Hello all. Happy Friday! If any of you have been grindin’ hard like I have lately, I bet you’re really looking forward to the weekend. I’ve been doing so much traveling lately that I haven’t had a chance to rest, so this weekend will probably involve a whole lot of doing NOTHING…gotta love it, right?
As a nice way to start off the weekend, I’m posting a couple articles about real life stuff that I thought might interest some of you. One is all about following one’s passion into a career path and the other is about living a much simpler life than most people are conditioned to pursue. The links to both of these articles were sent to me by a long-time reader named “DP”, so I want to send a shout out to him before continuing with the post.
Also, before I go, I want to send a shout out to all of the people graduating right about now. I know that universities are hold graduation ceremonies all over the country right now, including Stanford University whose graduations are this weekend. Speaking of folks graduating from Stanford, I want to send a special shout to a certain PhD candidate who may or may not see this…Congratulations on making it to the end of the road, Dr. G.A. All of your hard work has paid off and you’re going to do some amazing things in the future.
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The first article is a blog post from another site about the importance of letting your passion be the guide for your career. There are probably millions of people out there in jobs that pay the bills but don’t light a spark inside of them…that’s what this article is all about. It’s a short article, but I found it to be thought-provoking.
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“Letting Your Passion Lead You”
Author: “glen”
Source: LifeDev.net (LINK)
Date: May 28, 2009
Interesting quotes:
“I’ve noticed that creative workers (ie. artists, writers, bloggers, musicians, etc.), sometimes fall prey to not letting their passion lead them. Instead of letting the fire in their gut create wonderful masterpieces, they let money or other forces control their output, and it changes things.
Sometimes you have to give up control of what you want, and let your passion lead you.”
“We humans are attracted to passion, and we can sense it immediately. It’s contagious. We thrive on it, and we thrive on others who have it. It’s a quality we all possess, but it’s not something we all use. In fact, many of us ignore what we’re really supposed to be doing, because it’s much “safer”.”
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This next article was written by a man who once had a fast-paced professional life in the U.S. and gave it up for the simple life in a small town in Japan. Some might say that his perspective is a little extreme, but I found his words to be refreshing, especially at a time like now when so many people are stressed out about their careers. It’s pretty short and is definitely worth a read.
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“The Joy of Less”
Author: Pico Iyer
Source: The New York Times (LINK
Date: June 7, 2009
Interesting quotes…check out the article for more:
“I had been lucky enough at that point to stumble into the life I might have dreamed of as a boy: a great job writing on world affairs for Time magazine, an apartment (officially at least) on Park Avenue, enough time and money to take vacations in Burma, Morocco, El Salvador. But every time I went to one of those places, I noticed that the people I met there, mired in difficulty and often warfare, seemed to have more energy and even optimism than the friends I’d grown up with in privileged, peaceful Santa Barbara, Calif., many of whom were on their fourth marriages and seeing a therapist every day. Though I knew that poverty certainly didn’t buy happiness, I wasn’t convinced that money did either.”
“In the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.”
“Perhaps happiness, like peace or passion, comes most when it isn’t pursued.”
————–
As a nice way to start off the weekend, I’m posting a couple articles about real life stuff that I thought might interest some of you. One is all about following one’s passion into a career path and the other is about living a much simpler life than most people are conditioned to pursue. The links to both of these articles were sent to me by a long-time reader named “DP”, so I want to send a shout out to him before continuing with the post.
Also, before I go, I want to send a shout out to all of the people graduating right about now. I know that universities are hold graduation ceremonies all over the country right now, including Stanford University whose graduations are this weekend. Speaking of folks graduating from Stanford, I want to send a special shout to a certain PhD candidate who may or may not see this…Congratulations on making it to the end of the road, Dr. G.A. All of your hard work has paid off and you’re going to do some amazing things in the future.
————
The first article is a blog post from another site about the importance of letting your passion be the guide for your career. There are probably millions of people out there in jobs that pay the bills but don’t light a spark inside of them…that’s what this article is all about. It’s a short article, but I found it to be thought-provoking.
————–
“Letting Your Passion Lead You”
Author: “glen”
Source: LifeDev.net (LINK)
Date: May 28, 2009
Interesting quotes:
“I’ve noticed that creative workers (ie. artists, writers, bloggers, musicians, etc.), sometimes fall prey to not letting their passion lead them. Instead of letting the fire in their gut create wonderful masterpieces, they let money or other forces control their output, and it changes things.
Sometimes you have to give up control of what you want, and let your passion lead you.”
“We humans are attracted to passion, and we can sense it immediately. It’s contagious. We thrive on it, and we thrive on others who have it. It’s a quality we all possess, but it’s not something we all use. In fact, many of us ignore what we’re really supposed to be doing, because it’s much “safer”.”
————–
This next article was written by a man who once had a fast-paced professional life in the U.S. and gave it up for the simple life in a small town in Japan. Some might say that his perspective is a little extreme, but I found his words to be refreshing, especially at a time like now when so many people are stressed out about their careers. It’s pretty short and is definitely worth a read.
————–
“The Joy of Less”
Author: Pico Iyer
Source: The New York Times (LINK
Date: June 7, 2009
Interesting quotes…check out the article for more:
“I had been lucky enough at that point to stumble into the life I might have dreamed of as a boy: a great job writing on world affairs for Time magazine, an apartment (officially at least) on Park Avenue, enough time and money to take vacations in Burma, Morocco, El Salvador. But every time I went to one of those places, I noticed that the people I met there, mired in difficulty and often warfare, seemed to have more energy and even optimism than the friends I’d grown up with in privileged, peaceful Santa Barbara, Calif., many of whom were on their fourth marriages and seeing a therapist every day. Though I knew that poverty certainly didn’t buy happiness, I wasn’t convinced that money did either.”
“In the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.”
“Perhaps happiness, like peace or passion, comes most when it isn’t pursued.”
————–
Thank You!