Tag: profiting from your passions

  • 10 Steps for Turning Your Passions, Skills, or Interests into a Business

    The books and the workshops are out there. Monetize your passion…. Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow ….  Start Your Business Now ….. Making a Living Without a Job….. So how do you actually do this?

    Step 1: Brainstorm.  Take a moment, or hours, or even days  to write all your ideas down. Do not think about what will work and what might not work.. This is your brain storming session and you are allowed to write down whatever comes to mind.  Turn your censor off.

    Step 2. Make a List. Take the list of ideas from your brain storming session and write each idea on a separate piece of paper or index card. Use as many cards as you need.  Each idea should have its own card.

    Step 3: Categorize.  Look at each of your ideas, and sort them out, put them in categories.  Are any of them similar?  Do some of them go naturally together so they all might be done within one business?  For example, you love to cook and you love to help people with dietary restraints find foods and recipes they can use.  These two ideas would go in the same pile. The cards that state your love of doing stained glass and decorating your home for the holidays will go into separate piles.

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  • Retire or Re-tire

    For the past several years, I have thought that it was the baby-boomers, now that they are approaching retirement age, who had a problem with the word and concept, “retirement.”  Recently while cleaning out bookshelves, I found a vintage book, Paths to Power,  from the early days of women’s studies programs.  First published in 1980, Natasha Josefowitz ended her book with a chapter titled “Re-tire to Re-start.” She briefly began with the necessity to plan your retirement, if that is what you wanted to do and her planning advice concerned not only finances, but exercise, nutrition, using your talents, and keeping your mind active.  As for retirement she admitted it could be wonderful if you were using this time period to START something, rather than STOP.  The remainder of the chapter focused on your other option – Re-tire!

    Re-tire – put some new tires on the old car to make it run like new.  Then roll along or bump along depending on what new roads you decide to travel.  With your experience, she suggested that it may be time to consult, teach, or counsel (the coaching field had not been invented yet) or write.  But if the re-tired vehicle was looking for a more exciting trek, entrepreneurship was among her suggestions.

    Seems at least some of us read about reinventing retirement thirty years ago and promptly forgot about it.  But the seeds were sown.  Maybe this is why Profiting from Passions Coaching (R) is one of my encore careers.

    Originally published in my blog: Reinvent Retirement Jan. 2011

     

  • Passion, Purpose, and a Happy Life

    Does your work – full-time or part-time need to help you fulfill your purpose in life.  If you can combine your skills, talents, and passion to fulfill needs, you probably have work that is ideal for you, but is this necessary to be happy?  Must you combine all four in your part-time business?   I have been trained in Profiting from Your Passions coaching ® and although passion is in the title, individuals may choose their business niche for a reason other than passion.

    Chris Attwood and Janet Bray Attwood are the creators of the Passion Test, so obviously passion is most important.  Their recent post provides plenty of good information …….

    How to Be Happy in Life- The Most Important Decision You’ll Ever Make

    BY CHRIS ATTWOOD

    “Whenever you’re faced with a choice, a decision or an opportunity,choose in favor of your passions.”     – from The Passion Test

    Janet and I often say the sentence above is the most important part of The Passion Test Process. We ask our Passion Test facilitators to memorize it and use it in their workshops. We repeat it over and over and over again.

    Why?

    Because your passions are the pipelines to your soul. They connect you with your soul’s purpose in life. They are the light guiding you to fulfill your unique and special reason for being alive. As we say in The Passion Test:

    “What you love and God’s will for you are one and the same.”

    It’s not an accident you love the things you love. It’s not an accident you care about the things you care about. Nor is it an accident that when you are disconnected from those things you start feeling miserable and have to drag yourself through your day.

    These are all ways that life gives you feedback, telling you whether you are on the path of your purpose or off. If you listen, you’re passions will always tell you how to be happy in life.

    Finding Your Passion and Using Your Talents

    In the world of business, people talk about “beating out the competition,” but you have an unfair advantage. When you’re aligned with your passions, there is no competition. No one can fulfill you unique role in the world except you.

    The only time you have to worry about “the competition” is when you’re trying to be something or someone other than yourself. When you make decisions based first on money, rather than the things you love and care about most, then there is a real chance you’ll find “the competition” is beating you and you’ll begin to suffer.

    Passion + Skill + Talent + Need = A Purpose in Life

    In the same way that your passions emerge in you from somewhere inside, you are born with certain innate talents. There are things that come easily for you and are difficult for others. Just as it’s not an accident you love the things you love, it’s not an accident you are good at the things you are good at.

    As you get older, you’ll discover that your talents intertwine with your skills–the things you’ve learned to do well through education, training or experience. Now, here’s an interesting point:

    You can make a great living with just your skills and talents–but you will never be fulfilled until these two are aligned with your passions as well.

    We all Share a Common Purpose

    While you have a unique and special purpose in life, there is a common purpose we all share. It’s to serve each other.

    When you discover the reality that “there are no accidents in creation,” you’ll begin to see that the intersection of your skills, your talents, and your passions is where the unique way you can serve others is located.

    Here’s an interesting fact:

    The greater the need of others you’re uniquely able to serve, the more impact you can have and interestingly, the more money you will earn or raise. If you’re Mother Teresa, you may not create great wealth for yourself, but you will still attract millions and millions of dollars (or Euros, yen, etc.).

    And it’s useful to be aware that if you have a great desire to be wealthy, there’s a reason for that. It’s part of the unique role in which you are able to serve. If you don’t have that desire, there’s a reason for that as well. You don’t need to be wealthy to fulfill your special role.

    Every part of your life is designed to guide you to play the role you were born to play in the world.

    You just have to listen and know that we all share a common purpose in life.

    Discover How to be Happy in Life

    It begins by finding your passion. The most important decision you can make in your life.

    That’s the purpose of The Passion Test process.

    We created a modified version of the first step in The Passion Test process that was published in the September, 2013 issue of Success Magazine. They’ve kindly allowed us to make it available to you. Just click the link below to download the article and take The Passion Test again, in a new and fun way.

    The Passion Test for Success

    Thank you for reading this article on how to be happy in life and finding your passion and purpose in life.

    Topics included in this article are:

    Common Purpose

    Purpose in Life

    How to be Happy in Life

    Finding Your Passion

     

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