The Passion Paradox

The Passion Paradox
Author: Brad Stulberg
Publisher: Rodale Books
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2019-03-19
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1635653444

The coauthors of the bestselling Peak Performance dive into the fascinating science behind passion, showing how it can lead to a rich and meaningful life while also illuminating the ways in which it is a double-edged sword. Here’s how to cultivate a passion that will take you to great heights—while minimizing the risk of an equally great fall. Common advice is to find and follow your passion. A life of passion is a good life, or so we are told. But it's not that simple. Rarely is passion something that you just stumble upon, and the same drive that fuels breakthroughs—whether they're athletic, scientific, entrepreneurial, or artistic—can be every bit as destructive as it is productive. Yes, passion can be a wonderful gift, but only if you know how to channel it. If you're not careful, passion can become an awful curse, leading to endless seeking, suffering, and burnout. Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness once again team up, this time to demystify passion, showing readers how they can find and cultivate their passion, sustainably harness its power, and avoid its dangers. They ultimately argue that passion and balance--that other virtue touted by our culture--are incompatible, and that to find your passion, you must lose balance. And that's not always a bad thing. They show readers how to develop the right kind of passion, the kind that lets you achieve great things without ruining your life. Swift, compact, and powerful, this thought-provoking book combines captivating stories of extraordinarily passionate individuals with the latest science on the biological and psychological factors that give rise to—and every bit as important, sustain—passion.

Finding Your Passion For Dummies

Finding Your Passion For Dummies
Author: Noeline Kirabo
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2024-02-13
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1394216424

A hands-on manual for discovering what makes you tick and going after your dreams Finding Your Passion For Dummies offers you guidance and practical advice on how to identify and pursue your passion. With exercises to help you understand your values, interests, and natural talents, you can identify what you are passionate about—at any age. This self-discovery process will help you find more happiness, and a sense of purpose and direction in life. When you find your passion, you’ll be able to pursue it in a way that aligns with your values and interests. This book provides the motivation, the inspiration, and the how-to. In the friendly Dummies style you know and love, you’ll get guidance on setting goals, exploring your interests, pursuing education, and overcoming any obstacles that stand between you and what you really want out of life. Identify your natural skills and talents Discover hobbies and activities that excite you Learn how to overcome obstacles as you change your life Embrace your authentic self and gain the courage to live fully This book is for anyone looking to discover a life path that will lead to true fulfillment. Finding Your Passion For Dummies is great for recent graduates, mid-career professionals looking for a change, and for anyone looking to find more meaning in life.

The Fred Factor

The Fred Factor
Author: Mark Sanborn
Publisher: Crown Currency
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2004-04-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 038551364X

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The true story of an ordinary mail carrier whose approach to work and life has the power to transform the everyday into the extraordinary—now in an updated twentieth-anniversary edition “This beloved business classic has inspired millions of people over the years, and today Mark Sanborn’s transformative insights are more timely and necessary than ever.”—Jon Gordon, author of The Energy Bus and co-author of The Coffee Bean Meet Fred. In this timeless and powerful book, Mark Sanborn, member of the Speaker Hall of Fame, recounts the true story of Fred, an ordinary USPS carrier who introduced himself one day shortly after Sanborn had moved to a new home in Denver. Fred, however, was no average mailman. As Sanborn came to discover, Fred was the kind of worker who exemplifies everything “right” with customer service. Did people want packages left on the porch or prefer a notice to pick them up at the post office? Fred made sure he knew the answer. When another delivery service left a package at the wrong house, Fred shepherded it safely to the intended recipient. Others might have seen delivering mail as routine work, but Fred seized the chance to find meaning in the mundane, competing with himself every day to find opportunities to make his customers smile. We’ve all encountered people like Fred. In this deeply inspiring book, Sanborn illuminates the four basic principles anyone can use to bring fresh energy and creativity to our work and life: how to make a tangible difference every day, build stronger relationships, create real value for others without spending a penny, and constantly reinvent yourself. In this updated edition, Sanborn speaks to the seismic changes that have transformed the world of work in recent years—with employees increasingly hungry for purpose in their jobs—and outlines the book’s fresh applications. By following his principles, you, too, can find more excitement, fulfillment, and success in your career—and in your life.

What Matters Now

What Matters Now
Author: Gary Hamel
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2012-01-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1118219082

This is not a book about one thing. It's not a 250-page dissertation on leadership, teams or motivation. Instead, it's an agenda for building organizations that can flourish in a world of diminished hopes, relentless change and ferocious competition. This is not a book about doing better. It's not a manual for people who want to tinker at the margins. Instead, it's an impassioned plea to reinvent management as we know it—to rethink the fundamental assumptions we have about capitalism, organizational life, and the meaning of work. Leaders today confront a world where the unprecedented is the norm. Wherever one looks, one sees the exceptional and the extraordinary: Business newspapers decrying the state of capitalism. Once-innovative companies struggling to save off senescence. Next gen employees shunning blue chips for social start-ups. Corporate miscreants getting pilloried in the blogosphere. Entry barriers tumbling in what were once oligopolistic strongholds. Hundred year-old business models being rendered irrelevant overnight. Newbie organizations crowdsourcing their most creative work. National governments lurching towards bankruptcy. Investors angrily confronting greedy CEOs and complacent boards. Newly omnipotent customers eagerly wielding their power. Social media dramatically transforming the way human beings connect, learn and collaborate. Obviously, there are lots of things that matter now. But in a world of fractured certainties and battered trust, some things matter more than others. While the challenges facing organizations are limitless; leadership bandwidth isn't. That's why you have to be clear about what really matters now. What are the fundamental, make-or-break issues that will determine whether your organization thrives or dives in the years ahead? Hamel identifies five issues are that are paramount: values, innovation, adaptability, passion and ideology. In doing so he presents an essential agenda for leaders everywhere who are eager to... move from defense to offense reverse the tide of commoditization defeat bureaucracy astonish their customers foster extraordinary contribution capture the moral high ground outrun change build a company that's truly fit for the future Concise and to the point, the book will inspire you to rethink your business, your company and how you lead.

The Trouble with Passion

The Trouble with Passion
Author: Erin Cech
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2021-11-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520972694

Probing the ominous side of career advice to "follow your passion," this data-driven study explains how the passion principle fails us and perpetuates inequality by class, gender, and race; and it suggests how we can reconfigure our relationships to paid work. "Follow your passion" is a popular mantra for career decision-making in the United States. Passion-seeking seems like a promising path for avoiding the potential drudgery of a life of paid work, but this "passion principle"—seductive as it is—does not universally translate. The Trouble with Passion reveals the significant downside of the passion principle: the concept helps culturally legitimize and reproduce an exploited, overworked white-collar labor force and broadly serves to reinforce class, race, and gender segregation and inequality. Grounding her investigation in the paradoxical tensions between capitalism's demand for ideal workers and our cultural expectations for self-expression, sociologist Erin A. Cech draws on interviews that follow students from college into the workforce, surveys of US workers, and experimental data to explain why the passion principle is such an attractive, if deceptive, career decision-making mantra, particularly for the college educated. Passion-seeking presumes middle-class safety nets and springboards and penalizes first-generation and working-class young adults who seek passion without them. The ripple effects of this mantra undermine the promise of college as a tool for social and economic mobility. The passion principle also feeds into a culture of overwork, encouraging white-collar workers to tolerate precarious employment and gladly sacrifice time, money, and leisure for work they are passionate about. And potential employers covet, but won't compensate, passion among job applicants. This book asks, What does it take to center passion in career decisions? Who gets ahead and who gets left behind by passion-seeking? The Trouble with Passion calls for citizens, educators, college administrators, and industry leaders to reconsider how we think about good jobs and, by extension, good lives.

A Passion for Books

A Passion for Books
Author: Harold Rabinowitz
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0307419665

A collection of sixty classic and contemporary essays, stories, lists, poems, quotations, and cartoons that celebrates the joys of reading, the feeling of spending hours browsing through a bookstore, and the people for whom buying books is a necessity. Booklovers will find themselves in good company within the pages of A Passion for Books, beginning with science-fiction great Ray Bradbury's foreword and throughout contributions like-- Umberto Eco's How to Justify a Private Library, dealing with the question everyone with a sizable library is inevitably asked: "Have you read all these books?"; Gustave Flaubert's Bibliomania, the tale of a book collector so obsessed with owning a book that he is willing to kill to possess it; and Anna Quindlen's How Reading Changed My Life, in which she shares her optimistic view on the role of reading and the future of books in the computer age. Interspersed throughout are entertaining lists--Ten Bestselling Books Rejected by Publishers Twenty Times or More, Norman Mailer's Ten Favorite American Novels and many more-- plus select writings on bookstores, book clubs, cartoons about books and a specially prepared "bibliobibliography" of books about books. Whether you consider yourself a bibliomaniac or just someone who enjoys reading, A Passion for Books will provide you with a lifetime's worth of entertaining, informative, and pleasurable reading on your favorite subject--the love of books.

Moxie

Moxie
Author: John Baldoni
Publisher: Bibliomotion, Incorporated
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781629560212

Leaders today need to be mindful of their circumstances as well as mindful of their own strengths and shortcomings. They need to have the disposition to succeed as well as the inner resourcefulness to persevere. Leaders must be willing to do things differently but also draw on tried and true traits, such as courage and gumption. Moxie is a concept that the modern leader is wise to adopt—one part courage, one part can-do spirit, and one part recognition. In Moxie: The Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership, author John Baldoni uses concrete, tried-and-true steps to bring out the inner leader in everyone. For management and employees alike, Moxie provides a roadmap to inspire innovation and effective leadership. Whether you’re already at the helm of your organization or still looking for a way up the ladder, Moxie is the leadership tool you can’t do without. Built on the MOXIE framework, leaders learn how Motivation, Opportunity, an “X” factor, Innovation, and Engagement work together for success.

Passion and Purity

Passion and Purity
Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Publisher: Revell
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2021-03-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1493434551

In her classic book, Elisabeth Elliot candidly shares her love story with Jim Elliot through letters, diary entries, and memories. She is honest about the temptations, difficulties, victories, and sacrifices of two young people whose commitment to Christ took priority over their love for each other. These revealing personal glimpses, combined with relevant biblical teaching, will remind readers that only by putting their human passion and desire through His fire can God purify their love. In a culture obsessed with dating, sex, and intimacy, the need for Elliot's freeing message is greater than ever. This beautifully repackaged edition will appeal to today's young people.

The Dreams to Reality Fieldbook

The Dreams to Reality Fieldbook
Author: Robert Chen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-01-23
Genre:
ISBN: 9781479373246

The Dreams to Reality Fieldbook Have you ever wondered why some people accomplish so much more than you do even though they have the same 24 hours? Are you tired of watching everyone else get what they want? Are you ashamed of being jealous of your friends, family or strangers who are living the life you wish you had? What if that could be you? What if you were able to make the income you have always wanted? How about taking a trip around the world without worry? What if you could live life without regrets? Would you be interested in that type of power? You can't change your past but you can have the future you want by changing the actions you take right now. In The Dreams to Reality Fieldbook, Robert Chen shows you how, step by step. This fieldbook was not written to make you feel good. You are not going to find rags-to-riches stories or tips about affirmations and positive thinking. This book was designed to take any dream that you have and turn it into a reality. That's it. Robert's focus when creating this fieldbook was to make it comprehensive, easy-to-understand and as short as possible. This book is not for someone who hopes it will work like magic with little to no effort. Each chapter ends with specific action steps that you should take before moving on. If you do not want to follow the steps, don't waste your time and money because this book will not help you if all you do is read it without stopping to take action. There are only two pre-requisites for this fieldbook: A dream A desire and willingness to commit to pursuing your dream It doesn't matter if you do not know how to achieve your dream, that is why Robert wrote this book. All that matters is that you want to achieve it. You will learn how to: Challenge beliefs and assumptions that hold you back from committing to your dreams Properly set goals that will allow you to turn your dreams into possibilities Create a practical plan that fits into your schedule to achieve your goals Execute your plan to turn possibilities into reality Overcome barriers that will arise when you execute your plan Celebrate and repeat the process again This book contains the information you need to turn your dreams into reality. All you have to do is to follow the steps.