Your purpose has nothing to do with your degree, your resume, your career, or vocation. Your purpose is independent of all those things. In fact, it’s much bigger than any of those. Purpose has to do with your creative self expression. It has to do with what makes you feel alive. It’s something you do, where at the end of the day you think “I made a difference.”

Jonathan gives a four step exercise where you answer the question “What is my true purpose in life?” or “How would I want to be remembered when I die?” There is also a part about aligning your job and your life purpose.

The exercise comes from How to Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes where Steve Pavlina writes about how he found his life purpose.

See also:
How to find your passion

The subline of the report says How the Mega-Successful use this rule to achieve greatness and how you can too. Steve and Seamus connect Curly’s Law with Andrew Carnegie (at one time the richest man in the world) and what is known as Carnegie’s secret. They also give example of other successful people that focus on just one thing and become great at that.

My only complaint is that the e-book is compact, all text and no images. That is OK in an ordinary book but in e-books I prefer a lighter and more inviting look.

What’s In the Report?
The report has four chapters that are originally posted at their blog plus three articles that are not available on the blog. All in all seven chapters that introduce you to the concept of Curly’s Law, explain Curly’s Law in detail and in the bonus articles (chapter 5 – 7) go deeper into the concept. The report gives you tools to apply this rule in order to achieve great(er) success in your life.

You can get the free e-book at Curly’s Law. What they ask in return is that you join their Rebel Zen email newsletter.

I like his triangle concept with three cornerstones (truth, love, and power) leading to this:

There are seven principles total: truth, love, power, oneness, authority, courage, and intelligence. All of these are universal principles, so they can be applied to any area of your life — health, relationships, spiritual development, finances, daily habits, etc.

I have ordered the book today and it is already in the mail. It will be an interesting read and a review will follow as soon as I have read the book.

Note: The imaged above is borrowed from Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth.

The key and first on the list is to know what’s important. Then all we need to do is to focus on that. But since that often is easier said than done there are 19 other strategies to help us.

It is about changing habits, getting rid of time-wasters (like do not check email all the time) and getting rid of distractions. The tough part is changing habits but we benefit a lot when we get better at doing what really matters.

See also: Zen To Done

The e-book is edited in a way that makes it really easy to read on the screen. I like the articles, should I pick some it would be “The magic of the Every day mindset” (be here and now = mindfulness) and “How to sell yourself” which we all need to do.

Go and get your copy of the free E-Book: A Year of Change. It will inspire you in your work with your own changes.

If we know what makes us feel alive, why do we resist it? Why do we avoid doing what we love to do?

There are some important lessons in here:

Failure is fundamental to the creative process. If you don’t fail, you’ll never improve.

Respect the fact that mastering any skill takes time. Instead of thinking about all the things that aren’t right, think about what you can do now to improve.

There is also a part about when we have turned our passion into work and what we can do to re-ignite our passion.

Anytime you feel that you must do something, you lose inspiration. You lose your sense of excitement.

Jonathan is the author of the blog JonathanMead.com, a blog I follow.

I am following my passion and have started working as a professional coach, see Key Coaching. Another passion is sharing and gaining knowledge, a reason for my blogs.

If we do not like the way our inner controller works then we can retrain it. We can reprogram our inner controller to suit our needs. It takes time and effort, just like changing a habit, but it can be done.

Anywired have two great posts about this. In Recognizing Your Inner-Boss: 10 Breeds and How to Survive With Them is a list of ten breeds of inner bosses. They are: the perfectionist, the ‘done is good enough’, the devil on your shoulder, the workhorse, the innovator, the technophile, the guilt-tripper, the workaholic, the scheduler and the friend. The post tells for each breed how to spot one, the highs, the lows and making the best of it.

The other post is How to Be Your Own Boss (Without Acting Like One), it is about retraining your inner boss.

Update June 18, 2008.
I found a related post at Freelance Folder, Are You Your Own Bully?.

Note: Photo by Jimmy_Joe.

The image is borrowed from Allan Seale’s site.

The monk who sold his Ferrari is a great book that covers much of Eastern and Western wisdom around life and success. The book is well written and the concepts are nicely fitted into a frame, a fable around the seven virtues. This book is the first one with the monk and where you get to know his history plus why and how he changed.

Discover Your Destiny With The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari is labeled “A potent pathway to self-awakening that will help you to live your greatest life and claim the happiness, prosperity and inner peace that you deserve”. Still, this is not one of those “just wish and it will be yours”-books, instead it is a guide book on how to discover your authentic self and achieve lasting inner peace.

The Saint The Surfer And The CEO is about a person’s three final questions: Did I live wisely? Did I love well? Did I serve greatly? I like this book too, it gave me valuable input to help change my life and views.

Maki at Dosh Dosh writes about The Benefits of Keeping a Private Journal.

A private diary is tremendously powerful. It can help you to greatly improve your business or website. If you want to be a success, you need to think and act strategically. At the very least, you should keep your goals in mind in order to work towards them daily.

And a private journal achieves all this more effectively than a static to-do list, which only lists end goals and results to be achieved. Unlike a to-do list, a well kept journal provokes introspection. It is a liberating and productive outlet for random ideas, thoughts and feelings.

I already had the habit of making notes but it was not as organized as a journal would be. Maki’s post made me decide to use journals as a tool to help me improve and keep track of things. For those who follow this blog it comes as no surprise that I opted for a paper version.

I decided to go for two journals, one for my coaching and one for my blogging. The reason for two journals is that they are two separate projects and I benefit from keeping them apart. Even though I have been writing my journals for a few days only I already see that the journals give me a better way to collect ideas and to follow progress and changes.

Note: Photo by Peter Kaminski.