How much do you love what you do? If you were to take a moment and give it a grade out of 10, how would it score?
It probably won’t surprise you to hear that most people I’ve asked score their work below 7 out of 10.
Now, 10 out of 10 doesn’t indicate perfection – we all have our difficult moments. As a rule-of-thumb, I’d say that someone near the top of that scale would still do what they do, even if they didn’t get paid for it.
If most people score themselves below 7, then where is the love? Where is the passion we all have deep within ourselves?
In NLP, we talk about values – the motivations behind the things you enjoy doing that make them valuable to you as an individual. If your values are satisfied within an area of your life, you will be happy within that context.
That’s why values are so important within coaching – they can act as an indicator of where you should be looking if you want to be happy, successful and fulfilled.
What is it really like to love what you do? Take some time to watch the video below and you may get some ideas. Steve Jobs (Founder of Apple and Pixar) draws on three pivotal moments in his life to inspire Stanford graduates to pursue their dreams.
This video is inspirational to me, not just because of the stories he tells, but because it is tempered by a deep personal honesty:
“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition – they somehow already know what you want to become.”
When you know your values, you have a compass that always points towards success. All you need to do is follow it.
