by Tommy Baker
Walking. Walking, often called a standing meditation is a brilliant way to achieve a new perspective and connect to yourself on a deeper level.
Meditation. What most people miss out on with meditation is trying to do it right. There is no right or wrong, there simply is. With meditation, you’re not only accessing your signal, but working on the skill of focused concentration and emotional intelligence.
Float tanks. Floating, or sensory deprivation, is meditation on steroids. This is one of my favorite ways to tune in, and the physical sensation of zero gravity will take you to incredible places.
Deep texts. Reading a deep text designed to open your mind leads to powerful inner reflection. In this place, you’re in tune with yourself and more likely to create time to think and press the pause button on life.
Thinking time. Last, spending idle time without a specific agenda, simply thinking about life, your place in it, and whatever may come to mind. This is rare, yet all the greatest minds who changed the course of our world spent a significant amount of time thinking.
Leap Tip: Create Space (Start with One)
Pick one practice to start tuning in and reconnecting with the signal. For the next 30 days, you’re going to do it every single day. Keep it simple and remember: the time you spend in this practice will pay off in massive ways.
This is far from a comprehensive list, but the underlying result is the same: helping you release the noise and find a state of inner peace.
Tuning Out to Tune Back In
Although noise can be addicting, once released, you’ll experience a sense of calm and peace. You’ll also start to notice new insights on a daily basis, leading you to be proactive, not reactive. In a world where we’re always waiting for someone or something else to give us permission, or insight, you’ll begin to trust yourself with more depth.
Trust becomes your inner guidance system before, during, and after your leap. It’ll allow you to make decisions from a place of abundance, not scarcity. It’ll get you tuned in and connected with yourself, leading to a deeper connection with others.
Some of the most powerful shifts and breakthroughs have come, not when I was standing in my office with a whiteboard, but in a deep meditation or while pushing myself up a mountain during a hike. With the sweat pouring off my face and the brisk Arizona sun making its mark for the first time in the morning, I get a hit.
And that hit is a powerful download of clarity and perspective that changes everything. And I’m here to tell you: you can do the same, if you’re willing to harness the power coming from your own signal.
Because what you have inside of you once we’ve peeled back all the layers of fear, insecurity, doubt and your past is quite simply, pure gold. Now that you’ve released the noise, created space, and tuned into the signal, it’s time to light your life on fire through purpose and passion.
Chapter 6 Key Takeaways
Release the noise to achieve clarity. We often know what to do, yet our lives are too full of noise. To get clear, we must create space and let go of what’s in the way.
80/20 everything. We spend most of our time and energy on things that don’t move the needle, and only 20% on the most essential. Creating a practice to cut out the remaining 80% will shift your game.
The power of deletion. We are overworked, overcommitted and overstimulated. It’s time to clear your plate and focus on deletion and creating space in your life.
CHAPTER 6 LEAP POWER STEP
It’s time to delete. Make a list of 10 things you’re choosing to let go of or eradicate from your environment. Think: physical environment, home, digital, work, office, social commitments, etc. I am choosing to delete the following, in order to create more space:
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Notes
1 Resist Average Academy. Ep. 47. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/resist -average-academy-knowledge-inspiration-action/id1073462154?mt=2.
2 https://www.amazon.com/80-20-Principle-Secret-Achieving /dp/0385491743.
3 https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering -Organizing/dp/1607747308.
4 https://www.dmaorganizing.com/2015/12/15/5-best-quotes-from-the-life -changing-magic-of-tidying-up/.
5 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/habits-not-hacks/201408/want -change-your-habits-change-your-environment.
6 https://resistaverageacademy.com/why-real-entrepreneurs-dont-work-from -home.
7 https://today.duke.edu/2007/12/habit.html.
CHAPTER 7
Light Your Life on Fire
When was the last time you lost yourself? Time dissolved, and you tapped into an energy more powerful than the daily Starbucks caffeine hit. You felt in the zone and connected. You not only didn’t want it to end, it seemed impossible to stop. If it’s been ages, that’s okay, too. What matters is you have it, and it never goes away. Even if it’s been years or you felt it yesterday, this energy is fundamental for your leap.
Lighting your life on fire applies to every leap in your life; it’s rooted in living your purpose and allowing your passions to shine. When this happens, you’re likely to enter a flow state, a blissful state of optimized performance. But simply beyond achieving double the results in half the time, these states are deeply fulfilling, both in business and life.
But before you’re able to harness the true power of these states, you’re going to have to get clear on your purpose, passion, interests, and skills (see Figure 7.1). Using these ingredients, you’ll be able to move forward powerfully with your leap like never before.
Figure 7.1 Purpose, passion, skills, and marketplace needs come together to create your one-liner.
Step 1: Create Clarity Around Your Purpose
We sat there in a poorly lit, and way-too-cold Houston conference room and were told we had to identify our life purpose. We had exactly 90 minutes. The timer started.
Shit, I thought. I felt tremendous pressure wash over me. I wrote, rewrote, and erased several sentences. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I felt lost. Nothing I wrote stuck, and it all seemed like what I should be writing. I didn’t know if I was writing my life purpose or entering a submission for Hallmark. When I looked around the room, I exhaled. It seemed everyone was having the same experience.
Here’s why: if you and I are supposed to identify our life purpose, we better get it right. And that level of pressure is exactly the wrong way to think about it.
Purpose and Pressure Don’t Mix
There’s never been a time with such an abundance of energy dedicated toward discussing purpose, work, and meaning. This discussion has not only gone mainstream, it’s accepted everywhere. And while that’s awesome, the idea of clarifying a life purpose can seem daunting at best—and downright unbearable at worst.
It’s time to shift our definition of purpose to what it really is: an evolution. Purpose, contrary to conventional wisdom, is never a destination. It will shift, develop, change, and transform countless times. This is the essence of an evolution. Depending on where you are in your life, it will look and feel differently. Knowing this, in turn, allows you to release the pressure and live your purpose now.
Purpose is based on who you are today, your current perspective, and where you’re headed. You may be thinking: How can I live my purpose today, if I’m spending time in a career or situation that I know isn’t right? This sounds cool, but I still can’t stand my boss.
&nbs
p; Here’s how: the core essence of your purpose is one thing, and the way you deliver this purpose to yourself, to those around you, and to the marketplace is what I call the vehicle of delivery.
If you’ve decided the essence of your purpose is to teach, then the vehicle of delivery to get there can take different forms. Most importantly, you can activate your purpose muscle today, and not do what 99% of people do: wait and complain about how it’s not working out for them. Whether you’re a salesman, a grocery store clerk, mother, or full-fledged entrepreneur, you can still fulfill the essence of your purpose by teaching every single day. This not only makes you feel more connected with your work, you’re already putting in essential practice needed to improve your craft.
Win, win.
For me, my purpose is to teach and inspire and to create space where people achieve a breakthrough leading to a radical increase in quality of life. This is a bit more defined (can you tell I’ve done this more than once?) and yet, I could be doing a host of things: doing what I do now through consulting, coaching, writing and podcasting, or I could be a seventh-grade math teacher.
Okay, let me change that. I’m terrible at math and squeaked by every year with the most bottom-of-the-barrel C– you can find, but you get the point. I’d still be able to live and fulfill a part of my purpose, even if the vehicle of delivery wasn’t perfect. The ultimate goal is for your essence and your vehicle to be in alignment. But waiting to work on your craft is never a good idea. Seth Godin, author of countless books including Linchpin, expands on this very same topic:
Transferring your passion (and purpose) to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion.
What he means is simple: waiting to live your purpose is a false premise: if you haven’t practiced your purpose, you won’t magically wake up one day and live it full tilt. Regardless of the vehicle, you haven’t put in the required reps.
During the rest of this chapter, we’re going to get you clear on a few essential ingredients for any leap while clarifying the essence of your purpose as it stands this moment.
Step 2: Identify What Lights You Up Inside
Right now, there are things you do that light you up inside. All this means is you lose yourself in them, no one has to remind you to do them and you love spending your most valuable and finite resources on them: your money/time.
The second key ingredient for your leap is to identify what lights you up, or what most people refer to as passion. Again, the common literature around this topic leaves most people wondering how the hell they’re going to find their passion. The idea of having to go out and discover something when you’re already overwhelmed means nothing happens.
And then you feel worse.
Often, I’ll hear a variation of: “Tommy, I’m not sure what I’m passionate about.” To that, I say bullshit. We all already have things we’re passionate about and we don’t need to hit the mountains of Peru and sit Indian style in a medicine wheel sipping on tea to figure them out.
So, how do we clearly identify our passions? How do we know something can be incorporated into a business and monetized, or remain a hobby? How can you strategically spend enough time in something to obtain the valuable knowing it’s for you—or not for you? Why is the pursuit of mastery of a skill your competitive advantage in an Instagram famous world?
These are all great questions we’re going to explore following a simple process designed to get you undeniably clear.
Identifying Your Passion(s)
It’s time to identify what lights you up. They give you energy when you’re tired. They move you when you don’t feel great. They’re what you think about and do when you’ve got free time. This is a passion. Don’t judge what comes up, instead focus on how they make you feel.
It could be movies, stand-up comedy, learning, writing, cooking, gardening, training physically, hiking, nature, pets, personal development, finances, Feng shui, language—and the list goes on and on.
Take a moment to identify the common themes that come up time and time again that make you excited to be alive. These are your current passion(s) and there’s no right or wrong. Now is not the time to focus on monetizing or any other pressure you’ve been told to put on them.
Identifying Your Interest(s)
Second, we’re going to identify some of your core interests. These carry less energetic weight than passions, but they’re still important. The difference? You haven’t spent the same amount of time with your interests than you have your passion.
In any interest, it’s worth spending enough time and energy on it to cross the threshold from complete novice to beginner. Otherwise, you truly don’t know if it’s simply an interest, a passion, or something you’re ready to discard. Usually, this happens at about the 20-hour mark, according to Josh Kaufman who gave a TED talk on skill acquisition called The First 20 Hours—How to Learn Anything.1
For example, it’s easy to get excited about playing the guitar. You get the right equipment, you start cranking YouTube tutorials feeling destined to become the next Eddie Van Halen. But at about the 20-hour mark, you realize something: this is hard, and that 16-year-old YouTuber player is amazing. It may take you 24 months to get anywhere near her level, and then you’d have to figure out singing. This is where you either choose to stick with it or move on.
There’s value in distinguishing between your passion(s) and your interest(s). Some things deserve to stay as interests. You may love music: listening to it, going to concerts, and reading album reviews. But as much as you’re interested in it (and sometimes feel flashes of passion for it), it’s not at the level of passion today.
For the purpose of this exercise, you’re going to make a list of your passions and interests as they stand today. If you can’t figure out which one should go where, it’s usually going to be an interest (for now).
Once we have your passions and interests, it’s time to combine them with the third ingredient that makes you valuable in any marketplace: your skillset.
Step 3: Take Inventory of Your Key Skills
Although passion is sexy and will sell out motivational seminars, they mean little unless paired with skill acquisition. We’re led to believe that if we’re enthusiastic enough, people will automatically want to be involved with our work. Although this may be true at times, it’s not a powerful foundation for long-term success.
These days, passion is normal. When I opened the doors to my original fitness facility, I believed I’d bring more energy and passion than anyone else. I was right. You could find me at the facility at 4:07 a.m. cranking music, high-fiving people and being that way, too—annoyingly positive guy who you can’t stand up before I’ve had my morning brew.
(I’m still him, and my fiancée would agree.)
And yet, what I learned the hard way was passion wasn’t enough. If you build it, they won’t always come. I had to develop a set of skills to differentiate myself in the marketplace and become proficient at reaching the people I wanted to serve. I could be the best in the world, but if no one knew about me I’d always be struggling.
With this insight, I focused on the skill of copywriting, crafting an influential and persuasive message to connect with people. Make no mistake—handwriting 4,000-word sales letters to start one’s day is no fun. But as time passed, I realized the combination of passion for one’s work and skill acquisition is what makes us lethal in any marketplace. Often, this combo is undervalued.
In 2012, professor, academic, and writer, Cal Newport, published So Good They Can’t Ignore You. Borrowing a line from comedian Steve Martin about where to place one’s focus in one’s craft, the book is an argument against fully following one’s passion. Although I agree with most of the premise, I find the truth to be in the middle: passion is important but combining it with essential skills is the gamechanger.
So, what are your core skills? You may be an amazing listener and you’re the one people lean on in crisis. You may be able to take complex
financial jargon and make it digestible to someone like me. You may understand influence and its place in social media.
Identify your core skills and then place them into the following categories:
Beginner. You’ve developed some skill, but recognize you are still in the beginner phase. (Usually 20–200 hours.)
Intermediate. You’ve spent time refining a skill and have received feedback on your proficiency. You’re above average in it. (Usually 200–1,000 hours.)
Professional. You’re at an elite level. Here is where people throw opportunities your way because of your level of skill. (Usually 1,000–10,000 hours.)
Mastery. You’re in rarified air and are considered world class. This is a rare spot and takes decades of focused work to accomplish. (Usually 10,000–30,000 hours.)
These categories can be subjective. But there’s enough distinction among them to drop your skills into the appropriate category for now. Later in the chapter, you’ll find out how to evaluate your current skills, and create a game plan in line with your purpose, passions, and your leap.
Step 4: Examine the Marketplace and Their Needs
There comes an elegant intersection between your core purpose—what lights you up and your current inventory of skills—where they’re blended to provide value to others.
At the end of the day, all we can do to increase our value on the world is help others solve problems. Whether that problem is finding a place to crash, hailing a ride from a (hopefully trustworthy) stranger, getting unstuck in business, or finally losing the last 15 pounds, there’s no problem too small or insignificant.
