Are you living your passion? Do you feel satisfied and fulfilled with the choices you have made throughout your ugg boots uk life and career? If you are like many Americans, the answer is no. According to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive for Age Wave and the Concours Group, only 45 percent of American workers say they are satisfied or extremely satisfied with their jobs. Only 20 percent feel passionate about their jobs.
Some people think that passion and work are not supposed to mix. After all, we work to make a living, not to feed our souls, right? Wrong, says Mary Lyn Miller, a career consultant , author and director of the Life and Career Clinic. In fact, Miller says that finding your passions and living them is vital. She says your passion is part of your “core essence ” — your talents, your gifts, and all of the things that make you who you are. Your passion is your life force or energy. “It’s a part of you that you bring to everything you do,” she adds.
The problem? Many people ignore their passions when it comes to career choices. After years of meeting deadlines, dealing with stress, and going through the motions, we learn to shut off the connection we have with our passions. But, your true passions never go away; sometimes, you just have to rediscover them.
Here are some of Miller’s tips to help you discover — or rediscover — your passions and live the life you were meant to live.
Reflect on your past
Miller says a great way to identify your real passions is to think about your life, especially your childhood, and identify things that you love. What has given you the most joy? What comes easily to you? Think about your favorite subjects in school or your favorite games as a child. If you loved playing with puppets or putting on plays, you might have a starved performer inside you waiting to get out. Once you identify your predilections you can figure out how to utilize them. For example, the person who is yearning to perform can find opportunities at work for public speaking. “A lot of our passions are right there in front of us,” Miller says.
Identify your dreams.
If you want to uncover your passions, you need to identify your dreams. Make a list of things that you long to do, things you would do if you had nothing to lose. Miller says it is important to challenge your assumptions. Maybe your dream is to be a dancer on Broadway. Identifying this might not get you all the way to New York City, but it will point you in the right direction. Don’t leave something off the list because you think it is not feasible. Sometimes just being willing to identify your dreams opens you up to something new.
Look for opportunities to nurture your passions.
Miller suggests picking up a course catalogue from a community college. Look through the classes offered and mark each that elicits a strong reaction in you. Give yourself the opportunity to follow these reactions. If you get a feeling about something, try it. If you are interested in the arts, take an art appreciation class. If you dream of being a ugg boots sale photographer, take a photography course. Sing, dance, write – do whatever you feel drawn to. “You have to be willing to do some experimentation,” she says.
Build a world and lifestyle around your passions.
Miller says that everyone needs to follow the things that motivate and inspire us. She uses the analogy of a seed. Each of us is born with an inner seed and this is where our passions lie. If this seed is deserted, never watered and deprived of sunlight, it will not grow. But, if it is planted in the right environment, it will bloom. Like that seed, you need to put yourself in the right environment. If you yearn to be creative, a conservative corporate environment might not be the best choice. “Look for a work environment that fosters who you really are,” says Miller. Once you do, you will find that your passions are able to be expressed more freely, which will lead to more opportunities.
Learning how to live your passion takes time, exploration and the willingness to take chances. The important thing is to start now. “This life is not a dress rehearsal ” says Miller. “You need to put something in your life that gives you joy.”
You see them every summer morning, in the packed commuter trains and offices of Central Tokyo: men dressed in wool and polyester, sweating in the 90F heat. These are the salarymen, the warriors of the Japanese economy, for whom summer is a season more to be endured than enjoyed.
From June to September, a fug of humidity falls across Japan, tormenting office workers dressed in a uniform more appropriate for winter. But a salaryman in a T-shirt would be like a samurai without his sword, and there has been no serious challenge to Japan’s business dress code for 150 years.
This week the Japanese Government embarks on an ambitious scheme to reinvent the appearance of the Japanese businessman. It is being pioneered by fashion designers, famous department stores and captains of industry, and led by Junichiro Koizumi, the Prime Minister, himself.
The idea behind the initiative – christened with the English words “Cool Biz” – is simple and serious. Japan is lamentably behind in reaching its targets for reduction of ozone-depleting gases, despite hosting the 1997 Kyoto Conference at which they were set. The stated goal is to reduce 1990 levels by 6 per cent by the year 2012. But in 2003, emissions were up by 8 per cent on the base year.
Much of these come from the air-conditioning units, which thrum in Japanese offices during the hot months. So Mr Koizumi has ordered that from June 1 government offices should set the thermostats on their air conditioners for 28C (82.4F) – a little more than Tokyo’s average
August temperature and intolerable in a suit and tie. The air conditioning will rarely come on, so the Government has launched Cool Biz to persuade salarymen to take off their ties, unbutton their shirts and cast off their jackets instead.
“Japanese men are so hard to change,” says Hiroko Koshino, a distinguished fashion designer who has devised a range of cool men’s clothes at the Government’s request. “It’s a very, very challenging task.”
Except at the most youthful of fashion and dot-com companies, casual Fridays never really caught on in Japan. Tsutomu Hata, a former Prime Minister is notorious for his ill-advised energy-saving office wear, created by simply chopping off the arms of conventional suits at the elbow. The garments looked as if a jealous lover had run amok, ugg boots and are widely held to have set back the cause of dressing down in Japan.
The biggest obstacle is the strict hierarchy still operating in Japanese offices – for most salarymen it is unthinkable to indulge any innovation which has not previously been adopted by the boss.
