What Gets You Out of Bed in the Morning? Find Your Passion! 

“The time is right to make a change.” You’ve probably noticed that the willingness to do this is precisely what sets diamonds apart: they take every opportunity to sharpen their skills and make improvements to their lives. Are you ready to leave Energy-Vampire-Town, and if so, how best can you and your mirror neurons make it happen? To answer this question, look again at the superstars in your life and consider what they can teach you about living your passion. Are you already doing this? To find out, take a critical look at your current situation.

Write a spontaneous list of one to five words or phrases to describe your daily working life.

Finished? Okay. If you’ve written things like “Planet of the Apes” / “money generator” / “mental asylum” / “pit of wolves” or “just okay,” then work is the first area in which you need to make a change. According to Germany’s WSI Collective Agreement Archive for wage tariffs, we spend an average of 1,650 hours at work every year. This adds up to 16,500 hours over ten years and 49,500 hours over thirty years (2017 figures)! According to the World Economic Forum, Americans work 1,780 hours per year on average.1

Do you really want to sacrifice decades of your life to “just okay”? Would it not be much more gratifying to say that you are able to give something back in your job and have fun? Can you imagine the long-term effect it has if the only pleasure you derive from your working life is to spin on the office chair? Exactly—you’ll end up completely dissatisfied. Once this sets in, you’ll start telling your energy-vampire colleagues that the world is a terrible place. At some point, your only pleasure will be to switch on the TV in the evening and dull your pain with alcohol. That can’t be all there is, can it?

With this in mind, my first piece of urgent advice is to think about what you really enjoy. Is there a path you would have taken in a parallel universe? Is there a dream you’ve always secretly had, but never trusted yourself to say out loud? It’s time! Talk about it—just not with an energy vampire! All they’ll do is Google statistics and horror scenarios to scare you away. You see, energy vampires don’t want you to change. Energy vampires want everything to stay the same. They want to keep their audience. This brings me to my second piece of advice, which is to delete all the energy vampires from your list of contacts. It might seem brutal, but this is a vital act of self-preservation for you and your mirror neurons. As the German saying goes, “Those who follow the herd just end up staring at others’ butts.” Instead of doing this, surround yourself with people who’ll work with you to realize your vision and perhaps even make it better.