Yet, Elrod defied the odds and walked three weeks later. In 2012, he created his Miracle routine, which evolved into a book, a documentary, an app and an online community.

While filming the documentary, at age 37, he was diagnosed with a cancer that has a very low survival rate. Elrod continued his documentary while going through treatment. His cancer is in remission.

We’ve put together a roundup of Elrod’s offerings so you can begin your own Miracle Morning.

The Book: The Miracle Morning 

Elrod created The Miracle Morning: (Updated and Expanded Edition): The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM) to get through some of the hardest days of his life, but he never planned for it to be a book.

“It was never a book idea. It was my own desperate attempt to turn my life around when I was struggling,” Elrod says. “Financially, I was at the lowest point in my life. Mentally and emotionally, I was at the lowest point in my life. When I started this morning ritual, I just kind of combined the best practices that I could find into one ritual.”

Then, his ritual turned into a book: The Miracle Morning. The first edition—which sold over 2 million copies and was translated into 37 languages—has spun off into a series, with books written for a variety of audiences, including (but not limited to) salespeople, parents, entrepreneurs and those in addiction recovery. The book outlines Elrod’s six-step morning ritual called SAVERS (Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, Scribing) that he created in 2008 during the Great Recession.

The “updated and expanded edition” of Elrod’s book came out Dec. 12, 2023—nearly 11 years since the first edition’s 2012 debut. The updated edition includes more than 70 new pages of content, including two new chapters titled “The Miracle Evening” and “The Miracle Life.”

The Documentary: The Miracle Morning (2020)

Director Nick Conedera convinced an originally skeptical Elrod to do a film about the Miracle Morning practice. Elrod was concerned about the time constraints of making a movie; Conedera felt that the story needed to be told visually for an audience that doesn’t read self-help books. Finally, after months of check-ins, Elrod agreed.

In 2016, Elrod was halfway into filming The Miracle Morning documentary when he was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer: acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Given only a 20-30% chance of surviving, Elrod told Conedera that the movie needed to be placed on hold.

Instead, Conedera convinced Elrod to continue filming through his cancer treatments to show his ability to overcome the diagnosis.

“We weren’t planning on filming the cancer journey,” says Elrod, who’s now in remission. “But when you watch the movie, you’ll see: Thank God we did. The last 30 minutes of the movie are me trying to beat cancer while I’m still speaking and sharing the message, and The Miracle Morning community is rallying behind me. That really made the movie much more than it would have been without that experience.”

The Podcast: Achieve Your Goals with Hal Elrod

The Achieve Your Goals podcast offers weekly “practical advice and strategies to achieve your goals and dreams,” according to its Apple Podcasts description. Most episodes feature a guest. Past guests have included: Michael Breus, Ph.D., (aka “the Sleep Doctor”) and Shawn Stevenson (The Model Health Show podcast and Eat Smarter Family Cookbook: 100 Delicious Recipes to Transform Your Health, Fitness and Connection).

The App: The Miracle Morning

If you’re working to incorporate The Miracle Morning into your routine, there’s now an app for that, too. The Miracle Morning app visually takes users through the SAVERS steps and features helpful content that aids in their process.

The app contains hundreds of personalized morning routines, and users can complete all six steps of the process in as little as six minutes.

The app has both free and paid versions available.

The Community: The Miracle Morning Facebook

The Miracle Morning also has a thriving Facebook group, which had more than 360,000 members at the time of publication. In this group, members often share their own journeys of using the SAVERS method to change their lives. Elrod says that some of the updates for his book were inspired by the community and its members.

“I’m engaging in there,” Elrod says. “I’m learning not only from my own practice but from what other people are doing.”

The School Program: The Miracle Morning in Schools

The Miracle Morning program for schools offers self-guided, virtual and in-person wellness training for faculty. According to its website, the mission is “to equip schools with resources to bring The Miracle Morning into their communities with practices that invite mindful living, set future intention and encourage conscious action for today’s scholars, teachers, administrators and parents, one school at a time.”

Reviews on the program’s website note that it has been a valuable resource for eliminating teacher burnout and helping educators make deeper connections with their students. Educators also said that teaching the program to students helped improve attendance and behavioral issues in schools. 

This article originally appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of SUCCESS magazine. Photo courtesy of Hal Elrod

The post Hal Elrod and The Miracle Morning Ecosystem appeared first on SUCCESS.

I’ve been saying I want to learn to speak Italian fluently for the last three years, but all I can manage is a few minutes of Duolingo each day—and when I travel or get busy with other activities, the first thing I drop from my to-do list is practicing my Italian. I haven’t even been able to commit to taking a weekly class.

So how can we make time for a new hobby? The missing ingredient could be motivation, says Jen Dulin, an executive coach and leadership consultant based in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. If we want our new activity to be a priority, we need to understand why we want to learn it.

“If our why is strong enough, we will figure out the how,” Dulin says. Without knowing our why, we are relying on willpower alone to keep us going, and willpower is often temporary and wanes over time, she says. Dulin recommends spending a few days reflecting on how this new skill or hobby aligns with your values and how it might benefit you over time.

After reflecting on my desire to learn Italian, I realized it might be difficult for me to maintain my motivation because I don’t have a trip to Italy planned for this year. But that doesn’t mean I should give up. 

Here are six ways to stay motivated when learning a new skill.

1. Be patient

One of my biggest frustrations with learning to speak Italian is I want to sound like a native speaker, not an American trying to speak Italian. This has made me hesitant to practice my language skills with other people.

This gap between my expectations—that I will sound like a native speaker—and the reality—that I will sound like someone struggling to learn a new language—is common. We might be drawn to an activity like writing poetry or playing the guitar, but when we try to do it, we often realize we’re not good at it, says Grace Adele Boyle, a creative and executive coach in Nederland, Colorado. But being a beginner is part of the process of learning a new skill or taking up a new interest.

“Give yourself permission to be bad at it,” says Kim Childs, founder of Take the Leap Coaching in Arlington, Massachusetts.

2. Try new things

The first hobby you try might not be the one you stick with, so test out a few new activities until you find one that feels right, Childs says. “Give yourself permission to explore,” she adds.

If your hobby is meant to release stress, don’t put too much pressure on yourself to commit to an activity long-term. Especially if you don’t enjoy it, says Andrea Raggambi, chief success designer at PerforMore Coaching & Consulting in Falls Church, Virginia. For instance, you might think you will love to crochet, but then when you sit down to do it, you don’t enjoy it.

Keep in mind that a hobby doesn’t have to be an activity. “It might be something like mindfulness or meditation because you feel a lot of stress or because you want to learn how to make space and time to be present,” Raggambi says.

Once you find an activity you like and commit to it, then you can think about how to rearrange your schedule to make it a habit or to make time to practice it.

3. Start small

We often start out promising to commit an hour to our hobby every day, but that might not be realistic given other commitments to work and family. Start by doing a little bit a few times a week, says Katie Navarra Bradley, a business performance and executive leadership coach in Mechanicville, New York. “Set aside a small chunk of time for the number of days within the week that you feel you can commit to that skill, and schedule it on your calendar,” she says.

Set small, achievable goals. Maybe you want to knit an entire sweater, but you can start with knitting one square and learning a pattern, Boyle suggests. Set a goal of finishing that square by the end of the month.

When Dulin’s client wanted to incorporate time for exercise into his busy schedule, he established small milestones. Step one was taking his bike out of storage and setting it up. The second step was committing to doing two minutes on the bike at 5:30 a.m. for six days. His next goal was to wear a heart monitor and increase his time on the bike. His next goal was to increase the intensity of his workout.

“During that process, his identity started to shift from, ‘I can’t get myself to exercise’ to ‘I’m being consistent, and I am exercising,’ and for him, that was enough to get his habit and commitment started,” Dulin says.

4. Find pockets of time

A common barrier to starting a new habit or activity is believing we don’t have enough free time. To find time for a new hobby, Childs recommends thinking about whether you spend time on things you don’t really value, such as scrolling through social media, shopping online or binge-watching TV. Childs recommends identifying one evening or weekend afternoon that you will deliberately abstain from that activity and instead use that time to try a new activity like a yoga or painting class.

5. Enlist a friend

Sharing your hobby with friends is a great way to create a shared commitment, Raggambi says. “There’s something different that gets unlocked when we do that with another person,” Dulin says.

If you can’t get your friend to join you, ask if you can discuss your progress and share your milestones, Dulin says. Find someone to share your interests with who will ask you about your big and small wins and appreciate what you have done.

6. Reward yourself

After a few weeks, pause and look back at the skills you’ve gained. “Taking just five minutes to reflect on the amount of knowledge learned can help us see our progress and stay motivated to continue moving forward,” Bradley says.

Childs suggests writing a “ta-da” list of all you have gained from your activity. “Celebrate your courage, commitment and risk taking,” she says.

Your reward might be learning a new skill or finding a new passion. “If it’s a hobby you truly enjoy, and it’s something you have a lot of fun doing,” says Raggambi, “then that in and of itself should be a good motivator.”

***

Lisa Rabasca Roepe is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who writes about gender equity, diversity and inclusion, and the culture of work.

Photo courtesy Chokniti-Studio/Shutterstock.com

The post How to Commit to a New Hobby or Skill appeared first on SUCCESS.

Change Enthusiasm® Global founder Cassandra Worthy spent 15 years in the corporate world frustrated by leaders who addressed change in the abstract but failed to support their employees through it. Since leaving that world behind in 2019, she’s focused on helping organizations thrive through these periods—particularly by harnessing emotions that can lead to personal and professional growth.

“My work is to debunk the myth that emotion should be left at the door of business,” Worthy says. “Regardless of if you talk about them, they’re still gonna be there. It’s just a matter of if they’re driving your attrition rates up. Or if they’re allowing you to move successfully through change.”

With Change Enthusiasm®, Worthy has created a program that helps organizations embrace so-called “negative” emotions around change—whether that’s a buyout, restructuring or new management—by using those emotions to fuel positive growth. She wants you to know that your emotions are worthy of interrogating in a workplace setting. And that they can, in fact, be used to propel you to a new and better place during otherwise challenging times.

We sat down with her to talk about harnessing your feelings to fuel positive growth, especially in the face of fast-paced change and disruption.

(This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.)

The start of Change Enthusiasm®

SUCCESS: Would you tell me about the origins of Change Enthusiasm®?

Cassandra Worthy: I went through a lot of change in my corporate career, and most of it was acquisition. I’ve been on both sides of the coin. I’ve been in a large organization that acquired a business for multibillion dollars…and then I’ve been a part of a business that got acquired by another large company… And every time, I’ve felt the pain, the frustration, the anger, the anxiety, the fear—not knowing if I would wake up and have a job the next day.

Reacting to change

CW: I noticed that leaders would talk about, “This is gonna be tough times; it’s gonna be difficult; we’re going through a lot of change.” They would do that at the beginning, but then nothing else would be said about the difficulty, about the challenge. It was almost like this unspoken, grit-your-teeth-and-bear-it thing. In corporate, there’s the sentiment of, “Leave your emotions at the door. We understand you’re human—you have emotions. But don’t talk about them here.”

S: Right, right. “This is not the place.”

CW: Exactly. “This is not the place. I don’t need to hear that.” This never sat well with me. And I knew there was a better way. So, I actually started practicing this mindset that I coined Change Enthusiasm® back when I was in corporate going through these acquisitions and recognizing that the feelings I was having—the fear, the frustration—they always were signaling me to some moment of opportunity. Some way to learn about myself [and] to learn about something that I didn’t like. And to learn about one of my boundaries, to learn about my colleagues [or] about the business. And it was up to me to choose. How was I gonna show up? How was I gonna use that emotional energy to work for me as opposed to against me?

Creating change with Change Enthusiasm®

CW: A culmination of things happened. I got sober back in 2014. And I recognized this whisper I had been hearing really ever since I started in corporate—that there’s something more, something different you should be doing with your goals and talents to make the world a better place. The other thing that happened was, my sister asked me how was it that I was able to thrive and grow and inspire when going through really difficult times. I had to think about, “How do I do that?”

And I actually wrote out kind of the mental process, and the steps that I take…I started sharing it with other people and corporate, and was like, “This is something I could actually bring to the world.”

S: I can see this message really resonating with women, with younger workers—the idea of accessing your emotions and harnessing them to create change. It’s a powerful thing to hear.

CW: For sure. In Change Enthusiasm®, moving from step one to step two is about stepping outside of our emotional energy. It’s about stepping outside and not becoming our anger. Not becoming our rage or our frustration and acting out in that. I use this mnemonic of a traffic light, where the opportunity is the yellow light. That’s where you’re pausing. That’s where you’re taking a beat. [And] that’s where you’re reflecting on, “What is here for me to learn? What are my options in this moment? How can I move forward, becoming better, as opposed to running that yellow light and choosing to act in anger or frustration?” People really resonate with that because it’s like, “No, slow down. Take a beat. Take a pause when you’re feeling that emotion.”

The Change Enthusiasm® framework

S: In your speaking and consulting work, do you find that there are office environments or types of people who can benefit more from this framework?

CW: Honestly, the people who can benefit the most are the people who are most resistant to embracing it. It is the executives; it is the leaders [who] have grown up in a world where emotions were not to be talked about. They hear things nowadays about emotions, and it’s like, “That’s too woo-woo; that’s too fluffy. We need to be hard-nosed. We have to remain stoic; don’t talk about emotions. They cloud decisions.”

CW: It’s these folks [who] I talk about empathy with—I talk about appreciation, [and] I talk about being your full authentic self and about Change Enthusiasm®. And it’s like they shut down to it. They say, “You can talk to my junior colleagues about it, but I don’t need it.” But it’s them who need to [be] role model[s] and embody it and bring it to the forefront if they want their change initiatives and their growth initiatives to be successful.

Embracing change then vs. now

S: Do you feel that, as time goes on, there’s maybe less resistance to ideas like this? I think I’m seeing more and more talk about ideas like emotional intelligence, for example. Are people warming to it?

CW: For sure. They have to have been. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have had the success that we’ve had to date with Change Enthusiasm® Global—and the fact that my calendar stays pretty jam-packed, which I’m so grateful for.

CW: I think there’s a turning point that’s happening. There’s an evolution that’s happening in corporate. I think a lot of it is due to the changing of [the] guard, generationally, as we think about individuals who have grown up in a different space, who are now taking on leadership positions, and also just the nature of the work.

CW: The pace of change, of disruption, is becoming more and more rapid—seismic shifts everywhere. And so, because of that, the emotional landscape is even more tumultuous than it’s ever been…I think it’s become a business imperative. And for many leaders, they’re at a point of desperation. They’re now opening their eyes and saying, “OK, let’s talk about emotions. What is this emotional intelligence thing? Let’s talk about it—if it will help.”

This article appears in the September/October issue of SUCCESS Magazine. Photo courtesy of Rious Photography (IG @Riousshotme)/courtesy of Cassandra Worthy.

The post Change Enthusiasm’s Cassandra Worthy on Harnessing Your Emotions and Thriving Through Change appeared first on SUCCESS.

This is the concept behind “satisficing,” a decision-making strategy coined by economist Herbert Simon. Satisficing, a cross between the words “satisfying” and “sufficing,” is all about choosing an acceptable or satisfactory outcome rather than the optimal one. 

However, satisficing isn’t just about making the “good enough” decision, says Julie Morgenstern, a New York Times bestselling author and the founder of WorkSMART Solutions, a productivity training and coaching company. It’s actually about speeding up the decision-making process.

“Satisficing is actually an elevated skill of developing rigor of thought in articulating your decision-making criteria,” Morgenstern says. She adds that she’s seen senior executives use it to make substantially consequential decisions.

The strategy doesn’t always have to apply to high-stakes situations, though. It can also be used in situations like deciding what to eat for dinner or which TV show to watch. In those cases, determining the criteria and settling for something “good enough” can save you time and mental energy.

What is satisficing?

Satisficing taps into several psychological principles, such as cognitive load and decision fatigue. When faced with too many options or too much information, we can become paralyzed and unable to make decisions. The human brain can only process so much information before it becomes overwhelmed.

“There are so many decisions we have to make in a given day as humans—and we will run out of time and mental energy if we belabor and are paralyzed by every decision having to be maximized,” Morgenstern says.

Satisficing reduces the “opportunity cost of time,” says Dan Ariely, a Duke University psychology and behavioral economics professor and the author of several bestselling books, including The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. This method helps us decide if making the perfect decision is worth the time and mental effort required to get there.

The key to better decision-making

As an example of how satisficing might work, Ariely presents a scenario of buying a camera and narrowing the choices down to two options.

“At some point, you realize that… the two options that you’ve identified are not very different from each other,” Ariely says. “So now the question is… ‘OK, I have two good options,’ and you pick one of them. Or do you say to yourself, ‘I need to pick the best one’? And the idea is if you try to pick the best one, it might take you lots of time, and you’ll spend way too much time.”

Ariely explains that, at some point, it’s just not worth the time to continue debating which choice to make in situations where the difference in quality is not that great. “When you have two choices [and] you like both of them, give yourself a deadline,” he says. “Say, ‘By Monday, I have to solve it.’ And if you don’t figure it out by Monday, toss a coin. It doesn’t matter so much.”

Maximizing vs. satisficing

At first, moving to a satisficing mentality may be difficult for “maximizers” who believe that there is one best possible option. For those who fall under this category, Morgenstern recommends practicing this decision-making strategy in everyday life, from what to wear to dinner to what to order at dinner. 

“It’s easier to define satisficing criteria [for] frequent decisions, and if you get it wrong, the stakes are not that high,” she says. “Once you get better and more comfortable with the method, you can apply it to the next level of decision-making, [such as] what to say in a thank-you note, and you may never apply it to big, consequential decisions like house buying or job selection.”

For Katie Hostasa, a leadership coach and the owner of KMH Leadership, there’s an added ontological layer to this concept.  

“[Satisficing] aligns closely with being attuned to one’s inner voice and authentic self,” she says. When we put pressure on making the perfect decision, the stakes are too high. “Being perfect is exhausting—I know as a recovering perfectionist myself. When we stop chasing perfect[ion] and who we think we ‘should’ be, we can experience our lives as they are.”

Instead of striving for the perfect decision, Hostasa says to start at your core. 

“[This] involves understanding and honoring your values, beliefs and emotions and making choices that resonate with your true self rather than external standards or expectations,” she says. “One of the biggest challenges is overcoming the ingrained habit of striving for perfection. It takes a lot of practice to challenge the mindset.” She recommends taking notice of how often you’re striving for perfectionism and practicing replacing it with a “good-enough” mentality.

When satisficing isn’t the right choice

Satisficing works best for those who can articulate their decision criteria accurately. However, the method doesn’t work for everyone. Morgenstern says that pinpointing what decision criteria to follow can be difficult for more intuitive people who “know it when they see it.” 

Morgenstern also says that satisficing doesn’t work for every situation, such as when a decision impacts more than one person, but the decision-maker only uses their perspective to set the criteria. It also may not be best for high-impact decisions that are new to a person, such as buying a house for the first time. She adds that the strategy may benefit the most high-achieving perfectionists and leaders who have to make swift and precise decisions.

The impact of embracing this approach can be powerful, and Hostasa has witnessed it firsthand. 

“I’ve seen clients who embrace a satisficing mindset feel a real sense of liberation and empowerment,” she says. “It’s not always easy, especially when they’re used to chasing perfection. But with some practice and support, I’ve watched them start making decisions that feel more fulfilling and true to themselves.”

Not every decision requires exhaustive deliberation. Ultimately, satisficing is about making the best use of your time and cognitive resources. By setting criteria and knowing when to settle for an acceptable outcome, we can strike a balance that serves both our time and our goals.

Photo by insta_photos/Shutterstock.com

The post Want to Improve Your Decision-Making Process? Try Satisficing appeared first on SUCCESS.

Nine weeks as a contestant on ABC’s The Bachelorette launched Tartick into a new reality. At first, it seemed a far cry from the suit-and-tie life he’d been living, especially given his newfound access to endorsement deals. More money could be made in a week by showing up to a club opening or posting a photo on social media to hype up a toothpaste or atleisure brand than you could pull in a month from a day job.

“It was [like] the fire hose, full-speed coming at you, trying to drink out of it and just thinking, ‘I don’t know what’s hitting me in the face right now, but I like it and I need to figure it out,’” Tartick says.

After double-dipping for a year and a half, Tartick’s employer asked him to pick a lane. While content creation hadn’t been the stuff of his childhood dreams, he ultimately decided to leave the banking world behind and fully embrace this new-to-him field.

Carving Out His Niche

Tartick used the skills that brought him corporate success—his energy, analytical nature and entrepreneurial spirit—to help him find his footing in his next career. After doing some research, Tartick realized that achieving longevity as a content creator would require building an online following.

“If that community is properly managed, you can make life-changing and legacy-changing money with [it] while providing immense value,” Tartick says.

This value hinged on occupying a niche that would differentiate him from other reality show cast members and helped him command higher endorsement rates.

“They [followers] came for your personal life from the show,” Tartick says. “They’re now starting to dabble in a niche that you’ve created. You have to figure out how to make sure you’re blending both.”

For Tartick, the “both” meant merging what first drew the larger public to him—his relationship and time on The Bachelorette—with his financial background. He used social media to beta test this new hybrid model. In 2020, when the market crashed, Tartick polled his followers, asking them to define in three sentences the S&P 500.

“Over 250,000 people responded to it, and 91% of them said they couldn’t do it…. So, at that point, I was like, ‘I need to take the personal finance background and bring it in a very light, friendly, almost sexy way to this audience.’”

He Had His “What”… Now, Here’s the “How”

Seven years after not receiving The Bachelorette’s Final Rose, 2024 will be Tartick’s highest-earning year yet as a content creator. He currently holds seven jobs, all offshoots of his brand:

• Podcast host of Trading Secrets
• Professional speaker
• Content creator
• Talent management company owner/CEO
• Business monthly networking group owner
• Real estate and investing company owner
• And author

In April he published his second book, Talk Money to Me: The 8 Essential Financial Questions to Discuss With Your Partner. While the book functions as a business card to establish credibility and open more doors, Tartick also wanted to explore an issue he believes doesn’t receive enough airtime.

“We weren’t taught how to manage and understand our money in our systems,” Tartick says. “And if we weren’t taught how to understand them, we really need to explore: Do we know how to talk about them?”

Statistics show that financial arguments are the second leading reason behind divorce after infidelity.

“People at ages 65 and older have a 3x higher divorce rate than they did in 1990,” Tartick says. A lack of understanding our money impacts all ages, from 18-year-olds getting their first credit card to retirees at 65 and older.

Passion Fuels Energy

Content creation isn’t a nine-to-five gig. During his spring book tour, Tartick often worked 14- to 16-hour days. But he wasn’t counting the hours because he feels so passionate about this space.

“Truly, all I’m thinking is, ‘Am I healthy enough? Am I eating right? And can I sleep enough?’”

Another often-unpleasant byproduct of living a public life is getting hate. But Tartick believes that receiving negative feedback means he’s doing his job.

“Anybody I found who has achieved material success has some form of polarizing features in them that make people love or hate them, but they watch them,” he says.

And while he tries not to give the naysayers credence, he is working on listening more to someone else—himself.

“I think the older we get and the more life throws at us, we are told to suppress that little kid, that little curious side of you, and act a certain way. What I realized is the more I [listened] to that person and stopped caring about what other people thought and started really diving into curiosities—that is when I started to notice things were changing for all areas, my financial success, my happiness, etc.”

Tartick thinks multibillion-dollar businesses could be behind all those curiosities.

“And you could have a piece of that puzzle,” he says. “I do believe it’s the curiosity and the natural instincts of gravitation toward those things that create the biggest leaders in those spaces.”

Your Entire Life Could Change, Too

Tartick believes, if you’re tactful and entrepreneurial with the access a social media platform affords, you can unlock a host of opportunities—from investing in businesses and sitting on boards to collaborating with other creators. And these days, you don’t have to get dumped on national TV or compete on a challenge show for that platform to materialize.

“You can literally have an idea or an education piece or insight or something that’s just purely fun and entertaining, and take your phone out and put it on,” he says. “And tomorrow you can go viral, and in 24 hours, your entire life can change.”

This article originally appeared in the Sept/Oct 2024 issue of SUCCESS magazine. Photo by Samuel Kim

The post Entrepreneur Jason Tartick on Making the Most of Unexpected Opportunities appeared first on SUCCESS.

While it felt so good to be asked that, it also felt surprisingly shocking. As I chewed on the bigness of those simple words, my brain was scanning the room, as if to say, “what’s the catch?” while my heart was doing cartwheels at feeling seen. I knew something good just happened, but I didn’t believe I could really have it.

The false meaning of happiness

Happiness is, arguably, the one thing everyone in the world wants the most, yet it often feels impossibly difficult to access. So, it makes sense that when we are offered moments of happiness, we may not always receive them because we buy into the myth that it’s some elusive, impossible achievement.

That’s because, says Harrison, we believe in what she refers to as Old Happy, which is rooted in the idea that happiness is external, and things like working harder will lead us to fame and popularity, which brings lots of money and, thus, more possessions, which will mean we’re perfect and people will like us and we will have won in the competition of life.

Spoiler alert: That’s the wrong way!

Related: 28 Spring Quotes About Change, Resilience, Hope and Happiness

How to discover ultimate happiness

To truly be happy, we’ve got to kick Old Happy to the curb, and rediscover the true source of our happiness: each other.

In New Happy, Harrison emphasizes that “the self needs other selves,” and when we discuss this, she tells me that the greatest fiction in the world is this collective delusion we have that it’s not true. American culture has taught us that to be successful, we’ve got to go it alone, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and proving our strength and resilience to the world. But the true arc of life, says Harrison, shows different data.

“A woman carried you and birthed you, and then from that moment, for you to be where you are, there had to be people who loved and cared for you and supported you,” she says. “Even if they did it inadequately, even if they didn’t show up in a way, they still brought you to this moment. And the millions or hundreds or thousands of people who touched you in different ways that shaped you into the person that you are, every single one of them has their fingerprints on you. That shift of recognizing that we are all connected, the more we can contribute to those connections because we can see all that they’ve contributed to us.”

Human connection and the collective brain

In her book, Harrison describes the collective brain. Most of us, she shares, have this idea that humans are smart because of geniuses like Albert Einstein, but, in fact, “human intelligence comes from all of us contributing all of our great ideas and unique perspectives. And over time, that builds into something that could never be replicated and could certainly never be touched by one person.”

Harrison has had the blueprints for her message for a long time, and New Happy was the building she constructed after more than 10 years of research. In 2018, three years after finishing her master’s thesis, “The Importance of Acting Upon What’s Within: A New Definition of Happiness,” at the University of Pennsylvania, she realized she had a message people needed to hear.

She started a newsletter with just 17 subscribers, where she used her own art as a complement to the messages. Slowly, her subscribers grew, as did her social media following, where she posts videos that offer up deep insight and actionable ideas backed by science. With a podcast and a book added to her offerings, her community can find a route to happiness that suits their needs.

3 lies we tell ourselves about happiness

Some of the guidance Harrison offers centers around changing our attachment to the three lies she says we tell ourselves about how happiness is achieved. The three lies are:

Lie No.1: You’re not enough.

“Because we live in a society and a culture that makes money based on telling us that we’re not enough, we have created a relational system that values people based upon their achievements, their appearance, their success, their power and then we deem them as worthier or less worthy than others,” she says.

“And this leads us to view ourselves always through a lens of comparison to another person. We have systemic factors that contribute to certain groups of people feeling unvalued by society or marginalized and oppressed. We have systems in place in schools and universities and governments and workplaces that rank people by their productivity and their output. So, all of that together, plus many more factors, ends up coming together to create a world of people who do not believe that they are enough.”

She says when she started The New Happy movement, she thought she was the only one out there who didn’t think she was good enough. But it was her community that validated what she didn’t yet know: Everyone else felt the same.

“I was truly kind of shocked because I thought, ‘oh, this is my secret shame. This is a ‘me’ problem. How is it that these strangers also have this problem?’ And…it’s the No. 1 thing I hear from people, and we all think we’re alone in it. We all think that we’re the only one who’s broken. And it’s terribly tragic. And it’s also an opportunity for us to notice and to try and make change happen.”

Related: Use a Gratitude Journal to Boost Your Happiness

Lie No.2: You’ll be happy when…

Harrison says we’re fed ideas that to be happy, we need to achieve more, do more and push more, and our cultural obsession with materialistic values and the pursuit of extrinsic goals is making us the opposite of happy.

She believes once people realize they’re enough just as they are, they won’t have to turn themselves into anything else to feel worthy. It’s the pursuit of becoming yourself, she says, “that ultimately ends up being what can make you happy and not having to tie your well-being to something at the end.”

Lie No.3: You’re on your own.

Harrison is fascinated by just how pervasive the idea is that happiness is something you get for yourself by yourself in our culture, and she says she dreams of a kind of Wizard of Oz moment where we all see behind the curtain and realize nothing was as we truly thought. “Once you see [the truth], you kind of can’t unsee it,” she adds.

She believes that if we want to prevent suffering and create more joy, we must show up for those going through difficulties who may not have the resources or support systems they need.

“At the heart of all of our problems, there is one solution, and it’s to help each other,” she says. “It’s the only solution. And we can fight it, or we can embrace it. And how incredibly amazing that it turns out that helping people makes you feel good, too.”

Case in point: That question Harrison asked me at the end of our call.

Related: Stella Grizont’s Work Happiness Method: 8 Skills for Career Fulfillment

The connection between kindness and happiness

Kindness can often feel like an urban legend in our hustle culture where we’re too busy to lift our heads from our phones long enough to exchange a smile, or remove our hands from our keyboards to gently touch someone’s shoulder as we ask, “what good can I do for you today with no expectation of a return?”

When the authenticity of her question offered me a very real moment of happiness I could not seem to access, I know it’s because I’ve been operating at an Old Happy mindset that told me true strength lies in helping yourself, not asking others for support. I want to live in a New Happy world, so I do two things: I ask Harrison if we could meet again to connect on a deeper level if for no other reason than because we can, and then I take a cue from her playbook and text five people I love: “Is there anything I can do to support you?”

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy after those simple acts. Could it really be that easy?

“After all this research, I just have such absolute certainty that helping is the only path forward,” Harrison says. “And it just happens to be the greatest blessing in the world that it also ends up being what serves us at the same time.”

Related: 6 Easy Activities to Increase Happiness Every Day

Photo courtesy of Xavier Lorenzo/Shutterstock

The post Author of New Happy Shares The Key to True Happiness appeared first on SUCCESS.

“I want you to talk to your manager and ask him for more responsibility. Tell him that you are there to grow and ask what steps you need to take.” 

Another time, I remember her yelling at me when I gave her some sass back. 

“You need to be independent! I have never had to depend on anyone.” 

I didn’t get it at the time because I was on my own path. A college dropout who was quite frankly a mess, I could not imagine a life where I could even afford my rent, let alone learn independence. Never one to date for money, I had found myself supporting a boyfriend who knew I had a family that was easy to turn to when I needed a bailout. 

But I took each piece of my grandmother’s advice and I tucked it away. What I didn’t know was that her anecdotes about her career and her offhand, scolding advice would be the force that pushed me forward many years later. 

The queen of Pittsburgh 

I grew up with very big shoes to fill. My grandmother, Cecile Springer, built her own path to success. A chemist, her photo is on the wall of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh as part of the Charles “Teenie” Harris collection. I happened across the photo online one day (and I keep promising myself to buy a print) and was struck by how serene she looks in her lab—and she wears the same knowing smile I saw throughout my childhood. 

She had big ambitions from the start. When we would talk about my career, she would often tell me about her career. 

“I wasn’t making enough money. So I went to my boss’s boss and I told him that, and I asked him what he was going to do about it.” 

This attitude took her all the way to her role as the president of the Westinghouse Foundation, the first Black woman to head a major foundation in western Pennsylvania. 

When I was growing up, her name was beside my grandfather’s name as major donors to every theater in town. And when she retired from Westinghouse, she created her consulting firm, Springer Associates (my LLC, Springer Creative Associates, was named with a nod to her business), and was known for her own philanthropy and for her ability to convince major donors to open their pockets for the causes she championed. If you needed to raise a lot of money for your organization, you went to Mrs. Springer. 

She’s the person who taught me that you always put out brie when you have company. And she would use her parties to teach me how to network. She would place me on one side of the room and instruct me to introduce myself to everybody and ask them what they did, and then we would meet in the middle and compare notes. 

We would go to benefits: the Dress for Success gala, the NAACP banquet and whatever else was going on at the time, and we would see jazz performances and sopranos and the ballet. And as a child, I never knew how hard she had to work to be able to afford to take me to any of this stuff. 

After my grandfather’s funeral, we sat together on the couch in her condo, and she told me about how much she missed going out. 

“I was the queen of Pittsburgh,” she said. And she was right. 

Life on hard mode 

Despite having every opportunity in the world, I chose to live life on hard mode. After suffering two life-threatening blood clots (a clot in my brain and a pulmonary embolism), I ended up dropping out of college. Instead, I learned how to tip at bars and push people back into the pit at punk shows. 

After spending most of my 22nd year unemployed, one of my mother’s friends politely suggested that I might want to consider applying at the call center for a local bank. So I did, and I got the job. 

It was a retail banking call center job, nothing fancy, no education required. But my grandmother was so proud of me. I would spend the next 10 years working in retail banking. 

Once, we were having dinner at her second home in North Carolina with the former ambassador to South Africa and she told him that I worked “in banking” with a big smile on her face. And because she was proud of me, I was able to be proud of myself. 

My life choices eventually took me to California, and then to Illinois with my ex-husband who grew up there. And soon, I was pregnant. 

Making meaning with freedom and learning independence

It was 2020, and I was a stay-at-home mom to three children, each a year apart. I was also freshly sober. I was contemplating the fact that I was going to need to get a divorce—and that I didn’t have the means to support myself and my children. 

Our children were temporarily living with their grandparents, and I had a lot of time on my hands. I began to write. 

I published an essay about myself, and then another. Then I found the joy of journalism. The first reported story that I wrote was for the nonprofit solutions journalism newsroom Next City, and I would write many more stories for them and eventually for several other publications. That same year, I completed my bachelor’s degree. In 2021, I left my husband and moved into an apartment of my own to start a fully funded MA program in communication studies. 

As I made each tiny step, I reminded myself that my grandmother was always independent. She and my granddad were married for 60 years, but each held their own financially though they clearly loved each other deeply. 

I could find the same independence within myself. And that’s what I did. I pushed through my MA, supporting myself and the kids on my tiny teaching assistantship stipend and whatever writing work I could drum up. I was very busy with school, so I stopped chasing work, but I had a few editors that I had built rapport with who would occasionally send me an assignment. 

When I completed my master’s I was earning enough money to buy a house of my own. My first job out of grad school was a flop, but now I work half time as a marketer (at a consulting firm and independently by referral only) and the rest of the time for myself, doing what I do best: writing. 

I will likely never be the president of any foundation or have my name on any major donor lists. But I have learned independence, and when I speak to my grandmother, I remind her that it was her advice I once shrugged off that brought me to a fulfilling life doing what I love.

Photo courtesy U__Photo/shutterstock.com

The post My Grandmother Taught Me the Value of Independence: That’s What Drove My Success appeared first on SUCCESS.

We spoke to five people who have undergone significant pivots in their careers, asking them how SUCCESS® readers can prepare for pivots of their own.

Justin Jones-Fosu: From store manager to business speaker and author 

Justin Jones-Fosu was on the corporate ladder and managed a team of 50 at Target, but he felt something was missing. This led him to a series of career pivots that got him closer to where he is today. Along the way, he launched his own company, Work Meaningful, now in its 17th year. He delivers keynotes and workshops around mindset, purpose and performance, as well as diversity and inclusion, authoring several books along the way. Jones-Fosu believes every position he has held has offered a lesson. “There’s always something we can learn from our last place,” he says.

Jones-Fosu advises people considering a pivot to connect deeply to their why. “There’s a reason why you pivoted. My ‘why’ kept me going in moments when I was challenged,” he says. Jones-Fosu’s first pivot led to a drop in salary, but importantly, it offered exposure to the area he wanted to pivot to, and the new position provided a greater quality of life. “It gave me my peace,” he says. He also advises potential pivoters to embrace the unknown and develop a great support system.

Jones-Fosu saw his return to university as something he chose to do, rather than something he had to do, achieving an MBA in leadership and organizational learning. “I took it upon myself to continue to grow and learn. There’s a wealth of knowledge I felt I needed. I’m a formal learner,” he says, talking eagerly about his plans to pursue a doctorate and conduct another pivot, this time within his business. “Upskilling is just who I am.”

Genevieve Beyleveld: From journalist to Pilates studio owner

Genevieve Beyleveld started a career as a journalist, working in various media houses and launching a successful travel blog that unfortunately suffered when the pandemic hit. After moving to Miami, she and her husband decided to purchase retail space in Bay Harbor and renovate it.

They found a run-down Pilates studio for sale, but the condition was to keep it as a Pilates studio. Beyleveld decided to run with it, renovating and rebranding the studio as Reforming Pilates, and within months, the studio had both a waitlist and celebrity clientele. “We thought, ‘We’re onto something, so let’s expand,’” she says, and the studio opened branches in South Beach and Fort Lauderdale, with Boca Raton opening soon—and still others in the pipeline, including a studio in New York. She aims to have 50 locations by 2029.

“It was less about Pilates than about business. If you can sell anything, you can sell everything,” she says, recalling examples from her younger years when she launched dating agencies and sold hair extensions to her university peers. Beyleveld’s marketing strategy was to exceed expectations at every touchpoint, from aesthetics to customer service to the quality of instructors. “I looked at the small things rather than the big picture,” she says.

Her advice to anyone considering pivoting is never to say no. “Don’t close yourself off to anything; networking is the most important thing you can do. Every person you sit next to is a potential client or investor. Say yes to everything in the beginning and be more picky as you go along.”

Tucker Cottingham: From lawyer to tech founder

Tucker Cottingham studied classics in university and developed a passion for working with disabled people in various capacities, even working for Neil Young’s Bridge School for children with cerebral palsy. Cottingham’s frustration with systemic battles faced by disabled people led him to study law, and he worked in a litigation firm for several years.

“Looking back, there are some threads you can see that make it seem more cohesive than it felt at the time,” he says. While working as a lawyer, he enjoyed working on the plaintiff’s side. “I liked that we were meeting whistleblowers in the back of pizza restaurants. There was an entrepreneurial aspect to it that I enjoyed,” Cottingham says.

During his time at a law firm, he met hundreds of startup founders and became one himself when seeking a system to simplify documents. Nothing existed, so he co-founded Lawyaw with a Google engineer, and the duo were accepted by Y Combinator. “I didn’t appreciate the complexity and how hard it was going to be, but I felt like I knew it would work,” he says.

Clio Draft acquired Lawyaw in 2021, and Cottingham is now managing director. His advice when considering a pivot is to bet on yourself but also identify your own strengths and weaknesses. “You know the feeling deep down,” he says. “Have a clear line of communication with yourself… because then you can say ‘I trust myself in this decision.’ That internal feedback loop [made me] feel like I wasn’t jumping off a ledge.”

Noreen Nguru: From doctor to wellness travel consultant

Noreen Nguru worked with the National Health Service in the United Kingdom until she was hospitalized from severe exhaustion and burnout during COVID-19—though she was already struggling before the pandemic, describing herself as being in survival mode and working 80-to-90-hour weeks consistently. “I realized this isn’t sustainable, and I have to make myself a priority,” she says.

Her passion for travel led to her creating a business where travel could be prescribed deliberately for its therapeutic benefits. Nguru is currently seeking investment for her startup to help companies and medical boards encourage their staff to make the most of holidays from a wellness perspective.

“It’s taken a lot of self-education and skill development, immersing myself in the field of coaching, travel consultancy and entrepreneurship, as well as networking, mentorship and practical experience,” she says, discussing her work in CBT stress management and mindfulness practice.

“Listen to your intuition and follow your passion fearlessly,” she says, advising those on the verge of a pivot. “To gain that confidence, take practical steps—surround yourself with mentors who have taken that leap. Every experience, whether success or failure, is a valuable lesson that will shape your journey.”

Nguru also cautions against being too tied to degrees, thinking they’re the only way to be taken seriously. “There are many ways to hone and transfer your skills. You don’t need a batch of new degrees to feel validated to do something new.”

Justin Hardy: From personal trainer to AI marketing funnel consultant 

Hardy was all set to pursue a fitness career, studying kinesiology at university and working as a personal trainer. However, he soon grew frustrated with the limitations of the profession. “I was tired of trading my time for money and having to be there in person, but I liked coaching people. It was just a ton of work for the amount I was making,” he says.

Around the same time, he started seeing digital nomadism pop up online, and he started looking into remote work and what people were doing in that space. “It lit something up in me—I’d stay up through the night studying how people were doing it.” He decided to start out with content creation around fitness and applied to every position he could find for remote work.

He got his break with Alex Hormozi and Gym Launch, after which Hardy worked in various roles before founding his own company as a marketing funnel consultant. With the surge in AI, Hardy incorporated it into his offering, helping businesses apply AI to their funnels.

His advice is to harness everything freely available online. “With AI online courses and videos, there’s so much free, good information out there. It may sound cliché, but you can do almost anything you want to do nowadays, and there are so many opportunities out there,” he says. He also encourages resilience and tenacity during the tough times. “You’re probably a lot closer to a breakthrough than you think.”

Careers are far from fixed. For some, returning to university is essential, while others opt to harness self-directed learning through online resources. The common thread is identifying opportunities and leaning into intuition, hopefully with support along the way. The path to success might be a straight line for many people. For others, it’s a series of pivots, getting you closer to where you want to be.

Photo by SeventyFour/Shutterstock

The post The Power of Reinvention: 5 Major Career Pivot Stories with Happy Endings appeared first on SUCCESS.

However, not all coaches are the same. You want someone who’s qualified, but you also need a coach who will be the right mentor for your individual needs. Hiring a career coach is an investment and a commitment, which means that due diligence is paramount. Jon Cheplak, coach, consultant and CEO of the Real Recruiter, explains the benefits of career coaching and offers insights to navigate this process. He explains that research, asking questions, and self-assessment are key.

The main benefits of working with a career coach

For one, a coach “can see your blind spots,” Cheplak says. They offer an outside perspective, helping you identify what you might not always see on your own. “They show you the highest form of love, which is accountability,” he says. “[Accountability] is observing or noticing without judgment, while allowing you to self-discover so that you can choose your next steps and have an internal decision process versus an external decision process.” Rather than feeling like a decision was forced upon you, this value of personal agency is a beneficial core component when facilitated correctly by the coach.

How do you define a ‘good’ coach?

Cheplak says that this starts with integrity. “[A good coach is] someone who walks the talk…. [There are] too many coaches out there [who] say one thing, and they live in an entirely different way,” he explains. Getting to the heart of this requires asking strong questions, Cheplak says.

“[A good coach is] not constantly trying to validate themselves by overwhelming their client with information,” he says. They will empower their client to be in the driver’s seat and act as a guide who ideally operates from a place of contribution and empathy. “[A good coach] really holds the line on principle and doesn’t let personality blur the lines,” he says. They hold their clients accountable versus “just being a rah-rah cheerleader.”

In addition to wisdom and guidance that can support your career, mentors bring objectivity. “The toughest thing on the planet to do is to be a third-party observer of self. I don’t mean to look down, to judge, but to observe the field of play,” Cheplak says. He explains that a good coach offers a different perspective and firsthand insights from having been where you are trying to go. “The ultimate shortcut and ultimate fast path to growth is avoiding the mistakes you don’t have to make,” he says, emphasizing that a good mentor already possesses the knowledge, lessons and proof of concept. These are invaluable on one’s path toward success.

Choosing the right coach

Cheplak says that the “right” coach is unique to each person. “We all respond differently,” he says. “There are some people [who] respond to an absolute in-your-face… type coach.” In addition to recognizing one’s preferred style, a person must also determine what they actually need from a coach.

Do you need a specific strategy and tactic? Then maybe you need someone who’s operational focused. Or do you need someone who can support you with a bigger vision? Ask yourself, “Which of those do I need the most?” One might think they need business support, but really, they need personal development. For example, they might need to address the root causes of any reluctance or accountability struggles.

Still, Cheplak says the most important thing is to find someone who genuinely believes in you, perhaps even more than you believe in yourself. “In business coaching, there’s the business side of it; there’s the personal side of it,” Cheplak says. “But many, many people come to a business coach for that human element more than anything.”

It’s also important to be on the lookout for red flags, such as inconsistent messaging. “What that tells me is that the coach is just looking for money,” he says. “They’re just trying to find where the money market is.” Essentially, a mentor should show consistency in their content and offer expertise versus jumping into the next trending niche. Similarly, Cheplak says transparency is critical, not just in the coaching relationship but during the exploration and discovery process.

“Everything going on privately shows up publicly,” he says. Look at their habits, family situation, path to health and wellness, ongoing personal development and whether or not they have a coach. Cheplak also says to look for credibility. This includes observing how public a coach is about their clientele, whether past clients talk about their work together or you can even talk to current or past clients. All of this helps demonstrate a coach’s value. It’s critical to avoid coaches who cannot and do not admit their flaws. Another red flag is a coach who claims, or appears, to have all the answers, Cheplak says, “because they don’t.”

Learning from the past

If you’ve had a bad experience with a coach in the past, Cheplak’s advice is to remember the benefits of having a career mentor and to know that good coaches are still out there. “Trust the process,” he says. “All high performers have a coach or consultant. CEOs do; high-performance athletes do,” he says, explaining that success comes from having support. Almost always, we can find that spot where we saw the red flags, yet we didn’t listen to ourselves. “You’ll continue to repeat history over and over based on your ‘picker,’ if you will…. Don’t blame the player; evaluate the game,” he says. Reflect back and this will help you move beyond the negative experience and help you get the right support from the right coaches moving forward, Cheplak says. 

Sephton is a self-leadership mentor, visibility coach, podcast host, author and freelance writer.

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of SUCCESS magazine. Photo courtesy PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock.com

The post Coaching Compass: The Benefits of Career Coaching appeared first on SUCCESS.

Morrissey, who holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology, has facilitated three weeklong meetings with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and has authored two bestselling books, Building Your Field of Dreams and No Less Than Greatness, says that there are simple ways to attune to what will give you a greater sense of aliveness, fulfillment and meaning. Finding your purpose in life is an individual process. “There’s no one purpose for everyone,” she says. Discovering your purpose starts with closing your eyes, reflecting and asking yourself three questions.

Step 1: Ask yourself what makes yourself feel most alive

For many people, reflecting on this prompt to discover your life’s purpose brings vivid moments to mind—as it did for one of Morrissey’s clients, who could picture herself planting tiny seeds in Dixie cups and cultivating fragrant flowers each spring.

The moments you identify and focus on don’t necessarily have to be tied to earning money, even if this line of inquiry may ultimately lead to career changes. “That’s not the first question because that money will ultimately leave you bankrupt in other parts of your life. … You won’t have a life that you absolutely love while you’re living,” Morrissey says. Nor do you necessarily need to identify an area in which you have skills or education. In fact, doing so may be limiting.

Step 2: Ask yourself what you’re naturally good at

Think about what you feel good doing—and things you’ve done that other people have told you you’re good at. It could be volunteer or paid work, but either way, think about your innate talents, abilities and skills.

Step 3: Ask how you can make a difference for others

“You want to put yourself inside the circle of concern, of course,” Morrissey says. “But there’s more good in it than just for yourself. So does what I’m creating [or] what I’m doing with my time… [create] good for others? Because that’s a different kind of payment than the cash that you’ll earn.”

Once you’ve answered these questions for yourself, it’s time to start putting this vision into action with five additional steps.

Step 4: Notice patterns

With your vision work done, it’s time to take these ideas into the real world. Start to notice patterns and see if and how they reinforce your brainstorming. Do you truly feel alive when flying a drone? Are you naturally good at painting? Does planting flowers to make beautiful bouquets provide joy for others? Noticing these patterns will help you reinforce or adjust your blueprint.

Step 5: Write your purpose statement

A purpose statement is a concise declaration based on what makes you come alive, what you’re naturally good at, and what good you can use it for in others’ lives. Research supports the efficacy of writing down your goals—and writing down your purpose statement is no different, Morrissey says. Doing so activates your brain and helps you notice things that support this statement.

Step 6: Visualize your life’s purpose

“Finding your purpose holds little value if you’ve never figured out how to apply it in your life,” Morrissey says. “It just stays in the idea realm. With your purpose statement in mind… close your eyes [and start] to visualize a life where you are living in alignment with your deepest sense of purpose.”

Try on different possible futures using your imagination. As you do so, notice the people, places and activities that are part of that life. Morrissey asks you to ponder how “you feel inside the vision that you’re holding?…You’re either going to feel expansive or you’re going to feel contracted, like, ‘Oh, that feels like drudgery.’”

Step 7: Take an inspired step toward your life’s purpose

To begin moving into your life’s purpose, Morrissey advises taking steps, even small ones. “You don’t have to rearrange your whole life right off the bat,” she says. “But you do want to make sure you’re leaning into the vision you’re holding, [even with] small steps. [You should] feel progressive, and then you know you’re progressing.”

Ask yourself, “‘What could I do from where I am with what I have?’” she adds.

Step 8: Review and refine your life’s purpose

“Don’t think of this as a one-time life[‘s] purpose quiz,” Morrissey says. “Remember that your purpose isn’t set in stone. It’s okay for it to evolve as you grow and learn. … The key to staying connected is to [revisit] your passions—what brings you alive, your passions [and] talents [and] your desire to make a positive impact in the world.”

She understands that during this process, people may encounter naysayers—including themselves. When trying to envision your life’s purpose, you may immediately second-guess your gut instinct or convince yourself not to pursue your desires. You may even argue that you don’t have enough time, talent or skill to live out the life’s purpose you’ve identified. You may also talk yourself out of pursuing this purpose because doing so would require stepping from the known into the unknown, financially or otherwise.

“Know that it’s absolutely normal to have these thoughts. You’ve never done this before,” Morrissey says. “The patterns in the life we’ve known are like gravity, or there’s an undertow to pull you back to the familiar.” She advises treating finding your life’s purpose as an experiment that you’ll test by taking one step or spending a few minutes per day on it.

“It’s [about] ever seeking a freer, fuller, expanded version of itself, just like with a tree or a blade of grass. [You] will either move into a…hypnotic dead zone…or you [can] make the decision to see [that your] life matters,” she says. It all starts with asking what makes you feel alive.

Photo courtesy of Aleksey Matrenin/Shutterstock

The post How to Find Your Life’s Purpose in 5 Minutes appeared first on SUCCESS.