As a life and career coach, I’ve helped thousands of people discover a new direction full of passion and meaning.

One of the best tools is an inward search.

The following questions can help you see your life and its possibilities through a completely new perspective.

Write your answers in your journal and give yourself plenty of time to expand on your insights.

1. As a child, what did you dream of being when you grew up?

It’s helpful to get in touch with your earlier fascinations. In early childhood, it was easier to live from our imagination without all of the interference from our adopted limiting beliefs.

2. What are some of your favorite hobbies or activities—in the present and in the past—and why?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could turn your favorite pastime into your dream career?

We choose hobbies and activities that most likely resonate with our unique personality as well as our physical, mental and emotional nature. They are an extension of our inner voice…

Continued in her article: 10 Questions to Jumpstart Your Dream Career

“For me, I want inspiration. When it comes, that becomes my new intention. But the intention comes from inspiration, not from limitation. The intention comes from the Divine, not my pipsqueak ego.”

Lefkoe comments: “Joe made an important distinction between inspiration, which comes from who we really are (the ‘creator’) and intention, which comes from who we think we are (the ego, the ‘creation’).

“Because our creation is pretty much run by our already-existing beliefs and conditionings, our intentions are not really freely chosen. Our intentions are determined by our past, or, to be more precise, the meaning we gave past experiences.”

Continued in article What Drives You: “Intention” or “Inspiration”? by Morty Lefkoe.

Joe Vitale is author of many titles including The Awakening Course.

Morty Lefkoe is creator of the Natural Confidence Program [See testimonial by Jack Canfield.]

Try his Lefkoe Process and eliminate a self-limiting belief free at ReCreate Your Life.

I’ve always been embarrassed by my history on the job.

So many failed idealistic attempts to change things. So many years working at jobs where I didn’t fit and wasn’t using my talents.

If I’d understood a bit more about giftedness, I might have sought out more appropriate situations.

The research of Roland S. Persson, Ph.D. focuses on giftedness and talent, with an emphasis on gifted individuals in society.

Dr. Persson says the workplace can often be difficult for high ability people.

The gifted have problems with co-workers because of being more efficient, knowing more, and learning faster than the more regular workforce. This creates social tension.

They also tend to run into trouble with their managers, who do not understand them and who fail to provide appropriate work suited to their skills and efficiency.

However, 25% of the studied group did indeed thrive and could not imagine having a better and more rewarding job than they already had. This group was comprised of top executives and individuals running their own business. This is not a surprising finding.

It has been known for a long time that one of the main factors in creating work satisfaction is to experience that your own effort, suggestions, and decisions have a direct influence on your work situation.

In other words, you have to be allowed to perceive yourself as being important, with a view to making a difference where you work.

For the academically gifted, this seems only possible if they position themselves as top executives or run their own business. In most other types of work, they risk becoming misfits of sorts…

Gifted individuals interested in, for example, technology, medicine, or finance—“the nerds”—all serve supportive functions in society. They are rarely controversial because their skills contribute towards maintaining society, its leaders on all levels, and its power structure as a whole.

Also individuals gifted in sports, music, and the arts are much appreciated. A few are rewarded more for the moments of release from stress that their gifts offer. They allow us for a moment to escape into a very positive experience…

The greater the prestige to be lost, the more severe the battle to retain dominance and authority. Or, as Ellen Winner (1996) put it Gifted Children: The gifted are risk-takers with a desire to shake things up.

Most of all they have the desire to set things straight, to alter the status quo and shake up established tradition. Creators do not accept the prevailing view. They are oppositional and discontented.

From An Interview with Roland S. Persson: The Talent of Being Inconvenient.

Related

Post: Giftedness in the work environment.

Site: High Ability

Articles: High Ability – gifted/talented

Books:

Heroes, Nerds or Martyrs? On Giftedness and the Leaderships of Tomorrow, by Roland S Persson.

The Gifted Adult: A Revolutionary Guide for Liberating Everyday Genius, by Mary-Elaine Jacobsen

~~

giftedness and leadership, gifted adult books, gifted adults in the workplace, gifted talented characteristics, gifted adult information, giftedness and social change

The Brain Fitness for Seniors blog has a quick summary:

1. Meaning, Identity and Purpose Are Not Fixed. They naturally shift and change throughout life. A lot of our suffering over lack of meaning is because we’re clinging to an old, outdated purpose and identity; it can be resolved by redefining ourselves in our current existence. Just because an old purpose of job or family raising is no longer relevant does not mean that life itself is no longer relevant.

2. Take Responsibility. MAKE meaning. There’s a tendency in American culture to approach purpose and meaning passively, to see it as something imposed by external forces, to allow ourselves to be defined by our jobs, families, God. But we don’t have to be passive. We can be active, discover our own meanings, even create them, carving our own paths of purpose.

3. Meaning Is Not Universal, But Individual. Culturally, some purposes are viewed as more meaningful than others… but ultimately, what we find as meaningful is very personal. What we find meaningful is influenced by our personality, temperament, belief system, and values. That’s part of why we have to take responsibility, ourselves… because only we know what is really important and meaningful to us.

4. Meaning Can Be Large or Small. Big purposes are easy to spot… volunteering at a soup kitchen, starting a new charity organization, taking over day care for your grandkids. But small purposes are just as important, if not so grand…. watering a pot of petunias, feeding wild birds, maintaining friendships, or just smiling at a stranger.

5. We Can Have Multiple Meanings At The Same Time. Some people have one huge guiding purpose that runs throughout their whole life… a belief in God, a sense of civic responsibility, building a personal fortune, devotion to family. But we don’t *HAVE* to have a single guiding purpose, in order to be meaningful. Our actions can multiple, small impacts on the world around us, and it doesn’t matter if they fall into some grand pattern or not.

Eric Maisel has just published his new Meaning Solution Program.

Free introduction to the Program: 15 Great Meaning Opportunities.

Dr. Eric Maisel is “an author, family therapist and cultural observer and is widely regarded as America’s foremost creativity coach. His more than 30 books include Coaching the Artist Within, Creativity for Life, Creative Recovery, Fearless Creating and The Atheist’s Way.”

Learn more about his books plus Creativity Coaching Training and Meaning Coach Training at EricMaisel.com

Related:
Articles by Eric Maisel
Meaning and Purpose section

~~

Eric Maisel, meanng and purpose, self concept, what’s a meaningful life

“It’s like a director saying to me ‘cross stage left but don’t move.’  I’m stuck.  I can’t complete both directions because they cancel each other out.”

Dee Wallace in our podcast – hear it at Inner Talent Interviews.

“It has been the best kept secret down through the ages because it is so simple.  Truly, the last place it would ever occur to most of us to find the sacred would be in the commonplace of our everyday lives and all about us in nature and in simple things.”

- Alice Howell, The Dove in the Stone: Finding the Sacred in the Commonplace.

Related: Meaning and purpose articles

In a New York Times interview, she talks about work and purpose, among other topics.

Q. You work at the intersection of good work habits and psychology or self-awareness. What’s a tip-off that a time management or productivity problem might be better treated by a good therapist than a productivity expert?

A. If you are suffering from extreme paralysis, anxiety, or self-hatred over not being able to do the things you want or need to do, then see a counselor.

But it’s hard to say where the line is. It all goes back to the larger question: What do I want to be doing with my life?

Some go to church, some to therapists, some to mentors to answer it.

Many things on Lifehacker are my way of counseling myself.

The whole point of thinking about this low-level, rubber-to-the-road stuff is to get to the bigger questions of where you want to be. And then to analyze if a task serves your larger goal. If I’m spending this moment right now on the phone doing this interview, I have to ask myself if this serves my greater purpose?

She also comments:

Technology is deeply embedded in my life, but nothing can replace the feel of a pen against paper. I use paper and pen to brainstorm a lot. In fact, we just ran a feature story on all the neat things you can do with paper. It’s the ultimate tool. It’s affordable, compatible with everything, widely available. I also like it as a change of pace. Staring at a glowing screen all day is not a good thing for humans.

From Clearing Up a Blurry Work Life, By Marci Alboher, NYTimes.com July 29, 2008

Gina Trapani [site] is the founding editor and lead blogger for Lifehacker, and author of Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better.

creative meaning, find your purpose, meaningful life, life purpose, work and meaning

“Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.”

Michelle Obama – at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to help reopen its new American wing.

[Los Angeles Times May 19 2009]

From her article On Meaning: The Silver Lining of The Recession.

Human beings have often engaged in the search for meaning, but today’s economic downturn has brought the subject to light in a new way.

People are re-evaluating whether their financial power to accumulate possessions and wealth is the only determining factor of their happiness and success. Some are being forced to shrink their activities, their budgets and their ambitions and many report that it is not all bad.

Sure, economic woes are scary and many are frightened of how long they may last, but those that can keep their wits about them are also re-discovering what really matters to them.

personal motivation, developing creativity, find your true potential, personal growth development, positive psychology, self-exploration

“Our positive emotions evoke thought-action tendencies in humans that broaden human attachment to others and to community service. From thence comes meaning and purpose.”

He adds, “Both cognition and emotion are important in creating meaning, but sometimes the limbic system is ignored in favor of the neocortex. We need to ask ourselves: Does the meaning in our life come from the development of limbic love and compassion or does meaning come from cognitive purpose, efficacy, values and self-worth?”

Continued in article: A Fresh Take on Meaning.

~~

personal growth book, positive emotion book, meaning book, find your purpose