It’s not close to my house, not obvious from the road and his restaurant doesn’t even come up in a google search.

The reason we know about this restaurant in the first place is because we went to the vegetarian restaurant next door for a friends birthday and Cecil just happened to remember seeing it.

This guys restaurant by search engine standards has terrible SEO, though every time I go for dinner there, his restaurant is usually full of people.

It isn’t a very big restaurant. The size of roughly a small diner. It could easily fit 30 people inside and another 15 or so outside.

Initially you might wonder how his business survives, until you go and experience eating there for the first time.

Upon arriving, the owner greeted us as we walked in. The lights in his restaurant were dim, though it complemented the elaborate decor of the room.

Pictures and cultural heirlooms from Ethiopia covered the walls and the rich smell of spices flowed from the kitchen in the back.

You could tell that the owner really cared about his restaurant and that he had taken great care to make sure that when people walked in, it wasn’t just for food, it was for an experience.

The restaurant was run solely by his family so everything had a personal touch to it.

When it was time to order, the owner seeing that we were new took a few minutes to explain the menu to us and what exactly each dish was.

Making a selection of two dishes, we waited patiently for our orders.

When the food finally arrived, the owner had brought something we had not originally ordered. It was a bowl of freshly made cottage cheese. Before I can say anything, he quickly mentions that it is on the house and that the cheese would help reduce the spiciness of the dishes.

Earlier I had briefly joked to him that my stomach was fairly sensitive to too much chilli, but that I was determined to try this food that I was convinced was worth a temporarily burnt digestive tract.

Though it was only something small, I really appreciated his consideration and the amount of attention he gave to me though I was only one of many customers.

After we had eaten dinner, which was hands down one of the best meals I had ever eaten, he recommended that we finish off the meal with some spiced tea which he brings over in an engraved silver tea pot.

As he pours the first round of tea, he explains that the tea helps to wash down the spices and aided digestion. I could sense that he was still fairly concerned about my stomach, though I told him that no matter what happened I would be happy to do it again as the food was wonderful.

He laughs, and tells us that next time he’ll try to come up with more dishes that aren’t overly spicy. Surprisingly enough, the next time we visited, he did.

———————

Down the road from his restaurant is another African restaurant. It’ right along the main road you couldn’t miss it. Much bigger as well and it could probably whole twice as many customers.

This restaurant does show up in google search, however the feeling you got there was totally different from the first guys place.

I mean the food was decent (not as good as the other place) and the decor was alright, but the overall feeling you got was that the owner was more interested in making a profit than actually being hospitable.

When he realized that we weren’t interested in his efforts to up sell catering packs and the sort, he became quite rude as well.

We never went back to that place, and I always warn my friends who mention they might want to check it out.

Anyway, on paper, this guys restaurant definitely had a higher chance of getting walk in’s off the street than the other restaurant due to the better location (aka SEO).

Despite this though, the restaurant remained fairly empty during dinner with only one other small table being occupied while we were there.

Alot of people also passed by, and while a few would stop to read the menu, most of them would just continue walking past the restaurant.

The point of this whole story

Since visiting the first restaurant, I have since personally brought more than 10 of my closest friends and recommended it to many others.

The reason being that when I visit that restaurant, it’s not just the food that’s great. It’s the whole atmosphere and feeling of caring created by the owner and his family that keeps me coming back for more.

He might have the worse “SEO” in the history of restaurants, but I know where his restaurant is and I’m more than enthusiastic to share its location with anyone who will listen.

If you’ve ever been thinking of starting an online business, my advice is to simply be passionate about what you do and to care about the people who you serve on your site.

Passion is infectious and people like people who sincerely care about them.

If you do that, you won’t need to be on the first page of Google for customers to find you. The people who you’ve served will point new customers right to your door step, and there’s no better customer than one that’s arrived to your site on a recommendation.

If all the search engines were to disappear tomorrow, the only online businesses that would continue to flourish are the ones that have a dedicated following of people that have your web address memorized so they can always find you.

Connect with a customers heart and they’ll always know where to find you and they’ll want to share you with others.

Related posts:

1. DIY Website Part 1: Rules for choosing a name for your website
2. OEB 1 | What is your passion?
3. Donanza – A Freelance and Telecommuting Job Search Engine

If you can’t view the video here on the screen, the original link to the video is here.

This seems to be a TED week for me.

I was reminded of a talk I had listened to a few months back that really helped strengthen my resolve on why I believe the threat of getting fired is the worse way to encourage employees to be productive.

In the video above, Dan Pink talks about the science of motivation and how the carrot stick approach that most businesses are using to encourage productivity is becoming less effective as businesses rely on creativity and ingenuity to make progress.

He gives an example of a company that encourages Results Only Work Environments (ROWE) in which employees are free to do whatever they want as long as they get the job done.

He states that this approach has proven to do more for boosting productivity and ingenuity and uses a comparison between Encarta and Wikipedia as an example of what can happen when you put the carrot stick approach up against the ROWE.

The reason why this video excites me so much is because the ROWE approach just by its very definition is saying that by letting your employees choose where, when and how they work as long as they get the job done (and you pay them fairly as well), your business will become better.

He strengthens his case with real life examples of business’s and the results of experiments conducted by notable scientists and economists.

If you are a manager, team leader or anyone who is in a position of authority, it would do you well to watch the video above if you’re still using the carrot and stick approach to motivate the people under you.

Obviously there is more to ROWE than simply just letting your employees run free, however there are merits to the approach that I know from personal experience are worth exploring and applying.

No related posts.

photo credit: divemasterking2000

Chase your passion and the money will follow. Concise, inspiring, yet not very clear advice.

While this might be easier for some people to do, namely people who already know what they are passionate about, then this isn’t a problem.

On the other hand you have people who don’t know what they are passionate about, what do you do with these people?

The problem with the idea of passion is that it basically refers to the thing you care most about at that time.

After running a 50 mile marathon, I might be passionate for hydration, food and rest.

After being away for 5 weeks on an offshore rig, I might be passionate to go home and spend some time with my wife.

After spending 10 years working a soul sucking 9-to-5 job that I never really enjoyed, I might have a passion to just hang around at home and relax.

Starting to get the picture?

Not everyone has a passion for music or painting or teaching parrots to talk or making your own home made soy milk.

Most people are “hobby” type of passion dry because, they have spent so much of their time dedicated to their work that they have abandoned all the things they may have used to like. The result being that they no longer know what they do like anymore.

If you’re still following me, then good cause there’s more.

Most normal people have multiple interests/passions across their lifetime, and people will either add onto their current interests or get bored and move on to something else.

For instance, when I was still in primary school I had a passion for reading sci-fi and adventure novels and playing with lego and would spend every afternoon either reading or building something.

When I was a teenager up until college, I was really into sports and physical activity, basketball and martial arts in particular.

I also really enjoy playing video games, watching Japanese anime and playing the guitar so as you can see I am a very well balanced individual.

The greatest hang up people have (I believe) and that I used to have is that everyone is trying to find that one thing that are destined to be passionate about.

I do believe that this kind of passion exists, however without the opportunity to explore and try new things, the odds of finding it are slim to non.

Having a full-time 9-to-5 job is not the most conducive life situation in the world when it comes to attempting to find your passion, unless of course that job IS your passion.

The best way to start finding your passion, I believe,  is to start going out there and doing things you like or that interest you.

Join a club, start a hobby, try something you’ve never dared to try because you always felt “you didn’t have the time” because of your job or some other responsibility.

The unfortunate truth though is that yes, most people really do not have the time because of their current 9-to-5 job.

Calling it a 9-to-5 job is too nice. In some places people work from 8am to 7pm or 6am to 10pm or longer. If you have a full-time job, chances are you work way more than just 8 hours a day.

This is why I feel nobody has the time to just have fun anymore and as a result don’t know what they are passionate about or interested in anymore.

The truth is, you do have a passion. You just haven’t acknowledged it yet because it sounds kind of silly when you say it.

If you don’t have a passion for anything in particular and life feels dry, mundane and you are sick to death with your job… then you might have a passion to feel alive.

You just want to feel that excitement in your life that you felt when you were younger or when you were doing that thing that really got your blood moving.

I think sometimes we feel like we have to sacrifice that in order to fulfill our responsibilities to our family and to the people who depend on us.

I do not totally agree with this, because I believe that if you are happy as in genuinely happy with full awareness of all your responsibilities, you will work harder to make the people around you happy.

Now before you start thinking that I’m some irresponsible person trying to tell you to drop everything in order to find your passion then hold on, because that is not what I am proposing at all.

What I am proposing is a way that you can use in order to fulfill your obligations whilst working on discovering that thing that makes you feel alive.

The first step to achieving this I believe is to start creating time for yourself, and deep down I believe you already know this.

This is why I guess people are so drawn to the idea of working from home, because it appears to promise a kind of escape out of the system that has lead to the demise of your health, hobbies and relationships.

In a lot of cases, people believe that in order to work from home, they need to be self employed or start their own business.

The problem though is that for many people, becoming self employed or starting their own business is really really scary!

For most employees, this is almost like jumping through a curtain into a dark room where the overriding fear is an uncertainty of whether they will be able to support themselves and the people who depend on them.

In this 13 part course, I am going to introduce you to a process that will allow you to maintain your income stability while learning how self-employment or starting your own business works and then pursuing it if you want to.

Think of this as training wheels on a bicycle, where you get the chance to feel comfortable with sitting on the bike to develop your balance without worrying about falling and hurting yourself.

Eventually, once you have developed a stable income from self-employed or your business, then you can let go of your job based income whenever you feel you are ready.

The goal here is a gradual transition of the source of your income in order to prevent any potential financial risk or risk to any future career prospects (if you worry about such things).

If you’re not interested in becoming self employed but still want to work from home, I also teach you how you can achieve greater flexibility in your current job or to find a job that offers better work life balance opportunities.

I aim to teach you how to develop more freedom and flexibility in your life right from the start, whether you’re self employed or have a business or not.

The system is cake first, then effort for more cake.

If you don’t get a taste of the thing you want the most, you may never have the drive to pursue it. If the thing you want is freedom, then I’ll show you how you a method that will allow you to get a taste of it right now so that you have more and more drive to keep pushing forward.

Related posts:

1. OEB 5 | The Benefits of Telecommuting
2. What Martial Arts Taught Me About Finding Your Passion
3. Make Time To Find Your Passion Before Your Time Runs Out

When I first went to college, the place I studied was pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

The closest city was at least an hour away and I because of that I decided (or more like it was decided for me) that I would live on campus.

I knew that if I didn’t find something to do after classes I would probably lose my mind.

The day that all the clubs were recruiting new members I was the first on the scene.

It’d been already 2 weeks since my classes had started and I was anxious to join something so I could meet new people and try out some of the martial arts clubs I had seen being promoted.

I’d trained in martial arts when I was younger and I had always enjoyed the training. The college I went to had 6 martial arts clubs. I joined 3.

At first I was very excited because I had never trained in those martial arts styles before.

Aikido, Karate, Kubudo (Karate and Kubudo were under one club) and Wushu. All very different styles with different approaches to each.

For 4 nights a week I would train and by Friday I would be exhausted.

I enjoyed all the classes, but eventually I discovered that I had was very strongly drawn to Wushu.

For those of you who do not know what Wushu is, it is basically the term that Chinese use to call Martial Arts, more generally known as Kung Fu.

The reason I was drawn to it was because it fulfilled alot of what I had hoped to gain from training.

In order to do the style of Wushu I was attempting to get good at, you needed speed, strength, flexibility, balance, endurance and grace.

A lot of people would argue that all martial arts require this to some degree or another, however alot of people would also argue that Jet Li and Donnie Yen are way more fun to watch than Walker Texas Ranger.

Below is just a sample of what I’m talking about, and if you want to see more, just type “Wushu” in Youtube.

Some people would debate with me on the merits of wushu as  a martial art, but I really don’t care.

I didn’t join wushu because I wanted to fight anyone, I did it because it was challenging, beautiful, helped me achieve overall physical fitness and most importantly, I didn’t get bored.

Also, there was no bullshit when it came to wushu training. He was the strictest teacher I ever had (at first anyway), though he pushed me harder than any of my other martial arts teachers.

He also didn’t charge fees through the roof which helped as well, and you could tell he wanted you to get good.

It was one of the most unpopular clubs in college and we only had 5 serious members and for good reason.

Every time we tried to recruit, most people gave up during the first class.

The problem with wushu as a popular martial art (and starting it at a late age) is that if you didn’t train hard and seriously, you’d never get strong enough to do the forms, and there is no way to cheat your way out of a form.

Giving up or even laughing in the middle of practicing a form was usually met with a cold silent stare from our teacher. Going through this initially almost made me quit the club, though eventually it just motivated me to work harder.

Anyway, I could go on and on about Wushu, but my point is that my passion for wanting to train wushu gave me the strength to push past all the obstacles that stood in my way.

Another thing that didn’t help was that me and my teacher didn’t even speak the same language.

This used to frustrate my teacher, though eventually he realized that I wasn’t going anywhere and got the other club members to translate for him.

What Martial Arts Taught Me About Finding Your Passion

It took trying several different martial arts for me to find the style that suited me the best and I believe that finding you passion works in the same way.

If you don’t already have something you are passionate about, you need to start moving in the direction of things that interest you.

As you move forward, you will make clearer distinctions of the things that really interest you and you will gradually get closer to finding your passion.

If I hadn’t gone and done all the different martial arts and made the distinctions of what I liked and didn’t like, I may never have realized that wushu was really the martial art that I wanted to do.

Wushu has given me an outlet to express myself and I think at the end of the day, that’s what we all need.

If there is a chance or even an inkling of the possibility of something you could be passionate about, you need to start moving in that direction if you ever hope to find it.

There will always be work, there will always be things that need to be done, but you only have one opportunity at life, and I believe it should be lived with passion.

Living your passion and living responsibly needn’t be two sides of the same coin. I believe you can do both, as long as you are willing to try.

“Love is more powerful than kicking ass” ~Jet Li

Related posts:

1. Make Time To Find Your Passion Before Your Time Runs Out
2. OEB 1 | What is your passion?
3. Why I believe sincerity and passion is more important than SEO

photo credit: vvvracer

I’m going to be frank. If you don’t make time for your passion now, you’re going to regret it later.

Most people I know complain about their job, about not having time, about not being happy.. about not having any passion for life.

Floating through life without direction, the closest I believe a lot of people get to realizing that we only have one life to live is when they hit their mid life crisis, look back and think “Sh*t, where did the time go??”

That’s not where I want to be in 40 years, and I’m going to take a stab in the dark and guess that isn’t where you want to be either.

We push all the things we want to do in life to the end of our to-do list, busying ourselves with our work, raising a family, squeezing in moments of relaxation and just trying our best to cope with the constant demands on our time.

I am scared… no, TERRIFIED by the idea of looking back on my life and regretting not having lived my life to the fullest.

Even when I look back to high school and I reflect on all the things I didn’t do because I was too scared in that moment to do it… man, those moments could have been awesome memories to look back on.

The turning point for me to finally escape the 9-to-5 was when I realized that if I didn’t do something to change my work and income situation in the long run, me and my partner would never get to see our families or friends back in our home countries.

Me and my partner are both from different countries and at the moment we are both living and working in Australia.

Add that to the fact that we each only get 4 weeks of leave a year and you can see where the problems start in trying to organize trips home.

I made the decision that I was not willing let my relationships with the people I care about dwindle and die over the years because I missed out on the important occasions in their lives.

I also made the decision that I would not wait until I was too old to brush my own teeth before I set out to try all the things I wanted to try before I died.

If you spent even 6 months of your entire life focused on learning from a mentor how to create a sufficient personal income for yourself so you won’t be bound to a 9-to-5 job, do you think you would make some progress?

What if you spend 1 year, 2 years or 3, do you really honestly believe that you would not succeed??

Compare that to 40 years of sitting in an office forever believing that self employment or having your own business is too difficult or impossible… YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME??!?

Seriously, what is holding you back? If you’re being honest with yourself, I will tell you that it is your lack of knowledge on what is currently possible which in turn is causing you to feel afraid to move away from the comfort and certainty of the 9-to-5.

For whatever you know right now, if you aren’t taking action its because what you currently know isn’t enough. You can earn a full time living from the comfort of your home, doing what you love and living the lifestyle you’ve always wanted.

In 2010 we we are at a point in history where it is possible for you to get in touch with virtually anybody in the world in some shape or form right from your computer.

Never in the history of man has there ever been a time when the world has been so connected, and it’s only just begun.

Services and businesses no longer need to be limited to the distance and price of physical travel. Nowadays, you can work with anyone, anywhere.

So ask yourself this question, “What is your passion?”

If all you hear in response to this question is a deafening silence, then instead ask yourself, “What would you like to do that would make you feel excited and alive?”

This will be your fuel and the thing that drives you to look past your fear and move forward.

EDUCATE yourself! There is so much good information out there (this blog included) that can teach you what you need to know.

At the same time don’t listen to every self proclaimed Guru out there who claims to have the turn key answer.

There is no turn key answer to life… and finding your passion is about having the time to look inwards and finding that thing or things that make you just want to jump out of bed each day and feel excited, happy and alive.

9-to-5 was hindering me from discovering my passion, so I got out of it.

When you don’t feel that constant push to keep moving… life slows down and things start coming into perspective.

Along with this, you’ll also start to slowly rediscover the things that make your heart go *Thump *Thump *Thump.

When you can feel your heart racing and your eyes light up when you talk about the thing you do for a living, that’s how you know you’ve found your passion.

Start looking for it now, because I can promise you that if there is one thing that sucks more than anything, it’s looking back on moments in your life and wishing you had had the guts to live it.

The next time you feel bogged down with life, step outside, take a deep breath and shout, “[sexual act] THIS [bodily waste], I’M GONNA [process of sexual act] DIE ONE DAY AND I WANT TO [process of sexual act] DIE  HAPPY”

If nothing else, it just feels good to scream.

Related posts:

1. What Martial Arts Taught Me About Finding Your Passion
2. OEB 1 | What is your passion?
3. Why I believe sincerity and passion is more important than SEO

Can you think of anything that you would rather be doing with your life than what you are doing now? Did you somehow convince yourself that it wasn’t worth pursuing because there was no future in it?

That is process of what I like to call dream smashing. It is the process that many people go through in which they at some point in their lives decide to take a hammer to the thing they would like to do the most and smash it.

The question I believe we all need to ask ourselves is, “Why?”

An old saying I used to hear was that, “You can’t live on dreams”. That is fair enough and it does apply in some cases. I mean, if you’re so poor that you can barely feed yourself let alone your family, setting off to pursue your dream of being a professional circus clown might seem a tad irresponsible to some people.

While you may not pursue that dream right from the start, it doesn’t mean that you should let it go. For me, dreams are the fuel that give me a reason a live. They give me a reason to get up every morning and give my day’s a purpose.

I remember back when I was convinced I could never achieve my dreams and that my dreams were, and I quote “a pointless waste of time”. Daily life was a struggle between getting by with my responsibilities and trying to find meaning in things that others would have me believe are “the things that will make me happy”.

Getting advice on how to be happy from people who don’t know themselves  is like asking a spammer how to start a successful internet business. You get a lot of advice but nothing particularly useful.

Over the last year of working from home, I have come to clarify some definitions  with myself on what really makes me happy, and these include:

1. Being comfortable with being myself
2. Having the freedom to express myself in any shape or form
3. Having the freedom to pursue interests
4. Having the time to spend on the things I enjoy and with the people I love
5. Having the freedom to be there for the people I care for
6. Having friends who accept me as I am and do not judge me
7. Being able to truly help people in ways that change their lives

If you’ll notice, non of these reasons include money. This doesn’t mean that I don’t think money is important. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to do many things. The point is simply not to make money the end goal.

To say that having money will make you happy is like saying having a hammer will make you happy.

It isn’t the tool itself that makes you happy (unless you have some weird carpentry fetish), it’s knowing what you can do with the tool that gives the tool its true value.  Having the tool can bring you closer to realizing your dreams, but if you have no dreams to chase then the tool is worthless.

If you have a dream, something you want to do before your life is over and the only thing that is stopping you is lack of time and money, DON’T SMASH IT.

Money can be earned and time can be made as long as you have a strong enough reason to have it. Dreams can be that reason, so if your reason for wanting to escape the office is to pursue them, then hold on to that dream with everything you got.

No related posts.

As I mentioned before, if you don’t know what your target is, it is going to be very difficult for you to hit it. Knowing your definite major purpose should be the first thing you do before you start taking action on anything.

The easiest way to start doing this is to get a piece of paper and start writing down all the things that you want to gain from achieving a particular goal.

We will use working from home as an example. On your sheet of paper, write in big clear words on the top “Why I Want To Work From Home”.

Next, without judging yourself whatsoever, start writing down as many reasons as you can without stopping. The whole idea is to get every underlying reason out of your head so you can view them one by one with more clarity.

Some things you might write are “So I can sleep in late”,”So I can spend time with the kids”,”Because I’m lazy”… it doesn’t matter what you write, just write. By the end of it, you should have been able to fill up the entire piece of paper.

Next, go over the list and read aloud each and every reason paying attention to how you feel as you read each one. Your feelings will tell you which reasons are the ones that mean the most to you.

After doing this exercise, the reasons that I eventually found I resonated with the most were the ones that related to freedom and contribution. I realized that I wanted to do it because I wanted freedom to choose what I did and where I wanted to be.

I also wanted to be able to spend my time constructively by helping other people.

Eventually I was able to further hone down these reasons into clear goals which included starting this website so I could reach more people and share what I feel will  be valuable information for people who are seeking it.

Summary

Defining clearly what you want out of your life will not only help you approach each day with better focus, you will be able to make choices more confidently by knowing that the actions you are taking daily are moving you closer or further away from where you eventually want to be in life.

The goals and actions relating to my definite purpose may change over time, however I know that no matter what I choose to do, I am always moving in the direction that is consistent with who I am and who I want to be.

Related posts:

1. Defining your goals: Understanding why you want to Telework
2. How to Live Purposefully
3. OEB 2 | The Purpose Of Your Base Income

If you ask a person what they would like to drink, their answer may vary depending on the situation. If you ask a man dying of thirst the same question, without a second thought he might just yell out WATER.

Now that’s clarity, and you want to have that kind of clarity when it comes to your reason as to why you want to work from home.

Some of the answers pouring from your mind may include wanting to be able to sleep in, to have more time with the kids, to be free from office stress and so on.

Whatever you reason is, you need to be absolutely clear on why you want to do it, otherwise you will give up in your attempt when you face challenges.

If you don’t know where your destination is, you’ll have a hard time getting there. In the same way, if you don’t know what your motivations are to work from home, you’ll have a hard time following through with the necessary actions to make it happen.

Related posts:

1. How to Determine Your Definite Major Purpose
2. Why Teleworking Is A Faster Way To Work From Home Than Online Business
3. The 2 Key Reasons Why Most People Think Working From Home is Difficult or Impossible

Before when I used to work in an office, I would stumble out of bed, stumble to the bathroom, stumble into my clothes, stumble to the door, into the car, out of the car, into the office, through work, through the day, through life.

Everyday, was the same and I was pretty unhappy. That was, until I decided to do something about it.

The thing I love about being able to work from home is that I get to design my day. I get to choose to an extent what I do and when I do it. I’m not saying this so much to brag (maybe alittle), but more to make a point, and the point is that now I am more in control of my life than I have ever been.

So what’s the big deal about having control? Well, if you are the type of person who feels run by your job, i’m sure you can appreciate the ability to be in control. When you are in control of your time, of when, where and how, you have the power of choice. That is the key to living purposefully.

When you have a choice, you are forced to make a decision. You are forced to decide what you will do with your time and freedom.

Most people do not need to make this choice, as this choice is made for them the moment they clock into work. For 8 hours a day, you don’t need to decide anything that is pivotal to the improvement of your existence on this planet. You just need to sit, stay and do your job like a good office worker.

By the time the work day is over and you head home, there really aren’t many decisions left to be made either. The things you must do upon leaving the office include eating and sleeping. The things you could do may include hanging out with friends, playing the PS3, going to the gym, watching a movie and any number of things to relieve the stress from the work day.

Anyway, before I digress, back to my point of living purposefully.

When the 8 hour block of your work day is gone, nobody is going to tell you what to do with that time. It can even seem like a scary prospect at first. It’s like someone giving you a million dollars.

At first you’re going to spend all the money on the things you think you want, like toys,cars,tv, travelling, a whole bunch of fun stuff. Eventually though, you hit a point where all these things just don’t give you that excitement, happiness or even fulfillment that you used to.

The same with working from home. You’ll feel like you have all the time in the world to sleep, watch tv and play video games, but after awhile it gets old. You don’t feel the fun in it anymore and you want to do something meaningful, something that makes you feel like your life has purpose.

So if I had to draw my own map of how I live purposefully, it would look something like this.

1. Have the thing I want the most – Work From Home
2. Do everything I ever thought I could do because I can work from home – Sleep till noon, watch movies all day, play video games
3. Realize that all that stuff doesn’t make me happy and start thinking seriously about what I could do to make my life feel more meaningful and do it – BINGO

Once you’ve gone through those stages, living purposefully is going to be something you do automatically in order to make yourself happy. It is a natural human goal to find ones purpose. The problem is that most people never get to step 1 and they spend their entire lives  bouncing between feeling stressed and finding temporary release from it.

Working from home has given me a means of living my dream of being in control of my time and not feeling stress on a day to day basis. From achieving that I was eventually able to discover the thing that made me feel like my life had meaning.

Now instead of waking up in a zombie like state, I wake up and I know exactly what I want my life to be and what I want to do with my day. I hope that one day you will be able to experience this as well cos seriously, it is awesome.

Related posts:

1. How to Determine Your Definite Major Purpose