Making authenticity a priority has obvious benefits for your psychological health and your spiritual balance. It gives you focus to make sure you don’t over-schedule yourself with too many activities. It helps you establish your priorities and stick with them. But it also brings an unexpected benefit.

Living an authentic life means taking charge of your goals and the standards you set for success. It means letting go of concerns about status, which can be a huge drain on resources and a huge pressure on you.

Status goals may push you to seek promotions to get more responsibility and higher pay. Authentic goals may free you to see that you enjoy working directly with or for clients but you don’t enjoy managing people.

Status goals may have you striving to afford the European luxury car. Authentic goals may free you to be content with a late model used American or Japanese car.

Status goals may tell you the older boat you have should be replaced with a new, more powerful jet boat. Authentic goals may help you realize you go boating so rarely it works better for you to sell your boat and rent one occasionally with a group of friends.

Status goals may convince you that you need a graduate degree to be prepared to start a part-time small business as a contractor or consultant. Authentic goals may show you the path to develop your expertise in a more suitable field through your passion and natural curiosity.

Status goals may pressure you to trade up to the larger house in the newer neighborhood. Authentic goals may help you see that paying off your mortgage more quickly and then investing the equivalent of a mortgage payment will bring you more financial freedom and peace.

Status goals may have you going with friends every week to the newest movie theater paying top dollar for tickets to the latest movies. Authentic goals may have you planning which movies you actually want to see and choosing to see them for a discount at matinee times or at older theaters.

The money, time, effort, and other resources you expend pursuing your authentic goals will feel like a good value, not like a huge sacrifice. The money, time, effort, and other resources you expend pursuing status goals will often feel wasted.

You can’t get enough of what you don’t really need. It’s in the U2 song Stuck In A Moment. It’s also in a lot of the literature on addiction treatment, so much so that I can’t recall where I first heard it, although my best guess is from John Bradshaw.

When you pursue things that don’t really suit your authentic self, you experience scarcity and feel deprived. When you pursue things that align with your authentic self, you feel abundant.

That’s a liberating idea.

In ancient times – a little more than a century ago – education was about personal development. It was about exploring a variety of exciting things just because they were enjoyable. It was focused on finding ways to entertain the mind and the spirit through history, culture, art, music, and math.

Now education has become a factory to roll out little job-bots. Those poor little job-bots will graduate from high school and college this month and line up for their job-boxes. Want to make a difference?

Join the revolution and tell your favorite graduates that they can make a living without a job. Give copies of Barbara Winter’s Making a Living Without a Job: Winning Ways For Creating Work That You Love to spark their entrepreneurial spirit. This is a powerful introduction to moving from employee (and student factory) thinking to self-directed entrepreneurial thinking.

While you’re at it, tell your favorite graduates they don’t have to flatten their dreams and squeeze their expansive and creative lives into ruts and boxes. Throw in copies of Barbara Sher’s Live the Life You Love: In Ten Easy Step-By Step Lessons. This radical (and possibly dangerous) book affirms the power of long-term dreams. It not only opens the way to incorporate one’s gifts, talents, and passions in an intentional life plan, it makes it clear that it is imperative that each person do so. It is the way to be most successful, and the way to give the greatest benefit to others.

As long as we’re being radical, let’s get downright anarchistic. Include a copy of Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness. This book stands firmly on logic and common sense and shows “the road less traveled” to financial peace. He teaches outrageous ideas, like living on less than you earn, avoiding consumer debt, paying cash and getting good deals, and setting aside a little money each month now to build a wealthy future.

At this point, you have doomed your graduates to seeing beyond the rut. If they can make a living without a job, they are not subjugated by employers. If they can live the life they love, they can exercise free will and choose their own paths instead of following the crowd. If they embrace a total money makeover, they will avoid the shackles of monthly payments and watch their money grow, instead of watching their debt load grow.

They will be equipped to start living life on their own terms. If they truly have that kind of freedom, you might as well give them copies of Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (Classic Seuss). To job-bots marching in their ruts, this is a simple children’s book. To trailblazers who see opportunities and possibilities all around them, it is a hymn to living a full life.

Take all four books and put them together in one gift box. And maybe, just maybe, it will be the only sort of box your graduates will know.

The categories are a little jumbled this month to reflect how a lot of us have gotten our thoughts jumbled. We think we need money in order to play, and to have money we need to “work” – implying a certain level of drudgery and sacrifice. We formulate it like this:

I need a j-o-b that pays more than my bills. Whatever I make above that I can use to play. The more I make the more I can play.

What happens when we take charge of the relationships between work, money, and play?

Take away money as a precursor to play and you’re left looking for ways to play that cost little or nothing. It brings to mind a frequent complaint from older parents and grandparents who say children today don’t know how to entertain themselves. They don’t have to use their imaginations because they have electronic toys, video games, and movies they can play in their homes. How can your imagination help you play without spending a lot of money?

Barbara Winter tells a great story about a friend who called her and, though a little hesitant to ask, invited her to come over to paint with water colors. It wasn’t two trained artists working on pieces to sell. It was two women who enjoyed something as girls who finally decided to give it another go. As a fun evening, it was a spectacular success.

Think about the standard entertainment script: dinner and a movie. Is it enjoyable time with your friends and family, and is it worth the money? Often it’s not. What about movies on DVD at the library? It’s doubtful anyone has seen every movie available, even if you limit the list to all the movies considered classics. A Bette Davis or Clark Gable marathon with a “floor picnic” (around here that’s fast food eaten with a beach towel as the blanket on the living room floor) might be a lot of fun and give you many more opportunities to talk to each other.

Museums often have a day of the week or month that you get in for free or nearly free. Community theater companies put on enjoyable presentations for a low ticket price, and if you volunteer you might get in free. Unlike golf, tennis can be played at many public locations for free. You need a companion, a racket, and some tennis balls. Find the right person and he or she will provide all of them! Someone who wants to try out sailing can start meeting people at the marina and offer to learn by helping crew on some outings. You’ll probably sail a lot more than the people who spend a bunch of money to buy a boat, rent a slip, and keep up with maintenance!

Can you work without making money? Trust me! You can, especially when you’re starting a new business. But there are other ways to work without pursuing money. You can volunteer part of your time. You can do extra things at a j-o-b to learn more and get more experience. You can write without publishing, or without seeing a short-term possibility to publish. You might eventually get paid, but it’s not the main motivation. The work itself is.

Many people who write, or paint, or create things they might eventually sell do it for the enjoyment. They have already blurred the line between work and play. They have discovered work, a productive activity with a goal in mind, can be as enjoyable as play. Stories abound about people taking college classes for the joy of learning, then winding up with enough credits to get a second degree. The degree may lead to a new career or open additional doors. The experience of being involved in learning something for fun may lead to offers to work in the field.

The big question, it seems, is How can I play and make money? The ideal answer is to find a way to do work that crosses into play. It will be productive, like work, but involve the imagination and a sense of wonder and a lot of enjoyment.

A friend wrote an update to our creative career forum that in her new job she is able to organize the office, their paperwork, and some of their daily operations. She loves it! This is something she has looked forward to doing for years, and she sees it as something she “gets” to do, not something she “has” to do. That may not be play for most of us, but it sure is to her.

In the trailblazer’s life, the lines between work, money, and play will get blurry. Sometimes they might even disappear. Trailblazers find a way to do what they were born to do, so it flows from their gifts and passions and ignites their souls. They find people who will benefit from what they do, the ones who need what they have to offer. Those people are happy to pay for it.

May it be so for all of us.

Barbara Winter is famous for her book Making a Living Without a Job. She loves to talk about the “Joyfully Jobless” life. It’s easy to hear words like that and be skeptical.
But I’ve had a very special opportunity to listen to Barbara on teleseminars and talk to her and exchange e-mail notes. She is genuine. She is warm and friendly. There’s no hype to her.

And she’s passionate about helping people find ways to work creatively or set up a few part-time businesses, or just find a way to make money doing something that is natural and comfortable for them. In a recent conversation she said she remembers a small business consultant giving a most excellent answer to the “What do you do?” question. The woman said, “You know how some people get all excited when they see a puppy? That’s how I feel about new businesses.”

Barbara said it perfectly describes how she feels. She’s never used that exact answer – out of respect for its author – but it explains so much about her.

There is a way to get to know her sincerity and curiosity and passion. She publishes a newsletter – the paper and ink kind. It contains vignettes, book reviews, wonderful pieces of conversations she has with creative thinkers, and powerful ideas for sparking your own imagination to find better ways to earn money.

The newsletter is called Winning Ways and can be ordered online. Subscribe and enjoy getting to know the entrepreneurs’ muse, Barbara Winter.

What better way to pursue happiness than by learning how to work at what you love?

What better way to combine work and play than by bringing the things you enjoy into your work life?

Even better, how about sending yourself on a retreat to have fun, enjoy time away, find your life mission, and be able to claim it as a deduction on your tax return!

Valerie Young and Barbara Winter are two acclaimed experts on helping people find ways to combine your passions, values, and ideal life to come up with a plan for making a living on your own terms. They both have full schedules with workshops and teleconferences, but they were able to schedule time to come together and present their much-loved workshop “Work At What You Love” again this year.

Valerie and Barbara are idea factories and rivers of encouragement, hope, and support. Past participants rave about the two-day event. They leave with pages and pages of ideas, new connections with other creative people finding ways to take charge of their lives, and skills for turning dreams into real steps forward.

If you’re ready to leave the job-box and start taking charge of your life, Work At What You Love will supercharge you on your way!

I first learned about the field of Creative Career Choice when I was trying to find my own new career. I “Googled” and “Yahoo’d” different phrases. They led me to ChangingCourse.com and its founder Valerie Young, to Barbara Sher, and to Barbara Winter.

I am a huge fan of all three of these amazing women. I have read their books, e-books, workbooks, and newsletters, attended their teleseminars, and chatted with them on their forums. But in spite of how well I know their ideas, their energy, and their passion for helping people find work they love and live life with passion, I was blown away by the CD recording of their Making Dreams Happen live event.

There are 23—yes! 23—audio CDs in the set, plus a computer file of the handouts. I loaded all the audio CDs onto my iPod so I could listen whenever I had “mindless chore” time or driving time. The three ladies were my companions for several hours of my drive to and from Orlando, and they kept me company at my sons’ soccer practices and Tae Kwon Do classes before and after that trip.

As you can tell, there are many, many hours of content in this audio program. And it’s all good. The energy is maintained from one session to the next. You can feel the excitement and joy in the participants as they make discoveries about the kinds of lives they want to have and the kinds of work that will fit into those richer lives.

You get a real sense of participating in the event since the audio program contains comments and questions from the attendees, plus their responses to many creative exercises. Valerie, Barbara, and Barbara packed a ton of information, inspiration, and creativity into three days. I’m certain the attendees went home transformed, and overwhelmed by all they experienced.

This audio format is great for me because I could go at my own pace and drink it all in. I got to think about what I learned and let it bubble and simmer a little while before hearing more. As an added blessing, I can listen again and again when I need a creativity tonic.

I enthusiastically recommend this audio program. If you’re struggling to choose a career path, thinking about career change, or trying to live a creative and meaningful life, this is for you. It’s about listening to your deepest self to discover your calling, defining the life you want, and then taking practical and real steps to make it happen. Check it out!

Pursuit of Happiness: Work & Play

“So if the college your kids go to isn’t that important, what is the key to helping them be successful in life? I am convinced it is largely one thing: encouraging them to discover their true calling – the one thing that totally engages their interest and passion. If you can help them do that, their natural curiosity, intelligence, and drive will take them the rest of the way.”

Master Copywriter Bob Bly in November 6 2007 “Early to Rise” Newsletter

The only problem I have with Bob Bly’s quote is that this idea doesn’t just apply to college kids. All of us will be more successful in life if we find our true calling and live in alignment with our passions and interests.

I believe that means we live from the authentic self, the center of who we really are. We each have things that energize and excite us, that grab our attention and make us lose track of time. This is based on how we’re made to interact with the world around us, our unique perspectives based on how certain things dance inside us.

It really is possible to find your passions and captivating interests. It really is possible to bring them into your life. In fact, if you ignore them or don’t honor them often, you’re probably feeling miserable, empty, very frustrated, or stuck in a rut.

I’m going out further on a limb. It is not only possible to bring your passions and interests into your life. It is possible to find work that draws on those passions and interests. That is the work you were born to do. When your work comes from your deepest self, it will be your best work, and it will be joyful.

If you’re energized by this idea but aren’t sure what your passions and captivating interests are, or can’t figure out a way to turn them into a career, visit Changing Course. Valerie Young, “Dreamer in Residence” and Solopreneur owner of the business, is a creative career change guru. She helps you define your ideal life and plan a career, a business, or a self-employment opportunity that helps you create and live that ideal life. She has tons of free resources, including downloadable interviews and an excellent bi-monthly newsletter, affordable e-books and workbooks, and audio recordings of many workshops she has led or co-led.

If you’re a little further along and know your passions and interests pretty well but are hesitating in taking the steps to follow your dream, you’re ready for the Fast Track Your Dream Program. Valerie offers a box full of resources to help turn your passions into income. She includes workbooks to help you focus like a laser on your passions and interests so you know what you were born to do. She adds audio recordings of some of her workshops, including presentations by Barbara Winter and Barbara Sher, with dozens of ideas for leaving the j-o-b box and finding your true calling. She includes audio recordings that let you hear how other people are living their dreams.

For me the most important component of Fast Track is an online forum of people in the process of career change who are passionate about helping each other brainstorm new ideas and supporting each other through each step. I’m a member of the Fast Track Tribe and consistently rely on the support and encouragement I get from the group. When you join, send me a shout!

It crossed my mind during the Veterans’ Day celebrations that in the many years I have been focused on the field of creative career choice I can’t remember any discussion of the military.

For some people, joining the military is just a means to an end. It might be a decent job with skills training instead of college. It might be a way to go to college for people who can’t afford it. It might be the way to get specialized training that leads to a chosen career, like an airline pilot.

But for many people the military is their calling. There is a special bond that career service men and women talk about. There is a particular sense of pride that comes from valuing duty and honor. There are opportunities that no other job in the world can offer. I have heard tales of security and rescue operations for the State Department, intelligence gathering by monitoring broadcasts from stealth locations in submarines, and large scale construction projects that can only be planned and accomplished by the military.

Military service is certainly not right for all people. But for some, a career in the military gives meaning, fulfillment, excitement, challenges, and adventure. In an age when all the armed forces are volunteers, I am especially happy we are protected by people who are called to defend the freedoms and rights of our republic, including Life, Liberty, and

The Pursuit of Happiness.

This is a journal style account of my day off, taken to learn more about my interests and passions and unique way of viewing the world. I’m sharing the day in detail to encourage you to take a day off and see how much you can learn about yourself.

I was talking with my friend Henry Packer about a telecourse we were planning called The Ferris Bueller Approach to Career Choice when Henry asked me a big question. He said, “Are you going to take a ‘Ferris Bueller’ day off before the telecourse?”

The correct answer was obvious: Yes, of course I’m going to do the exercise we’ll recommend in our telecourse and take a day off for spontaneous fun. But honestly, until he asked, I hadn’t realized I should. More importantly, I hadn’t realized I could. So I found a day where my wife could drop our sons at school and my mother could pick them up so I would be free to head out and explore without a schedule.

Henry is the mastermind of this idea, although he had an enormous amount of inspiration from the John Hughes film. Henry’s idea takes the template of a slightly rebellious, brash, but whimsical teenager who packs a lot of fun and limit-pushing adventure into one day and rewrites it for adults who feel stuck in an unfulfilling routine. Henry first used this model to give himself permission to take all the chores and projects off his schedule and focus on fun while his wife was out of town with a group of friends for a couple of days. No, it’s not that kind of fun. It’s Ferris Bueller, not Risky Business.

Henry, wise man that he doesn’t realize that he is, has included a Ferris Bueller day in his life once in a while to help keep himself connected to the things he loves but misses in his daily life. He understands that by taking time away from repetition and demands and opening the day to possibilities, he can reconnect with himself and hear his heart telling him what he enjoys.

As I approached my day off, I didn’t make any specific plans, just tentative ideas so I had the freedom to follow my interests. I got online that morning and looked up the Ron Mueck exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth. I had read about Mueck after seeing the signs for the exhibit. I also checked out foreign and independent film listings in the entire Dallas-Fort Worth area. I enjoy seeing small-release films but only go once a year or less because they’re usually far away. Unfortunately, nothing was showing that sounded compelling.

I headed out thinking about what I wanted in my day. I thought about driving the two hours to a small town I know where the river meanders through rocks and trees and carries away daily stress and brings in grander thoughts. I compromised and decided to go to a park in Fort Worth near a river. I bought a chocolate chip croissant on the way. The park sits high up on the bank of the river, which has been reshaped for flood control. The trees are far back from the benches along the trail at the top of the bank. I like rivers, and I like being right next to them and in them, so the arrangement was somewhat lonely.

I had time to think about the upscale older neighborhood where the French bakery is. I was seeing things more like a traveler in a new city. The people were more interesting and I wondered about their lives instead of focusing on the long lines and lack of parking (I didn’t ignore those, obviously!).

I thought about biking one time on the trail along the river with a friend many years ago, and how I was worn out at the end. He was biking for fitness and some sort of timed accomplishment. I was biking for enjoyment at first but had to focus on trying to keep up and breathing. I had a similar experience with a different friend who was into mountain biking and took me to a seven-mile course on the edge of a lake. I enjoyed the trails and the trees and the views of the lake, but I was wobbly and sore at the end. I didn’t ask to go on any more biking trails with him, which was probably a good thing, because he wound up crashing into a tree and getting a concussion shortly after that. Some people take fun way too seriously.

What I rediscovered in that half hour or so by the river is that I love being outdoors (when it’s not too hot) and that I love outdoor activities—just not strenuous ones! I thought about bringing my bike to the trail and riding for fun—just fun, with no number of miles to cover or time deadline to beat. I left thinking of taking another day off to drive the two hours to enjoy the river with the rocks and the trees and the rapids.

I headed straight for the Museum of Modern Art eager to see the Ron Mueck exhibit. Mueck makes sculptures that appear lifelike of people in different ages and stages of life. Some are small scale and some are huge. None are exactly life-size—that’s part of the magic when he shares his perspective. Some look annoyed, some fearful, some very content, and others contemplative. They are made of materials carefully tinted to look like skin, with detailed contours and wrinkles and toenails. And other parts of anatomy, as many of the pieces are nude. I was amazed at the ability of one man to conceive of a piece of art with such detail, figure out how to make it look exactly correct, and make it happen.

I discovered that I enjoy approaching things by deconstructing them, understanding something about how they are made, to entertain the sequential and logical part of my mind. Then I back up and experience them as a whole, using emotion and intuition and symbol to entertain the creative and intuitive part of my mind.

For lunch I went to a Lebanese restaurant which I don’t often have a chance to visit. Discovering different cultures, and especially different styles of food, is enjoyable to me for the immediate taste pleasure and for the more subtle pleasure of thinking about how people live. I was reminded I have an ongoing interest in cultures of all kinds that I want to include in my life more often.

Part of me was pretty tired from the intensity of the Mueck exhibit. I needed to use a different part of my mind so I went home to look at all the movie listings, not just foreign and independent films. None of them grabbed me, and then I remembered I had received the Pedro Almodóvar film Volver as a gift and hadn’t watched it yet. I made my plan to watch it that evening and headed to the bookstore.

I enjoy the bookstore but always have my sons with me and have to keep up with them and suit my schedule to theirs. Going on my own I got to enjoy a frozen coffee drink, thumb through a magazine on new cars (a passion of mine since childhood), and look through thesauruses. It might be hard to understand, but I know people who love reading dictionaries so a few will understand. During the day I had a dictionary and thesaurus in my car because I was thinking of different words to express the coaching and training business I am starting. Following one word through its meanings and related words leads me to distant connections. This helps me get a bigger understanding of how to describe things, and it’s like gymnastics for my brain. Reading huge thesauruses for a while was playful fun.

I talked with my wife and she suggested Indian food for dinner. It was my second choice for lunch, so having it for dinner was a wonderful idea. This left me with time to consider another whimsical pleasure—test-driving a new car. In college I was able to test-drive a BMW with no chance of being able to buy one. Over the years I’ve always volunteered to go with friends who are looking at cars. I love new cars, fasts ones, sporty ones, luxurious ones, and even quirky ones. But something was different. I didn’t want to test-drive a BMW or Mercedes because they were no longer completely out of reach. They can be affordable purchased three or four years old. I wanted to test-drive a smaller, fun car since my older son will be driving soon. I didn’t have enough time to drive all the cars I had in mind, but I had the chance to visit one dealership and look at one car. I realized I can do this for fun every month.

Dinner with my wife was a rare treat. We ate at a small Indian restaurant we recently discovered and tried new things—more adventure! I talked about my day, what I had done and what I had figured out so far. She had stories from work and from her riding stable and we laughed a lot.

At home she settled into some computer work and something on fashion or home makeovers on television so I put on Volver. The television in the family room is seventeen years old and the picture is not always clear, but I loved the movie. Almodóvar has a quirky, even twisted view of the world, and sometimes I have this eerie feeling he’s directing my life, especially when I see a hatchback full of clowns drive by (which happens far more often than it should). I remembered that I not only love story—the structure, patterns, symbols, and resolutions—but I especially love stories told visually so the meaning is in color and movement and juxtaposition and composition.

Sounds like my ideal career would be to make a film like A River Runs Through It set in an interesting foreign town with clowns delivering chocolate croissants in new cars to people reading thesauruses to each other. All the extras would be Ron Mueck style sculptures. But that’s not how the Discovery Day works!

It points me to what I love: words, associations between ideas, strong personal vision, detailed work, artistic meaning, visual composition, people in all their differences, great food, and discovering new things. A lot of it fits into coaching and community building, but I will keep looking for ways to bring more of my interests into my life, especially those things that make my brain and heart dance. And I will take more days off to make more discoveries.