I have learned a lot over the past few months from Ester Hicks.

First and foremost is to care enough about myself to control my focus. I feel so good so fast by being aware and tweaking this one aspect about my thinking. What I do is imagine how I will feel when I have what I want and choose to feel that now. I get jazzed about all the experiences I want to have and what I want to create and I go with that feeling as long as I can.

Another huge change for me is clearly understanding that I cannot control what someone else is thinking or experiencing…and I don’t want to. What I want is to leave them to their creation and focus on mine. The freedom and heightened energy I have from this release is astounding.

I have also appreciated the idea of wellness as a natural state of being. I remind myself periodically throughout the day to relax, allow, and enjoy.

Step #1 Pay attention to what you’re focusing on.

This step alone can do wonders for you almost immediately. First understand that what you focus on affects your emotional state, or how you feel.

If what you’re thinking about makes you feel bad it affects your energy level in a bad way. If you’re thinking about something that makes you feel bad you will quickly start to feel stressed or tired or just generally have a bad attitude.

On the other hand, if what you’re thinking about makes you feel good it affects your energy level in a good way. It doesn’t really matter if what you’re thinking about it is true or not what matters is if it helps you feel good.

So use this to enhance your career. For example if thinking about the weekend or free time makes you feel good then don’t wait until Friday to daydream about the weekend. But if thinking about the weekend makes you feel bad because you want it to be the weekend now or it makes you yearn for the weekend, then avoid thoughts about the weekend choosing to focus on something to make you feel good instead.

Here is another example. On a recent episode of Dancing with the Stars, Olympian Evan Lysacek was being coached by his dancing pro Anna Trebunskaya. Evan is a top notch technician but was not good at showing emotion in his dancing. Anna asked him, “What makes you happy?” Evan mumbled something about cars and then said, as his face lit up, “my baby nephew!”

He then proceeded to show cute little videos of his nephew on his phone to his coach smiling & laughing the whole time. Anna capitalized on that reaction and brought it to his attention. Long story short, he danced like a whole new man in that week’s competition. Even more importantly, he now knows a trick (shall we say, a Jedi mind trick?) for something to focus on when he notices he is not feeling as happy as he could.

Step #2 Use your strengths in your career.
Strengths as related to careers are activities that you enjoy doing, that you do well, and that you don’t mind doing repeatedly. This new hot philosophy on strengths was developed by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton in the book, “Now, Discover Your Strengths.”
They promote the idea that we can be happier in our careers by focusing on strengths instead of trying to improve weaknesses. In fact, they say that one can advance further and faster in skill attainment by practicing and developing one’s strengths rather than one’s weaknesses (for example, their idea that you can work everyday  to improve a weaknesses and achieve only lackluster results). The book is a little long winded because of all the theory and development talk, but when you buy the book you get an assessment code to enter online to take the assessment. The more recent version is StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. The book is much more of a friendly, quick reference which also includes an assessment.

Step #3 Be selfish.
No, I don’t mean selfish in a bad way. It is simply that factoring in everyone else’s opinion of what you should be doing in your work, (or for that matter what anyone thinks about the work you do) is exhausting and fruitless…so be selfish! After all, YOU are the one putting in the time and attention to whatever you choose for your career, and you are the one noticing everyday how you feel about your career (see step #1). So be selfish, and take charge of your career development to make sure your work is life-enhancing.

You have to control your focus to be happy…in fact it is the only thing you do have control of. You can’t control others or at-the-moment situations you find yourself in but you can control what you think about and give your attention to.

Here is a short careerillionaire story. It is a beautiful demonstration of something I’ve been thinking about.

You see, no matter what your work is each day you are in charge of your attitude. If you spend time resisting what you chose to do (i.e. working in order to feed yourself and your family) then you are spending a lot of energy resisting something you have decided to do. What a waste! Since you have decided to do it anyway, why not be fully present in the moment and engaged in your work cheerfully?

As demonstrated in the fast food workers’ story that I linked to above, it is when working while fully engaged in the present moment and with a positive attitude that you profoundly affect the people around you. Not only that, but you also greatly help your own cause. People love to be around such a positive, carefree personality so your networking becomes easy and natural. You begin to allow creativity and intuition to work through you. And, most importantly of all…you just generally become a force for Good!

Thinking about past experiences in school as a child and teen is an often recommended exercise that can help you recognize where you are naturally skilled and activities you enjoy. You have to be careful and thoughtful in the interpretation though. For example, I used to love to ride my horse as a preteen. In looking back later during a career reflection, it would be easy to me to take off on a tangent about how to involve horses in my career. If I imagined taking some kind of route like that, I would realize that it just doesn’t feel right to me. I’m not that interested in horses! So after more self reflection I was surprised to realize that it was more about the sense of freedom and independence I got from horse riding. There was also a bit of risk-taking involved as well as a camaraderie that I enjoyed building with the horse that really drew me to the activity. Now, I can see now how this past joyful experience plays into my career choice of being an infopreneur.

Essentially a personal mission statement is about your big picture purpose in life. In 50 words or less, mission statements are concise guiding principles that you can refer to again and again to remind you of why you are doing what you are doing.

The mission statement touches on the idea of life’s purpose and why we are here. Most of us at one time or another have wondered along this train of thought, right? We feel we must be here for a reason, a higher purpose if you will.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could bring in money and be working on our purpose in life at the same time? You have probably seen people or known people who have found their mission in life. They are passionate about and proud of the work they do and seem to exude a special type of energy or joy.

Mission statements will evolve as you go through the stages of your life. In fact, it is interesting to save old mission statements as a record of how you have changed over the years. Maybe your mission statement will be essentially the same and only become better defined and distinguished. Or, maybe your mission statement will change dramatically. Either way is perfectly fine.

Careerillionaire – I made it up…actually, my husband did. I was trying to think of something clever for another website concept so I ask him & he just threw careerillionaire right out there without skipping a beat. It was perfect for what I was writing at the time and since then I have been working on a definition. So here is the first draft. A careerillionaire is someone who is in a groove where work easily brings a sense of fulfillment along with an equally satisfying paycheck. They feel like they have hit the lottery because they get to do what they love for a living.