9 Questions You Need to Ask About Your Career

Written by Paul Angone

Do you have big questions about your career? (or lack thereof)

Searching for a career is more than just finding a job, it’s about finding a place to call home where you can thrive and grow.

I believe it should matter that you want your work to matter.

You will spend more time working than you will anywhere else. Don’t you think it should feel like a good fit, instead of something that’s forced? 

If you’re always trying to kill time at work, what does that say about the way you’re spending your life?

If you’re struggling with your current career, are confused about the direction it’s heading, or just want to re-confirm you’re on the right one, here are nine questions you need to ask.

9 Questions You Need to Ask About Your Career

1. Are the people who have obtained success in your career path, you know, actually happy?

When you look at the higher ups in your field of work, the people who have really made it, are they happy? Are they living a life they enjoy or are they doing just the opposite?

As I first wrote in twentysomething problems, if the thought of doing your bosses job 15 years from now makes you throw up a little, then maybe that’s a sign you’re in the wrong job.

2. The moment right before you enter into your day’s work, how do you feel?

Tomorrow, right before you begin your work, pause, ask yourself this question, and see what you say. Are you excited? Anxious? Overwhelmed?

You might be surprised that you find yourself thrilled to begin another day of work. That’s a great sign! Or maybe you notice that dread is slowly wrapping its fingers around your neck?

How you feel the moment before you begin your day will tell you a lot about how you will feel when your day ends.

3. What’s your Dread/ Tolerate/ Love breakdown?

Let’s make a chart! This will be fun!

Look at a typical work day. Break down each hour. From email, to meetings, travel, and then when you’re actually plugging away at the work you’re supposed to be doing.

Looking at your breakdown, how many hours would you place in each category – Dread, Tolerate, and Love.

Now take your hour breakdown and make it into a pie chart. Does this pie chart make you nauseous or happy? If your day is filled with more dread than love, is there a way you can tackle more projects in your “Love” category?

Is there a way to spice up some of those Tolerate hours to make them fit better within your wheelhouse? Or is this career taking up permanent residence in the Land of Dread.

Define what you love about your job and then refine your job to do more of what you love. 

4. Or do you feel you’re full throttle-ly (that’s a word, right?) employed in a crappy job and it would take an act of God to help you enjoy it?

A crappy job can feel like a black hole — it sucks and feels impossible to escape.

Yes, working a crappy job is a twentysomething rite of passage. But how do we make it smell a little better?

The key to working a crappy job, and then leveraging that job into a better one, is to find and hone your One Thing.

Find and focus on the One Thing you like about this job.

Then do that one thing even better than before. Grow your skill-set there. Learn from co-workers who do that One Thing well.

Make that One Thing your crappy job trampoline, bouncing you to greater heights.

Your twenties are about putting in the work now so that you can enjoy your work later. 

Too many of us want to escape our crappy jobs before we’ve grown in a skill-set that we can leverage into a better opportunity. If you leave your crappy job without learning and growing, chances are another crappy job awaits.

5. Does studying, researching, and becoming more proficient in your career give you energy or drain it?

Does learning about your industry or craft give you life or take from it?

If becoming a master of your craft is something you’re avoiding, it’s either time to fully dive in or it’s time to pick a new craft.

6. Does this career path create the life you want?

Sometimes you can have an amazing career, but the wake from it is choppy and uneasy.

Do you love your job, but it’s pretty much a given that you’re working 70 hour weeks? And your boss works 80. Or maybe your career is filled with purpose and passion, yet it doesn’t really pay the bills? Basically, what’s most important to you? If you’re not sure, maybe start with these 11 questions every twentysomething needs to ask and then come back here.

It’s a strange paradox when you love your job, but you don’t love the lifestyle it creates.

Choose a healthy life, not just a successful career. 

This might mean you have to make a difficult decision about the kind of life you want to live. But I promise it will be easier to make that choice now, than when a house, spouse, and a few kids are in the picture.

7. Are you doing work that matters? Do you believe in it? Should you believe in it?

Boomers and Millennials especially sometimes find themselves at a disconnect when it comes to career choices.

And it seems whether or not you should have purpose and meaning in your career is at the heart of the debate.

I believe it should matter that you want your work to matter. 

For many twentysomethings, they are more focused on finding a job filled with purpose and passsion, than a healthy paycheck.

As a recent Barna study on Millennials states: “When it comes to work and career, more than anything this generation wants to be inspired. Finding a job they are passionate about is the career priority Millennials ranked highest.”

For me personally, doing something that makes an impact in a meaningful way was a number one priority for me. It was a non-negotiable. And it’s compelled me to make hard choices away from comfort and job security. It’s led me through seasons of unemployment and utter leanness. And it’s meant a lot of early mornings and late nights working at a dream, before I went and worked at my work.

This path towards meaning has not been easy, but I love where it’s led me.

8. What are the top skills that you currently using and growing at your work? Are those skills you want to be harnessing and focusing on?

Write down the top 3-5 skills you’re using and developing at work? Or if you’re not working, the top skills you’d like to be developing.

Are those skills you want to be developing? What deeper values are those skills tied to?

I’ve found that many people get stuck in their jobs because they are doing something they find success in, yet they feel this undercurrent of discontent and frustration because the skills they’re using are tied into anything deeper.

Success in your skill-set alone is not your purpose. Your skills should be infused in pursuing something purposeful, but your skills are not your purpose in and of themselves.

Sometimes what we’re good at can become a comfortable trap from living a life away from our true purpose because we’re using skills apart from what we think is important — our “why” – our full Signature Sauce.

9. Do you even want a career?

Career sounds stuffy and inescapable like getting lost in the back of your Aunt Martha’s closet.

The world is flat now with the ability to work anywhere, on anything, at anytime. I’m not sure the standard ideas and concepts behind a linear career are completely relevant any longer.

I don’t think our generation will as readily climb the ladder. Our generation will swim from island to island, picking up necessary skills and experiences as we travel towards our Career Promised Land.

What do these questions say about your career? If it looks like it might be time to make a change, make sure you grab Jenny Blake's new book Pivot to help you navigate the next steps. 

About Paul Angone

Paul Angone is the author of All Groan Up: Searching For Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job!, 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator ofAllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking “what now?” Snag his free ebook on the 10 Key Ingredients to Finding Your Signature Sauce and follow him at @PaulAngone.

The Biggest Problem Millennials Face in Achieving Their Dreams

Written by Paul Angone Millennials get knocked for having big dreams. As if having goals, plans, and wanting to do something significant with your life is a personality flaw.

Millennials want to live on purpose with purpose.

How’s this a bad thing?

Staying optimistic, even as all the “reality checkers” are telling you “that won’t work”, is something to be commended – not scoffed at.

Yet, there is a problem.

There is something that will keep you from ever seeing those dreams come to fruition.

There is a problem that we need to understand and overcome if we’re going to make our big dreams a reality.

Here is The Problem to Pursuing Our Dreams in Our 20s and 30s

Your big dreams aren’t the problem. Your timeline is.

As I first wrote in 101 Secrets For Your Twenties,

“Our big dreams aren’t the problem. Our crazy timeline of how quickly we want those plans and dreams to be sitting on our doorstep with a big Christmas bow is the problem.”

For me personally, I thought the red carpet was going to be rolled out on Day 33 of life in my 20s when God had that penciled in for Day 2,333.

You know, for when I was actually ready for it.

God has His timeline for your life. You have your timeline for your life. Some of the time those match—like on that one Tuesday in February, three years ago. But most of the time they don’t.

We could try and hold tight to the uncontrollable, gripping the details of our lives like a five-year-old trying to walk a rhinoceros.

Or we can let them go and do their thing. We can drop our dreams deep into the ground and water them with creativity, consistency, and patience.

Don’t let your timeline blow up the timeline that needs to happen.

Keep Growing Your Dreams

As I wrote in All Groan Up: Searching For Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job!

“Don’t chase your dreams, grow one. Plant them in good soil and consistently water it. Then trust that God will spark life underground.”

When it’s the right time, we’ll watch our plans and dreams grow bigger, better, and more beautiful than we ever could’ve planned.

Most of the time life will not feel like “it’s supposed to” and that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.

Keep believing that in the small, daily grind something big is taking place.

And that the big outcome might not look anything like the portrait you painted of success while dreaming at the starting line.

Hold your dreams tight as everything tries to rip them away.

Keep warring for hope as everything feels like it’s warring against you.

Sometimes life in your 20s and 30s is about having the courage to write a couple crappy first drafts. Then after 5 re-writes, you start finding the story you need to live.

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About Paul Angone

Paul Angone is the author of All Groan Up: Searching For Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job!, 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator ofAllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking “what now?” Snag his free ebook on the 10 Key Ingredients to Finding Your Signature Sauce and follow him at@PaulAngone.

6 Ways You're Making Life Much Harder Than it Has to Be

Written by Paul Angone Life is hard.

So why do we consistently make it harder than it has to be? Life is complex enough without adding a bunch of baggage specifically designed to make it more difficult, more frustrating, and break down more frequently on the side of the road.

Why do we do this? On a daily basis.

How do we lay all the dead weight down to rest?

Well, here are six ways you might be making life more difficult than it has to be. The first one in particular is like grabbing a 1990’s box TV off the side of road, tying it around your ankle, and then trying to run at a full sprint.

6 Ways You're Making Life Much Harder Than it Has to Be

1. You’re hitched up to the gigantic dead-weight called unforgiveness.

Man, being bitter just feels so right sometimes, doesn’t it?

When by all accounts and witnesses you have every right to be utterly furious with someone, yet as you replay all the wrongs like a Spice Girls song stuck in your head, the more you obsess over it, the worse and worse you feel.

You have every right not to forgive, yet holding tight to that anger is like letting that person repeat the offenses over and over—completely tearing you apart while doing nothing to them.  As author Anne Lamott described best:

“In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” – Anne Lamott

Now hear me, I don’t know your situation. I don’t know the stuff you’ve been subjected too. Yet, forgiveness is more for you than it is for the person you’re forgiving. It allows you to be free and move forward.

Like getting over someone you loved and thought was the “The One”, forgiveness doesn’t always happen overnight. In my life, forgiveness has been a process that’s taken a lot of prayer and some counseling. And it’s not easy.

Unhitch that box TV and never look back. Unforgiveness is a weight that is too heavy to carry.

2. You’re trying to solve your big life problems late at night

I’ve realized in my life that late at night isn’t the best time to try and solve problems. Instead of trying to solve life’s big problems late at night as an anxious exhaustion swallows me like a black fog, I should just try something more productive–like going to sleep.

Morning is magnificently redemptive.

3. You’re secretly searching for perfect

The search for perfect is the perfect way to be perfectly miserable.

There is no perfect job. No perfect partner. No perfect friend. No perfect time. No perfect answer.

You’ll never have all the answers. Or enough information. Or the perfectly uninhibited view.

For years, I think much of my angst came because I was subconsciously searching for that perfect path to my future that didn’t exist.

As I write in my new book All Groan Up: Searching For Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job!, “after college I expected a dove to fly down and deliver the detailed plans for my life, tipping his hat like a friendly 1950’s milkman, but someone must’ve shot that dove because I haven’t seen him.”

The only thing you’re going to find on your search for perfection is a bunch of imperfections to be depressed about.

4. You don’t utilize an Entrepreneurial Mindset enough

No, I’m not saying becoming an entrepreneur is going to solve all your problems because whether working in a cubicle or for yourself, it’s not going to be perfect (see what I did there).

Yet, I do think you would make life much easier if you became intentional about having an Entrepreneurial Mindset. What do I mean?

In my Finding Your Signature Sauce course, I discuss four different mindsets that I believe would change our lives if we intentionally modeled them–the Entrepreneurial mindset being one of the four.

At the core, I see the power of the Entrepreneurial mindset as the ability to see challenges as opportunities. Entrepreneurs make a living getting excited about problems they see because they can work on creating the solution. Obstacles are opportunities, challenges the trampoline to their purpose.

I just finished reading a great book by my favorite historian David McCullough on The Wright Brothers, who famously made the first successful manned flight with their own homemade airplane, and it was amazing to see their entrepreneurial mindset at work.

While the leading experts around the world with well-funded, never-ending resources at hand were trying (and dramatically failing) to become the first to fly, it was these two brothers, two bicycle mechanics who didn’t have a college education, who saw each new problem standing in their way of flight as one amazing step closer to solving the problem.

The Wright brothers were brilliant, but also doggedly optimistic that each challenge they faced was another key insight into solving the mystery of flight.

Successful entrepreneurs never let their epic failures stop them from possibly failing again.

What if instead of dreading and avoiding the problems in your life, they became your new business ideas, non-profit, invention, way to serve someone, etc. How much easier would life then be?

5. You’re on social media way too much

Have you ever been scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, then jumped off and thought, “Wow, that was a great use of my time! Oh, and I feel so much better about my life too.”

I think only Mark Zuckerberg, and that weird guy who sits way too close to you at Starbucks, does that.

People used to go to their 10-year reunion and have to make it appear for one night that their life was amazing beyond belief. Now, we’re trying to pull that appearance off every second of every day. It is an impossible, crazy-making, endeavor.

We consume social media like a two-year-old downing birthday cake–we can’t get enough until we get more than we can handle.

There’s no better way to become depressed about everything you don’t have than by staring at the illusion of what everyone else apparently does.

Like I wrote in 101 Secrets For Your Twenties, don’t check Facebook when…

Now I’m beginning to think there should be even more stipulations than I originally thought.

6. You're trying to figure all this out on your own

We all need help. Or at least, I know I need a lot of help. From friends, mentors, family, and most importantly from my faith.

If I had to carry life's problems all on my own, I'd have been crushed to death a long time ago. I know enough about me to know that on my own I'm definitely not enough.

I'd love to hear from you in the comments on this article: How do you resonate with the ways we make life more difficult discussed above?

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About Paul Angone

Paul Angone is the author of All Groan Up: Searching For Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job!, 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator ofAllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking “what now?” Snag his free ebook on the 10 Key Ingredients to Finding Your Signature Sauce and follow him at @PaulAngone.

5 Pitfalls to Avoid in Your Twenties

Written by Paul Angone There are so many well-hidden suckholes that can stop all momentum, growth, and success in your twenties.

And you can fall into one of these pitfalls without even realizing it, and then stay stuck well into your 30s, 40s, 50s...you get where I'm going...

Now that I've successfully freaked us all out, lets talk about these pitfalls and how we avoid them.

Pitfall #1: My Circumstances are "Who I Am" 

If you start believing "well this is my lot in life and I can't do anything about it," then you are more than stuck.

Really this pitfall makes all other pitfalls non-existent because you never walk far enough forward to even have a chance at failing at anything else.

Don't be cemented in your circumstances. They change all the time. Too many people are settling in Sucksville because they don't believe they can leave town.

We all have crappy subplots we need to work through. Don't let them become your whole book. Failure doesn't ruin your story, failure helps you write it. 

It's really hard to step into your future if you don't believe you have one.

Your twenties set the course for the rest of your life. If you start settling for a life that's a "3 out of 10" now, it might not magically become better later.

Pitfall #2: Becoming Bitter, Instead of Better

You might be feeling good about life. Maybe you're even at the grocery store, with an actual list, buying things like kale and argula.

You're crushing this whole adulthood thing.

And then you jump into the line at the checkout and start checking out Facebook or Instagram, with the glaring AMAZINGNESS of all your friends buying a new BMW, having a new baby, traveling to Istanbul to take pictures for American Express, and suddenly you want to replace your kale with a box of wine and three jumbo bags of M&M's.

The new OCD I have coined -- Obsessive Comparison Disorder has a way of heightening any discontent to "I only want to drink wine from a box" levels.

Don't become bitter. Become better. Don't smack yourself with some yardstick you're not measuring up to. You do you.

Keep creating instead of complaining.

Strive to find solutions, instead of marinating in all the problems.

Pitfall #3: Never Committing to Anything

Find something you enjoy, that gives you life, and commit to it. It doesn't have to be what you want to do for the rest of your life to give a little of your life to it.

Your twenties are about what you plant in the ground, not about what you harvest.

We can’t keep pulling our seeds out of the dirt before it has time to grow.

As you commit to something and begin to walk forward, paths and opportunities will open up that you couldn't see from where you started.

Pitfall #4: Doing Life Alone

We are made for community. We thrive in relationships. Your friends are struggling right next to you to find their purpose and place.

Call a friend. Be honest about what you're going through. Seek out mentors. Ask them to coffee. Call your mom. Find a counselor if you feel you need one.

Don't do twentysomething life alone.

To blow up this lie that you're all alone in this twentysomething struggle is one of the main reasons I wrote my new book All Groan Up: Searching For Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job! It's why I'm so honest about my own hilariously embarrassing, yet slightly brutal, failures that lined my twenties.

This "groan up" life is anything but easy and straight-forward, and we need to talk about it.

If you try to do life in isolation, it will be very difficult to feel alive.

Pitfall #5: Failing to Clarify Your Signature Sauce

I believe you have a Signature Sauce – a unique mix of ingredients that gives the world a flavor that no one else can.

No, I'm not talking about some sort of magical marinara.

I believe that defining, refining, owning, and honing who you are, your unique tailor-made-ness, your personal Signature Sauce, is the absolute most important thing you can accomplish in your twenties. It's the key to not only finding your passion, but living it for the rest of your life.

Don’t expect anyone to hire you for your passion if you can’t explain what it is. 

The people who are the most successful know who they are, what they believe, and why they are pursuing what they're pursuing.

Don’t get me wrong, this discovery process is not always simple and straightforward. This is why I’m working on an intentional program and community to help you own, hone, refine and define what your Signature Sauce is.

You have a unique Signature Sauce that the world needs.

It just might take some time, strategy and intentionality to figure out what it is.

We'd love to hear from you in the comments below on this article: 

Are you stuck in one of these pitfalls and is there one thing you can do this week to begin your climb out? 

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About Paul Angone

Paul Angone is the author of All Groan Up: Searching For Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job!, 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator of AllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking "what now?" Snag free chapters from both his books and follow him at @PaulAngone.

You are Not Alone

Written by Paul Angone If your twenties have gone nothing like you planned – you’re not alone.

Career doubts. Crushed dreams. Relationship debacles. Faith struggles. And flat out groan up awkwardness. In my twenties I experienced them all and felt like such a failure.

After college I was working a comfortable job, yet I couldn't shake this gnawing discontent and question of  “what am I doing with my life?”

For a while I thought I was the only one struggling. But as I started opening up to friends about the big doubts and questions I was experiencing–about wanting my life to mean something more, a relieving thing began to happen.

Those same friends who I thought had it all figured out, were asking the same questions and feeling the same frustrations. There was something bigger going on here and I knew we needed a space to really talk about it. To really figure out how to live a life of meaning and purpose when you don't feel at home in your groan up pants.

I started writing the most honest book I could about my journey through the ambiguities of adulthood to find the answers to the big questions we're all asking.

Now ten years later, that book All Groan Up: Searching For Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job! releases in just a few weeks, April 21st, 2015!

This book is the most vulnerable, hilariously embarrassing, and important thing I've ever written.

In All Groan Up I pull back the veil on the unspoken fears, doubts, lies and BIG questions you are facing and smack them in the face with truth and hope.

Your twenties are about slowly building a plan that actually has a foundation to it—built on failures, strengths, mistakes, values, wrong turns, vision, etc.

Your twenties are about building a plan based on who you are, who you’re not, and who you’re becoming.

All Groan Up: Searching For Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job! releases this April 21st, 2015, but if you pre-order the print book, you can read the entire ebook right now. Plus you will also receive over $250 worth of additional bonuses in the upcoming weeks.

• Pre-order the book at Amazon
• Pre-order the book at Barnes and Noble

Pre-order the book at any of these locations, and then go to the All Groan Up Book Page and enter your email to download the entire ebook and be entered to receive the extra bonuses.

Or if you want to read the first four chapters right away for free, enter your email at the All Groan Up homepage and you can read them right now.

It took me ten years to see this book happen and the only reason I was able to push through the failures, dead-ends, and do-overs is because I passionately believe in the hope, truth, and inspiration the story of All Groan Up offers.

Thank you friends for being such a huge support and encouragement to me. I hope this new book will encourage you in return that you're not alone on this journey.

Watch the Epic, 121 Second All Groan Up Book Trailer!

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the author of All Groan Up: Searching For Self, Faith, and a Freaking Job!, 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator of AllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking "what now?" Snag free chapters from both his books and follow him at @PaulAngone.

Have You Become a Half-Dead Adult?

Written by Paul Angone Are you becoming a real live half-dead adult?

What do I mean?

Well to explain let me take you to a call center.

Call Center Crisis

In my opinion, the only difference between hell and a call center is the phones. (Unless the devil is sporting a cellphone these days.)

When you work at a call center you realize fairly quickly that when people call in it’s not because they want to chitchat or tell you about the amazing work your company is doing.

No. They call because they have a problem. A life-shattering, comets-colliding, worlds-imploding problem that you’re to blame for.

And since our call center was wildly understaffed, every person I spoke to was usually waiting on hold for an hour before they even made it to me. Oh, they were just as pleasant as a peach come summertime by the time I said “hello.”

The Call Center Chef Behind Me

The only really nice thing about working at the call center was the solidarity and unity among coworkers based on one simple truth—we all hated our jobs. Every last one.

But then I’d ask coworkers how long they’d been working there. “Five years,” they’d say.

“Five years!” I’d respond. “Well, when did you first start hating the job?”

“Five years ago,” they’d say.
“Five years?” I’d respond.
Something about these conversations didn’t make sense.

Take Rosey who sat behind me. She was about 45 years old, kind, energetic, and was an amazing chef. The office parties where she brought carrot cake were the only times all calls were placed on hold.

But Rosey had been working at the call center for a long time and complained about the job with the same frequency as the incoming calls.

“Rosey, why don’t you quit this lousy job and pursue cooking?” I asked. “You’re an amazing chef. You hate it here. Why stay?”

“Oh, I tried pursuing cooking once,” she said. “But it was hard. Didn’t pay enough, you know? And I couldn’t catch a break. So I gave it up and started working here.”

“Well, I think you should give it another shot,” I said.
“No, no. That’s not for me anymore,” she said putting on her headset. “I’m done with dreaming. Just gets your hopes up for no good reason. You’re young, but one day you’ll learn. Sometimes you’ve just got to say goodbye to the fairy tale and put on your grown-up pants.”

Right there at that moment, I vowed something. I was never going to wear grown-up pants.

You see, the call center was filled with real-live-half-dead adults—people who are more comfortable with feeling like crud than they are with making a change for the better.

Change is scary. Change takes courage. Change means uncertainties.

The people at the call center let fear call the shots. They were fine living crapfully ever after. I was not.

How to Escape From Becoming a Real Live Half-Dead Adult

Taking yourself too seriously is very serious work. Very important, steadfast, I-can’t-be-bothered business. Where you save up every penny to buy a one-way ticket to Boredullameville—it’s kind of like living at Disneyland, except the exact opposite.

Or you can live differently. You can live ridiculously.

The #1 rule to living ridiculously? Never, ever, under any circumstances, worry if people think you’re ridiculous.

The boring love to bore. The realistic live all too real. Naysayers love their ample amounts of nay.

On the other hand, ridiculous people live with their bodies dipped in possibilities and they don’t care who crawls out from under a rock to tell them that painting your body in potential and “what if’s” is not the appropriate or responsible use of resources.

Ridiculous people are these weird, wild people that actually make you feel alive. They take one step in the room and the heavy weight of Stuffy Adult-Dom floats away like a helium balloon.

Ridiculous people ooze creativity. It’s easy to follow instructions. It’s hard to create your own.

Ridiculous people believe in others more than others believe in themselves. Then they constantly encourage others to see the truth that they see.

Ridiculous people don’t always live life strictly by the facts. Oh, they take them into account, but they know facts aren’t always factual. They know that facts are contrived by self-proclaimed adults for their own fancy.

Ridiculous people care more about doing what’s right than what will look right to others.

There’s too many real-live-half-dead adults for you to join the ranks. So if at some point you want to accidentally drop your “grown-up pants” in a real.live.fire, you have my blessing.

I want to be ridiculous. Who's with me?

This post is adapted from Paul Angone's book 101 Secrets For Your Twenties 

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the author of 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator of AllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking "what now?" Snag free chapters from his book and follow him at @PaulAngone.

Your Biggest Fall Might Save Your Life (an unbelievable story from history)

Written by Paul Angone This story starts with a terrible accident.

One that took place at the worst possible time. (as most accidents do)

A man went on a carriage ride with his son and daughter. This man was an incredibly important figure of his day and was working non-stop for years. He needed to get away and think in peace for a moment.

As the carriage turned down a cobbled street, a horse got spooked and took off full speed, crashing the carriage and throwing this man to the street below.

His injuries were extremely serious. A broken shoulder, broken jaw, face and head lacerations, and severe bleeding. Some feared the man would not survive. A large metal splint held his jaw together, covering one of the most prominent faces of the time.

How could this happen? 

This man was so crucially needed, and his injuries so serious, that Abraham Lincoln cut his trip short and rushed home to visit his most trusted confidant, ally, and friend. Lincoln stepped into a dark room full of nurses whispering, with worries of death on their faces, and his heart sunk.

There his friend lay in immense pain. Lincoln was able to share with him that the Civil War was sure to be over in days. They had finally done it. It must have been a moment shared together filled with such joy, pain, and exhaustion.

It was the last time Lincoln would talk to his friend, the Secretary of State, William H. Seward.

Nine days later, Lincoln would be assassinated. And on the same night as Ford Theater's infamous performance, an assassin would come for William Seward as well. And Seward should've died if it wasn't for the most unusual of miracles.

The Assassination Attempt

Lewis Powell entered Seward's house and injured many with a gun and bowie knife as he stormed into Seward's room. And there over a defenseless Seward the assassin would strike him with a bowie knife in the face repeatedly and hit him with his gun until Seward rolled off the bed, supposedly dead.

But defying all odds, he was not.

Months later, Seward would make a miraculous recovery and re-take his position of Secretary of State, supporting newly appointment President Andrew Johnson through their courageous, yet reviled by many, plans of complete reconciliation with the South. If not for Seward's support, Johnson might have been impeached.

So what miracle saved Seward's life that terrible night?

The large metal splint from his broken jaw. The terrible carriage accident only nine days earlier saved his life from the unthinkable act later.

The metal used to hold together a terrible break became a shield that would protect his face from numerous fatal blows.

Road to Redemption

The most miserable moments of our lives have the potential for the greatest redemption. 

Our greatest falls have the possibility for the greatest rise.

Many things in life won't turn out like we planned. Some things will even inexplicably take turns down dark roads.

But we never know what amazing gift lies around the next corner if we are willing to keep walking.

As I recently wrote recently in the incredible benefits to failing miserably; failure doesn't ruin your story. Failure helps you write it.

Later William H. Seward would do something else that many would consider one of the greatest mistakes of the time, he would purchase a piece of land called Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000 in 1867. "Seward's Folly," as it was called, purchased one of the most dense states of natural resources for two cents an acre. Not a bad return on investment. One that probably would've never happened if he hadn't first crashed that day.

Where does your story find you right now? At the top of the mountain? Or at the bottom with a broken ankle?

Wherever your story finds you, live it with the hopeful expectation for redemption.

With great pain can come great purpose. 

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the author of 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator of AllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking "what now?" Snag free chapters from his book and follow him at @PaulAngone.

5 Greatest Obstacles Facing Twentysomethings (and how you overcome)

Written by Paul Angone The obstacles facing twentysomethings today are massive and can sometimes feel un-scaleable.

I thought in my twenties I'd be running full-speed and winning the race I'd been preparing for so many years to run.

Instead, I felt like I tripped at the starting line and looked up to see a race filled with potholes, rings of fire, and dream-eating-managers covering the path I thought was going to be smooth and straight.

What exactly are the main obstacles facing twentysomethings today? And more importantly, how do we leap over them?

Five Obstacles Facing Twentysomethings

1. Informationized

Twentysomethings are being informationized, a barrage of "need to knows" being shot at us with every step.

With twentysomethings being exposed to 1 trillion messages a day - give or take a billion, information is no longer gold, it's a trap. At least the wrong kind of information.

Just like the food we eat -- the information we consume can be junk or it can be nutritious. Consuming the right information is just as important as blocking all the wrong.

How we overcome:

We need to start asking questions about our info-intake.

Do you need to turn off the wireless internet at certain points during the day so you can focus on one task?

Do you need to stop watching the news about everything that's going wrong in the world and just focus on what you can do right?

Instead of reading so much of our information in today's headlines, how about we read books full of needed and important info specifically for us. If you're not sure where to start, check out my list of the Top 21 Books for Twentysomethings.

Wherever your info-intake is at right now, start asking yourself when enough info is enough. Death by information is a terrible way to die.

2. Social Media

Social media can either be like a black hole, sucking all your time, energy, and creativity into a vortex of zero returns.

Or social media can create a galaxy of opportunities, relationships, job opportunities, and platforms like never seen before.

Social media is the great amplifier, shouting the good and bad of YOU at record octaves. It takes your success, failures, fears, and puts them on stage for the world to judge. And how you're presenting yourself on the social media stage can make all the difference.

How we overcome:

Is social media something you do intentionally or without any thought?

Is your social media presence proactive or reactive?

Are you strategically creating your online brand or are you letting others create the brand for you?

Social media is like a chainsaw. How you wield it is the difference between building something or just cutting everything down.

3. Stereotypes

As I wrote in "Enough with the Twentysomething Stereotypes!", the same old buzzwords are being thrown around and adopted about everything twentysomethings "are doing wrong."

We don't dare stereotype based on gender, religion, race, or sexual orientation, but if you stereotype based on age you'll have a front cover story.

And if you're twentysomething, your managers might have their own stereotypes about you based on your age before you even tackle a project.

The stereotypes might be subtle or incredibly pronounced, but you must be aware of how you are being perceived. Then do your best to take those stereotypes to the shredder and into the outgoing trash.

How we overcome:

As I wrote in my book 101 Secrets for your Twenties,

If you feel like you’re being stereotyped because of your age, your best ally is quiet confidence—a humble consistency that shows up and gets the job done. You don’t argue with them about your skill set, you just show them every single day how awesome your skills are.

It’s a tough, thankless gig, but soon, very soon, you’ll prove to them that you’re a person, not an age range.

4. Lackluster Economy  + Debt = Holy Horse-Apple

You don't need me to tell you that the economy has been a tad dumpsterish lately, with many twentysomethings taking out thousands of dollars in college loans for the grand opportunity to step up to the garbage bin to find that job in the rough. The Great Recession became a very depressing twentysomething reality.

How we overcome:

Instead of complaining about a lack of opportunity, we need to focus on creating them instead.

We can't sit around and wait for an open door, we have to keep pounding on them until one busts open.

We can't be reactive to the economy's woes, we have to be proactive in finding needs and meeting them.

Opportunities for twentysomethings didn't disappear, it just takes a little more hutzpah to uncover them.

5. Wasted Time

Now that I'm married with two daughters, I become a tad sick when I think about all the hours I wasted in my early twenties.

Time is your greatest asset. And for most twentysomethings time is still on your side.

Just remember that time is a depleting supply.

As you possibly look to get married, buy a house, have kids, the time you're going to have to pursue your dreams is going to be fleeting. For me, that meant working a full-time job, putting kids to bed, and then chasing my dream of becoming a full-time writer and speaker at 5:00 am or 10:00 pm, trying to ring productivity out of every free second.

How we overcome:

Wasting free time is very expensive. 

Make a schedule. Choose your time. Don't let it choose you.

Wasting time becomes a never-ending carousel, anxiety multiplying with every turn.

Time is a gift. Unwrap it and use it wisely.

Your life might not be turning out nothing like you planned mainly because you never had a plan to begin with. Take time to make one.

I'd love to hear from you in the comments section below on this article:

What obstacles are you trying to overcome? 

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the author of 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator of AllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking "what now?" Snag free chapters from his book and follow him at @PaulAngone.

The Most Dangerous Job You Can Have in Your Twenties

Written by Paul Angone The most dangerous job you can have in your 20s is a comfortable one. 

Comfortable is a quicksand -- the job you never wanted becoming the job you can’t escape.

Worse than no-job, frustrating job or a demanding job, is a job that demands nothing.

Like taking basket weaving your senior year. Sure you’ll get an easy A, but what did you lose in return? There is a stark cost for time wasted on comfortable.

Because you don’t grow with comfortable. You don’t learn. You don’t refine who you are or what you’re capable of.

No, comfortable is the leading cause for R.E.A.S – Rapidly Expanding Ass Syndrome. Your body, mind, and soul turning to goo. Because challenges refine. Remove challenges, remove growth.

The crux of your 20s is not how much you make, but how much you learn, grow, and change. Those of us who refuse to change, as Robert Quinn writes in Deep Change, will enter into a "slow death."

Wondering if your job is too comfortable and it's time to escape? Here are three signs it's time to run for your life.

3 Signs Your Job is Too Comfortable (and it’s time to leave)

1. Culture of Complacency

Need to know if your office suffers from complacency? Pretty simple. How are new ideas received? Are they explored or instantly exploded with a shotgun of "that’s not possible." Have you been there for a few years and are still not able to voice an opinion?

Are the unspoken rules of the office to keep your mouth shut and not rock the boat?

Are you allowed to tackle projects outside your "job description?"

Does your boss want to work there? Does your boss’s boss want to be there?

Complacency is a disease. Extremely contagious and easily passed from one employee to another.

If your office permeates with a culture of complacency, especially from the top down – game over. Pack your bags. Time to leave.

I’m serious as a heart attack.

Because you, starry-eyed twentysomething, brimming with energy and ideas will be crushed over and over by tsunami waves of complacency. Until you shut your mouth, settle in, and catch the disease yourself.

In a culture of complacency there is a sick, perverted love affair with status-quo. And honestly, you’re probably not going to change it.

2. You Feel Drained By Doing Nothing

If you come home absolutely drained from work. If you need to watch 2-4 hours of TV a night to escape. Then you think back to your day and realize you really did nothing at work.  You’re really just drained because your mind wasn’t stimulated.

You’re drained because you spread one hour of actual work over a span of eight.

Being drained by comfortable is a scary way to start living. Because it’s incredibly hard to escape. Like a carousel ride that never stops spinning. Jump and roll. Now.

3. “We Want to Promote You” is the Phrase you Fear Most.

If the idea of being promoted makes you more nauseous than the time you ate cotton candy and three churros before jumping on the spinning teacups ride, then why are you freaking working there? I can hear lots of "but Paul you don't understand..."

No, I do understand. Comfortable is your drug. I'm checking you into a clinic.

Comfortable Will Kill You

Comfortable is like smoking -- addictive and killing you with every puff. Quit before it’s too late.

No one who has achieved great things and made a difference in this world has done so while remaining comfortable.

We'd love to hear from you in the comments below:

What do you think -- is a comfortable job as dangerous as I've made it out to be?

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the author of 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator of AllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking "what now?" Snag free chapters from his book and follow him at @PaulAngone.

7 Ways to Worry Less

Written by Paul Angone Do you want to worry less?

Of course you do, right? That’s like me asking if I could send you free bacon (or the tofu equivalent).

Worry is like black mold – it springs up in soggy conditions. Spreads uncontrollably. And often times we don’t realize it’s there until it’s literally killing us.

I'm speaking from experience here because I struggle with worry. Big time.

Each day is full of ripe opportunities to be anxious about something – finances, relationships, my kids, and all the unknowns. I even worry about how much I worry.

But we need to stop. Because…

Worry crushes creativity.

Worry warps wisdom. 

Worry pummels peace.

We must wreck worry before it wrecks us. 

But how?

Here’s seven strategic ways to punch worry where it hurts.

1. Do What You Need to Do 

I can’t tell you how much of my worry comes because I’m simply not doing what I know I should be doing. I’m lost on the Internet when I have a deadline. I’m avoiding projects or hard conversations.

I don't do what I know I should be doing, and then I spend the rest of the time worried I’m not doing what I should be doing. Even an insane person would tell you that's crazy.

Often times the angst and anxiety that comes from worrying is much worse than the task we’re worried about.

2. Make a “Wow! I’m Insanely Blessed” List

How many times have you come up against something that you thought, this time, without a doubt, you were dead meat. And then out of nowhere, the answer, the open door, the finances, the wisdom you needed arrives and everything works out better than you ever could've dreamed.

Your greatest fears that you were sure had no answer usually end up solving themselves.

We’ve been blessed so many times, so why do we continually keep expecting the opposite?

If you keep worrying that you’re in deep crap, that’s exactly how you’re going to feel.

“Most folks are as happy as they have made up their minds to be.” Abraham Lincoln

3. Get Intentional

I think many of us act like we’re puppets in a play and we’re waiting for something or someone to put us in the right place.

We need to stop letting life just happen. We need to live on purpose. Nothing breeds worry like purposelessness.

“About one third of my patients are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.” - Carl Jung

Define what you want from this life and take steps towards it.

The most important thing we can do with this life is actually live it. 

4. Make Plans (then make plans to make new plans)

You can’t have intentionality without making plans.

Yet, don’t place your plans in stone. Make your plans with Play-Doh -- malleable, adaptable, and fluid.

Being a twentysomething is often times defined by your plans not going as planned.

But the more comfortable you are with the uncomfortable, the less you will worry when things become worrisome.

Accept change. Make new plans. Then move forward.

5. Stop Smoking Your iPhone

The iPhone is our generation's cigarette.

We are the Refresh Generation – constantly getting a hit from our phone for the latest update.

Some of us (myself included) need to admit we have a social media and iPhone addiction. And this addiction breeds in us Obsessive Comparison Disorder, worry, and anxiety.

We can’t fill every second where we should be resting and reflecting with frantic refreshing.

The worst way to be refreshed is continually refreshing your phone.

6. Take a Creative Break

There are powerful healing and calming effects in taking time out to create something. The artists at Plumb write that taking an art break "boosts immune system functioning, reduces anxiety and stress reaction, aids healing, and, of course, increases creative growth."

Worried about something? Maybe it's time to take out a pencil, water colors or Photoshop and get creative.

7. Serve Others 

Sometimes the best way you can be intentional about your life is being intentional about helping others.

Sometimes the best cure for your problems is by helping someone else solve theirs.

As Dale Carnegie of the famed How to Worry Less and Start Living wrote:

“It is utterly impossible for any human mind, no matter how brilliant, to think of more than one thing at any given time.”

Get out of your own head for a little while and you might find there’s actually light on the outside.

We'd love to hear from you in the comments below: 

What strategy helps you from worrying? 

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the author of 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator of AllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking "what now?" Snag free chapters from his book and follow him at @PaulAngone.

Are You Being a Real.Live.Human?

Written by Paul Angone We are experiencing a dire shortage these days. Not just of oil. Or water. Or food.

We have a shortage of humans.

You wouldn't think in a world of over seven billion people we'd have such a problem. But call this Terminator Five. The machines are taking over.

And I'm not talking about the machines putting together our cars, driving our cars, our planes, our computers -- no I'm talking about us.

We've lost the art of being human.

And in this highly digitized world, it's those who excel the best at being real.live.humans who will experience the most success.

Lack of Real.Live.Humans

What do I mean?

Many of us have forgotten, well, how to be us.

We've lost how to actually be a face behind the name. To be more than a piece of paper. A status update. A picture. A Tweet. A LOL.

We hide behind screens and phones, interacting with each other in ways that require less need for us to really be us.

We apply for jobs as a list of bullet points.

We appeal for support with a mass email. Proud that we addressed it Dear ____.

We say happy birthday with a click of a button.

We buy our groceries without ever making eye contact with the person scanning our Frosted Mini-Wheats. The cashier just an extension of the checkout aisle.

We drape ourselves in routine, forgetting that feeling of new-ness.

We say things that we think should be said instead of saying what we know is right.

Authenticity has become the new buzz word.

But with our auto-drive, auto-text, auto-tweet, auto-think, auto-write: Authenticity has been replaced with Auto-thencity -- an automated version of us that's not really us. 

Your success hinges on your ability or inability to be a real.live.human. 

Three Key Places to be Human

1. Job Search

It is those who shake a hand and look into eyes, who will win the job. A resume has no face. A piece of paper is too easy to say no to. A person with a smile, laugh and a story is much harder. Humans want to help humans. Humans love reaching out a hand to pick up another. When looking for a job, somehow, someway you must become a human to the human on the other side. No matter how "green" we get, humans will always crumble up paper before a person.

2. Dating/Marriage

If you place your relationship on auto-pilot, you will crash. I say this reminder more to myself than anyone else.

I forget far too easily that my wife trumps other deadlines, dreams, and desires. Every night that my computer takes precedent over her is a night that I have screwed up.

Having an affair with my computer is not how I want my wife and kids to remember me.

Turn off auto-pilot Paul. Put your hands back on the wheel. Fly the plane you swore you would fly.

3. Friendship

If I call a friend back within a weeks time, I consider that doing a pretty good job. Two weeks - two months is most likely the norm.

Sure life is busy. Too freaking busy. But too busy for friends?

Too busy to make a phone call? What five minutes? Five minutes to connect with a person I swore I would never lose contact with?

Sounds easy. So why have I resorted to texts and Facebook? A wall is no place to make friends.

The Impact of Humanity

It is the real.live.humans who will inherit the earth.

We need those who will call out to others in a real voice by their real name.

We need to rise above the drab of the impersonal.

Even within technological forms which are not going away, how can we promote personality and purpose through a medium that can possibly diminish both.

Because humans desire interaction with real humans. Humans desire for the taste of real relationships not contrived on cliches.

We yearn for those special people who can call out the person inside of us. 

This is a cry for us to come alive. By God, I hope I answer the call...

I'd love to hear from you in the comments section on this article: 

What's one way you can be more human today? 

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About Paul Angone

Paul is the author of 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator of AllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking "what now?" Snag free chapters from his book and follow him at @PaulAngone.

How to Crush Fear

Written by Paul Angone "Go put this bridle on that horse," my boss said to me. "And don't touch his ears this time."

Here are some facts that led up to this statement:

• I was working as a wrangler at the amazing Deer Valley Ranch in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.

• I started working there, somewhat inexperienced with horses (I was mainly hired for my rugged good-looks and possibly because I lied a little on my application) so I was learning on the fly every day. Most times, very afraid.

• The horse I was supposed to put a bridle on had just ripped an 8ft, fifty pound rail from a fence, and swung it around on a rope like it was a piece of licorice just because another wrangler moments before had touched his ears while trying to put it on.

• As I grabbed that bridle and slowly walked towards that horse, a small amount of pee pre-maturely escaping in my jeans, what happened next taught me an important lesson about fear.

How to Crush Fear

I slowly walked up to the horse I would've rather not touched with a 100ft pole. Quickly did what my boss had just taught me. And got the bridle on with no problem. Simple as that.

I then walked away a little taller and prouder, forgetting about the pee soaking my pants.

If I would sum up my boss's leadership style, whom I respected very much, that's what it would be.

If you're afraid, do it anyway.

It never mattered to our boss who had the most experience or who was the best on paper for a certain task.

If you were there, you did the job.

You ease fear by doing it afraid. Then the next time, the fear is a little less frightening. 

For the rest of the summer whenever I began to avoid a job because I was afraid, I would turn back around and do it.

You learned by doing. You grew by doing it scared.

He didn't sit you down and teach you a class on proper riding. He put you on a horse and told you to get going!

Get On and Get Going!

As a generation we've become paralyzed by over-analyzing.

With so much information at our fingertips, we want to research and remove all risk of embarrassment before we'll even put our toe in the water.

When sometimes the best way to learn how to swim, is by being thrown in the deep end naked and blindfolded.

Doing something big is scary! Not doing something big because you're afraid is even scarier! 

If there's something you know you need to do, but have been too nervous to take that first step, do it right now.

Don't wait for it to feel right. Do it. Then feel right about it after it's done.

If you're scared to speak in public, join a Toastmasters and give a talk.

If you're scared to network, email five people right now you'd like to meet with and ask them to coffee.

Walk into the office you want to be hired at and see if the hiring manager is available. Shake their hand with confidence, even if inside there is none.

Go up to the girl or guy you've been texting with and ask him or her out on a date. In person!

Volunteer to head up that big project at work even if you feel it's over your pay grade

Do it. Then figure out how to get it done.

You learn the most by doing the things that you fear you're the least capable of doing.

I'd love to hear from you in the comments section on this article: 

What's one thing that terrifies you that you can tackle today? 

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the author of 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator of AllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking "what now?" Snag free chapters from his book and follow him at @PaulAngone.

9 Secrets to Real Success in your Twenties

Written by Paul Angone We go through college, many of us spending a small fortune for an education, yet so many twentysomethings leave feeling completely unprepared.

How can this be?

Maybe we need a new kind of education once we hit our 20s. A strategic, big-picture plan on how to truly and authentically succeed in a decade that feels ripe with unsuccess.

Here are what I believe are the nine things everything twentysomething needs to know.

9 Secrets to Success in your Twenties

1. The Discipline of Yes or No 

Successful people have mastered self-control in the small. The skill of saying no and yes at the right time to the right things.

It’s not complex. It’s simply trusting your gut and having the strength and wisdom to follow its lead.

It could be as simple as consistently saying yes to going to bed at the right time.

Saying no to that next round of drinks. Saying yes to the lunch with a friend of your parents, even though it’s bound to be awkward. Saying no to the relationship that’s as healthy as sipping motor oil. Saying yes to reading and exercise. Saying no to office birthday cake.

We can’t consistently make bad decisions in our 20s and then expect things to magically become better.

2. How to articulate who you are and what you’re passionate about

Finding your passion is one thing, being able to explain it simply and succinctly is another.

Don't expect anyone to hire you for your passion if you can't explain what it is. Everyone should have their "elevator pitch" down about Your One Thing – that place where your values, motivation, and strengths intersect.

Self-awareness is a crucial, underrated skill.

If you don’t know what your passion is and can’t explain it, don’t expect anyone to be able to understand what it is.

3. How to drink, and do social media, responsibly

Drinking responsibly – Life-Savingly important.

Doing Social Media Responsibly – Reputation-Savingly important.

Are you presenting an authentic, positive image of yourself online? Or are you the purveyor of these Facebook updates that need to stop happening?

Are you binging on social media in the same way you’d binge on alcohol – it makes everything feel better until, well, it doesn’t.

Use social media responsibly. Your life might depend on it.

4. New Stuff and Name Brands Don’t Add Value

Do you know what I consider one of the greatest achievements of my twenties? A beat-up, unsexy ’93 Honda Civic Hatchback with no air-conditioning, no right mirror, no power-steering, but lots of character. That’s right. I’m dang proud of this car and the fact that I’ve driven that thing my entire twenties to 220,000 miles and counting. I’m proud of all the money I saved from a car loan I never had to get.

Too many twentysomethings try to take a “stuff and status” leap that their budget can’t handle.

We try to ease our insecurities about what it means to be an "official adult" by covering it up with new things and name brands.

Our twenties are about what we plant in the ground, not about what we harvest. We can’t keep pulling our seeds out of the dirt before it has time to grow.

The answer -- Craigslist, thrift stores, yard sales, hand me downs, and the “As-Is” clearance section at IKEA. Literally every major item my wife and I own has come from one of these magical places.

Buying it new doesn’t add value, buying it new just adds a shiny, new, debt.

Don’t medicate your ego with new stuff while your bank account feels the effects of the hangover.

5. How to Mentor and be Mentored

Every twentysomething should have a mentor and be a mentor.

Twentysomethings should continually be learning to learn and learning to teach.

As I write in 101 Secrets for your Twenties:

“[We can’t] be smothered in Twentysomething. We need to sweeten our lives with some Generational Potpourri--a collection of
 age ranges with different backgrounds and experiences to spice our lives up.”

If you don’t have a mentor, I don’t think there are necessarily a lack of mentors for twentysomethings. I think there are a lack of twentysomethings who are actively seeking mentors out.

I think many twentysomethings are frustrated that we can’t find help, yet we don’t take the steps to actually look for it.

Don’t expect a mentor to find you.

Maybe it’s pride or a lack of time that’s holding us back from seeking help, but I think the real obstacle is fear.

A fear of being rejected, a fear of commitment, and maybe a fear of someone shining a light on “all our stuff” and challenging us to do something about it.

6. How to Invest Your Time with Purpose

One of the biggest advantages twentysomethings have is time.

No longer is your time tied up with homework and you might not yet have the time-sucking vacuum that is a house and kids.

And every day you have a choice – will I invest my time in things that build or things that destroy?

How wisely do you invest your time, energy, and creativity in things that will produce high returns?

Will I deposit my time in things that will produce value? Or will I continually make withdrawals of my time and spend it on things that will never pay it back?

How you leverage your time now will be the key to your success later.

7. How to Strategically Work a Crappy Job

As I often say, “Lousy jobs are a twentysomething right of passage.”

But we can learn the most in the jobs we like the least.

Every job, no matter how terrible, has something to teach. What skills can be gained NOW that you can leverage LATER?

8. How to Fail Well

Twentysomethings have experienced an epidemic of success.

Growing up we received awards, gold stars, accolades, and most importantly, immediate feedback on how we were doing (most of which was overwhelmingly positive).

After college, immediate feedback is gone, trophies are packed away in your parent’s attic, and tangible success becomes a fairy tale of the past.

Twentysomethings must learn to fail well – to fail without calling yourself a failure.

To fail is human. To become a failure is deadly.

9. Know When to Stay and When to Leave

Knowing when one season is over and one is ready to begin is a crucial skill many of us spend years perfecting.

There are miserable thirty and fortysomethings in jobs they stopped caring about a decade ago—and it shows all over their work.

Then you have twentysomethings jumping from ship to ship before it even heads out to sea.

Operating at the right time with intentionality is a crucial and underrated life skill. Seasons come and go, if you don’t keep your eyes out for when the leaves are changing and plan accordingly, then you might be stuck out in a blizzard with your flip-flops.

Read the signs, ask for advice, and know when it’s time to go and time to stay.

(Special Note from Paul: I'm excited to share that for the next two days only, my publisher has significantly dropped the price of my book 101 Secrets for your Twenties (eBook version) to only $1.99 . The deal ends this Friday so snag it now!) 

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the author of 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator of AllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking "what now?" Snag free chapters from his book and follow him at @PaulAngone.

Enough with the Twentysomething Stereotypes!

Written by Paul Angone The great chasm between Boomers and Millennials can feel like crossing the Grand Canyon on a three-legged donkey.

Or so it feels.

And to try and reach the other side faster we bridge the Understanding-Gap with stereotypes. Instead of taking the time to travel there to see for ourselves, we listen to those who swear they've been there and know all their weaknesses.

And at the core there seems to be one question at the forefront of all debates and articles – What's wrong with twentysomethings these days? 

Like The Most Interesting Man in the World -- Millennials seem to be a walking paradox that makes for great entertainment.

Yet, why is it that stereotyping most topics is completely taboo, yet stereotyping an entire generation is all the rage? 

Entitled. Narcissistic. Lazy. The Facebook Generation all about instant gratification. Generation Me.

We need to stop throwing out the same tired buzzwords to define the "twentysomething problem". 

We read a NY Times or Huffington Post article and think we have Millennials pegged.

As I wrote in my book 101 Secrets for your Twenties, "why do we think an entire generation can be summed up with a two paragraph label like a box of Wheat Thins?"

Because it's not entitlement or narcism or laziness that is expanding the chasm between Millennials and Boomers–it's the stereotypes.

The Danger of Generational Stereotypes

Many of us are not taking the time to truly understand Millennials because it's much easier to have the three word answer than to take the time and effort to ask the right questions.

Buzzwords can't be gospel truth.

Some twentysomethings will act entitled, some won't.

Some will have an IV of technology hooked to their veins, some will like the feel and smell of a good book.

Some will persevere and work their ass off, some will take repeated naps and watch Netflix.

Some will get married young, some will cast marriage off like a pair of worn tennis shoes.

Some are immersed in social media, and yet at the same time feel very alone.

Yes we can make generalizations to try and understand, but let's be careful not to treat generalizations as facts. Because the problem is that these stereotypes become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Stereotypes become your reality.

If you think twentysomethings are entitled, then you're going to continually look at twentysomethings through that lens. Your perception will define your reality. You won't look for examples of self-sacrifice or hard work because that would be contrary to the truth you already know.

Because you've read a Huffington Post article on Millennials doesn't mean you understand them. 

Because you have twentysomething children does not mean you know what all twentysomethings are going through.

There's 80 million Millennials today who are each complex, unique individuals.

Millennials, just like every generation, have grown up in a wide array of circumstances and backgrounds specific to this time in history. And they're going through a real struggle of transition, uncertainty, doubt, depression, and frustration as life has turned out nothing like they planned.

And just because you don't want to acknowledge that the struggle is legitimate doesn't mean it's not happening.

I've spent close to a decade researching emerging adulthood, writing about what is truly at the heart of the twentysomething struggle, and I will not be so brash or arrogant to say that I have them completely pegged.

So how do we move beyond stereotypes and actually bridge the Generational Understanding-Gap towards healthy, productive, edifying relationships between generations?

Open, Authentic, Conversations

Both Boomers and Millennials need to come to the table and have open, honest conversations.

Boomers would do us well to remember, and Millennials would do well to forget.

• Boomers need to remember what it was like to be in their twenties to help Millennials through their questions.

• Millennials need to forget about having all the answers, and be open and vulnerable to learning from those who have gone before.

Parents, bosses, pastors remember when you were anxious about the future and overwhelmed with doubt? Where you were barely getting by yourself and struggling to find your place?

Millennials weren't around when our parents were thick in the struggle.

Millennials didn't see our parent's sacrifice as much as we saw our parent's success.

Boomers the more real and honest you can be about the difficulties you faced growing up, the closer the Understanding-Gap will become. If bosses can go back and remember how they felt when they were nothing in the office, they can help empathize with twentysomethings and help them find productive ways to grow, instead of casting them aside as lazy or entitled.

The biggest obstacle facing most Millennials today in the office is not a lack of work ethic, but a lack of understanding.

Twentysomethings are desperate for mentors who are willing to tell the truth of their own struggle. 

As 74-year-old author Parker Palmer wrote:

“When I was young, there were very few elders willing to talk about their darkness; most of them pretended that success was all they had ever known ... I thought I had developed a unique and terminal case of failure. I did not realize I had merely embarked on a journey toward joining the human race.” – Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

Boomers. Millennials. There's similarities in our struggle. The more we can understand and identify with the other side, the less we'll rely on stereotypes to bridge the gap.

We'd love to hear from you the comments below:

Have you experienced stereotypes because of your age?

Do you have strategies for transcending stereotypes?

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the author of 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator of AllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking "what now?" Snag free chapters from his book and follow him at @PaulAngone.

This post originally appeared at AllGroanUp.com.

8 Questions to Finding Your Passion

Written by Paul Angone As I left college and attempted to "find my passion," I felt like a 3rd grader trying to attempt Calculus. I couldn't even understand the question, let alone scratch the answer.

Each year that passed I felt like a character in The Office, working a job I hated because I couldn't figure out what job I loved.

Finding Your Passion Ain't 1 + 1

Only now at the tail-end of my twenties, do I feel I'm beginning to smell my passion; like walking into the front door and catching that first whiff of homemade cookies.

My passion: To empower twentysomethings with overwhelming amounts of truth, hope, and hilarity as I narrate the unfolding story of my generation, for my generation. 

As I look back since I walked across that college graduation stage with such a passionate cluelessness, here are eight questions I've wrestled with these last eight years that have helped me find my passion.

8 Questions to Find Your Passion

1. Where have I failed the biggest?

Where have I embarrassed yourself like an 8th grader cracking his voice on his big solo? Where have I failed the biggest -- yet picked myself up and kept charging forward?

As I wrote in my book 101 Secrets for your Twenties:

"Your passion is not just something you do. Your passion is something you cannot NOT do...You find your passion when it’s totally failed, yet you refuse to let it fail."

For me personally that has been writing as I've sought to narrate the unfolding twentysomething story. No matter how many times I've burned these fingers in the process, I've refused to stop punching these computer keys. I learned to pay attention to those times I failed, but refused to give up. There's some secret sauce in this space worth putting a personal patent on. As Thomas Merton writes, "A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly."

2. What are my top values?

Authenticity. Integrity. Right Relationships. Excellence with Fun. Perseverance through Pain.

These are the values that top my list. I've learned when I'm working outside of these values, anxiety tackles me like a security guard laying out a shoplifter. What are your top values? Make a list.

Your passion has to live inside the parameters of your top values or you will sabotage yourself.

3. What do people important to me say makes me come alive?

Pick three people closest to you and ask them when they have seen you come the most alive. Say it's for an assignment. Say work is making you ask.

You'll be surprised at the amazing things they say. Often times we won't give ourselves credit when it's due.

4. What are my favorite stories?

I've been on a five-month personal PR campaign for the movie Warrior -- about two estranged brothers and a father who are all fighting to change their destiny and find redemption. I've seen it three five times and can't help but shed a few cascading amount of tears at the end. It's up there with my other favorites -- Shawshank Redemption, Walk the Line, and Braveheart.

There's a powerful personal truth found in the stories that resonate the closest to you.

The common thread that runs through mine: the underdog who perseveres through pain, thrives from their authentic self, and succeeds at something sane people would never attempt. I can see my top values weaved into my favorite stories. How can I weave the themes from my favorite stories into the most important story I'll ever write -- my own.

5. What’s my top strengths?

Where are you most confident, competent, and crazy locked in? No clue? Taking the StrengthsFinder is a good place to start.

Basically, where do you kick the most ass? Think about what you consider your three greatest successes. What were you doing? Were you leading? Communicating? Designing? Analyzing? Your strengths are a direct shot to your passion. Follow that arrow Robin Hood.

6. What’s my dream?

What’s your BHAG? Your Big, Hairy, Audacious, Goal, as author of this amazing book called Life After College Jenny Blake helped explain in her book.

Feel like your BHAG is alluding you like Big Foot on a Vespa? Do this simple exercise. Envision your life 20 years from now in the year 2032. Where are you waking up? What’s your morning routine? What are you wearing for work? Where’s work? Home? 115 story skyscraper in the city? What do you do there? Map out your whole day. Don’t think what’s possible. Think big. Your BHAG is at the door waiting to be let in for dinner.

7. Is there a need?

Where is this world leaking that you feel like needs to be plugged? As Fredrick Buechner wrote:

“Vocation is where our greatest passion meets the world’s greatest need”

8. Am I willing to pursue greatness without ever being great?

Now picture your big dream, but it takes fifteen years longer to happen. Now instead of impacting the world, let’s say you change a neighborhood street. What if you never become great when pursuing your passion. Would it still be worth it?

Passion Evolves

There you have it — the eight questions to discover your passion. Remember though, this is not a one-time, catch-all answer. Your passion will change as you do. I was once passionate about wearing a different color pair of sweatpants for every day of school. We grow up and so does our passion.

We'd love to hear from you in the comments below: How would you answer one, two, or all of these questions about how to find your passion? 

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the author of 101 Secrets for your Twenties and the creator of AllGroanUp.com, a place for those asking "what now?" Snag free chapters from his book and follow him at @PaulAngone.

This post originally appeared at AllGroanUp.com.

101 Secrets for your Twenties – Now in Bookstores

Written by Paul Angone Every twentysomething needs a little black book of secrets.

Our twenties are filled with confusion, terrible jobs, anticipation, disappointment, cubicles, break-ups, transition, quarter-life crisis, loneliness, post-college what the heck, moderate success sandwiched in-between complete failure, and we need a worn, weathered guide stashed somewhere close by to help shed some light on this defining decade.

101 Secrets for your Twenties is that book and is now available for sale wherever books are sold!  

Well kind of. 

It released on Monday July 1st and within the first 24 hours sold out on Amazon!

Thank you to everyone who has taken to the Interwebs to share about the book's release to make it such a success.

You can still purchase it on Amazon as more books quickly arrive or snag a copy at Barnes and Noble.

As of right now the book is ranked in the top 300 of all books being sold on Barnes and Noble! I think with your help we can make it all the way into the top 101. What do you say? Please share about the book through social media and snag a copy for yourself.

And if you do buy a print copy anytime before July 10th, I want to say thank you in a tangible way. I will give you the 101 Secrets expanded ebook with bonus secrets, digital prints, stickers, and the chance to win $80 worth in gift cards and a Kindle Fire or iPad mini, thus totaling more than $639 of free stuff.

Sound like a fair trade? Keep on reading to see the full details.

LA, New York, Chicago, Oh My!

However, first I want to give you a quick inside look at how the launch week has been so far as I've gone from LA, New York, and Chicago for three separate amazing launch events. I have gotten a total of 10 hours of sleep in three days and I couldn't be better!

LA

The 101 Secrets pre-release party in LA on Saturday night was unbelievable. It was a surreal honor to have a gallery full of amazing people all there to celebrate this book.

My wife and I stayed up until 2 a.m. the night before putting the finishing touches on our 101 Secrets for your Twenties 16 by 10 foot, yarn, nail, paint 3D book cover, which served as an awesome photo-shoot backdrop. How do you like it?

There's no way this book happens without my wife's support so it was awesome to celebrate this together with our family.

 

Then we packed everything up, got out of the venue at 11 p.m., drove home, unpacked everything, went to bed at 3 a.m., woke up at 6 a.m., (have I mentioned my wife is insanely amazing) and drove to the magical land called Los Angeles Airport where the line for Southwest check-in went through the lobby, snaked outside, and ended somewhere around the Santa Monica pier.

New York City

Next up came the small rural town called New York City where I teamed up with website builder Wix.com, the NY Creative Interns, and the one and only Jenny Blake, to throw an epic launch extravaganza celebrating the launch of Jenny's new website JennyBlake.me and the release of 101 Secrets. The Wix Lounge was filled with hundreds of amazing people and I couldn't have dreamt a more perfect launch party for the day of the book's release.

A HUGE thank you to Wix.com and NY Creative Interns for their amazingness in helping make this event a smashing success. Thank you Jenny Blake for the honor of co-headlining an event with you. Then as well thank you to all the guests who braved the rains and snagged a copy of the book. I've never signed that many books at once in my life!

Then after the party, 101 Secrets for your Twenties even found itself even being prominently displayed in Times Square!

Chicago

The next day it was up at 5:00 a.m. to barely catch the train to Newark, to barely catch my flight to Chicago. Then I was back at it again, this time speaking at Enerspace Chicago to the 20Something Bloggers community about the book, and then tips on how they can turn their blog into a book deal. Another night, another amazing experience. Not too shabby of a view either.

Purchase 101 Secrets and Possibly Win Prizes Worth up to $639

Again here are the links to buy 101 Secrets for your Twenties on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. If you purchase a print copy of the book and email me your receipt at paul[at]allgroanup.com (Amazon receipt, picture of physical receipt) before July 10th, I’ll personally send you:

• The expanded 101 Secrets for your Twenties eBook with bonus secrets (releasing and sent later this month).
• Three digital secret stickers to print for your iPhone, etc.
• Two digital 8×10 secret prints
• Exclusive access to me for a 45 minute online webinar where I will talk about the secrets to rocking your 20s, writing, secrets to getting published, creating an online platform/brand and any other questions you have. (Time and Date: Sometime in August)

And then for every book purchased that you send me the receipt for, you’ll be entered to win one of four Twentysomething Survival Kits that consists of:

• Two extra copies of the book to give to friends so they know they’re not alone (Secret #32)
• $15 Starbucks gift card for members of any coffee quadrant (Secret #30)
• $50 gas card for the road trip you need to take to fix everything (Secret #28)
• $15 iTunes gift card for the purchase of non-sad songs only (Secret #65)

Then one lucky person of the people to send in a receipt will be chosen on July 11th to win the GRAND PRIZE: A twenty-something survival kit + Kindle Fire or iPad mini to help build the brand that is you (Secret #23)

Winners will be announced, by July 11th.

Share the Secrets

It’s been an eight-year dream to see this book happen. I can’t thank you enough for your help, support, and encouragement along the way. And if I ever have the pleasure of meeting you in person I’m thanking you with a great big hug.

Too much? Maybe a handshake then?

This book is part humor, part pearly-wisdom pearls, and part field manual, and I think it has the potential to offer heaps of encouragement, hope, and Laugh-Out-Louds that can’t be contained.

This book has the potential to impact millions of twentysomethings. Please help me in sharing its message on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram Pinterest, etc. 

Let's make 101 Secrets for your Twenties the worst kept secret in the world.

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the creator of All Groan Up, a community for twentysomethings searching for self, faith, and a freaking job. Snag a free copy of his ebook 21 Secrets for your 20’s and follow him at @PaulAngone.

101 Secrets for your Twenties Writing Contest

Written by Paul Angone There are two cold hard facts I learned in my twenties:

1. Your twenties can be really hard.

2. Finding success in your twenties (or thirties, forties, etc.) can be even harder!

Today I am excited to shine sweet rays of light on both these facts.

First, I get to help take the sting off twentysomething life with my upcoming book 101 Secrets for your Twenties releasing this July 1st. It’s the most honest, hilarious, and vulnerable book I could write about the ups-and-downs of a decade filled unknowns.

Second, I am giving everyone the opportunity to have their writing go straight to the desk of my publisher and included in a published book!

Let me explain.

101 Secrets for your Twenties

As anyone who has been following my story knows, this has been a seven-year writing journey for me to see my first book in print. I have been passionate about writing this message for twentysomethings for years, but had to go through a 2,555 day journey filled with “no”, “try us later,” and “we love your writing, but we can’t take on new authors without a platform.”

Cue the long walk on a pier, in the fog, to violin music. You know you're becoming a writer when you feel like your heart has been broken into pieces and sold on the black market. Time and time again.

Then less than a year ago I wrote a post on All Groan Up called 21 Secrets for Your 20s, which went viral thanks to my amazing tribe of passionate readers and has now been viewed by more people than live in Wyoming and Barbados combined.

All it takes is one spark to set all your hard work on fire.

During this seven-year journey I’ve learned some hard, valuable writing lessons:

If writing is solely about being published, you’ll stop writing.

Writing isn’t about external accolades; it’s about how it changes you in the process.

The possibility for greatness and embarrassment both exist in the same space. If you’re not willing to be embarrassed, you’re probably not willing to be great.

The publishing business is sometimes more about the number of followers you have than the message you’re trying to tell. But it's not about that today.

101 Secrets for your Twenties Writing Contest

I am very excited to announce the 101 Secrets for your Twenties Writing Contest where anyone has the opportunity to submit their #1 Top Secret for Rocking Life in your Twenties -- basically, if a struggling twentysomething was sitting across from you at a coffee table, what one piece of advice would you give them? Even if you’re a twentysomething yourself, what’s one thing that is really helping you through?

Your entry will go straight to my publisher Moody Collective (no agents, proposals, 10,000 Twitter followers required) for possible publication in the expanded 101 Secrets for your Twenties ebook, along with your article, bio and website featured on All Groan Up.

I already have a few surprise prominent bloggers and authors who will be appearing in the expanded ebook and now I want to give you the opportunity to be there right next to them.

Entry Requirements: Submit your #1 Top Secret for Rocking Life in your Twenties. It can be funny, engaging, sarcastic, serious or light-hearted. Anywhere between 50-500 words, with the structure being a 1-2 line “secret” at the top and the rest of the article expounding on that secret. If you want to receive a sneak peak from 101 Secrets for your Twenties you can snag one for free at the 101 Secrets for your Twenties book page.

Submission Deadline: Submit your top twentysomething secret directly to Moody Collective at moodycollective@gmail.com by June 24th, 2013 for consideration in this contest.

Winners Announced: Winners will be chosen by Moody Collective and then announced through All Groan Up on Monday July 15^th. Winning entries will be included in the 101 Secrets for your Twenties expanded ebook, as well as featured on All Groan Up. I will then be giving this expanded 101 Secrets for your Twenties ebook away for free to anyone who purchased the print copy of 101 Secrets for your Twenties during the first two weeks of July. As you help spread the word about 101 Secrets for your Twenties as we build up to the launch, then thousands upon thousands of people might be reading your name in the expanded ebook.

Submit Your Twentysomething Secret

Gain amazing exposure from a targeted twentysomething audience base, be featured next to other published authors and prominent bloggers in a published book, and have your writing reviewed by a publishing house who is solely focused on publishing books for the next generation of leaders, influencers, and creators.

You never know where this could lead.

I can’t wait to tell the world our secret!

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the creator of All Groan Up, a community for twentysomethings searching for self, faith, and a freaking job. Snag a free copy of his ebook 21 Secrets for your 20’s and follow him at @PaulAngone.

The Secret to Overnight Success

Written by Paul Angone I have the secret to becoming an overnight success that I am going to share with you.

Honestly, I probably should be selling you this formula for overnight success for $29.99 and a free set of steak knives (plus $69.99 shipping and handling), but just as long as you send 10% my way from your overnight financial bonanza, this success-secret is yours. (Just kidding about the 10% thing. 3-5% would be just fine).

Overnight success is like Jack and the Giant Bean Stock, one night you throw a couple magic beans in the ground and the next day you’re holding a goose that can’t help but poop golden nuggets. What could be better?

My golden goose came by the way of an article I wrote called 21 Secrets for your 20s, which became an overnight hit having now been read nearly a million times in 190 countries, and leading to a book deal for 101 Secrets for your Twenties that releases this July 1^st.

And I have the patented secret on how you can do the same.

You ready?

The Secret to Becoming an Overnight Success

Overnight Success Secret: Work with such a passionate, tenacious consistency at something that you cannot NOT do that you lose all interest, anxiety, and desire of becoming an overnight success.

“It takes 20 years to become an overnight success.” Eddie Cantor

The idea of overnight success is a seductive lie. Success doesn’t happen in a night, it happens in the thousands of nights that no one will ever write a song about.

There are overnight sensations, sure. Take a crazy fall off a ledge while crushing grapes or have someone auto-tune your interview, and millions of people might come across you. Overnight phenomenon’s are an everyday thing now in the Land of the Internet.

However, just as a lottery winner ends up bankrupt in less than a year, an overnight sensation goes up quick and then falls back down at the same speed because there was no platform supporting it. An overnight sensation is like a shooting star – a brief blaze that quickly burns out.

"I worked half my life to be an overnight success, and still it took me by surprise." - Jessica Savitch

The moment you’ll be ready for success is the exact moment you stop obsessing about why you’re not more successful. 

The moment you’ll get your first piece of fan mail is when you stop checking the mailbox hoping to find it.

Musicians, actors, artists, writers, comedians, and entrepreneurs that we claim as an “overnight success” might have experienced some sort of tipping point moment, but they’ve been tirelessly and quietly building the base to sustain that "overnight success" their entire lives. They’ve been honing their craft, building their network, and pushing themselves way beyond the label of “successful”.

A true overnight success is someone who has carried bucket after bucket of water to fill up a well. People celebrate you the moment it all spills over, without realizing the 10,000 buckets you carried to make it happen.

As I wrote in “Your Twenties Not Going as Planned? You’re in Famous Company,” actor Morgan Freeman became an overnight success after movies like Driving Miss Daisy and Glory, well except he was nearly fifty years old and had played in countless acting roles since he was nine-years-old.

Abraham Lincoln came out of nowhere to lead the nation, well except he spent his entire twenties being defeated for political positions with striking regularity as he continued to grow as a lawyer, thinker, writer, and speaker.

I started writing my first book on a motel room floor at 22 years old.

I’m now 29 years old and come July 1^st you’ll be able to read 101 Secrets for your Twenties – my first book.

It took me seven years to find overnight success.

Those seven years are strewn with hundreds of memories of running full speed, thinking I could see the finish line, thinking I’d finally made it, only to run head first into a brick wall, knocking me unconscious. Every time, it took me months and a few stiff drinks to stand back up.

I compiled 21 Secrets for your 20s on a Sunday afternoon. It took my entire twenties to learn how and what to write.

A true overnight success has simply mastered the art of staying in the game, no matter how lopsided the score. An overnight success has stayed present so that success can be a possibility, but a long time ago success stopped being the whole point.

An overnight success learned to do good work even when there was no one there to affirm it.

The greatest people who do the greatest things don’t care one lick about being called great.

Will you have the perseverance and passion to become an overnight success?

We'd love to hear from you in the comments below:

What is something that you cannot NOT do that you are striving to make an "overnight success"?

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the creator of All Groan Up, a community for twentysomethings searching for self, faith, and a freaking job. Snag a free copy of his ebook 21 Secrets for your 20’s and follow him at @PaulAngone.

Stop Trying to Balance Your Life

Written by Paul Angone Do you ever feel like you’re spinning sixteen different glass plates at once? The question not if they will fall, but when? And how many shards of glass will be left lodged in your legs once they do?

That’s how I’ve felt the last six months. My spinning glass plates? Being an Author. Blogger. Speaker. Full-Time Employee. Husband. New Father. Friend. Son. Brother. Neighbor…The list just keeps on going and going…

Where should my time be spent? What comes first? Second? Or not at all.

How the heck do you balance sixteen different elephants all jumping on the same side of a teeter-totter – without being crushed in the process?

Over-Commit Much?

It seems in this day and age if you’re not over-committing you’re not being a true red-blooded-American. Like those weirdos who don’t eat meat or watch Nascar. Freaks.

We talk so much about the need for “balance” because we have so much over-commitment. An epidemic of over-commitment. This desire, daresay sickness to exclaim, "yes of course" when your entire schedule (and soul) is screaming, "please God no!"

I myself am an over-committer. And I think it’s for two reasons:

Insecurity and Fear.

Insecurity – That no one will ever ask me to speak, write, or help again…

Fear – That no one will ever ask me to speak, write, or help again…

So I smile.

I say, “yes count me in!”

I regret my “yes” about 3.4 seconds after it exits from my mouth.

Then I spend the next few weeks passively aggressively trying to avoid the person I said yes too. (If you’re reading this and I haven’t emailed you back about that thing we talked about two weeks ago, I’m of course not referencing you here. However, I just went on vacation for about two months on an island without Internet connection (crazy, right?) so it would just be a waste of your time to try emailing me again).

Balancing Act

That’s exactly what trying to balance the un-balanceable is – an act. You’re putting on a show and when the reviews of your performance start coming in they are going to be more rotten than rousing. Because when we take on too much, everything suffers. Even the things we used to do with ease and enjoyment are pulled down by the dead-weight of over-commitments.

So instead of life-balance, we need to work on something else -- life-prioritization. What’s the difference between life-balance and life-prioritization, you ask?

Balance: Carrying too much on each arm then trying your best to walk across a tightrope without the net.

Prioritization: Strategic, specific, and planned -- only carrying what is necessary so that the chances of falling are greatly reduced. And the chances of reaching the end successfully – greatly increased.

Life-prioritization is focusing, honing, and becoming very specific in what we will say yes and no to.

Prioritization makes finding balance extremely simple because instead of juggling fifteen balls, you’re holding tightly to a few.

Prioritization is simply, simplifying -- it is saying yes only to tasks that align with your values, strengths, long-term plans, and passions.

How do we become intentional with life-prioritization? Maybe before committing to anything new ask yourself one question: Does this fit with my long-term vision of who I am and where I am going?

Of course, this means you have to actually have a vision. Preferably written down and thought-out. Where do you want to be in 20 years? Are the commitments in your life pushing you towards that vision or pulling you away? How do you commit or possibly even begin un-committing to things that are not aligned with where you want to go? Instead of trying to balance dead-weight, maybe it's time to just cut it loose.

Start Becoming Confident in Where You Are Competent

Instead of finding life-balance lets find life-prioritization. Lets start growing confidence where we are competent so that we stop letting fear and insecurity say yes for us.

If any of this seems overwhelming and you don’t know where to even begin, start by getting Jenny Blake’s help! Seriously. It's not too late to join her May Mastermind program with the deadline to enroll being Sunday, May 5. I’ve had the immense privilege of being coached by Jenny and it was invaluable in helping clarify my goals and take steps towards them.

Let’s start prioritizing. Because for every yes we are in turn saying no to something else.

We'd love to hear from you in the comments below:

What's one thing you can cut that doesn't fit with your long-term vision?

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the creator of All Groan Up, a community for emerging adults searching for self, faith, and a freaking job. Snag a free copy of his ebook 21 Secrets for your 20’s and follow him at @PaulAngone.

7 Strategic Ways to Un-Succeed

Written by Paul Angone Success is overrated. Those people living their dreams, making money, making a difference, creating, inventing, leading, yada-yada-blah-gag-me-with-a-stapler.

No, give me that 8-5 job surrounded by rainy-day-cubicle where I can master Cubicleness – the art of taking forty-five minutes of actual work and spreading it over eight hours.

Give me day after day where I have been on the Internet for so long I have literally run out of things to search for.

I don’t want to make sh*t happen. No, no, no. I want to be that co-worker who gave up caring about their work 15 years prior, but has become that large boulder in the office – unmovable and ready to crush you with one wrong look. That’s the sweet spot that I know I can thrive in.

But how do I get there? How do I make sure I live a life of Un-Success, where I scold “dreamers” who think they’re actually supposed to enjoy their work? Freaks.

 Orignal Photo by Michael LaNasa - Creative Commons

7 Strategic Ways to Un-Succeed

1. Don’t Care Just Enough

Yes you can care about things, people, doing okay work, making a moderate amount of money, but just don’t care too much. No, fully giving yourself to something, pushing through the heart-ache and struggle that comes with caring about something more than staying comfortable and complacent, is a way to live dangerously close to success.

2. Be a Critic and a Cynic

Cynicism is a great tool to make sure you don’t care just enough. If you can find and focus on the faults, cracks, and crap of life, then you’re bound to never really create anything really worth creating because you’ll be able to pick the idea apart before you can even start. Awesome! Bring on the next big idea, so that you can topple it like a 5-year old playing Jenga blindfolded.

3. Call your Dream a Hobby

While I don’t recommend really pursuing dreams at all if you want to live a life of Un-Success, if you just can’t help yourself, then make sure you call your dream “just a hobby”.

Calling your dream a hobby is key because this way you’re telling friends, family, and most importantly yourself, that you’re really not in this for keeps. No, you’re just dabbling like a teenager who’s going to take up guitar for three months before he moves onto Xbox.

A hobby is casually dating without any of the commitment and sacrifice that might come from a long-term-relationship with a dream.

4. Pursue your “Hobby” in Isolation

Yeah, on second thought it’s probably better if you really don’t tell anyone about this “hobby” at all. That way, when it gets to that sticky point where the steps forward become as difficult as walking through wet tar on a summer day, then you don’t have to explain to anyone a dang-thing when you stop walking altogether.

Letting people in on your hobby, especially wiser, successful people who have pursued a similar dream before, makes a life dedicated to Un-Success much more complicated. Because they’ll probably try to prod you to push past the sticky, and gosh, who the heck wants that?

5. Watch Elephant-Sized-Butt-Loads of Reality TV

This tip might seem elementary, but don’t underestimate the profound effect a good 2-3 hours of real, fake, TV can have in reaching your goal of Un-Success. Becoming obsessed with other people’s scripted lives is a great way to not have to live your own.

(Note to Self: Did I remember to tape True Confessions of US Sewer Workers tonight? God I hope so.)

6. Never Fail

If you’re failing, you’re trying way too hard. If you’re committed to Almost-Success than you should have numerous instances of Almost-Failure as well. You can’t have one without the other.

7. Don’t Help Others be Successful

Obviously, if you’re committed to Un-Success it’s kind of against the rules to help others fully succeed. No, when friends have the audacity to chase their dreams, you want to be that voice of reason that points out all the ways they will fail. You don’t want to help them push through obstacles, no you want to throw more in their way.

Because when you help others succeed there’s this strange effect where you’re paid back somehow.  Not because you asked for it, but because when you help others, they want to help you. And that’s a dangerous place to be when you are going for Un-Successful.

A Commitment to Un-Success

Yes, if you follow these seven simple strategies, you can live a life of Un-Success -- on April Fool’s day or any of the other 364 days of the year.

I would love to hear from you in the comments below: Do you relate to any of the unsuccessful tips? What strategies do you have to live a life of un-success? 

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About Paul

Paul Angone is the creator of All Groan Up, a community for emerging adults searching for self, faith, and a freaking job. Snag a free copy of his ebook 21 Secrets for your 20’s and follow him at @PaulAngone.