No joke! You want the formula, here it is:

A Happy Life is:

Pleasant emotions (Think about that great feeling you have after great food, an awesome movies, theme parks and sex)

+

A life filled with moments of flow ( When you engage fully in what you are good at. Time and space stand still as you are one with what you are putting out into the world. Check out this interview where its briefly discussed)

+

A meaningful life (taking your unique gifts and applying them towards the achievement of something greater than yourself

A Very Important Idea to Remember

I have a running hypothesis in my head that as human beings we are naturally wired to hold on to, experience and be guided by what makes us feel pain as opposed to what makes us feel pleasure.

What I mean by this is that, we appear to more naturally remember, want to converse about, and have our actions guided by the one time an employee screwed us over as opposed to the Saturday we went out and watched a great movie.

I have a Discovery Channel derived idea on why that is but that isn’t the point of today’s discussion.

Here’s The Thing

The skills that are neccesary to eliminate negativity and negative emotions ARE NOT the same skills that make us happy.

Let me say that one more time:

The skills that we use to make us stop feeling like crap ARE NOT the same ones that will make us feel happy to be alive.

So, if you are buying into the belief that:

I will be happy when I get rid of this person/this job/retire/this weight etc etc etc you might be right, but chances are, science and literature have repeatedly shown, you are probably holding on to a fool’s gold.

Ladies and Gentlemen

In case you did not watch the video please set aside just a little bit of time today and learn how to be happy for the rest of your life:

Have a day just brimming with positive emotions where you love what you do so much that the time-space continuum does not exist and you truly are bigger than your body,

Mwangi

Kelly, from the hottest new blog on the scene, recently wrote a post based on the movie Bucket list. In it Jack Nicholson and Morgan (good casting me thinks) have 6 months to live and they create a ‘bucket list’: This is a list of things that they want to do before they ‘kick the bucket’ (die). I thought to myself, what would I do if this, the year 2008 was my last year to live. So below is my rather idiosyncratic ‘bucket list’ of things I would definitely get done (in truth, a lot of them I will eventually do…but I digress)

1) Build my blog to the point that it’s my job and I no longer need to work: Imagine, I write, I reply to comments and I no longer have to have hand-to-hand combat with an alarm clock. Sigh!

2) Win or at least qualifying for a bodybuilding competition: It’ll depend on how the winner looks: if he looks like he eats steroids for breakfast, then qualifying is good enough.

3) Win a national and/or international hip hop dance competition: I am barely a dancer now. I am a pretty resourceful person and so I would love to know how I would get this done.

4) Become a public speaker to young African men: I know Carol, I should have already started. Soon and very soon….

5) Create my own clothing label and begin designing and retailing my own clothes: Clothes make the man, right? I want to be in full control of what I wear. Maybe make some change on the side….

6) Create my first ever movie and/or series (TV or radio): Ever since I saw the play ‘Lwanda’ I have always wanted to make a movie based on that play. I also absolutely loved BBC radio theatre when I heard it.

7) Travel home for many months and learn my native tongue: My mother is a Kikuyu from Rift Valley ( who speaks the more widely accepted version of Kikuyu) and my father is from Kirinyaga where they speak a type of Kikuyu that is grossly different from the norm. I want to learn both of them before I begin learning all languages in Kenya and then in Africa………..

I would love to see other people’s Bucket Lists, so Caustic, majonzi, gal africana, Sunny please share yours. My lovely readers, leave a comment below or write your own lists on your blog and link to mine and tell me what you would do before they put you six feet under (or cremate you or put you on a burning boat and set you out to the ocean or put you in a house for a week prior to digging a hole in the compound or……..:P )

Live like you will eventually die in every moment of your existence,

Mwangi

I interrupt the regularly scheduled programing, (believe it or not, the blog runs on a program now…who woulda thought) to bring you a quick inspirational story from the Diaspora. Whereas material wealth isn’t everything (I’m serious), I still love stories like these because they force us to raise our standards and our beliefs about what is possible. Anyway enjoy and I hope it sparks some thought (and more importantly) some action that will get you on a headline somewhere. Taken verbatim from this Daily Nation article:

US-based Kenyan businessman joins the big league Story by ENOCK WAMBUA in Lowell, Massachusetts Publication Date: 3/22/2008

A Kenyan made history this week by taking his privately owned business to the mainstream of America’s commerce. The building which houses the Holden Group of Colleges and right, Mr Wilfred ole Saroni in his office Mr Wilfred ole Saroni, the proprietor of Holden group of colleges, has merged with Premier Educational Group. The group is an empire of private sector middle-level training institutions boasting 47 colleges in states within the American eastern seaboard. According to the merger, the Kenyan businessman brings to the Premier group the much sought-after private nursing programme which he has successfully run for more than five years at his three colleges in Lowell, Worcester and Nashua. The Nashua college has been rated the second best in New Hampshire by the New Hampshire Board of Nursing for two years running. The new development directs focus on a man who has become accustomed to scoring firsts. Three years ago (in 2005), Mr Saroni hit newspaper headlines in the US when he became the first Kenyan to be awarded the Ronald Reagan Republican Gold Medal. In the same year, he scored another first by bagging the New Hampshire Businessman of the Year award. By joining the board of directors at the Premier Educational Group, Mr Saroni has embarked on a journey of a transition from a business owner to an investor. Talking to the Saturday Nation in his office in Lowell, Mr Saroni said he has had to endure great challenges to get where he is today. Last year, he said, was particularly difficult for his businesses. He cited two investments that he said pushed him to the edge. The first one, he said, was the acquisition of a multi-million-dollar building (Holden Center) at the heart of Lowell City. The building, sitting on 3,000 square feet, is a former health facility that Mr Saroni planned to convert into a dormitory to take advantage of accommodation needs for students at the neighbouring University of Massachusetts, Lowell campus. He is in the process of liquidating part of his shareholding in the building. The second misadventure, he said, was a co-investment in the Holden Home Care company which, he said, had grown to a 300-employee service firm with a $100,000 weekly wage bill at its peak. Owing to what he referred to as “billing differentials”, he withdrew his interests from the firm last year. Exit strategy Asked if he had any regrets over the two deals, Mr Saroni said: “It does not make business sense to hang on to an investment whose fundamentals are shaky. After realising my business miscalculations, I worked out on an exit strategy to concentrate on more rewarding ventures. I am very comfortable with the direction I am taking,” he said. Following the merger, Premier Educational Group projects to grow its operating revenue with an additional $100 million from its current $270 million in the next five years. While he will sit on the board, Mr Saroni will oversee the implementation and running of the nursing programme at all the 50 institutions. Commenting on the fate of his employees, he said there was no risk of redundancy, adding that the creation of a nursing department at Premier will open more employment opportunities. He said the new deal was a blessing for his employees who will move into a larger institution with better terms of service including retirement and health insurance packages. Mr Saroni’s story is one of the success of a self-made man who has worked his way up from very humble beginnings. He attended Kimana primary and secondary schools in Kenya. Mr Saroni arrived in the United States of America in 1996 and lived with his aunt whom he helped with household chores. In 1997, he enrolled for a course in Microsoft Certified System Engineering and bagged the certificate in the same year before enrolling for an online Masters in Business Administration in 1998. From the humble beginnings at Holden Quality Staffing, a nursing staffing agency he started in 1999, Mr Saroni has built an empire in health care provision.

Now go out and make it happen,

Mwangi

Rest of the series:

1) How to discover your mission in life (part one)

2) How to discover your mission in life (part two)

3) Bonus:How to Discover Your Mission in Life 

Many of us already know how to do this.Many of us have already heard the principles needed to achieve success in a capitalist world recited over and over again. We have heard story after story after story about people who used these principles to climb to the capitalist mountaintop. In fact if you fall into this category, feel free to scroll to the bottom of the article where I have linked to 12 resources that will hopefully inspire you to do things bigger than you dreamed of before. They key though is not knowing what to do. It is doing what we know.

However, there will probably be some of you who have never heard of the principles needed to make money and be financially free. In short, they are:

1) Begin with a vision in mind/ Know Your Intended Outcome

Something you want to achieve. Make it more specific than ‘Just make money’ because the ways to do that are too many and you risk getting confused.

a) Maybe you want to be the first person in the global marketplace to fulfill a certain need like me with this blog or Henry Ford with cheap automobiles.

b) Maybe you want a certain lifestyle like Timothy Ferriss where you work less and live life more.

c) Maybe you want to work in a particular area such as physics or philosophy or botany and want to guarantee your financial security while you work there.

d) Maybe you want passive income streams so that you can work on enriching the lives of the disadvantaged.

The clearer you are on what you want, the easier it becomes to chose a quick path to success that you can stick to.

2) Chose the Quickest, Easiest Path to Success

This is a recent distinction I came to. When I first started this blog a few months back, I was trying to do a lot of things at once.

I was trying to work on creating passive income for the family business – a nursing agency, if you must know. I was trying to sell information products online. I was working on creating my own information products to market online.

Eventually about two weeks ago, I got a helluva lot confused. I was waking up every morning with a very long to do list. It was then that I had to sit down and figure out:

“What matters most to me? What will have the greatest impact and help me achieve what I want to achieve?”

I figured that it was this blog. Now, there is a high chance that this blog will never ever make me a dime. After all, it is a site for Africans. As Africans we are not exactly renowned for our financial generosity. However when I started this blog,I started it as the blog I wish I had read when I first immigrated and it gets me to my ultimate destination- which is to matter to Africa by giving some unique contribution to African society -quicker than any other path I was on.

That’s why being specific about what your eventual goal in life is so important. Once you know exactly what you want and where you want to go, choosing the road to get there becomes easier. When you are lying on your death bed, what do you want to look around and see? Work backwards from that point.

3) Flexibility of Approach and Rigidity In Terms of the Goal

Once you have decided on what it is you want to achieve, think of that as locking in your answer on some game show. Your answer will never change from that point on. From the moment you have decided what your target is, that’s it. There is nothing else that exists but that target.

That having been said, be very flexible in the approach you are willing to use to get to your target. In a Western society if your goal is to make $100 in a day for example there are a helluva lot of ways you can do that:

a) Ask your friends and family

b) Borrow it from the bank

c) Borrow it from loan institutions

d) Go work on a construction site or do some landscaping work.

e) Go beg for it on the street.

f) Go online and sell ebooks from clickbank using an adwords campaign.

g) Organize a lemonade stand or sausage sizzle etc etc etc

If the path you chose as the fastest to success is clearly not working, be willing to change and select the second or the third quickest approach. As long as you get there. That’s all that matters.

4) Develop Sensory Acuity

I like that term , sensory acuity, it’s half way between being a complex and a simple term. Sensory acuity in plain English is developing and sharpening the awareness of whether or not what you are doing is achieving results. If you are really serious about achieving your goal, everyday sit down for maybe half an hour and ask yourself:

Today, overall did I get any closer to my goal? What did I do that took me closer to my goal? What did I do that took me away from my goal?

The goal over time is to get rid of everything that takes you away from your goal and consistently do the things that will take you closer to your goal in the quickest and fastest way. You’re success is determined as much by what your willing to include in your life as what you are willing to exclude.

5) Persistence and Consistence

This is what truly separates the wheat from the chaff. Are you willing to do what takes you closer to your goal, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over……day after day after day after day after day after day. Even when it gets boring. Even when you see little to no results. Even when it’s more painful to do it than to not do it. Even when there are doubts in your mind and in the minds of those around you. Are you willing to commit to every day moving yourself closer and closer to your goal. For those of you who have studied this stuff with as much passion as I have, you know this tip alone is worth it’s weight in gold.

6) Prepare Yourself for Success

This is what seperates the overwhelming majority of lottery winners who lose their money in a few years from the people who actually continue to get richer over time. Make it a habit to study and understand the habits of the succesful. Study yesterday’s post for some thoughts on how to immitate success. Learn to think like the succesful think and act like they act. Read this story from Oprah.com. It’s pretty indicative of the fact that making and maintaining money are skills that are far from innate and that some people simply aren’t skilled enough to handle money or success.

You Have Heard the Six Principles Above Before………

…..and you will probably hear them over and over and over and over again. This is because they are like the fundamentals of a sport like football and basketball. They are the things you must do to achieve and maintain success. Don’t ignore the fundamentals in favour of more esoteric or complicated ideas. The above ideas are cliche because they have worked time and time again in a variety of circumstances. What I want to do to set this post apart is give you a bunch of quirky stories to inspire you and get you thinking about the host of possibilities that exist in terms of financial success.

1) Timothy Ferriss: 4 hour workweek

I have already discussed the Timothy Ferriss story . What I thought I would include was a link to how this guy got his book onto number one on the New York Times bestseller list. If any of you aspire to be authors, especially non-fiction ones. Enjoy.

If you want to listen to a free interview where he discusses his story and his philosophies,you can find it here or by doing a Google search for Timothy Ferriss interview.

2) Wine Library TV

Wine Library TV pretty much started as a little video blog where a man by the name of Gary Vaynerchuk tasted a few wines everyday on camera. Now this website is huge, $50 million dollars huge. You can find an interview he did with a guy by the name of Rich Schefren here

3) My mentor: Yaro Starak
This is the man who is responsible for your reading this post. This is the man who is basically teaching me the ins and outs of blogging as we speak. What I love about Yaro is that Yaro isn’t in maniacal pursuit of success. Rather, Yaro prefers a lifestyle of low pressure where you are earning as much money as you want to earn doing what you want, when you want and with whoever you want. If you want to read his business story and pick up an idea or two, check it out here at the Entrepreneur’s Journey website(It’s a four part series).

4) How Jay Abraham got started

An absolute genius in the world of marketing is Jay Abraham. He did not go past college but in the past thirty years has helped companies increase their revenues by $7 billion. His language may get a little complex (Africans should have no problem with that) and he may be a bit hard to understand at first, but once you understand Jay’s ideas, you realize: He is a genius. I thought I would share with you, a part of his story that he shared during Tony Robbin’s Powertalk series (Bloody fantastic audio series, pick it up when you can).Feel free to Google him or check out his book below on how you can squeeze more financial value out of everything you are currently doing at little to no cost.

5) The Diabetes website
To be honest I never would have thought of not only starting a diabetes blog but also using it to make money. A sweet tale (bad pun, I know)

Diabetes Blog Earns $40K per year

6) The Stephen Pierce story

An African American who went from being a gang member and homeless high school dropout to Internet millionaire. A story of persistence. You can find a video (audio with pictures really) interview he did where he talks about his story right here.

7) The story of Hitwise

When I was in business school, I had the pleasure of watching one of the founders of the Hitwise, Andrew Giles,speak to my class. I must admit, he was a very boring speaker. However, a boring speaker isn’t always a boring man. After all, he is worth hundreds of millions, after him and his business partner sold their company Hitwise a short while back. Here is a transcript of an Interview he did with smartcompany website. For more in depth information on the man, check out Wealth Creator Magazine and the Australian Business Review magazines or just Google him and his company Hitwise.

He filled the need for Internet statistics and in so doing filled up his pockets.

8 ) Sandstorm Events

Truly one of the more idiosyncratic ways to make money. Sandstorm events make their money by building sand castles on beaches all over the world and having workshops where they teach people the art of building sand castles. I also had the pleasure of seeing the founder speak while I was in business school ( you don’t realize how valuable your education is until you have hindsight, I had access to brilliant minds back then).

I have browsed around to find any places where I can find interviews with the director, Sharon Redmond, but alas I can’t find one. If anyone is interested in finding out more, contact me and I’ll see if I can set up an interview with her.

9) The story of Andrew and Daryl Grant

If there is one thing the final half of 2007 taught me, it’s the incredible power to create your ideal lifestyle using the Internet. Case in point is Andrew and Daryl Grant; a couple from Brisbane who made $250,000 either last year or the year before selling ebooks online. They find out what people are searching for on Google, pay someone peanuts to write a book on it and sell the books online. Learn more about their so-simple-why-more-people-don’t-do-it-i-don’t-know system in this two part interview conducted by Yaro Starak.

10) Moms Who Made Millions

Oprah recently did a show on mothers who made millions of dollars. All the stories were fantastic. The one that stuck out was the mother who made money by (IMO) making ugly shoes, prettier-but-still-ugly shoes. Check out the story from Oprah.com right here.

11) The story of Erwin Mcmanus

As you stay with this blog, you will hear A LOT about this man. He has literally changed my life. He is one of the best thinkers and speakers I have ever seen.

Now don’t the name fool you, Erwin Mcmanus is actually a hispanic man from El Salvador who is the founder and head of Mosaic based in Los Angeles. I remember the first time I saw him speak was quite a while ago, maybe one or two years ago. He was meant to speak during a church conference on Friday and Saturday then speak during the main service on Sunday. I watched all three of his talks and I actually seriously considered walking up to him after the service and telling him that I was going to follow him and be his personal assistant for the next couple of years (then I began to think about air fare, accomodation etc etc). I know I can’t do his life story justice and so I will search deeper for resources that tell this story of this amazing man. In the meantime, check out www.mosaic.org for more information on his organization and www.mosaic.org/podcast to hear him speak.

12) Resource for people who want to make money online: 28 Ways to Make Money With Your Wesbite

The blog daily blog tips did a great job of summarizing the ways that one can make money from blogging. You can find the blog post here. Yaro Starak did a great job of following that up with some additional input of his own.

I really hope this has been valuable to you. If you think there are any resources I missed, need help learning more about any of the people mentioned, want to say hi or think I am smoking helium and blowing it out (??), contact me or leave a comment below.

I finished a series! Yay! The first series ever completed in the history of the Displaced African. Mark this day my friends!

Be blessed y’all and go out and spread the blessings to others,

Mwangi

Bonus(Part 3??) in the series: How to Discover Your Mission in Life and Use It to Make Money

Rest of the series:

1) How to discover your mission in life (part one)

2) How to discover your mission in life (part two)

3) How to use your mission to make money

I could lie and say that these bonuses were planned all along, however they were not. What I am about to share with you, I intended to share on later posts. However the research needed to write the final post in this series is more than anticipated. Therefore I thought I would share with you two resources that have really had an impact on how I think and feel about life.

The first is from a man who more of us should know about and celebrate.After all, he founded and headed the largest international African movement in history: I am of course referring to Marcus Garvey. In our African Dream Group, one of our administrators, Obura, posted a snippet of Mr. Garvey’s thoughts. How real and how poignant and how relevant his words are today, I’ll let you be the judge………………………….

The second is from the man himself. The king of the life coaching/ motivation /moving people from zero-to-hero industry Mr. Tony Robbins doing a much better job of helping you discover your purpose and your destiny than I could. This audio is taken from his phenomenal seven day series, Get the Edge, which of course I highly recommend.

And for the encouraging email . Thanks

For man to know himself is for him to feel that for him there is no human master. For him Nature is his servant, and whatsoever he wills in Nature, that shall be his reward. If he wills to be a pigmy, a serf or a slave, that shall he be. If he wills to be a real man in possession of the things common to man, then he shall be his own sovereign. When man fails to grasp his authority he sinks to the level of the lower animals, and whatsoever the real man bids him do, even as if it were of the lower animals, that much shall he do. If he says “go.” He goes. If he says “come,” he comes. By this command he performs the functions of life even as by a similar command the mule, the horse, the cow perform the will of their masters. For the last four hundred years the Negro has been in the position of being commanded even as the lower animals are controlled. Our race has been without a will; without a purpose of its own, for all this length of time.

Because of that we have developed few men who are able to understand the strenuousness of the age in which we live. Where can we find in this race of ours real men. Men of character, men of purpose, men of confidence, men of faith, men who really know themselves? I have come across so many weaklings who profess to be leaders, and in the test I have found them but the slaves of a nobler class. They perform the will of their masters without question. To me, a man has no master but God. Man in his authority is a sovereign lord. As for the individual man, so of the individual race. This feeling makes man so courageous, so bold, as to make it impossible for his brother to intrude upon his rights.

So few of us can understand what it takes to make a man – the man who will never say die; the man who will never give up; the man who will never depend upon others to do for him what he ought to do for himself; the man who will not blame God, who will not blame Nature, who will not blame Fate for his condition; but the man who will go out and make conditions to suit himself. Oh, how disgusting life becomes when on every hand you hear people (who bear your image, who bear your resemblance) telling you that they cannot make it, that Fate is against them, that they cannot get a chance. If 400,000,000 Negroes can only get to know themselves, to know that in them is a sovereign power, is an authority that is absolute, then in the next twenty-four hours we would have a new race, we would have a nation, an empire, – resurrected, not from the will of others to see us rise, – but from our own determination to rise, irrespective of what the world thinks..

Be blessed and bless the rest of humanity,

Mwangi

African Americans when they speak, the spirit just takes over. These guys are just too too gifted.

Part three of How to Discover Your Mission in Life and Use It to Make Money
The rest of the series:

1. Introduction

2. How to discover your mission in life part one

3. Bonus: How to discover your mission in life

4. How to use your mission to make money

Today I will jump straight to it because I have a lot that I want to cover. If you haven’t, please read parts one and two of this series so that you can get up to speed on what’s going on.

There are three basic ways you can go about experimenting:

a) Gradually leaving your comfort zone.

b) Doing things that are the exact opposite of what you do.

c) The Nike Approaach: Just Do It -Letting your heart guide way and just trying whatever you feel like trying.

Gradually Leaving Your Comfort Zone

This one is for people who really have a hard time being flexible or creative or trying anything that is outside the usual rut. Just take one micro-mini-baby step EVERY DAY in a direction that you normally wouldn’t head in.

Let’s take the case of the accountant. Let’s assume that for some reason or the other he feels compelled to try out stand up comedy.

Step one might be to watch free stand up comedy videos on Youtube.

Step two would be to go to the bookstore and buy a short book of jokes and humour or the biography of a comedian he admires.

Step three would be to go to a comedy show and watch.

Step four would be to download jokes from the Internet and tell his friends and family a joke everyday……..

….slowly by slowly, by taking gradual DAILY STEPS ( I cannot emphasize enough that action must be taken daily) eventually he will be able to go to an open mic night and begin hanging around comedians and picking up tips from them. Then one sweet day he will pick up the mic. That day he may discover that he is the next Seinfeld or Richard Pryor or Churchill (the only man to tickle a crocodile to sleep, but do I say ).

Trying the Exact Opposite of What You Would Do

For those who have never heard of Timothy Ferris, I cannot recommend his work highly enough. He is a genius. The story of Timothy Ferriss goes a little something like this. He started his own company and his company began to do well financially. In spite of the fact that he was earning $70,000 US Dollars a month he was miserable. He was working wwwaaaaaayyyyy more than 40 hours a week. His relationships were in shambles and he was many things, but happy wasn’t one of them.

In an attempt to ‘get happy’ he flew to London where he decided he would unwind and relax for a short while before returning to work. While there he decided he would do something that was entirely unlike his character: he would only check his email and work on his business one hour a week. This was so far outside his reality, he had a nervous breakdown.

This nervous breakdown however was to be the start of an absolute breaking point in his life. He spent the next year plus not just cutting down on the amount of work that he did but more importantly trying to build a life not centred around work. He actually began to live.The type of life that so many of us work so hard to achieve someday when the Holy Grail of retirement arrives.

He is now the author of the bestseller the Four Hour Workweek and is renowned worldwide for his crazy lifestyle experiments and achievements – including winning the Chinese National Kickboxing Championships, lecturing at Princeton University and getting a Guiness World Record for the Tango, all the while working four hours a week on a business that brings him enough to fund his lifestyle.

My advice to you would be to draw a circle. On one point in the circle draw a dot to represent yourself. Draw a line from that dot through the center of the circle to the opposite end of the circle. Ask yourself one question: Who would I find on the opposite end of this circle? If you are a physicist, it might be a gymnast because they work using their body whereas you work using your mind. It might be a quantum physicist because your area of expertise is nuclear physics. Whatever you perceive to be the opposite of your current field of occupation or current lifestyle, start by experimenting with that.

Now that leaves the rest of the circle. Gradually work your way round the circle starting from the opposite end and fill it up with things that are gradually similar to your current lifestyle or occupation. What is the second-most-opposite (you best believe that’s a word lol) activity or lifestyle choice to your current one, the third, the fourth, the fifth. Maybe the second-most-opposite (I’m sorry this word is just ridiculous) thing is chemistry, still intellectual but a very different area of empirical science. Maybe the third most opposite is psychology (can you imagine some loonies actually say that psychology isn’t a science; they are nothing but a bunch of passive aggressive sociopaths with madonna complexes) and on and on and on.
The circle should be looked at as a tool to ignite your creativity. Let your creative mind lead the way when finding opposites. There is no right or wrong answer. Whatever you feel is the opposite to your current lifestyle choice is good enough so long as it feels right to you. I know this concept may be a little difficult to grasp for some: If that’s you, please leave a comment below or email me at masmilele@thedisplacedafrican.com

Let Your Heart Guide the Way and Do Whatever You Feel like Trying

This was pretty much the approach that I took because I didn’t know any better. If you want to take this approach then the first thing that I would recommend is that you have a very strong, stable support base in terms of family, friends and money. That’s because this approach will take you to many dark places before you land in your area of flow. Make sure that for these dark times you have people around you who care for you and you have enough money or resources, or resourcefulness , to fall back on.

Under this approach you would basically wake up and do whatever you feel like doing. Again, be sensible i.e. don’t indulge in behavior that you know is destructive to you or your community.

In my case, I remember when I was in business school. One particular morning I had a lecture on God-knows-what. I got up, showered, dressed. Made the 1.5 hour commute. Got off the train and began to walk to RMIT University here in Melbourne. The closer I got to the building the more I felt the knots tighten at the back of my neck. I began to feel tears welling up in my eyes though I couldn’t cry. I had a problem holding my head up and I really felt like my body was having a mini-revolt. So I turned around, got back on the train back home and soon I was a college dropout. As soon as I got home I went online and began to study and listen to audios on success, history, politics, human anatomy etc etc. If you ask me what my agenda was for the last six months of 2005, I would have told you I had no idea. I would wake up and that’s the only plan I had. Some days I would go on line and study the diplomatic history of the United States. I had months where I was involved in theater groups and spent days on end rehearsing and going over the minutiae of making a character come to life . For one month I even got up and went to work as a door to door salesman, knocking on one door after the other trying to sell car servicing vouchers.

This one I would recommend for those young enough to not be entirely on their own or old and mature enough to have enough friends and enough stashed away to actually take some time to get in touch and figure out:

“If I did not have to follow anyone’s schedule: If I didn’t have to follow the world’s schedule, my employer’s schedule, my University’s schedule, my friend’s schedule. If the only schedule I had to follow was that of my mind, body, heart and soul, what would I do?”

Seriously, take some time and think about that right now, what would you do if you had all the money and time in the world? Answering that question alone may mean you may not even have to use the rest of this article.

Remember What You are Aiming For
What you are aiming for is a state of flow. Don’t judge it if the source of your flow is ‘weird’. There is a multinational firm that make their profits from building sand castles so whatever you think your limitations are: trust me, the chances are you haven’t even began to test them.

Approach Number 2: Become a Passionate Problem Solver
If there are any people that all societies tend to admire it is these people. We are talking about the Nelson Mandelas, the Steve Bikos and the Dedan Kimathis. These are those rare unique soles who find a problemin their community and do something very few people do. They don’t complain about it. They don’t try to find a scapegoat though they try to find the cause of the problem. They don’t look to anyone else to solve the problem. They get up, go out and decide that it’s up to them to solve the problem. Below are a couple of pointers on how perhaps you can join the ranks of these great people.

1. Understand That If You Do It for the Glory, You Probably Won’t Get It
   These people very rarely did it for the glory. I hardly think that as Martin Luther King was marching through the streets getting stoned he was thinking: “ Yes, just give me thirty years and I know they will name a day after me for putting up with this mess.” Martin Luther King saw a problem. When the whole Rosa-get-your-behind-to-the-back-of-the-bus saga and the Alabama bus boycott came up, he was there. He stepped up with a dream in his mind, conviction in his heart and some divine intervention in his soul. Your objective must be the joy and happiness of the people whose problem your solving. You should derive your satisfaction from knowing that because you entered these people’s lives, they are now happier and rid of a problem that once ailed them.

2. Understand That Even Though You Deserve the Glory, 90% of the Time You Won’t Get It
   One of the main reasons I am advising you to not chase after the glory is because when you commit yourself to serving other people, a lot of the time you don’t get it. First of all, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Malcolm X were not the only people involved in the civil rights movement. There were hundreds upon hundreds of organizations that all fought for a more equitable American society. There were native American and hispanic civil right groups. Groups like the Rainbow Men, the Black Panthers, the Rainbow Coalition, John Lennon and his fans, the students of Berkley University just to name a few. Now for those of you who may be wondering, “Why don’t I know these people?” it’s because a lot of these people were shot, jailed or marginalized in one way or another.

In general people who dedicate themselves to serving their fellow man get crushed and used and abused. This gig takes courage and heart and that’s why we admire the Jesus Christs’ and the Patrice Lumumba’s of the world so much.

3. Find a place where human need and your skills and passions converge.
   This is a tip for the sake of efficiency. Your desire to serve is admirable and absolutely fantastic. That having been said, do not serve in an area where you don’t have the skill or the passion to do a good job. Simple example: I am trained as an aged care nurse (yes, I am in charge of hygiene in regions I haven’t seen since my younger sister was a baby, get over it). However, Florence Nightingale, I am not. I am alright at having a conversation and connecting with people. But whenever I have to do any manual task, it bores me so much that I immediately escape into my mind where I plan, dream and create etc. Please read through the previous sections of this post and the previous post in the series to find tools you can use to discover your passions.

4. Make your goal A SOLUTION not just putting an end to the problem.
   To put this one into a nutshell: Spend 20% of your time clearly defining what the problem is and then the other 80% of your time, energy and resources in creating a solution that is much larger and much more magnificent than the problem ever was. Remember the story of Timothy Ferriss: In retrospect, don’t you think he is a little glad that he had a nervous breakdown. Look to every problem as a phoenix that has just disintegrated into ashes. Your job is to revive a fiery phoenix from those ashes.

How to Do It
So how would you go about being a passionate problem solver. Look around at your community and try to find a problem that has yet to be solved sufficiently. Maybe like me you just wanted a place that is centered around understanding the African immigrant situation with all it’s unique problems and quirks and strengthening and encouraging African migrants all over the world. Maybe you are like Mama Mike who wanted to create a way of supporting the local community of Kenya on the Internet. Once you find a problem, no matter what the problem, if it affects a lot of people, it needs someone to solve it. Maybe that someone will be you.

Approach number 3
I thought I would post this one together with approach 2 because I have very little to say about it. I read about this approach from probably the largest personal development blog on Earth, www.stevepavlina.com. It struck me as quirky and unique enough to work powerfully. And Steve is the number one personal development blogger so he must be doing something right. Let me just quote straight from Steve Pavlina himself (Taken from the article: How to Discover Your Life Purpose In About 20 Minutes)

Here’s what to do:

1. Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type (I prefer the latter because it’s faster).

2. Write at the top, “What is my true purpose in life?”

3. Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.

4. Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.

He goes into further detail on his site so please head on over to Steve’s website and read the rest of this powerful article. Then come right back for the next post in the series. I would be curious to see if this approach works across cultures or is just unique to the land of Caucasia. Personally I really have a hard time crying and I already found my flow using another approach and so I am really anxious to hear successes and failures that people may have with this approach.

I hope these tools are sufficient enough to help you discover your mission in life. Remember, reading this post without taking some form of action is futile. So please, take some action NOW and you might be surprised what your future may hold in store for you.

Be blessed and bless others,

Mwangi

How to Discover Your Mission In Life

Part two of How to Discover Your Mission in Life and Use It to Make Money

The rest of the series:

1. Introduction
2. How to Discover Your Mission in Life Part Two
3. Bonus:How to Discover Your Mission in Life
4. How to Use Your Mission to Make Money

Hello hello hello,

Today, I thought I would write a nice, light post on the meaning of life he he.

Now straight off the bat I must admit that I do not unequivocally, 100%, beyond-the-shadow-of-a-doubt know why we were put here on Earth or what our individual and collective missions in this life are. My belief is that as human beings we just weren’t meant to know this. Otherwise we all would! What I thought I would offer instead are three approaches that other people have taken successfully. In so doing, I hope I help you get to that core part that is deep within and is just bubbling with passion and life.

Three Approaches to Discovering Your Life’s Mission

The three approaches are:

1)Experimenting and testing until you experience flow.

2) Becoming a passionate problem solver.

3)Writing your way to your mission (An idea I was first exposed to by a man known as Steve Pavlina in his phenomenal blog www.stevepavlina.com)

Approach 1: Experimenting Until You Experience Flow

A Christmas Carol
I will begin with a bit of a story. As I go through the story, search for bits and pieces of yourself: they are sprinkled throughout.
I was sixteen years old. I was scared, alone, confused AND ANGRY . I had been at this school for six months and had already tried to drop out twice- I eventually succeeded the third time. Only one thing kept me going to school day after day after day: Mrs. Spelling.
You see, Mrs. Spelling was not just my legal studies teacher but she was also directing the theatrical piece that would be presented to the school, the church and the community at large. It was a performance of A Christmas Carol and I had auditioned and gotten the part of Ebeneezer Scrooge. I got the role because the only other person who had auditioned for the role was in Year 12/Form 4/ the last year of high school and they didn’t want to give him the lead role that would take a lot of time away from his dual career as school senior and singer in the church choir. Far from a vote of confidence for my being the leading man.
That being the case, when I went to Mrs. Spelling to tell her that I was dropping out of school, we had a conversation that went a little something like this:

“I want to go out and be a man and do manly things.” (Clearly I had no clue what I was talking about)

“If you want to be treated like a man then act like one. Finish what you started. Make sure you put on a good show like you promised when you auditioned.”

She appealed to my “manly skull crushing” ego so I obliged: I would finish this silly show because I was a man, but as soon as it was finished I was out of there.To say that I felt empty as I went through those auditions and went to class after class after class would be an understatement. I was searching for anything that felt good, anything that would light me up and I had long ago decided that drugs wouldn’t be it and at this point I had the charm of a mutilated raccoon and no cash flow so women or any other material pleasures were out.

And so in desperation I began to put my passion into the auditions. When I was asked to act, I didn’t act. I WAS the character, I hid behind him and hoped that I never had to come out. When I was asked to sing – I am not that good but I am decent enough for musical theater for those who want to know – I SANG and tried to embed the joy and feeling from the song deep into my soul. But still, there was something missing. Until……….

Day 1 of the performance. For some odd reason this day I felt incredibly angry. I mean the type of anger where I was shaking. And so there I am back stage two minutes before I am to come out and assume the role of Ebeneezer Scrooge and I am shaking like I am about to morph into the Incredible Hulk. It must have been a guardian angel who in that moment planted a thought into my mind that literally changed my life:

“You know, Ebeneezer Scrooge is supposed to be an angry, bitter, old geezer and right now I AM a bitter old geezer why not transfer all this anger and negative energy to Scrooge and exorcise it through him.”

And so I did. Rather than gently open the stage door, I kicked down the door and came onto the stage huffing and puffing, to the point that they could hear me breathing throughout the auditorium. Sarcastic remarks were expressed with a much more caustic tone and when I had to sing about how much I hated Christmas, believe me I HATED Christmas.

And then I began to experience that phenomenon professor, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,(ten dollars if you can say that name right upon first hearing it) describes as flow. I completely lost sense of place and time. The only thing that mattered, the only place that I was, the only thing on my mind, was my character, Scrooge and the journey he was going through. I remember at the point of the play where Ebeneezer Scrooge is beginning his metamorphosis from grouch to a giving soul, I stopped examined what I was doing and shed tears of joy in my head. I had found my bliss, my muse and my passion.

Have You Ever Experienced the State of Flow?

Have you ever experienced the state I just described. Have you ever been doing something and:

1. Been completely present in what you are doing and felt no urge to do something else.

2. Lost track of place and time because all your mental space was occupied by the activity you were engaging in.

3. Actually felt as though what you were doing was energizing you as opposed to draining energy.

If you have felt that, then you have found your passion in life If you have felt it more than once, even better because you have more than one passion . If that is the case then you can pretty much skip the rest of this post and wait for the post on how to use that passion to make money.

If You Don’t Know What Your Passion Is

However if you do not know what your passion is then the rest of this post is for you. Just to recap, the three methods that I will be talking about in this series are:

1. Experiment and test things until you find ‘flow’

2. Write your way to your mission in life.

3. Become a passionate problem solver ( I will explain them all later on).

Experiment Like Crazy
If you have no clue what ignites your soul, then a way to find that out is to experiment like crazy.
The basic idea behind this is to try things that you normally would not try or that you have not tried in the past. If you are an accountant, trying taking an improvisation class. If you are a radio disc jockey try playing golf. If you are an actor try becoming a woodworker (if Daniel Day Lewis did it, you can too). You keep trying different things that you don’t normally do until you effortlessly experience that state of flow. There are three basic ways you can go about experimenting:

a) Going gradually out of your comfort zone.

b) Trying to find the exact opposite of what you do.

100. Letting your heart guide way and just trying whatever you feel like trying.

A Digression: The Cost of Drinking and Doing Drugs

Tomorrow I will go into a bit more depth about the three ways you can experiment and test things out.
Now before I leave you this great day let me put a little caveat on what I just said, be wise and sensible.
If you feel empty or angry and stressed and you try to fill that hole using alcohol or drugs or by indulging in superficial things that lack depth and bring no value or beauty to humanity then let me tell you right now that at the very least, over the course of your life, you will waste A LOT OF MONEY.

Don’t believe me: Do the maths with me: Now in my drinking days, on a light, easy weekend with not much going on I would drink from Thursday to Saturday night.
Now at the cheapest my alcohol bill was about $50 a night -well I was very very cheap and it was more like $8 but let’s say $50 because that is what I observed on average. So, $50 at the minimum and about $200 maximum.

So let’ s take the minimum and say you spend 50 dollars a night for 3 nights every single weekend. That is $150 a week: Already, you have paid a week’s rent. Let’s move on.

Including transportation, really bad food, buying drinks for that girl that you know will not sleep with you (Obviously this does not apply to women; for the women let’s leave it at $50 though we all know that half of y’all didn’t even know that you actually had to pay money to drink: “ What do you mean, pay? I show up, unbutton my blouse just a bit and the drinks chase me.”) and other miscellaneous expenses such as losing one’s phone, add another $100 dollars a and we are now at $250 a week. Rent for a lovely abode in the city center.

Multiply that by 54 weeks and that’s $13,500 dollars a year (for those who want it in third world currencies approximately 675,000 Kenya Shillings): Could you imagine what you could do with an extra $13,500 a year??

Now compare that with someone whose passion is similar to mine, performing in some capacity. If you develop your skills, at the smallest community theater, about 100 people come to see you. They pay at the minimum $10 a piece. That’s $1000 a show. Assuming you do three shows that’s $3000 a show. If you minus expenses, you have still made way more than the -$250 that would be the case if you choose drinking as your passion. We haven’t even begun to touch on the people who think they are ballers and are constantly on the Alizes and the Johnny Walkers and the Hennessys. We also haven’t even scraped the surface and discussed heavier drugs like weed and cocaine but I think you see my general point.

In short, please explore the depth of your soul, don’t cover it up with drugs or television or distractions. Get to that deep part of yourself and figure out,”Just what was I put on this Earth to do.”

This is where I sign off for today. You know the drill, any thoughts or comments do not hesitate to contact me and be blessed and go out and bless others,

Mwangi

Hey guys,

I have just one more article in my first ever series: the top 10 things I wish I knew before I left Africa. Rather than just writing a nice, simple post I have decided to make it an audiovisual feast to the senses, incorporating some video and audio from my past that really influenced my way of thinking. The only problem is: I actually have to go in search of this audio and video because some of it is many years old.

Therefore I have decided that while I am on my treasure hunt I will try to serve you by bringing together all my knowledge and experience to answer the question: How do you discover your mission in life and use it to make money?

I have broken it down into four parts that I will post over the next 4 days:

1. Introduction to series. Outline of the three approaches to discovering your mission in life.

2. Begin explanation of approach number one..

3. Approach number one completed. Approach number two and three explained

4. How to use your mission to make money.

So click on any of the links above to head straight to the article. Above all else I hope this series drives you to action.Faith without action is dead. A dream without action is dead. Reading this series without acting on it is as good as not having read it at all.

Any thoughts or feelings? Leave a comment below or contact me.

B blesd&Bles Othaz,

Mwangi