Fear is Valuable

Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That’s why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance.

So if you’re paralyzed with fear, it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.

– Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

Are You Stuck at Work?

Michael Hyatt’s blog has been a part of my daily trawl for a couple of years. When he started podcasting last year, I hesitated adding him because I was already a bit overwhelmed with all of the media I was taking in, and I didn’t think adding one more voice to the pile would gain me much. That might have been the right decision at the time, but when I cleaned house earlier this year, I intentionally made room to start listening to him. This post is inspired by his podcast from April 10 on the 3 components of job satisfaction.

There are three basic components to that must be present to be satisfied with your work. You must be competent at your work. You must have a market for your work. You must have passion for your work. With all three of those, you hit the sweet spot. That can be awesome.

Having only two of those, though, isn’t so awesome. Those zones will only lead to building frustration, and it makes your life a struggle.

There’s a difference, however, between those three zones that we have to recognize. The upper left and upper right zones (hobby and failure respectively) both have fairly short life-spans as a career. Staying in those zones is discouraged by a lack of income.

That bottom middle zone, though. Boredom? You can settle down and live there. Pretty comfortably, too. And most of us do.

And that’s where the trouble starts.

We lie to ourselves and say that work is supposed to be frustrating, and we can pursue our passion when we’re not at work, or after we retire. We medicate our discontent with spending, maybe even driving ourselves into debt while chasing happiness. And it only gets worse from there.

And I know. I live in the bottom middle. I’m very competent at my day job and boy howdy is there a market for my services, but I’ve got almost no passion for it. There’s a bunch of reasons why that is, but needless to say, I’ve topped out on my job growth. I’m stuck.

Most people understand that they enjoy greater success when they feel good about their activities. […] Helping your mind to know and believe that what you do professionally is good, noble, and worthwhile in itself helps to fuel your energies and propel your efforts.

If you feel really good about your profession, you sweep others along with you on the waves of your enthusiasm for what you do. You will become known for telling entertaining accounts of amusing incidents in your professional life. Stories about events in your business day can inspire others, and they will be moved by poignant interactions you relate. These natural and positive aspects of your public persona flow inevitably from feeling pride and passion for your work.

– Rabbi Daniel Lapin

In order for you to have a chance at real success, there has to be passion. And if you don’t have passion, it shows, because boredom isn’t inspiring or engaging. Either become more passionate about the work you’re doing, or begin the process of transitioning to something where you have all three components. It’s either that, or stay stuck.

Quick Hits of the Week

• After being kicked out of the Anglican church, John Wesley would preach in the fields and drew huge crowds. When asked how he was able to attract so many, he replied, “I simply set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.” His passion was unquenchable, and people responded to it. What are you on fire for?

• Each month that you put a little money aside for retirement, what are you actually putting the money aside for? What’s your plan? I talk about things like passion in work to remind you, and myself, that we’re all put on this rock to fulfill a purpose, and that purpose doesn’t end until we stop sucking air. Don’t become obsessed with a dream of luxury that you can’t guarantee. Don’t fall into the trap of purposeless hedonism. It’s a great idea to invest in the possibilities of tomorrow, but you should never stop being productive with the one lifetime you’ve been given.

• What habits are you training yourself to keep right now for the rest of your life? Here’s 20 that you should be working on as soon as you can, and the sooner the better. Too many of them are things that I learned later than I should have.

• In America, we’ve gotten used to certain luxuries that, if they were suddenly gone, would seriously alter our lives for the worse. We take things for granted, like indoor plumbing and waste management, because they’re always there. Another thing we take for granted: Generally being free from illness. Why don’t we suffer from horrible illnesses like Small Pox or Polio? Vaccination. Massive, ubiquitous vaccination of the population. The more people who are resistant to a disease due to vaccines, the harder it is for that disease to spread to someone who’s vulnerable. Like Dana McCaffery, who caught Whooping Cough as an infant and died. Even if vaccines caused health problems like Autism (which they don’t) it’s a better solution than widespread terminal illness and higher infant mortality rates. Don’t fear the needles, people.

• Finally, this is still my favorite music mash-up. Amazing.

Is there something valuable or important or cool or funny or weird or awesome out there I missed this week? I can’t hit it all, but you should let me know about it by dropping me a line or sharing it in the comments below! I’d appreciate the heads up.

Quick Hits of the Week

• Last week, Dan Miller and his son Jared released their new book, Wisdom Meets Passion. The need for passion was a big thing for me to get my head around. See, I don’t hate doing my job, but I don’t have a passion for it. When I sought out purpose in it, I couldn’t easily lay my hands on it. Nothing about it moves me or frustrates me. I can’t see myself ever leading there. I realized I needed something more, and I began moving towards work that I could celebrate. I’m looking forward to getting this book and reading through it. Jared seems like a remarkable young man with a fresh voice that will only add to his father’s already impressive insights.

• What if everyone actually had only one soul mate, a random person somewhere in the world? Our chances of finding them would be stupidly small. We should be really glad that we can make do with most of our fellow human beings.

• It was announced last Friday that Paragon Studios, developers and maintainers of the long running MMO game City of Heroes, was being closed down immediately. City of Heroes will be shut down on November 30. Now, this was sudden, the reasons given by parent company NCSoft were vague (“a realignment of company focus”), and unsurprisingly the extremely loyal core fan base has responded with vary degrees of shock, sadness, and fury. There is an online petition calling for NCSoft to keep the game alive. There are grassroots plans to try to get the game under a new studio. However, the consensus is that these efforts have a slim chance of succeeding, despite what NCSoft’s mission statement might claim. I’ve played City on and off over the last several years. I’m going to miss it when it’s gone, and I’m going to miss the characters I was able to create. I don’t know if I’m going to find another game to replace it. I loved being able to fly.

• I love this kid’s entrepreneurial spirit. I hope he never lets it go.

Is there something valuable or important or cool or funny or weird or awesome out there I missed this week? I can’t hit it all, but you should let me know about it by dropping me a line or sharing it in the comments below! I’d appreciate the heads up. Leave your replacement game suggestions in the comments, too.