Personal Development with Gray Miller
I’m happy to see that the word “passion” making a comeback. It fell out of favor for a while, and was even ridiculed in self-help circles, because the idea of “following your passion seemed to be a one-way ticket to being a penniless hobbyist living in your friend’s garage. However, people like Angela Duckworth started …
Yesterday Petrona put a comment on my post about following passion that I had some trouble with. It’s from Amos Bronson Alcott, “We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.“ I did some further research (ok, I actually just read the wikipedia page, but that …
I am not a tremendously logical man. I wish I was; it's probably part of why statistics thrill me so much. It's taken me a while, but there was always something about the whole If you follow your passion, you're very unlikely to be happy or successful because you'll be financially insecure argument. With the …
If you have headphones, or can play classical music in your environment, you should click on the link and watch this short (about two minutes) video: Even if you can’t watch it, you can tell from the screen shot that this is a conductor who is engaged in what she is doing. Even people who don’t like …
Last weekend when I recorded the Love Life Practice Podcast I was able to read the comment that my friend Petrona left rebutting my rebuttal. I actually had to re-record the section, because the first time I read it I kept on interrupting to argue with her points and insist on clarification and jump up …
The only thing that drives me as nuts as the bland and whimsical “Follow your passion!” articles that fill personal development blogs is the inevitable backlash of “Don’t follow your passion!” rebuttals. I’ve written on the subject here before, and I swear, I’m not going to go over the same stuff in this post. Aside …
Do What You Love – No, Wait… Ya gotta love the lemmings. Steve Jobs, in a now-famous keynote, set down a challenge for the up-and-coming workers (aka college grads) that has been quoted over and over: You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for …
Love & Other Disasters In episode 30 of the “You Are Not So Smart” podcast there is an interview with sports writer David Epstein, in which they talk extensively about that infamous “10,000 hour” rule. It was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers and is based heavily on the work of a Dr. …
Always Be (INSERT PASSION HERE) Recently a very talented illustrator friend of mine posted on his Facebook page that he had gotten a client based on an offhand sketch he’d made on the back of a napkin in a restaurant. He declared that the lesson learned was “ABD: Always Be Drawing.” I ran into the same …