It’s for working professionals who are searching passion and fulfillment in their work. Most of the people at work are not engaged. There could be many reasons for not loving what you do. One of the effective ways to be engaged at work is to really understand what you love to do and find a way to make it happen. Let’s discuss some basic steps to know what you love to do and how to get there to your dream job or a business.

How to find what you want to do:

For years, I’ve been observing people engagement at work. For many people, it might be difficult to understand what they love to do. After reading many articles, I believe below basic steps can help to know what we really want to do. Here they are:

• If you have enough money for your life and dependents, what work or a business would you still like to do for free?
• If no one is observing you on your performance, what would you do for a day?
• If you’re a social worker, what would you love to do to help others for free?
• If you are attracted to anyone’s job or a business, what is that job or a business? In other words, who do you see as successful in their lives?

For example, if I have no money expectation with the work and no concern of my social image, I’ll do these activities:

1. I am a seeker. I want to understand who we are and why are we on earth?
2. I love making connections. I love understanding people. It attracts me to know what inspires people, what are the difficulties in their lives, and what do they want to do in their life.
3. I can’t stop knowing how technology is continuously changing and enabling people’s lives.

How to do the the work you love to do:

At first, we discussed noting down what we want to do. The next step is to find a way to get the job or business you want. Here are few steps that I found effective:

1. Write an as-is and a to-be plan: Write down what you do in your current/as-is job or a business. Write down a to-be/dream job or a business plan.
2. Plan high-level steps: Once you found what you want to do, do not change or quit your job immediately. Instead, find out small changes that you can make to your current job or business towards your dream job or business. Plan for small steps at a time on a consistent way. To build the consistency of efforts, read my article here. This article is about learning. It gives an insight on finding time in your weekdays consistently.
3. Know about the dream job or a business: Find ways to learn more about your to-be dream job or a business.
4. Know people who’re in a similar to-be job or a business: Be around people who’re already doing what you want to do.
5. Prepare yourself mentally: Build the mindset that you can do it. If you believe in positivity and self-affirmations, practice the technique to stay positive using self-affirmations. Also, if it works for you, start seeing yourself in your to-be job or a business.
6. Take actions: Start taking actions in an incremental way. Start with one step at a time. Without impacting your current job or business, what steps of a to-be job or a business you can perform this week? Here are some examples of how to move towards a to-be job or a business in an incremental way:
   1. A Lead software engineer is not happy sitting alone for hours with his or her code. He or she loves people connections and also love technologies. What if he or she finds a way to collaborate more with people? What if he or she contributes in organizing forums to meet peers and other colleagues? He/she can slowly move towards a people management role that requires understanding of technologies.
   2. A software engineer loves writing articles. What if he or she offers help in writing documents and other creative materials at work? What if slowly, he or she moves towards a technical writing career?
   3. A corporate employee is interested in real estates. What if he or she starts learning real estate business at part time? I know a friend who changed his career from a software developer to a real estate agent. He utilized is technical and leadership skills in organizing and creating attracting digital presence. He’s successful in what he does and he loves his real estate business.

We all have a limited life time. It’s critical to do what we love. With a step-by-step plan with consistent efforts, we can transform our career from a current job or a work situation to a desired job or a business. Let me know your thoughts on this article.

Summary: The book, Positive Intelligence suggests how can we live a more fulfilling life, using positive intelligence.

Introduction of concepts:

Saboteurs: Saboteurs our inner enemies. Our ten Saboteurs are:

• Judge: It is the master Saboteur that everyone suffers from.
• Stickler: It is the need for perfection, order, and organization taken too far. It makes us and around anxious.
• Pleaser: It compels us to try to gain acceptance by pleasing others.
• Hyper-Achiever: Our self-respect depends on a constant need of high performance.
• Victim: Playing a role of a victim, to get others’ attention.
• Hyper-Rational: It involves being rational about everything.
• Hyper-Vigilant: It makes us being vigilant all the time to stay away from dangers.
• Restless: It makes us constantly search for the next excitement.
• Controller: It makes us feel either in control or out of control.
• Avoider: It makes us focus only of positive and pleasant in an extreme way.

PQ: PQ stands for Positive Intelligence Quotient. High PQ means your mind acts more as a friend and less as an enemy. PQ scores range from 0 (lowest) to 100 (highest). For example, a 75 PQ score means your mind is serving you about 75% of the the time and sabotaging you about 25% of the time.

Sage: The sage represents the deeper and wiser part of you. All your distress is self-generated. The Sage perspective accepts every outcome and circumstance as a gift and opportunity. Your Sage has access to your five great five Sage powers:

1. Empathize: Feel and show empathy, compassion, and forgiveness.
2. Explore: To deal with any problem, explore the ways with the curiosity.
3. Innovate: Think out of the box and think of new ways of addressing a problem/situation.
4. Navigate: To unblock/unstuck us from choices, we can decide based on internal compass. For that, we can rely on our values.
5. Activate: Active power moves us into pure action, with all mental and emotional energies on actions, and without distractions by the Saboteurs.

Implementation items:

Three strategies to improve PQ Brain:

1. Weaken your Saboteurs:
   1. Do a self-assessment of your Saboteurs. Check our ratings (1 lowest and 10 highest) on each of these Saboteurs. The next step is to work on minimizing the power of these Saboteurs.
   2. Observe and level your thoughts. For example,, “oh, I am restless again.”
2. Strengthen your Sage: Shift towards Sage perspective.
   1. Three gifts-approach: think of at least three ways a problem could turn into a gift and opportunity at some point in the future.
   2. Apply above mentioned five Sage powers to a problem you want to solve.
3. Strengthen your PQ muscles: The book suggests making habits to practice PQ brain muscles, to get 75 score points every day. The author suggests practicing mindfulness techniques about 15 minutes every day. To remember building PQ muscles, we can set reminders around our daily routine activities.

As I learn more, I will revise my notes about the book.

Reference: Positive Intelligence, by Shirzad Chamine

Dare to Lead is a great leadership book by Dr. Brené Brown. It is a must read book. My notes below are nowhere even closed to complete. Consider these as draft details to attract you to read the book. The book suggested four main skills:

1. Rumbling with vulnerability:
   • Vulnerability is a risk, uncertainty, or an emotional exposure. You can’t get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability.
   • Who we are is how we lead. Clear is kind. We have to have hard conversations even when we’re not ready.
   • The antidotes to shame are empathy and self-compassion.
   • Self-awareness and self-love matter.
   • Refer to rumbling skills mentioned in the book. Practice these skills in your day-to-day interactions.
2. Living into Values: This book suggests picking at most two values to practice. Living our values and providing feedback to others have a key connection.
3. Braving Trust: The book suggests that trust is built into small moments. It has a BRAVING inventory that is great to know and practice.
4. Learning to Rise: The book suggests that having skills to get back up is important. Because, as per the book, if we’re brave enough often, we’re going to fall. The book suggests to understand what stories we are making up, when we’re missing the data. First, prepare the draft. Use rumbling process to discover the missing details.

Here is my summary and interpretation of how this book has helped me:

• This book helped me to learn the skills of self-awareness and self-love. For example, understanding the emotion behind an emotion helped me to dig deeper to understand myself. If I am angry on a situation, is it the anger or something beneath the anger?
• If we think we’re not enough, we’re not alone in this feeling. This book helped me learn that we all feel that way. This learning has helped me to connect better with other people.
• I thought that people who are courageous, are fearless. It helped me to learn that courage and vulnerability show up at the same time.
• Assume every person is doing the best he/she can.
• It helped me to learn that in the absence of data, we make stories.

Thank you for going through this article. As I learn more, I will share more.

Reference: Book Dare To Lead by Dr. Brené Brown.

Sometimes, we’re in a difficult situation in the life. This article is to discuss some options on how to ensure we’re able to work while dealing through a difficult personal circumstances.

In my article about life principles, I mentioned the need of having a clarity of the work priorities. Many of us go through difficulties in personal life. For example, you might have an ill family member to take care of, or going through a marriage arrangement, or a divorce situation. In such difficult situations, managing work and life balance could be tough. It could be difficult to deal with the emotions at work. If you have difficulty in managing work/life balance, contact a trustworthy psychologist and other local resources to help you.

Here are few personal tips how I will deal with such a situation while not letting the work impact:

• I will let my manager know what personal challenge I am going through. It seems simple and obvious but sometimes we miss the value of it. Even if it’s a simple personal situation that might impact the work, it helps to let the manager know about it.
• When interacting with stakeholders (like peers, project members, or a client), it’s okay to let them honestly know, that I am going through some rough time that might impact some work. I’ll just share about the mood, not the actual problem. Also I will let them know that my intention is to do the best possible work. We all are human and we understand that anyone could be in such a situation.
• At any situation, knowing the priority of your work deliverables is always very important. I always attempt to know the answers to these questions:
  • What’s the first, second, and third most important work deliverables expected from me?
  • What’s my first priority work deliverable today, this week, and this month?
  • If you have only 4 hours in the day, can I take care of my most important work deliverables?
• I will work with my manager to help him/her understand what work deliverables I can realistically deliver given the personal situation. I will try to not overcommit. In fact, I will plan for 75% of the tasks that I am confident I can take care of. Reason is, we all have a tendency to overcommit.
• At work, I will go in a transactional and a mission mode to complete the important work deliverables within the least possible time limit.
• I will go in a bare minimum work survival mode. That could mean I will have no time to network more than required, no time to join meetings where I am not required, and no time to say Yes when I can only say No.
• At work, I will ensure to speak only required and speak only about work.
• I will wrap up the work in no more than planned hours. I will create a hard boundary of work and personal life. That means, I will not be able to work after the work hours. Remember. It’s a personal hardship that needs my attention after the work. So, after work, do take care of the personal situation.
• During the work, I maybe distracted with emotions related to personal situation. I will learn to delay the decision to go back/think about the personal situation just after the work. If needed, I will schedule a meeting with myself after the work, to think through the personal situation. If I am disciplined to respect the work and personal time boundaries, I will be able to delay the personal tasks after the work.
• I’ll definitely contact a trustworthy counselor, psychologist, or a related help, to help me deal with my situation.
• I’ll also look for people who are in a similar situation. I will learn from them to deal with such a personal hardship and how they managed or managing their work/life balance.
• If I am not able to work without distractions, I will work with my manager to work either part time or take time off, to take care of the situation.

As I learn more, I’ll share more.

Who should read it: Applicable to everyone.

In the life, it’s important to decide your own principles and philosophies that you want to follow. I encourage everyone to think and plan for your own life principles.

Why to create your own life principles:

• As Stephen Covey suggested in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People“, that principle based life is a true fulfilling life as compared to single centered life (like money centered, spouse centered, or similar).
• To take a decision on a situation, having your own set of principles help.

An example of list of principles:

• My core values: Service and Perseverance. Out of all, service is the first priority.
• Decide your focus areas in the life. Then, make the progress in those areas first. Leave the rest. Mine are: Spiritualism, Fitness, Finance, and Folks.
• Creating an Ignore List is equally important as creating your focus area list. For example, one of my items in the ignore list is to avoid watching TV after 10 PM.
• This world needs service. And, we all are born to serve self and others. You are a parent because you want to serve. You are a friend because you want to serve. You work because you want to serve. You do business because you want to serve. You do X because you want to serve.
• If you have time to make only one friend, it should be your writing journal. Journey of finding purpose can begin from it and end at it. Journey of achieving anything can begin and end with planning. Writing is a great process of achieving it.
• At your work, always do the bare minimum required tasks first. Reason is, many times, we miss the minimum required work. This also helps to navigate what’s most important to be done for the day. The second is to do more than required. Sometimes, in the process of figuring it out how to do more, we may lose the focus on doing the minimum required first.
• Try to enjoy each and every moment of your life: at work and outside work.
• Humor is important. If you focus on it, you could see the humor in every situation. This is the best remedy to stay healthy mentally.
• Enjoying the journey is as equally important as achieving a goal.
• When working with people, always separate people from the situation.
• Planning and creating a vision is important. In the famous business book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen R. Covey stated that “all things are created twice. There’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things.”
• As we are temporary on this earth, how can our problems be permanent? That means, there is a solution to everything.
• If you have time to do only one thing today, focus on servicing others. If you have time for one another thing in the day, practice a gratitude habit. Before going to bed, simply review who and what are you thankful to and for.
• If you want something, dare to ask for it. Many times, people don’t get what they want because they don’t ask for it.
• If anything a human can do, you can. Because you are a human.
• Persistence is the key to success. Failure is just a step before the success. Make progress towards your goals with a steady approach, one step at a time on a day. Consistent efforts are more important than a one-time effort.

As I learn more, I will update it. Thank you !

Overview: Helping a new employee to the success is important for the growth of the company and the growth of the employee. Here are few basic steps to set a new employee to the success:

Begin with the end in mind: “Begin with the end in mind”, as said by Stephen Covey. The process of setting the goal begins before the hiring process. List out why the company wants to hire a new employee.

Employee’s goals: Before employee joins, set-up the goals for him/her. When writing goals, remember the steps of SMART goals. Means, goals must be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Let’s take a simple example. If your goal is to exercise daily, how you can write the SMART goal for yourself. Below are steps:

• Specific: My goal is specific. I have decided the exercise types for every day.
• Measurable: I will use my smart watch to measure the duration of exercise (30 minutes) and the intensity of it to qualify it as an exercise.
• Achievable: I want to ensure my goal is achievable. It’s reasonable for me to plan for 30 minutes of exercise in the morning. I do want to make it an hour but I am not sure if I can achieve it. Also, if I skip in the morning, for me, it’s difficult to plan for it in the evening. So, morning 30 minutes exercise duration is achievable for me.
• Relevant: I want to ensure my goal is relevant. As per the CDC, it’s important for adults to exercise. CDC has recommended guidelines and the weekly limits for the exercise routines. So, my goal of 30 minutes exercise daily is relevant.
• Time-bound: My goal is to exercise 30 minutes daily between 7 AM and 8 AM. This goal is time-bound.

Training plan: Employee must be clear about the training plan. It should be well written with the success criteria of the first day, first week, and further. It should be clear who will provide the training, what is the expectation from the trainer, and what’s the expectation from the employee. The key to success is to avoid assumptions and document the success criteria.

Cultural understanding: Helping a new employee to learn the company culture is equally important. Plan how you can help a new employee to learn the company’s culture. There are different ways to do it. Some common options are: company specific documentation, cultural training plans, mentoring plan, or a colleague to help the employee. It’s equally important to check-in with the employee about his/her collaboration with the colleagues.

Many other areas: there are many other aspects that are not covered here. For example, employee’s well-being plan, initial set-ups, etc. Help new employee to check-in on all these steps.

Periodic sync-ups: Let the employee know the frequency of sync-up meetings and the expectations of these meetings. Do you want him/her to prepare any details before the meeting? Does he/she know the next step?

Stay flexible: What if the goal change? Stay flexible to make the necessary adjustments to it.

Conclusion: Helping a new employee to the success is important to the company’s success and the success of the employee for his/her own career growth. We all are human and we all want to do the best of our abilities. These shared steps are very basic. Depending on the company size and company culture, these steps might vary. Planning and executing the defined steps will lead an employee to the success for himself/herself and to the company. I am eager to know your thoughts about it.

Are you living a break-free life? Are you living your dreams? Are you doing the things that you want to do? Are you in a job or in a situation you wanted to be in? Are you doing the things that are natural to you? In such a busy life, do you have time to pause? Can you relax and think about life? Or, are you like a robot? Do you have a fixed mindset to achieve some predetermined goals? You think not doing so will make you look odd to yourself, your family, friends, and so-called-society. If you are already living the life you always wanted to be, this article is not for you. If you are not, read ahead.

How can you truly live a life free from breaks? You shouldn’t HAVE to do certain things just because everyone says it’s the right way. Let’s look at just three basic steps to live a break-free life:

Step 1: Do you know who you want to be?

1. Your childhood dreams: what you wanted to be as a child?
2. Your wishful future image of yourself: Do you carry a bag of strong desires? Does it include an image of you, being you one day? What does that image look like? You have words to describe it. Or, you do not. Let’s introspect deeper. How would your life be if you were the person who you always wanted to be?
3. What are things you don’t want to do: Have you noticed any tasks that are energy drainer to you? Have you noticed what makes you think to let the moment just pass somehow? For example, waiting for 5 PM and I am out of this <#adfdkfjdkfj#> place.

Step 2: Do you know what is stopping you?

What is stopping you today, to live the life you want to live? Is it one or all of below:

1. Fear of rejections by yourself and others around you?
2. Fear of failure to achieve what you want to achieve?
3. Fear of losing what you have?
4. Not confident in your ability to start becoming you?
5. Not knowing from where to start becoming you?

Step 3: How can you navigate to next steps?

Do you want to offer advice for others? Would you do so with great sorrow in your eyes, on your deathbed? Or, do you want to look at the sky with open arms? Say it loudly to yourself, “yes, I can dare to live the life I imagined.” To be a person you wanted to be, what if we look at a step-by-step journey:

1. As-is and to-be image: What if you write how you are living now and how you wish to live?
2. One step at a time: What if you take just one step to live how you want to really live? Not two, just one step. And, it is a lot. It is a big deal to be a more courageous person. It means pushing yourself out of your fear zone. Just one step. What is stopping you to move one step towards the life you always wanted to live? Is it your list of fears from Step 2 ? I do agree it will. As it is just one step challenge of a change, can you dare just for one step? The good news is that you are planning just one step towards becoming you. You can move back anytime. Your existing life situation takes up 100% of your time. What if you decide to change just 1% of it? What if this change lets you become what you always wanted to be? 1% is roughly 15 minutes a day (to be precise, it is 14.4 minutes a day). That is 105 minutes a week and 7.5 hours a month. For example, if you are interested in writing, what if you write just 15 minutes a day?
3. What’s next: Review your life after a week and after a month. Did the sky fall as you changed 1% to being you? Did you notice a change in you? Did you enjoy your challenge? If yes, what if you increase it to 2% from next month? And, one day, what if it becomes 100% the way you want your life to be?

As George Reeves said, “you can if you think you can.”