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"The Passion Core has a very real, tangible quality to it," she says. "I can see how what's missing from my life now, and how I can get some of that back."
- Jennifer
 

Curt Rosengren
Passion Catalyst
SM

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Wild About Work SM Newsletter #1

Welcome to the premiere issue of the Wild About Work (sm) newsletter! Thank you for subscribing. I'm excited to have you along for the ride.

Each issue of this newsletter will reflect the three core components of my work:

  • PASSION: Creating passion in your career
  • MEANING: Making a personally meaningful difference in the world
  • ABUNDANCE: Achieving 360 degree abundance

In future newsletters you will find three bite-sized articles focusing on each component. To set the stage in this first newsletter though, I am writing a single article weaving all three together.

So without further ado, let's get rolling!

- curt

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Issue #1

THE THREE-LEGGED STOOL: PASSION, MEANING, & ABUNDANCE

Think of your career as a stool with three legs - passion, meaning, and abundance. Passion comes from doing work that flows naturally with the way you're wired. Meaning comes from making a positive impact on something greater than yourself. And abundance is the environment in which it's all happening.

Take one of those legs away and, while it might still be possible to sit on that stool, it's a whole lot more wobbly. Take away two of them, and all your energy goes towards just trying to stay upright.

Passion

It all starts with passion. You can be making an amazing difference in the world and be up to your eyeballs in abundance, but if you don't love what you're doing, you won't be happy in the long run.

Loving what you do has multiple benefits, from having more energy to put into succeeding in your work, to feeling more confidence, to being less stressed.

Figuring out what makes you tick, what energizes and engages you, is the foundation on which everything else is built. That awareness creates an internal compass that lets you identify new possibilities and evaluate choices in terms of how much they're going to light you up. It gives you direction and focus.

Making a Personally Meaningful Difference

OK, so let's say you've found a path that feels juicy and fun. But there's nothing about it that makes a difference in the world that feels personally meaningful to you. Research indicates that one of the key components to happiness is a sense of meaning, of doing something that makes a difference with something bigger than yourself. Without it, one of the legs of the stool is missing.

You'll note I said, "personally meaningful difference." When it comes to making decisions about how to spend your own life, it's important to make the distinction between "meaningful" in a broad sense and "personally meaningful."

There are a bazillion different ways to make a positive impact in the world, many of which we can look at and intellectually say, yes, that's meaningful (feeding the hungry, for example). But if we don't feel drawn to it ourselves, if we don't find it compelling, then it's not personally meaningful.

Just like what makes us feel energized and alive is unique to each individual, so is what feels personally meaningful. The key is identifying what that is.

360 Degree Abundance

The third leg of the stool is abundance. More specifically, it's 360 degree abundance, which looks at abundance from a holistic perspective, not just financial.

Financial abundance is definitely a piece of it. You don't want to love your work, change the world, but never make enough money to make ends meet. That's not sustainable.

But there's more to abundance than money alone. Relationship abundance, for example - having great relationships in your life that support, nurture, and sustain you. Or health, or spiritual, or time abundance.

Because it is a whole system, abundance will always be a balancing act. You will never be able to have 100% of everything, but you can optimize it to have as much of the full picture as possible. And by taking a 360 degree view, you make sure that you don't focus so exclusively on one element that the others suffer.

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If it's time for a change but you don't know where to begin, start with The Occupational Adventure Guide: A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams.

© Curt Rosengren, 2000-2006
Passion Catalyst, PassionKey, Wild About Work, Occupational Adventure,
Occupational Adventure Guide, Passion Core, and Passion Profile are service marks of Curt Rosengren.
Trademarks pending.