Over the weekend I watched a four-part documentary on Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine called “The Defiant Ones”. The documentary was about how both these icons in the music industry began their careers producing music and how both became huge successes.

Usually, when we look at people like Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine we only see the success and we believe they are unique, special or in some way blessed. What we rarely see is the amount of work, practice and sacrifice people like these guys make and do. Both Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre spent almost the whole of their twenties inside a recording studio. While most twenty-somethings spend their time going out with their friends and having a good time, these guys were learning their skill and practising their art. They loved and breathed music and learning. Not academic learning, they were doing and living their learning. They were experimenting, crafting, making mistakes and building the kind of knowledge no university or school could ever teach.

Another vital ingredient in this mix was their love and passion for music. They not only lived and breathed learning production skills, they lived and breathed music. Always pushing to get a better sound, a better beat or a better vocal. It was always about the passion, the love for the music and how to make it better.

And that is what success is all about. It’s about pushing your boundaries, pushing beyond your own limitations and beliefs. Trying new things that will probably fail, but you just want to try to see if it will work. It also means incredibly long hours of practice and loving every minute of it.

The kind of success people like Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre have achieved is rare. The vast majority of people, although capable, are not prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve huge success. Most people never give up their weekends to practice their skills or give up their twenties to live their passion for music, food, art or whatever their passions are. Most people buy into the belief that a good life is a work-life balance with two holidays a year, an average sized house in an average street, driving an average car to an average nine to five job they are going to hate going to. That is not success. That is average. And it is not a very good average if you look at it, that kind of life means hating five days out of seven. That’s 71% of your week you hate. That is not a successful life.

I know finding what you love doing is hard, but when you look at the alternative, an alternative that for some reason society tells us is the right way to go, then I think it is something worth spending the time to find out. To seek out what you love doing requires you try new things, to revisit your childhood, what things really got you excited when you were eight, ten or twelve years old? What topics do you find yourself reading when you surf the internet? What subjects do you read about when you read a magazine or newspaper? What are your favourite blogs? All these will point you in the right direction.

What skills would you love to learn? YouTube and other resources are freely available where you can start to learn new skills. Would you like to learn how to do video editing? Photography? Cooking? Computer programming? All these skills can be learned free of charge and from the comfort of your own home and if you find you do not enjoy learning these subjects, there are hundreds of others you can try. All you have to do is start looking, searching and learning.

Searching for what you really love doing is worth investigating. Because when you find what you really enjoy doing, your whole life will change. You become passionate, more energised. Each day is another opportunity to learn, develop and become better at whatever it is you want to learn and when that happens, you find you wake up with excitement for the day. No more waking up to the dread of going to the office, or living just for the weekend. You have a purpose, you have a goal and you love every minute of it. Now that is a life worth living. Giving up your favourite drama, or going down to the local pub every Friday and Saturday will not feel like a sacrifice, because what you are now doing and learning is giving you energy and a burning passion.

We are natural learning machines. We are like sponges soaking up information every minute of the waking day and when we sleep we are processing that information. This is why it is so easy for us to get lost in our Facebook or Twitter feeds because they are serving us information. Information about our friends, our favourite celebrities and brands. All we need to do is focus that desire for information towards things that can improve our lives. Focus your desire to learn things that can improve your life, that can stimulate your passion and give you the energy to learn more. That is how you build a life of success and it is a lot easier than you think.

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My purpose is to encourage you to live the life you desire. To help you find happiness and become better organised and more productive so you can do more of the important things in life. If you want to learn more about how I can help you, have a look at the various online courses I have. There might be something there that could change your life!

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