Limitless - Jim Kwik Page 0,44

in your parents’ basement, it’s hard to become a millionaire. Your goals should challenge and stretch you, but not so much that you give up on them.

T is for Time-based: The phrase, “A goal is a dream with a deadline” comes to mind. Setting a time to complete your goal makes you that much more likely to reach it.

The challenge for many people is that this process, while logical, is very heady. To get your goals out of your head and into your hands, make sure they fit with your emotions—with your HEART:

H is for Healthy: How can you make sure your goals support your greater well-being? Your goals should contribute to your mental, physical, and emotional health.

E is for Enduring: Your goals should inspire and sustain you during the difficult times when you want to quit.

A is for Alluring: You shouldn’t always have to push yourself to work on your goals. They should be so exciting, enticing, and engaging that you’re pulled toward them.

R is for Relevant: Don’t set a goal without knowing why you’re setting it. Ideally, your goals should relate to a challenge you’re having, your life’s purpose, or your core values.

T is for Truth: Don’t set a goal just because your neighbor is doing it or your parents expect it of you. Make sure your goal is something you want, something that remains true to you. If your goal isn’t true to you, you’re far more likely to procrastinate and sabotage yourself.

ON PURPOSE AND PASSION

Knowing your purpose in life helps you live with integrity. People who know their purpose in life know who they are, what they are, and why they are. And when you know yourself, it becomes easier to live a life that’s true to your core values.

Your life purpose consists of the central motivating aims of your life—the reasons you get up in the morning. Purpose can guide life decisions, influence behavior, shape goals, offer a sense of direction, and create meaning. For me, my life purpose is to create a world of better, brighter brains.

The English language is rife with words that get used interchangeably, as if they mean the same thing. Let’s take the words nice and kind, for example. These two words are often used in the same way, but their roots reveal a different story. The origin of nice comes from the Latin word nescius, which means “ignorant.” Kind, on the other hand, is of Germanic origin and is related to the word kin. The original sense of the word was “nature, the natural order,” and “innate character, form, or condition.” It morphed from the sense of “feeling of relatives with one another,” and became a word that meant “friendly, deliberately doing good to others.”1

Passion and purpose are in the same camp—they’re often confused with one another. Both concepts are discussed all over the Internet, in motivational books, in TED talks. It’s easy to feel as if you must be lacking if you don’t feel a burning passion or purpose in your life. In my experience, however, passion and purpose are not the same thing; instead, one leads to the other.

Finding your passion is not about choosing the right path or finding the perfect professional destiny. It’s about experimenting to see what ignites your joy. Passion comes when we rediscover our authentic, alive self, the one who has been muted and buried beneath a pile of other people’s expectations. There is not a single right path to be discovered or revealed. Instead, I believe that when we exchange a fixed mindset for a growth mindset, as we discussed in Chapter 6 in the section on myths, we learn that interests can be developed through experience, investment, and struggle.

Furthermore, different passions can be cultivated simultaneously. You don’t have to choose one over the other when you’re exploring. Finding your passion is like finding true love, in that you have to go out on many dates to get to the perfect match. Once you find that special person, it doesn’t just magically “work,” because it takes effort to build a relationship. Finding your passion is no different—it takes experimentation to see what clicks for you, and it takes effort.

To sum it up, passion is what lights you up inside. My passion to learn was born out of such a struggle that it became a major part of my life’s identity.

KWIK START

What are your current passions? List three.

Purpose, however, is about how you relate to other people. Purpose is what you’re here