Get Lori’s new book, Tiny Buddha. It’s awesome.

Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? How can we feel happy and free? The answers to these and other life questions are gathered in Tiny Buddha, Simple Wisdom for Life’s Hard Questions.

It’s a combination of the amazing responses that she received along with her own insightful essays, and insights from wise teachers around the world and throughout time. Deschene explores how these issues have played out in her own life and offers action-oriented suggestions to help people empower themselves, even in a world with so much uncertainty. The result is a guide that helps readers discover the endless possibilities for a life lived mindfully in the present, and connected to others.

See the book on Amazon

Is being happy just something you’re born with?

These are some of the questions that happiness researchers (yes, really) have set out to answer. And probably the most famous image in happiness research is the pie graph that summarizes the answers:

Researchers studied identical and non-identical twins to work out how much influence genetics has on happiness. They followed up people at intervals after lottery wins and disabling accidents, and they asked people about their activities and how happy they were.

And they concluded that about half of your happiness is down to your genes, only ten percent comes from your circumstances – and the remaining 40% is pretty much up to you.

This is one of those scientific findings that just doesn’t seem right at first. Surely having a wonderful or terrible event in your life accounts for more than 10% of your happiness? Listen to the contestants on any reality show. “If I get sent home I’ll be devastated.” “If I won it would be the greatest thing in the world.”

Well, of course when big things happen to you, good or bad, they transform your emotional world. But only for a short time. Negative events seem to last longer than positive events – most people get over a major loss in a year or two, usually, versus about six months to get used to something that makes them happy and return to their normal happiness level. (Each case is different, and some people’s grief or happiness will last longer or shorter than this, but those are the averages.)

If you’re talking about long-term happiness, there are two big influences: the capacity for happiness that you were born with, and what you do in order to become happier.

You can’t do a thing about your genetics. But what about that last 40%? How do you become happier?

Here are three ways with good research to back them up.

1. Experience life

Having fun experiences, researchers have found, easily beats buying things in terms of how much happiness you get.

Extra points for:

• Experiences shared with other people
• Physical activity and movement
• Natural surroundings, including green spaces and, ideally, water
• Trying new and challenging things
• Engaging all your senses.

Looks like sport might have a few things going for it after all.

2. Pay attention

We’re not often encouraged to reflect on our lives or pay attention to what we’re doing. Possibly this is because we’d buy less stuff and question authority more if we did. But we’d also be happier.

Especially helpful for happiness are reflections on:

• Things you’re grateful for
• What’s important to you (your values)
• What your strengths are
• What you enjoy doing
• What’s worked well for you and given you a sense of achievement in the past.
• Keeping a journal is a great way to become more aware of your own life process and get to know yourself better.

3. Do things that mean something

We’re happiest when we’re doing something meaningful – for ourselves and for other people.

Of course, self-reflection is really the only way to figure out what will be meaningful to you. But these are the sort of things I mean:

• Creating something – whether an artwork or a computer program
• Learning a skill you can use
• Passing on something you’ve learned or discovered to someone else
• Supporting a cause you care about with time or money
• Helping someone less fortunate than yourself.
• Eating the happiness pie

Half of the happiness pie belongs to your genetics. A tenth is down to things that just happen. But you can totally own the rest of it by choosing to experience life fully, pay attention with a positive mindset, and take meaningful action.<

Go!

Mike Reeves-McMillan writes more about how to be happy on his website How to Be Amazing, where he trains ordinary people to be heroes by teaching the things you didn’t learn at school.

Find Jacob here!

At some point, you’re gonna get scared – I can guarantee it!
But you know what? IT’S OKAY! We all get scared. The best of the best go through the same exact emotions as you and I do. The difference is that they keep going anyway!
For a long period of my life, I was petrified of a plethora of things.
I was afraid of stuff like public speaking, high-status people and even my own mind. But the scariest thing of all was what would happen if people actually found out that I WAS SCARED.

The public perception that I persistently worked to project was:

“Who, me? Scared? PFFFF… NEVER THAT!”

But underneath that rock-hard image I swore by, I was secretly scared of a TON of things.

I was afraid of what my family would think of me if I did something outta THEIR norm. (Not that they’re a normal bunch to begin with… love you guys!!)

I was also afraid of what my friends would say about me. I was afraid that I wasn’t good enough. And underneath it all, I was afraid I wouldn’t do anything with my life.

Fears can take form in many weird ways. We can repress them in ourselves, or project hatred onto other people who have the qualities that scare us.

Ultimately, if we don’t own our fears, they end up owning us.

Here are 3 Ways that you can handle your fear!

This is not a coincidence.

Since when did it become acceptable to listen to others’ dreams instead of our own? When did it become not only accepted but encouraged to take jobs ‘we’re ‘supposed’ to have’ instead of ones we’re actually good at and enjoy?

Are you one of them?

I have good news. Thanks to a good friend of mine, Scott Dinsmore, you don’t have to be. For the past few years Scott has studied, interviewed and done case studies on hundreds of folks around the world making a living off their passion.

As a result he’s discovered a process that not only helps people find their passion but also gives them the vital steps to make a career out of it.

Check it out right now:

Live Off Your Passion: An Unconventional Guide to Finding Passion and Getting Paid to Do Work You Love.

In this interview Scott tells his story of moving out of a meaningless job and into work that he loves. Plus he shares a technique that you can use for earning cash with what you already know. Its towards the end so watch the whole thing. You don’t want to miss this!

Editor’s note:

For the past few years I’ve dedicated a ridiculous amount of time to understanding the ever-elusive topic of passion.

Not only have I set out to understand what allows certain people to find their passions, but also what allows the seemingly rare few to convert that passion into a career or business. That’s the Holy Grail.

After hundreds of case studies, interviews and interactions with passionate people all over the world, I’ve come up with some pretty useful answers and tools to help get us there.

As it turns out, the results are not as complicated as you’d think.

Here is the foundation to get you started.

Four simple steps to finding and monetizing a passion:

1. Know yourself.

Knowing your passion (and having a chance at building a career around it) is directly proportional to how well you know yourself. Few people take the time to fully understand who they are and as a result most the world is lost.

What are your most important values? The emotions and experiences in life you are absolutely not willing to compromise on? What are you incredibly good at? What are your strengths (aka ‘superpowers’)? What natural talents do you possess and love using? What do people thank you for?

And finally, what is your definition of success? I’m not talking about what school, society or the corporate world has brainwashed you to think—that is not success. And it’s especially not success if you didn’t come up with it on your own. What really matters to you? If you were to look back on your life once it’s over, what do you want to be known for? Success is not about money and fame and status and prestige. Most people who believe it is, only do because they haven’t taken the time to understand their own true success. Identify and write down your own unique definition.

2. Get congruent.

Your values, talents and unique success are what I call your compass. With it you can guide yourself anywhere. Without it you’re lost. Once we have our compass calibrated, we can then begin to notice the things that come our way that turn us on – the things that make us come alive. We can not only notice them, but we can start to make them a part of our lives. When you begin to experience your values, talents and success on a daily basis, you are congruent. It’s this combination that creates and drives passion.

3. Apply it to the world.

Passion almost always comes back to helping others in a way that only you can by doing something you absolutely love. There are people everywhere who need help. All you have to do is start looking for them. For some reason we tend to put up these barriers that people will not be willing to pay us for the things we love doing. It kills our creativity before it even begins.

The truth is, people love nothing more than to pay a person for something they are incredible at.

Think of some of your favorite interactions with products and services. Did you like the salesman who tried to cram a car stereo down your throat or the one who could hardly breathe because he was so excited about the unbelievable technology and the way it allowed you to experience the art and sounds of the musicians?

We love working with people who are passionate about what they do. We tell our friends about those people. We buy again from those people. You can be one of those people. Think of the things people thank you for. The things you have helped people with in the past and the ones you know people need help with now. Go out and find a few people who need help. Coach or consult them one-on-one or use a service like Traindom to offer virtual courses and seminars. The ways to monetize a passion are endless, once you realize it’s possible. Find the people who need your help the most. Do that and getting paid won’t be a problem.

4. Realize you’re already an expert.

‘But there are so many people more talented that I am out there – I’m not qualified enough!’ you scream back. Experience and expertise are likely the biggest limiting beliefs keeping people from making money from what they love. The word expert is totally relative and based largely on perception. If people perceive you to be an expert and you can genuinely help them with something, that’s all the expertise you need.

Sure, there are people better than you at your given passion. There always will be. That’s life. But there are also plenty more people who are much worse off in your area of interest. I bet you could dramatically help them without even rolling out of bed. Start with those people. As it turns out, many of the top ‘experts’ in the world have very little formal education. Take Tony Robbins who’s considered one of the world’s top psychologists, yet he’s never gotten a formal degree in the subject. Instead, he took to experiential learning and as a result he is more effective in helping people achieve positive change than most anyone.

Thinking you need more qualifications and experience is usually just an excuse for in action. Recognize it and then start getting paid to help people. You’re already an expert, you just might not know it yet. Start acting like it.

Change your psychology, live off your passion

As with most things in life, the biggest barrier to living off your passion comes down to your psychology. Realize you have skills, tools and interests that people would pay you for right this second if you asked for it.

Understand who you are, notice how to help people in a way only you can and trading your passions for money will start to become a lot less difficult. Before long it will become a way of life.

Scott Dinsmore is the founder of Live Your Legend, where he writes and helps people discover passion & purpose and do work they love. He is also the author of Live Off Your Passion: An Unconventional Guide to Finding Passion and Getting Paid to Do Work You Love. Check out his latest articles or download his free Epic Work Toolkit.

If you have asked yourself this question and feel the way Jane does every day, you may need to consider a change. While change can be scary for many people, changing the way we do things each day is the only way to begin leading a purposeful life.

Many people believe that life purpose is a project. That it is a hard thing to find in the noise of the world. In a way it is. The distraction of technology is endless, and not living the rat race can leave you feeling abnormal or unaccomplished.

If you wake up everyday and realize you have a hollow feeling inside that is not getting fulfilled from a relationship, job, your health or business, you may feel lost. Let’s face it there is no big sign on the road that says “ Find your life purpose here,” otherwise I think there could be a longer line there than at Starbucks.

There is nothing more telling than that hollow or lost feeling inside, so welcome it in and allow it a voice. It is there to tell you to listen to who you really are and what you want. The good news is you are born with a purpose or a calling. No one can take it away from you and we all have the ability to connect with it. Consider it misplaced, not lost.

There are many positive ways to look at this. It allows you to go on an adventure, relearn what you really like. When you begin to look for your life purpose, lean into it rather than force yourself, because that will only lead you back into a hollow life.

What do I mean by lean?

Like my friend and mentor Martha Beck taught me, just start by noticing what makes you feel good; those heartfelt moments, what attracts you and where that comes from in that moment.

Sometimes we would like this process to move quickly because we don’t like the way we feel when we go through such shaky grounds. Look at it as recreating a new foundation for yourself; like a blank canvas that needs new paint. Be kind to yourself and give yourself gentle nudges, rather than paying attention to the sergeant like voice in your head that says you are moving too slow. You will eventually build momentum to map out some directions for yourself, but first you have to start.

Here are three steps to help you lean into life’s purpose.

1-Connect with simple joys
There is no cookie cutter recipe to help you describe what a simple joy is for you. You want to connect with what you consider pleasurable because it brings a sense of connection to your true self.

When searching for purpose, we don’t realize a lot of that has to do with remembering what brings you happiness. For me, it’s a great cup of coffee. For others it could be running. For some it’s a sunset or the beach, perhaps it’s free time for others, reading a book or never paying attention to the time. You get my drift.

This is part of leaning into your true likes and pleasures and cutting out things or activities that inundate your daily life and have no meaning.

So how do you know if it is real joy? You will know it because you will feel it; that physical and emotional peace. This is a key exercise to consider because it is important to build a foundation of truth from your basic pleasures of life.

2 – Use guided imagery to articulate your true purpose.
We all get hijacked by our left brain because that is the verbal section of our minds that wants to quickly label our next venture.

To prevent this from happening use guided imagery because it is a creative process that triggers right brain activity. When you can’t articulate what you want your soul speaks through images. Begin collecting images or words you are attracted to. You can use magazines, newspapers, and articles, and then cut out or stick on a board. Here is the key – no judging, censoring or editing yourself. This is a creative exercise, so allow yourself to free flow and have fun with it. The results will give you some guidance and clues when you can’t articulate what you want.

3 – Don’t chase it. It’s about meaning.
Like the coyote and the roadrunner – don’t waste your energy chasing it. Know what has meaning for you and only you. Don’t chase a meaningless life because that is what everyone else wants or because that is what you think you should want. Meaning is the substance to a purposeful life.

Lost? Try this. Set aside a shelf, table or other space that can be just for you. Now start collecting photos or objects from your life that have had meaning to you in the past. Perhaps that includes your college diploma, your grandmothers jade ring that has been around for generations, or even an award or trophy from a childhood moment.

While we can look for meaning outside ourselves, it can only be defined through your own definition or an experience.

Hopefully, Jane will follow your lead and walk through the above steps so that she can realize what gives her a peaceful connection, as well as identify clues from her vision board on what purpose and meaning is for her. Leaning into a purposeful life is less stressful, and these small steps matter because you are consciously present through the process. Once you know, it is easy to align your purpose with people, activities, jobs, and things that matter to you.

You will have paint on your canvas before you know it and it will be meaningful because you decided that for yourself when you were lost.

Ned Rios is a certified life coach that empowers professionals to connect with their strengths and passions in order to maximize their individual performance.
She was personally trained and certified with Dr. Martha Beck, best selling author, columnist for O magazine.  Ned has co-authored a book called Changes of the Heart –Align your personal strengths to find your purpose at Amazon.com.
Download her audio “8 ways to revive your career or business” for free and get started www.nedrios.com

In this mini course I cover how the upcoming webinar is going to help you re-become a confident person…. and what you can do today to move towards your dreams, even if you have no confidence at all!

After you watch this video be sure to click the link below and register for the confidence seminar!

Register to Get the Confidence You Need Here

That is not true! Everyone is born with confidence. Throughout our lives some people lose the confidence while others continue to trust themselves and therefor have greater success.

This video course teaches about how you lost your confidence and how you can be confident again, immediately.

This course will give you 3 really simple techniques to change the way you feel about yourself.

Be sure to watch until the end because I have a special gift for you!

And last but not least this course teaches how confidence creates success.

Register to Get the Confidence You Need Here