Here’s a quick recap of what we’ve covered so far:

1) Don’t do things you don’t like doing.

2) When you do something, do it all the way

and now..

3) Be more than what you do.

Considering #2, it might seem odd for me to suggest you should be more than what you do. After all, isn’t “doing it all the way” all about living and breathing your work and activities? Yes. Absolutely yes.

In fact, so much so that I don’t think you’ll ever achieve #3 unless you first master #2.

Somewhat of a paradox. When you’re really in something you discover things about your true self, and you gain abilities and insights that help you awaken to a fuller version of you. The feeling of being “in flow” is an experience of the self outside of particular activities that might have activated that state. It’s that broader self you want to always stay in touch with. It has huge benefits if you do.

One of the benefits is that it makes you better at what you do. When you can both live and breath your work and yet not take it personally or feel despair over failures, you are unstoppable. You want the win more than anything, but when it doesn’t come, you’re fine, because you’re more than that win. That’s a tough mindset to earn, but it can be done.

When an angry customer, co-worker, or boss, or just a mistake you made by yourself can ruin a day, remember, this is just something you’re doing now. This isn’t you. If it fails, you don’t fail.

A good test to see how well you’re maintaining an all-in mentality and an “I’m more than this” mentality at the same time is the shock test. If you quit what you’re doing now and did something totally different, would your friends and family and coworkers be shocked? They should be. If they say, “What? You’re doing something else now? But you lived and breathed that job/business/vision/project?!?” That’s a sign that you were in it and living it and extracting all the value out of it so much that others saw you as inseparable from it. But all along you were and are so, so much more.

Be more. Be a lot more than what you’re currently working on. But never in a way that takes you out of the moment so that you’re not engaged. If people heard you were changing direction and said, “Yeah, she was never really into it, so I’m not surprised”, you’ve been missing an opportunity to fully engage. (Unless of course the thing you’re quitting is something you don’t like at all, in which case you’re working on #1…but the better you get at #1, the less this will be the case, if ever.)

At some point, everything you move on from should seem like a shock because you loved it so much!

Read You Are Not Your Job

Listen to Jeff Goins on The Art of Work

Listen to The Necessity Of Unnecessary Creating

• Read 5 Things Every Employee Should Ask Their CEO. Find someone who owns a business, take them out for coffee, and ask them the five questions from this article. Be sure to send them this article ahead of time so they can think about their answers.

1. What does it mean to be creative?
2. Why is creativity important?
3. Do you consider yourself to be a creative person? Why or why not?
4. Who’s an example of someone you know that’s creative? What makes them creative?
5. What does the author of “How To Be Creative” mean when he says “Ignore Everybody?” Is it ever good to ignore people? If not, why not? If so, why? Is it ever dangerous to ignore people? If so, why? If not, why not?
6. What can hard work teach you about being creative? In what ways can hard work help with self-discovery?
7. Can anyone be creative? Why or why not?
8. Who is the “watercooler gang” and why should you ignore them?
9. Does a person need to feel inspired in order to be creative? Why or why not?