Byrne Rhonda - Hero (The Secret)

JOHN PAUL DEJORIA

I love what I do, or I wouldn’t be doing it.

G. M. RAO

Money and security are very important to everyone. Personal satisfaction and passion for a particular thing you do is more important. That is why it is important to dream.

If you have a full-time job, you probably spend around 250 days of the year at work. Two hundred and fifty days is over two-thirds of the year, so if you’re not doing what sets your heart on fire and fills you with passion and excitement, you are wasting a lot of precious days of your life.

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle.”

Steve Jobs

Cofounder of Apple Inc.

If you’re at home raising children, make sure this precious time of your life includes something that you love, and do it as often as you can. When I was at home raising my children I needed a creative outlet, and so I threw myself into cooking. I took cooking courses, bought books, and practiced and cooked until I had perfected every cooking method I could find. Cooking became my bliss. When I returned to my job in television, the first television show I developed was a cooking show, and because of what I had learned, the show became very successful. With its success, my career in television production flourished.

JOHN PAUL DEJORIA

When you are passionate and you like what you’re doing, when it is what you want to do, not what you have to do, you always do it better because you’re doing it with love.

For some reason many of us have separated our bliss from our work, and we don’t love what we do every day. But life doesn’t have to be like that. The fact that there are people who are blissful and living their dream for their work tells you that it’s possible for you, too. You don’t need to know what your dream job is, because your bliss is connected to it, so all you have to do is follow your bliss and it will lead you to it!

G. M. RAO

I don’t work because I have to work. I work because I enjoy the work. To me work is worship, because it is with a sense of purpose and gives happiness and contentment not just to me but to those around me.

LIZ MURRAY

I don’t think I’ve ever said: “I’m going to work.”

What kind of job can you imagine yourself doing where you wouldn’t ever say, “I’m going to work”? Your work should embrace your passion or special talent, and be something you would do whether you were paid or not.

LIZ MURRAY

I have to have fun in what I do. If I don’t have some kind of fun, if it doesn’t blow my hair back, if it doesn’t feel like magic, I just can’t stick with that. I must pursue things that make me feel like it’s Christmas morning when I was a kid and I couldn’t wait to get out of bed. If I start dreading something or wanting it to end, it’s a symptom that something needs to change.

MICHAEL ACTON SMITH

At Mind Candy we love working with people who don’t take themselves too seriously, who can have fun as they work. None of this is life or death, even though some people would like to think of it like that. I think you enjoy life and you have a lighter spirit when you have fun at work.

“I didn’t set out to be rich. The fun and the challenge in life were what I wanted – and still do… but I have found that, if I have fun, the money will come.”

Sir Richard Branson

Entrepreneur/Business Magnate Be True to Yourself

When your work is your bliss, you will be happy. Doing a job you think you should do instead of doing what you love is leading a false life. So many precious people are living a life that has been put upon them by well-meaning parents, teachers, or society, or even by a friend or partner, and they’re miserable. We’re seeing the evidence of the misery in people through the alarming increase of mental health problems in the world. Shut out what everyone else thinks, have the courage to follow your own bliss, and you will be immensely happy.

JOHN PAUL DEJORIA

There’s a lot of things one wants to do that maybe isn’t commonplace or that everyone else agrees with, but if it makes you happy, by gosh, go after it. It’s so rewarding, being true to yourself.

MICHAEL ACTON SMITH

I left university and got a sensible job in a bank, and I realized quite quickly that it just wasn’t for me. It didn’t speak to my soul. And I realized I was pretty much unemployable.

G. M. RAO

When we pursue a dream, there will be several pulls from different directions, from stakeholders, family, friends, and society. In my case, there were many such situations. For example, when my brothers with whom I was in partnership for our family business had different aspirations, I exited the partnership to pursue my own dreams.

G. M. Rao had the courage to follow his own dreams, and look what he’s done with his life. He has built airports, highways, and hospitals, and developed cities in India. He has improved his country and the lives of hundreds of millions of people because he made a decision to follow his own bliss.

It often takes courage to do the thing you love and go against the majority. Resist the temptation to try and please anyone, and be true to yourself. It’s not your job to please anybody else, anyway; it’s their job to please themselves and find their own happiness. This is your life, and you must follow your own heart. There is something special about you, a talent or skill that is unique to you, and you have a responsibility to your life to bring it out.

“Take a job that you love. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn’t that a little like saving up sex for your old age?”

Warren Buffett

Business Magnate and Investor

ANASTASIA SOARE

Look into your life. If you are happy where you are, good for you. If you are not happy, you should start analyzing. “Okay, what makes me happy? I’m in a job and I’m unhappy.” Well, change the job.

If you’ve decided that you’re going to make a change but you don’t know how, the first and biggest step you can take is to start to follow your bliss.

ANASTASIA SOARE

You are an accountant, and you are totally unhappy. Well, maybe you like to cook. Go and become a chef. Don’t drop your job immediately, because you need to pay your bills, but try to set the plan. “Okay, I’m going to do this part time.” You have to plan. Every penny that I made I wanted to make sure I would use to follow my dream. If you do not have that support from money, the stress that comes from not being able to pay your bills will shatter your dream.

Anastasia had a family to support, and so she spent two years planning her business before she took the leap. Now she has a global company and she’s living the life of her dreams. If Anastasia hadn’t worked on a plan and followed her bliss, she would still be working fourteen-hour days in someone else’s salon.

There are so many things you can start doing now to follow your bliss. Take a free course on what you would love to do. Get books and magazines and read up on the people who are doing what you want to do. Find out what kind of job you could get to put you into that field. Use the Internet, social media, write blogs, and do research. You have the world at your fingertips and more opportunities than ever to connect and explore. Put as much attention as you can into what you would love to do.

LAIRD HAMILTON