Today, we talk about finding your Passion!
First and foremost, have you ever felt like you are not where you are meant to be?
Repeat after me: I am exactly where I am meant to be! I am not early, I am not late.
Your life is your life. It does not matter if your friend already has a job, a child, etc. your life is your life and you live it at your pace.
To live a meaningful life, you need to understand YOUR passion, YOUR purpose and how to monetize it. Without that, you will always feel behind. You will always compare yourself to others.
Without knowing your passion, you will always feel like you are coming in last
Without knowing your purpose, you will always feel like there are a million people who are succeeding around you and you are failing
And without knowing how to monetize it, you will always feel unfulfilled and that you didn’t reach your potential
You hear me saying “Passion”, “Purpose”, what are these terms?
Imagine that:
Interest = Baby
It grows into a passion = Teenager
It further grows into a purpose = Adult
You need to nurture your interests to make sure you find your passion and your purpose.
You may be familiar with the Japanese term Ikigai.
That’s the Ikigai. When you hear me say “Purpose”, I am referring to the Ikigai. Another word I might use sometimes is the Dharma, a Sanskrit word used by Jay Shetty whose meaning is similar to Ikigai or Purpose.
In this Article we will mainly focus on finding your Passion.
Why is it important to find your passion?
According to a Deloitte survey, only 13% of people feel very passionate about their jobs. 33% feel they have reached a dead end.
71% of people who live with their passions, instead, report working extra hours! Psychologist Kelly McGonigal presented “How to make stress your friend” on a TED talk and she explained that we can take on more stress when we do something that is meaningful to us.
When you feel the pain of where you are, you then recognize the potential of where you can go. The worst thing that can happen to people, in my opinion, is that they get comfortable in their unconscious discomfort!
You need to live a life with passion. As a parent, as an employee, as a friend, etc.!
What is a passion? When I say Passion, I do NOT mean what you like doing or what you enjoy doing! It is NOT something you do in your spare time!
Passion is where your skills and your interests intersect. Passion = Skill + Interest
If you have an interest but not a skill, such as basketball for instance, this is called HOBBY! You cannot monetize it because you are not good at it. Never blindly follow your interests because there are 1000 people who are better than you with extreme ease.
If you are skilled at something, but you are not interested in it, unfortunately or many people that is called JOB. It’s not interesting, it’s boring.
After coaching more than 100 people I can tell you that most of us have either a hobby or a job. And hobbies do not entertain/monetize in the long run and jobs start to be painful after a while. Why do people struggle with finding their passions?
1. The world has constantly brought us away from our strengths.
How many times have you been told “Focus on your weaknesses”? For instance: You have got 3 As and a D. You should work on that D! Let’s get that up to an A. My parents are professors and they taught me I should perform well in everything. Unfortunately, this way of thinking brings you away from your strengths.
2. People say “Follow your passion” as if you were born with a passion. And then you spend ages and feel overwhelmed because you can’t find this passion! Truth is, you are not born with a passion! You are born with an inclination for certain things and you grow some skills, and then voilà! Passion is cultivated. It comes from mastering something you love doing.
You do not need a passion to start. Everything starts with an interest! A passion starts with CURIOSITY and SELF AWARENESS! You need to be curious about your own mind, the way you live!
You need to start at interest (what I like doing) and skills (what I am good at doing), and you need to be curious. This is how you find your passion!
Keep asking yourself these questions:
What success is to me?
Why do I get up in the morning? Money? Healthy family? Happy marriage? Help other, to be famous, being spiritually sound, leave the world a better place?
Important: you might have a number of skills and interests and multiple passions. That is possible.
There are so many entrepreneurs who fail and they think it is because of their marketing, their sales people, etc.! Marketing and Sales are very important but the first reason is that they have not find the perfect combination of interest and skills and they give up after a while because they do not love what they do or someone is better than them. Success starts with self-awareness! If you are not self-aware of what you are passionate about, what’s meaningful, what’s fulfilling, it’s very hard to start the journey!
Let’s find your Passion
Take a piece of paper and draw two columns: Interests and skills.
3 SKILLS: Things you are good at, things you have an aptitude for. If you feel you do not have any skill, you need to work on your self-confidence. If you keep saying that you have no skills, that becomes your reality. Ask your best friend "Hey, what do you think I am good at?".
3 INTERESTS: Thinks you like doing, things you would do for free because you love it.
Now, Steve Jobs said that creativity is just connecting things. Start seeing how skills and interests might intercept.
Example: Skill: Problem finding: Asking great questions, make people talk and identify a Problem + Interest: Working in a quota-based role, in competitive environment? --> Sales
Example: Skill: Problem Solver: strong analytical mindset & Ability to break down any problem into “buckets” (e.g. Profit = Revenue - Costs) + Interest: Frequent travelling and being close to your clients? --> Consulting
Example: Skill: Low Dominance and Ability to de-escalate conflicts + Interest: Working on a queue of problems and being fundamental to the support of other departments -> Customer Service
Here is how you find your Passion. Once you have identified your Passion, you need to take some time and figure out how to monetize it and how to use it for a better world. In my opinion this is not too difficult because if you are good at something and you love doing it, it’s pretty easy to be paid for it. Moreover, since you love it, you can do it even for free to help people who cannot afford to pay you. For instance, I coach two people per month for free!
If you don’t know how to monetize your Passion in the Corporate World and as an Entrepreneur, don’t worry because we will have other two episodes on the topic, so make sure to follow the Podcast to receive the updates!
Jay Shetty says that you can always be testing three ideas at the same time. Jay was working in a corporate career, doing public speaking and making videos. He was doing three things that were linked to his interests. Since an interest of his was social media and the skill was teaching people, he started educating people via social media.
You cannot narrow this down at the beginning. You have to open lots of doors and see which one stays open.
Now, go and become the best at that skill you need! Public speaking? Negotiation? Whatever! If you had 100 hours to invest in yourself, would you invest them in something you are good at, average at, or bad at? The most successful people in the world split 100 0 0 or 80 10 10. There was a study about this. You invest where you are already naturally good at. When you do that, you go from good to great.
That’s what I have got for today’s Article; if you found value please share it with someone you know and love! The only way we grow and impact more people is if you guys share it so I greatly greatly appreciate all of you who will do it.
Make your life a masterpiece, see you next week, I appreciate you and I hope you have an amazing day.