Many of you are probably already familiar with Barrie Davenport, life passion coach, author and blogger over at the very popular Live Bold and Bloom. This week she is launching BarrieDavenport.com, a new site that is focused exclusively on uncovering and living your life passion.

Since I know – from all the emails and feedback I get – that finding your passion in life is one very common goal for many of you I decided to mix things up here and took the opportunity to ask Barrie a few questions.

What do you mean when you talk about passion and why do you help people to find it in life?

I like to talk about life passion in the context of what it feels like to be in love.

When you are in love, your entire world feels happier and brighter. You wake up feeling excited and thrilled to be alive. When you are with your beloved, everything else around you fades into the background, and the two of you are focused intently and joyfully on each other. Even life difficulties feel smaller and easier to manage with you are in love.

The feelings are similar when you have a life passion. You experience those same feelings of aliveness and joy. It creates the same aura of general happiness and positivity because it ignites an internal spark of deep interest, creativity, and fulfillment in your life. These feelings provide the energy to deal with all aspects of your life more easily. You gain clarity about everything in your life.

This is especially true when your life passion is attached to a deeper purpose for you. However, unlike the feelings of being in love, the feelings associated with life passion can remain with you for a very long time, maybe forever. Depending on what your passion is and how you make it part of your life, it can be a never-ending source of joy and contentment for you.

I help people find passion in their lives because that is my passion. In my personal search for a life passion, I discovered that my passion is helping others uncover what makes them come alive.

Through my work as a personal coach, my previous career in public relations, and my personal passion search, I learned some very specific strategies for uncovering life passion, dealing with potential internal and external roadblocks, and creating the actions to change your life so you can live your passion.

I know how having a passion has impacted my own life, and I want others to experience that for themselves.

What is the most common mistake people make when trying to find their passion?

That’s a great question, and I’ve actually written an entire free guide on this topic that I offer at BarrieDavenport.com called The Passion Myths: 6 Lies Keeping You from Uncovering Your Life Passion. Most of the mistakes people make related to finding their passion happen before they begin searching for it.

They make false assumptions or have beliefs about themselves and their lives that simply aren’t the truth — or the entire truth. Sometimes they take a few steps toward seeking their passions, only to allow these assumptions and beliefs to get in their way and stop them from doing anything.

Once people address these myths, they can clear the path for themselves and begin their search in earnest. But even during the search, one of the common mistakes is not remaining flexible and staying open to all possibilities.

Sometimes our passion search will take us down one path, but then an idea or situation will occur that potentially leads down another. People sometimes resist exploring this different path because they feel they must “stick to the plan.”

But a passion search can lead in all sorts of wonderful directions. I thought my passion search was leading me to just a coaching career. But it has also led me to being a blogger and creating an online personal development business. I never could have anticipated that when I began my search.

What are your top 3 tips for finding one’s passion?

Tip #1: Begin with a blank slate.

While you are searching, try to remain completely open to all possibilities, even if they seem impossible for your life right now. You are capable of doing and changing far more than you initially assume, so try not to assume anything.

Just enjoy the ride – have fun on the search. You can deal with the practicalities of how to make your passion work for your life once you find your passion. When you uncover it, you’ll feel so energized that you will find a way to make it happen.

Tip #2: Expect fear and doubt.

That is perfectly normal. Fear and doubt will creep in at the beginning of the search and will reappear throughout the search. It’s impossible to go through a process of self-discovery and make life changes without the “what ifs” and concerns about your future.

But fears and doubts are almost always smokescreens that your psyche is throwing up to prevent you from taking action. The more you take action in spite of fear, the more confident you will feel and the less fear will bother you.

Tip #3: Have patience.

There are some people fortunate enough to find their passions quickly. But in most cases, it takes time. It can take a year or more to find your passion and then make the life changes to bring your passion to life. I like to view the process of finding a passion as a passionate endeavor itself. When you accept that you are going to begin this journey, enter the process with enthusiasm and a learner’s mindset.

You will discover interesting and exciting things about yourself. You will get to explore and experiment with different pursuits and creative ideas. If you view your search in this way, it won’t be just a means to an end. It will be a thrilling adventure.

There is often a focus on finding and living your passion through your work. But what if you cannot just quit your job and start your own passion-filled business? What can you do then to still live a more passionate life?

This question is one of the main areas of focus for my work at my new website.

You see many bloggers and courses teaching people how to find work they love. Since work takes up such a huge chunk of our lives, it is wonderful when we are passionate about our careers.

But especially in this economy, many people aren’t able to quit their jobs to start over. It’s just too risky for them now.

But there are many other ways to incorporate your passion into your life – and your work. You can live your passion through an avocation or hobby. You can volunteer in the area of your hobby. You can begin a small side-business in addition to your day job. And you can even find ways to make your current job more in alignment with your passion if you think creatively.

Even living passionately in one small part of your life can dramatically improve your overall outlook and sense of happiness in life.

What are the two most common questions you get about finding and living your passion? And what are the answers for those two questions?

The first question relates back to the topic of work. “I can’t quit my job, so how can I live my passion?” Again, depending on the individual’s particular passion, there are many ways to incorporate your passion into your life other than through work. It takes some clarity, prioritizing, and life balance to make this work.

When you clear out a lot of the extraneous stuff that is stealing your time and energy, you can open loads of space for your passion.

The second question is always a “what if” question. What if I can do it? What if I’m too old? What if I’m wrong about my passion?

We can “what if” ourselves out of taking any actions. The constant “what ifs” stir the pot of fear and prevent us from moving forward.

I encourage my clients and readers to let go of any “what ifs” until they get to the specific details of taking actions to change their lives. Then they can logically and creatively think through potential issues and address them when they actually occur – rather than worrying about them in advance.

What is just one or a few small steps that Positivity Blog readers can take today to start discovering their passion?

I would invite them to read my free guide on the myths surrounding life passion. That’s a great place to start by eliminating some of the preconceived ideas around the topic.

I would encourage them to give themselves the gift of allotting a few hours a week to devote to discovering their passion. It doesn’t happen by randomly wishing for it or doing a quick internet search. It’s a process that involves self-discovery, exploration, testing, and planning. There are plenty of articles and action steps on my site that they can use as a guide.

By giving themselves this gift of time, they are taking the first step on the path and opening the door to a wonderful new life that awaits them at the end of the journey. It will definitely be well worth the time expended for the amazing results down the road.

What are your passions in life?

My primary passion is helping other people come alive with their own passions. I do this through coaching, writing, and teaching courses.

I wake up every day excited to get to my computer and begin writing or Skyping with a coaching client. It all feels like fun to me.

In addition to my work, I also have a passion for travel, biking, reading, and spending time with my three amazing children, my family, and my friends.

And that is it. I hope you found this interview with Barrie as helpful and inspiring as I did. If you want to learn more go check out her site at BarrieDavenport.com

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
Chinese proverb

“Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.”
Bruce Lee

”Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world.”
Miguel de Cervantes

Personal development books, blogs, videos and audio programs can be truly wonderful. Some of them have helped me to change my in life in small and bigger ways.

Over the years I have also a picked up on a few insights that help me to use personal development information in a smarter and more helpful way.

I’d like to share a few of those insights and tips below. I hope you’ll get something good out of them.

Use your own common sense.

It’s easy to be drawn into thinking that gurus or teachers know everything. But a book or blog can’t know or understand exactly what you dream about and all the positive and negative experiences you have been through. No one can know you better than you know yourself.

So it is important to use your own common sense with any advice you are given. Sometimes it may mean that you rely on what someone knows and so you take a leap of faith. Sometimes it may mean that you recognize after you have tried it that something does not live up to the grandiose hype but still has useful things to offer. Sometimes it may mean to dismiss something because it just doesn’t sound right or simply doesn’t work for you even though you have tried it five or ten times.

Friends and family that aren’t that into personal development can be a voice of common sense. They can ground you if you become a little too lost in theories. So listen to them. But of course, use your common sense here too. Don’t listen to voices close to you that are always negative about just about everything.

Be the highest authority in your own life. Be your own guru.

Stay with it longer than you may have hoped for.

I think it took me four tries to establish a workout routine that stuck. It is common to have to start things over a few times before they really stick.

So things may take longer than you hoped for. Life is most often messier than the plan you had. Don’t let that stop you. Be patient, learn from your mistakes and keep moving.

If something doesn’t work dust yourself off and try something else.

Some things may work well for me to keep in shape or to keep procrastination at bay. But it may not work as well or very well at all for you. We are all different and there is seldom one solution that fits all.

I recommend using the advice from Bruce Lee at the start of this article and finding what works and fits you the best. Find just one, two or three tips that really work for you to avoid procrastination or to stay motivated. And then you can let go of the other stuff that you have tried.

Do to understand. Spend more time on using what you have learned by taking small steps forward.

Don’t hang around on blogs or online forums all day. Don’t get stuck in just reading more and more books about a topic.

Use most of the free time you have for experiences, no matter how small they are. Because you gain experience, confidence in yourself and real results by doing things. Not by overreading, overthinking things or having endless theoretical discussions.

Focus on spending 20% of the time you have for personal development on learning through books and blogs.

And then use 80% of your personal development time on taking small steps forward, on changing small and bigger habits step by step over days, weeks and months.

Reinforce what you want to be doing.

Maybe it’s just me but I sometimes have a tendency to forget what I want to do. It easily gets lost between old habits and the tasks of everyday life. This has been most common when I have changed thoughts habits such as a more optimistic mindset for example.

So I use written reminders – notes on the fridge, in my smart phone or on my bedside table – to reinforce what I am striving for and what change I am working on right now. If I don’t use such reminders then I tend to slip back into old thought patterns more often.

“Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention.”
Jim Rohn

Do you often get distracted online?

Do you struggle with getting the most important things done each workday because you get stuck on Twitter or in your inbox?

Are you split between your online life and your real life at the same time as you check your Facebook while trying to have a conversation?

The internet allows us to connect with people all over the world, to learn about just about anything and check out an endless amount of cute cat photos.

But is can also become a huge time-and-attention-thief. A source of distraction that add a lot of stress too as you get behind on work or miss out on being fully there with the people around you.

So what can you do about it? Here are 4 steps that help me.

1. Shut off your notifications and make yourself unavailable as much as you can.

To be able to fully focus on your most important tasks:

• Shut off notifications in your email client and other such programs.
• Shut down instant messaging programs.

Then do your work with less stress, interruptions and ways to procrastinate.

2. Create a small and time-limited checking ritual at the end of your workday.

A less reactive way to handle email etc. – compared to always checking when you get a notification or being online in your instant messaging clients all the time – is to check and use such things at a certain time during your workday.

I recommend stringing all your checks one after another into one small ritual. And to perhaps do your instant messaging during that time-period too.

By bunching your email processing and social media checking and only setting off for example 20 minutes for email and 5 minutes for Facebook each day you stay focused instead of drifting off and spending too much of your attention and energy on those things.

I do my checking ritual at the end of my workday because then my energy levels are relatively low and I know I have used my peak hours earlier in the day to put dents into the most important things (usually writing and creating posts, newsletters and courses).

If you can’t wait until the end of the day wait for just an hour. You can probably postpone the checking for one hour in the morning without big consequences. Then, if possible, try the following:

After a day or two, try to move the checking further down the day. Maybe to after lunch. Or perhaps even, as I have, to the end of the workday.

The further you can move the checking in your workday, the less of a priority it will feel like as you fill the first hour(s) of your day with what is actually the most important stuff. This will reduce the impulse checking that often becomes worse if you start your day with the email etc.

3. Limit your access to your smart phone and computer.

I shut off my work computer at seven o clock in the evening at the latest – but usually earlier that that – and it stays off until the next morning.

This helps me to decrease stress and to stick to my work schedule for about 95% of the time.

My smart phone can not only become a distraction while I work but also when I am spending quality time with the people in my life.

I have learned to handle this by setting up small obstacles to using the phone. When I sleep it is not in the bedroom with me but in drawer beneath the desk in my home office.

When I work during the day or hang out at home during the evening I keep the phone in small wooden box with a lid on as far away from me as possible in my office. If I can’t see it or reach it easily then use it a whole lot less.

By putting up small obstacles like these I make sure that the phone is not by my side all the time and the procrastination by phone has dropped in huge way. And if someone calls or sends me a text message I will still hear it most of the time.

So if you can, prevent the easy access and what that tends to result in and put the phone somewhere where you can’t see it or where you have to get up and take a whole bunch of steps to get it.

4. Pause when you feel the urge to check and just be still.

When you feel the urge to escape by browsing Reddit, by checking your Facebook or by just quickly popping in to see if there are any new emails in your inbox then pause. Sit still on your chair and do nothing.

The urge and impulse will most often not stay for long. So if you just stay still and don’t act on it for a few seconds or a minute or two it will pass.

“The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term, is the indispensable prerequisite for success.”
Brian Tracy

What is holding you back from making big, positive changes with your habits? What is messing up your progress and making your motivation drop after a while? What makes you sometimes quit before you barely got started?

I am guessing one answer could be the need for instant gratification. It was for me.

But over the years I have learned a few things that help me to delay gratification for the most part so that I can reach more long-term goals and make new and positive habits into normal parts of my life.

Here’s what helps me.

Build a supportive environment.

When ads, magazines and other media over and over tell you that you can reach a goal very quickly – lose 30 pounds in 10 days! – you may start to expect such results. But in reality it is often a bit messier and takes more time and effort than that.

So start recreating the environment you live in. Discard some of your old input that just frustrates you in the end. Add new sources that support delaying gratification.

• Start to read blogs that keep your motivation and optimism up but also focus on long term progress.
• Read books from people who have done what you want to do. People who can paint a picture of what you may encounter based on experience and give you a more accurate time-frame for success.
• Talk to the people in your life or outside of it that seem to be good at delaying gratification. See if they have some strategies and tips that can help you.
• If you can get accountability partner that helps you to stay on track with for instance your diet or building your own business then that can be very helpful too.

Adjust your expectations with the help of your new environment and use the environment for support when you feel like giving up or giving into an instant gratification impulse.

Detach from of the outcome and learn to find the pleasure in the journey.

When I lost 26 pounds in 2009 and over the years as I have built this blog I have created and used an environment that supported the long term work. But when I have actually done the exercising or writing, day after day and week after week, I have detached from the outcome.

I first got this tip to detach from the ancient Sanskrit Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita. It says:

“To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive; neither let there be in thee any attachment to inaction”

This tells me to understand that I cannot control the results of my action. I can’t control how someone reacts to what I say or what I do. And that I should do what I do just because it is something I want to do rather than because of some outcome I’d like. But at the same time I should not let these two ideas lead me to become passive and get stuck in sitting on my hands and not taking action at all.

Basically, I do what I think is right and that is my responsibility. And then the rest (the possible results), well, that is not up for me to decide about or try to control. I let it go.

Now, I apply this when I do something. I can get motivated by future results before the doing the activity. But when I start doing any of those activities I detach and change how I think. I just focus on showing up and doing. This may sound a bit weird or hard but after a while it gets easier and easier to do that shift in your mind and to not start projecting into the future while you are doing.

I have applied this to these 3 areas for example:

• Working out. By focusing on just showing up and doing the workout you won’t get discouraged when you haven’t lost x pounds after a week. You become more patient and more emotionally stable when you don’t think about losing that weight all the time. If you just show up and work out – and control what you eat – the pounds will come off. This really helped me to get into better shape and to find the enjoyment in doing the work outs.
• Blogging. If you don’t have to worry about what people may think about your next post then it becomes a lot easier to calmly write what you want instead of getting stuck in some kind of writer’s block. This has made it a lot easier for me to keep writing pretty much every week for the last 6 years and to make that journey so much more enjoyable and fun than it could have been.
• Social interactions. If you detach from an outcome such as someone liking you at a party or on a date then you’ll be less nervous. You won’t try to impress people. You will be more like how you are with your closest friends, relaxed and easy going. Just being yourself is an often cited and sometimes criticized piece of advice. By detaching from outcomes – while still of course using your common sense – it will be a lot easier to just be the best version of yourself.
  Using this approach was a huge help for me to just have fun and be more relaxed as I improved my social skills.

Pause when an impulse is about to sway you onto the wrong path.

When you feel the need to give into an impulse to wolf down some candy even though you trying to get into better shape or you feel the urge to check your Facebook instead of focusing on doing an important task then just pause.

Just pause and be still. I have found that the need will pass if you don’t do anything for a few seconds or minutes. Then think of something better to do and do that instead.

And if you slip and still give into the impulse then don’t beat yourself up. Instead, think about how you can avoid giving into that impulse again. Try to find a solution to use the next time you are in such a situation. Then get back on track again and keep going.

“If my dreams can happen to me, your dreams can happen to you. Champions are not made on the track or field; champions are made by the things you accomplish and the way you use your abilities in everyday life situations.”
Bob Beamon

The Summer Olympics are here and in full gear. This time I have probably watched it more than ever and enjoyed a lot of great entertainment in the athletics, triathlon, swimming, gymnastics, wrestling and sailing competitions.

For me it is not just exciting, educating and suspenseful to watch the competitions. It’s also very inspiring to see how much work people have put in, the fantastic things they achieve during the Olympics and the joy that people get out of it all no matter if they watch or compete.

So today I would like to share some of the most inspiring thoughts I have found from current and past Olympic champions.

1. Don’t make things harder, bigger or more complicated than they can be.

“All I’ve done is run fast. I don’t see why people should make much fuss about that.”
Fanny Blankers-Koen, sprint, long jump, high jump and more

One thing I try to keep in mind is to not make a too big a deal out of things.

Many movies or life-stories of successful people tell us stories of the underdog that struggles and struggles until he or she finds the success that he or she was dreaming of. Things often take time. Perhaps longer than one would hope for. And keeping yourself in underdog position can be motivating to keep soldiering on.

It can also be a way to make things a lot harder for yourself than they need to be. Every bit of progress and action becomes a big struggle. Approaching things like you’re in some kind of battle may look cool on the movie screens. It may not be the most pleasant way to go about things.

Your attitude towards things does to a large degree determine how you experience them. And how or if you take action. Now, things can be difficult. But making things harder than they need to be, to identify with an image of someone who makes progress inch by painstaking inch can make you feel important since your struggle is so epic. It’s a bit unnecessary though.

If things are hard or difficult then it is most likely you who are creating much of that in your own head. So be good to yourself. Let that kind of thinking go and replace it with a lighter and a less serious attitude. You’ll thank yourself later.

2. Climb out of the sea of negative voices.

“When anyone tells me I can’t do anything, I’m just not listening any more.”
Florence Griffith Joyner, sprinter

It’s easy to let other people’s negative opinions slip into your mind. But remember, they are just opinions. Not fact. Even though the opinion may come from someone your look up to and respect. When faced with this problem ask yourself a few questions:

Have they actually tried this or do they know something about this? Or are they just sharing their own pessimism?

Or trying to keep everything as it always has been as change and the unknown can be scary?

You may often realize that people are just voicing there own problems and identity. Rather than giving your accurate and experienced advice.

Listen to what others have to say. If what they’re saying makes sense, take it into account. But hold your own opinion in the highest regard. Make own decisions instead bouncing around like a pinball while reacting to what others tell you.

3. Don’t let hero worship get in your way and hold you back.

“It took me time to realize that the men who won Olympic gold medals in the decathlon are just men, just like me.”
Dan O’Brien, decathlete

Sure, you may not be able to swim like Michael Phelps. But to put people you admire up on pedestals is to make things unnecessarily hard on yourself. Because everyone is human, no matter what that have accomplished. If you don’t think that you can do anything similar then it will be very hard for you to do so.

You won’t feel worthy to do so. You’ll feel that this or that person is so very different from you. And so you’ll hinder or self-sabotage to keep yourself in line with your own expectations and self-image. Understanding that everyone is human can open you up to your own potential.

And realizing that everyone fails and make mistakes can remove other mental blocks in your mind too. When you feel like everyone is human you feel more connected to people. Holding people to unreasonable standards will only create more unnecessary conflicts in your world and negativity within you.

4. Be careful with inflating your ego or identifying too strongly with your success.

“I’m the same kind of guy before all this happened.”
Michael Phelps, swimmer

If you let the success go to your head then it can, for one, make you an arrogant jerk. It can also make you more emotionally reactive as you inflate your ego and strongly identify with your achievements.

This will feel awesome at first. But soon you may start to doubt that you are still as good as your last achievement and as awesome as everyone said you were. And so you become more reactive to criticism or having a bad day. This affects the steadiness of your focus, thoughts and emotions. And so your inner life becomes more of a rollercoaster. All of this can not only affect your relationships with other people but also your performance.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t have a high level of confidence in yourself and your abilities. It just means that you should be careful with getting completely wrapped up in your past achievements and letting you ego inflate to a harmful size.

5. Put your work into a longer perspective.

“What I can tell them is the way you become an Olympic champion is to start working now. I tell them why it’s always worth it to put the time and effort into something you want to be good at.”
Rafer Johnson, decathlete

How do you become really, really good at something? The biggest part is the amount of work you put in. Sure, you can work smart too and save energy and effort. But the people that really fulfill their potential seem to put in years and years of hard work that most people just aren’t willing to put in. Why?

Well, I’d say:

Because of the support from other people.
Because they know that they need the challenge and can’t stay in their comfort zone and just take it easy.
But mostly I think it’s because of the love of what they do.

So focus on doing what you love – or like a whole lot – to get really good at something.

6. Take a risk.

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”
Muhammad Ali, boxer

To get what you really want you will pretty much always have to take risks. Of course, that can be scary.

So how can you overcome this, take a leap and take the risk? I don’t have some simple and easy solution. But I do have a couple of tips.

• Really, really want it. When you really want it simply becomes easier to push through the inner resistance you feel. You are so motivated to achieve whatever it is you want that the risk may be scary but smaller than your desire.
• Ask yourself: what’s the worst that could happen? It is common to build big, negative fantasies in your heads of what may happen if you do something. Huge scary monsters. But probably 90 percent of what you fear never comes into reality. If you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.

Every time you take the leap and take a risk – even if things might not go your way that time – you can build confidence in yourself. By getting more experiences where you took action instead of sitting on your hands it will over time becomes easier to start moving in the direction you desire and take a chance.

7. Focus only on what you are doing right now.

“I’m trying to do the best I can. I’m not concerned with tomorrow, but with what goes on today.”
Mark Spitz

When you are actually doing the best that you can out on the court, in the pool, behind the computer or wherever you do what you do in then detach from the outcome. Just focus on what’s in front of you. Not on what you missed in the past. Not on the all possible future outcomes of your performance right now.

Then things will become easier. You’ll create less inner anxiety and pressure for yourself. And you will perform better because you are just focusing on what’s right in front of you and you are not weighing yourself down with a lot of self-created negativity and doubts.

8. Don’t let the initial impression get you down.

“Don’t be afraid if things seem difficult in the beginning. That’s only the initial impression. The important thing is not to retreat; you have to master yourself.”
Olga Korbut, gymnast

Since society often tells us to look for quick fixes or instant gratification it’s easy to make the mistake of giving up too soon. After you have tried something maybe just once or twice. Or after you have failed or put in a pretty bad or mediocre performance perhaps 1-5 times. That’s a pretty “normal” thing to do.

But what could have happened if you just kept going after that? And for each time you did it you learned more and more about what works?

I think people often make a mistake of giving up too early. Your mind probably has a reasonable time-frame for success. This might not correspond to a realistic time-frame though.

It’s useful to take a break from common and often advertised perspectives and let more realistic perspectives seep into your mind. Learn from people who have gone where you want to go. Talk to them. Read what they have to say in books or online. This will not give you a complete plan but a clearer view of what is needed to achieve what you want.