Have you found your passion in life; something that wakes you up in the morning and makes you jump out of bed, something that makes you sing with emotion, something that when you try and describe it you get lost for words?

If you haven’t then this article is for you.  It’s an article to help you think about the possibilities, to help you believe that you can do it, to help you see life doesn’t have to be boring and repetitive, to make you stop and think for a few minutes and re-evaluate, to make you want to shout out loud ‘I Have a F*cking Great Life.

Always Be Truthful

When You start being honest with yourself about every single thing you can start to be honest with others and gain the respect you deserve in life.  Being truthful is so much harder than lying, but it is worth it.

When we lie to ourselves and each other we create what is called: ‘cognitive dissonance’ within our minds and we start to have an internal battle with ourselves which can build up into a form of a mental illness such as depression.

There is a release that comes with being truthful and it clears your mind to deal with other important things in life.  When I say be truthful I don’t mean be hurtful, be diplomatically truthful.  You will soon get a reputation for being truthful and soon people will come to you knowing that you will tell them the truth and some people will stop asking you questions, knowing that you will tell them the truth.

Enjoy Some YOU Time

It’s great spending 8 hours per day at work, 2 hours travelling, 6 hours with the family and 8 hours sleeping.  However, we need to take a break from all of that and spend some time on our own to replenish our batteries, so to speak.  Take a day off work and spend the whole day on your own watching your favourite TV show, or spend a whole day browsing books and drinking coffee in Borders, or whatever floats your boat, but just get away from it all.

Don’t get stuck in the trap of taking a day off work and letting everyone tell you this needs done and that needs done.  Politely tell them you are spending the day alone and no housework, DIY jobs or anything else is getting done, this is time for you, enjoy it and don’t feel guilty.

Daydream Often

Daydreaming is great for our minds and great for taking little mini-mental breaks.  I often dream of winning the lottery and imagining what I would do with the money (50% is mine, 10% to charity and 40% goes to family and friends).  I know the chances of winning are extremely slim to say the least but it’s great just taking a mental break for a few minutes and dreaming about the possibility.

Have A Mental Mentor

This might be a new concept to you but if you have a goal in life, and everyone should, you will more than likely have a person who you admire greatly.  Someone who is already doing what you want to be doing.  I admire and look up to Eben Pagan and have enormous respect and admire his qualities and he is my mental mentor. when I feel as if I am getting nowhere I can hear Eben saying ‘Keep going, you’ll get there’ and other little nuggets which keep me going.

You can even go as far as having a conference room in your mind whereby you meet all these heros of yours and just have one topic of conversation and they each have their say on it.  It might sound crazy but you’d be surprised at what comes up from your mentors, I know it’s your own mind giving answers (or is it!).

Regret What You Have Not Done And Not What You Have Done

Regretting your mistakes is a wasted emotion as you cannot undo the past.  However if you regret what you have not done there may be time to fix that.  Someone who regrets not going to law school when they were younger can still go, no matter what age they are.  Someone who regrets not travelling the world when they were younger can still do so at any age.  Many of the things will have passed you by and there is nothing you can do about this, let it go and move on.

Remind Yourself Everyday What Treasures You Have

Every single person reading this just now are so fortunate; we simply cannot comprehend how fortunate we are.  We cannot comprehend it because we are used to living this life, we have become comfortable living in a house, become comfortable with our loving partners, become comfortable with food, with friends, with money, with a job, with a warm bed, with a 50 inch flat screen TV, with a computer – It’s time we stopped for a moment to say ‘I am so grateful for ……..’ – make this moment a daily moment.

Hold Your Hands Up

If you’ve done something wrong, admit it.  Simply put your hands up and say ‘I’m sorry, that was my fault,’ and then work to rectify the wrong.  Simple advice; huge dividends.

Love Your Partner

There was a reason you fell in love with your partner, remind yourself of it every day.  Try and not to see the bad points but look at all the good points, the good points were the reasons you fell in love.  If the bad points are so bad, then leave and move on, there’s no point in wasting energy on a bad relationship, but there’s every point stoking the fire of a good relationship.

Don’t Care What The Neighbours Think

So much mind energy, money and time is wasted on keeping up with the jones’s that it can ruin our lives.  Imagine how much money we would save if we bought a reliable but older car and parked it in the driveway – heaven forbid, what would the neighbours say if our car was 6 years old, they would think we were poor – Who cares! Save the money and go on a great family holiday or save the money and start your own business or whatever, the point is do what YOU want to do and don’t think about what others might say.

To Help Yourself, Help Others Achieve Their Dream

This might sound a little paradoxical, but by helping others achieve their dream you will be know as the person to turn to when help is needed.  This help can be monetised in some way.  For example: there are thousands of life coaches in the world, they are helping other people achieve their dreams and getting paid to do it at the same time – a win-win situation.  If you are starting up in business, don’t think how can I make money from these people think how can I help these people.  When you ask ‘How can I help?’ you are seeing the world from the perspective of a customer and will ultimately be in tune with the customer.  When you answer the question ‘How can I help?’ you will succeed in life.

Excel At What You Do

Never be known as the lazy one.  Strive to be the most organised, the smartest working, and the person to go to when things need to get done.  This doesn’t mean taking all the crap from everyone, it means organising yourself to a degree where you can finish your work in half the time it would normally take, believe me there are hundreds of ways to do this.

When you have cut your time in half work on improving other things in the workplace without being a wise man about it.  Suggest things and give other people the credit for it.  When you start to think ‘efficiency’ in everything you do you won’t believe the amount of time you can save doing things.

Read More Books

Books, more than any other form of entertainment, will raise your IQ and your sense of wonder about the world and your part in it.  Books are the gateway to your mind and will forever help you question life and keep your mind intellectually piqued.

If you can help your children to read at an early age there is nothing better than reading for raising their intelligence and their mental development.

Always Look For The Lessons In Failure

Whenever you fail at something it doesn’t mean you are a failure it means you failed at something, and you need to find another way to do it.  So many people give up after failing a few times.  When you accidentally touch something hot your body reacts immediately by sending a signal to your brain saying: ‘Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh that’s f***ing hot, get your hand out of there.’ and you will almost instantly remove your hand.  So it is with failure, it’s life way of saying: ‘Don’t do it that way

Find Your Passion In Life

Everybody seems to be saying find you passion in life, it’s not that easy to do.  For one, not everyone has a passion in life and finding it can be like trying to find the holy grail.  here are some suggestions to finding your passion:

What do you dream about doing – Ever since the age of 14 I dreamed of being a writer, I used to copy the blurb from Harold Robbins books and make up my own.  That dream died out but kept coming back and it’s still here and now I am pursuing it.  What did you secretly dream of.  You don’t have to be good you just have to do it, the more you do it the better you become at it.

What floats your boat – Have you ever had a conversation with someone and a friend talks about something and you find yourself saying ‘I would love to do that’ and have found yourself thinking about a few more times since? why no try it? A friend was telling me a few months ago about his friend who dreamt of flying and getting his pilots license.  It was a pipe dream but he did it, he just went for it, and now he has his own small plane and flies all the time and makes money taking other people out.

Look at what you’re good at – Everybody has skills they are naturally good at or just enjoy.  Look at this and see if you could pursue it a little more and turn it into a passion.

Make Money From Your Passion

When you have found your passion and have become extremely good at it or even competent you will find some people ask you to do a job for them using your skills.  When you get to this point in your passion there may be a great opportunity lying here to make a living from your passion.  If you just want to keep it a passion and help friends out now and again that’s good.  However if you see an opportunity for something bigger then go for it.

There are thousands of ways to make money from your passion.  I am doing it right now by writing and it’s transitioning from a part time passion/hobby into a fully fledged freelance business.  That could be you to, think about it for a moment.  What would it feel like waking up every single morning doing something you loved doing and getting paid for it.  Yes it would be scary as hell giving up a day job for it, but it will be so worth it for the quality of life and the enjoyment. It could turn into a chore if you make it your full time job but there are ways to deal with this.

Life is not about getting the best paid job and working 70 hours per week to get $100,000 per year, who needs the hassle. Life is about finding a balance between your family, friends, your passion and bringing in money to provide for your family.  If your passion and your money are linked it will make it so much easier on yourself and your family.

Conclusion

The key to living a great life is to work with what you have and make what you have great.  If you need more skills, acquire them through dedication.  Your life can be utterly amazing if you let it, acknowledge your life and everything good about it today and start living a life of passion, a life of love, a life of awe, and tell yourself that ‘This is a f*cking great life!’

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Education is the driving force of modern society and the path of knowledge, that thrill of learning something new, can in and of itself be an exhilarating part of our lives. The benefits of continuing education are wide ranging for the individual and their community by equipping them with better skills, a deeper understanding of themselves, others, and the world around them, and strengthening their own natural talents. Education on a personal level can increase a person’s ability to manage stress, live a healthier life, find creative outlets in new passions and existing talents, and broaden their intellectual horizons. On a professional level, learning new skills can help advance your career, move you to a higher pay grade, help you promote your skills in a new area, or join a new career.

Some studies have shown that over 75% of adults who have engaged in continuing educational activities of some sort felt that it had made a very positive impact on their lives. Such activities can consist of any variety of educational pursuits from taking an art class to completing a course for certification in a new skill set to learning self improvement skills.

The benefits of continuing education can be important to everyone in all walks of life and at any age; however, too many of us are bogged down with long work hours, family obligations, and far too many errands that eat up our day so who has time left over to attend a university to further our own personal or professional education? Fortunately there are lot of simple tips that you can use to help you incorporate educational and intellectual pursuits into your regular schedule without requiring you to commit a full time schedule to your learning goals. In this article we will explore some simple ways that you can expand your intellectual horizons and educate yourselves on a variety of interests.

Ideas of Enhancing Your Educational Repertoire:

Make It a Family Affair:

Turn family game night into an educational free for all by playing games with an educational twist such as Jeopardy or create a fun twist on trivia. Start by dividing your family into two teams, then have everyone research a particular topic for the week and create trivia questions to try and stump the other team with. Assign a point value to each correct answer and the team with the highest points by the end of the night wins. It can be a great way to spend quality family time together while learning something new at the same time.

A Word a Day:

Start off each day by learning a new word.  Certain providers such as Google and MSN have start page widgets that you can add to your start up page that features a new word of the day so you can start your day off learning something new. There are also services that will email you a daily word or text a new word complete with definitions right to your text phone for a quick and easy way to expand your vocabulary.  You can even find widgets for daily words that can help you build a vocabulary in a foreign language such as French, Irish, German, or Russian.

Learn While You Drive:

While we may not always have time to read up on new and interesting topics, you can make good use of your commute time with audio books. Whether you are stuck in rush hour traffic or just running the kids to school you can make good use of your commute time by listening to a wide range of audio books covering everything from the latest fiction to astronomy to the Bible. Even if you only have a few minutes of drive time a day you can use it to get through a book that you might not have the time for otherwise.

Put Your TV to Work:

Most cable services carry a varied assortment of educational channels and programming including PBS, the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, among others and you can take advantage of these educational opportunities to incorporate learning into your day and even find ways to do double duty with the time you spend. For example, if you find yourself using a treadmill or exercise bike devote a certain time frame to working out while watching an educational program that way you can give your brain and your body a workout at the same time.

Find a Community:

The internet makes it easy to connect with communities based on just about any interest or topic that you can think of from philosophy to literature to science and becoming a part of an active community is a great way to learn about a new subject or find the latest news on a favorite topic. Do a quick search for forums and communities that are designed around a theme that you are interested in. Here are a few quick picks.

Philosophy Forum

Science and Philosophy Chat Forums

Philosophy Now Forum

Literature Forum

World Literature Forum

Society for the Advancement of Micronationalism Forum

Astronomy Forum

Historum (A History Forum)

The History Forum

Get a Pen Pal:

Having a pen pal is one of the best ways to learn about the culture and customs of another country. Writing to those who are native speakers of a foreign language is also a great way for you to practice or learn new language skills.  Having a pen pal and exchanging letters, post cards, etc. can also be a great deal of fun.

More Traditional Education at Home

If you prefer a more traditional style of learning there are several options available including free and low cost classes and workshops that you can take in your local community or online right from the convenience of your computer. You can find courses ranging in everything from art to zoology and everything in between. Here are a handful of ideas:

Artistic Skills-Learning a new skill or enhancing your current talents is a great way to release your creative passions and can be both rewarding and therapeutic. Even if you do not have the time or ability to attend an art school there are still several ways for your to gain an education in the arts and to pursue your interest whether it be as an art connoisseur or an artist yourself. So taking courses in painting, art history, sculpting, or participating in a writing workshop or learning a new musical instrument are all great ideas for indulging your right brain vices.

Here are a few great links to get your started:

Artists Network TV

This is a great and affordable way to access an art class online at any time right from home so you can easily follow along, pause, and replay sections whenever you need to from your PC or laptop.

Interactive Art School:

Although their complete series of classes is rather pricey, they do offer over a dozen free mini lessons.

YouTube:

Looking for free and easy ways to learn some creative arts? There are actually several channels on YouTube dedicated to arts and crafts such as the painting channel from the company plaidarts. You can watch step by step instructions and best of all it is completely free.

9 Week Introduction to Screen Writing:

A great over view for those interested in writing their first script.

Literary Passions- Ever wish you had learned more about the classics? Want some great points of conversation when discussing your favorite authors or need a refresher in Shakespeare? Taking classes with a literary focus is a great way to improve your own critical reading and analytical skills, to learn more about topics and authors that you are already interested in or expose yourself to knew works that you have not had an opportunity to explore before. There are several excellent books to point you in the right direction and you can easily start or join a local book club to help you explore selected titles in everything ranging from Contemporary Russian Poetry to the tales of Edgar Allan Poe.

If a book club is not quite your thing and you prefer private study, there are some great opportunities online to take literature courses conveniently from home, here are a few suggestions to get you started:

Shakespeare’s Comedies: A free online course from the University of Washington

Shakespeare: Audio lectures of a course on Shakespeare presented by UC at Berkely

Foundations of Western Culture:Homer to Dante A free course from MIT

Academic Interests

Whether you want to expand your knowledge of philosophy to make yourself more well rounded or needed to brush up the history that you seemed to have forgotten, learning does not have to stop when you graduate. There are a wide range of online classes and workshops that present learning opportunities in academic areas such as-

MIT’s Free Courses

Learning Space from the Open University

Free Courses from the University of Utah

What ever methods you decide to use, make learning a life long endeavor and you will be amazingly surprised at how easily you can find ways to learn new things and improve your existing skills on a regular basis.