DISCOVER WHAT YOU'RE PASSIONATE ABOUT
A common theme in most writing on goal setting is the need to follow your passions. Do the things that make you want to get up early in the morning. There’s only one thing missing:
What if you don’t have any passions?
I’m sure everyone on this planet has interests. But that’s not the same thing. Enjoying playing video games isn’t the same as spending thousands of hours designing your own. Your passion has to be something you would work exceptionally hard for.
So what do you do, if there is nothing you feel that engaged about?
The Way to Start Isn’t With a Survey...
A lot of career guidance involves measuring your current skills and personality, and then deciding what you would be most suited for. I don’t like this approach because people are complex. And any test will ultimately be a gross simplification of what’s important to you and what you like to do.
I once heard a story about a wealthy woman who was looking for a husband. She invested over $20,000 on a series of psychological surveys to match her with potential candidates. She met individually with the dozen candidates that were her best match. After all that money and effort, she decided she didn’t like any of them.
Six months later, she was engaged to someone she had met randomly at a bar. Moral: people don’t know what they want until they see it (and surveys aren’t much better).
The truth is, I don’t think any questionnaire can tell you what you’re going to be really engaged about. I’d rather experiment with dozens of wildly different activities, than limit my scope, just because a test said I wouldn’t like it.
The better approach to finding your passions is actually fairly simple:
- Try a lot of different things
- See what you enjoy and love
The biggest obstacle to overcome is a narrow vision of what you can do. If I wasn’t passionately interested in anything, I’d try to cast a wide net to look at dozens of different activities. Staying safe and familiar is the reason I’m bored, so now is the time to experiment.
Dabbling is key to the art of finding what drives you. Dabbling means committing to something for 3-6 months. This amount of time isn’t enough to become really good at anything. But it is enough time to get over the sharp learning curve in the beginning.
I didn’t enjoy programming for the first few months I worked on it. I didn’t know enough, and it was too frustrating to continue. But once I got over the frustration barrier, I found that programming is an activity I really enjoy.
If you don’t have any project that makes you want to wake up early and sacrifice leisure for, you should start dabbling. Find new activities completely outside your comfort zone you can do for a few hours a week, and commit for at least two months.
Sometimes You Need a Spark…
Sometimes the problem with a passion isn’t the activity, but the goal. I enjoyed working on small self-made projects. But it wasn’t until I saw that people actually made self-run businesses out of those efforts that I became really engaged. Until that point, my goal was just to dabble in something fun. After that point, I realized there was room for a challenging goal I hadn’t considered before.
Equally important to dabbling in activities is to dabble in experiences. Meet people from weird and unique backgrounds. Read books that don’t normally appear on your shelf. Randomness increases the chance that one of your interests will be sparked into something more.
Always Look for More
Dabbling is a continuous process. Committing yourself to one goal is good. But that should still leave time for brief experiments. If you’re always dabbling, you have a large base of passions you can do interesting work from. Don’t tolerate boredom.
Finding Your Life Purpose
You have a purpose in life. You have a unique gift or special talent. By using this to gift to benefit others you raise your spirit to it’s highest. This is the ultimate… the dream of all dreams and the point where you can all live a life with abundant happiness.
The question is how?
This will set you on that path and tell you what to do next.
Forget how much money you have. Forget how big your home is or how big you’d like it to be. Forget where you want to go on holiday. Forget your religious background and forget your education. I say this because focus on these things can stop you from seeing who you really are and therefore stop you from doing what you want to do in life.
The reasons why you’ve forgotten who you are and what you want to do are that they have been extracted from you or squashed by following beliefs and values of those around you. You’ve been stopped from exploring you.
We get caught up on ‘being good’ conforming to the norm, directed by peers and elders and adopting the beliefs of groups and our society as a whole. Your education may have thwarted your talent about as much as a religious upbringing may have choked your self-expression.
Parents and friends may also have suggested strongly or even told you what you needed to do when it came to your career. You have ended up working for the local government because it was safe and secure or for a bank, insurance firm, followed a legal or accounting path because you believed it had good career prospects and good chance to make money. You may have made good money, built a successful career, but also noticed that you have a desire to do something else. Here is how you can use that desire to your benefit.
Understand you came to this earth with the purpose to discover your true identity and that the experiences you have had so far have been pre-sent to help you discover that. Remember times when you’ve been told you can’t do something because of education, religious or parenting boundaries. Remember the things you did that made your heart sing. Remember that these things hold the key to your self-discovery and your true desire and purpose. Maybe you know immediately what your gift is, maybe you don’t have a clue… which ever, read on.
Whether you’re immediately aware of your true talent or not, I know you get the sense that you are here for a purpose. And I know you will also understand that when you use that gift for the greater good you will feel happier, more fulfilled and more greatly rewarded than ever before. Living your life purpose you’ll want to get up earlier, stay up later and you’ll lose all track of time. You will literally move into timeless awareness , so absorbed and excited by what you create. And one more thing.
The rewards you get can be limitless.
Discover Your True Passion
One key component to the ability to find success is to find your passion and pursue it. But what does that mean to find your goals/passion, and how do you go about finding it? Another way to say it is, "What do you love most in life?" What brings you the most fulfillment? What would you do if you had all the money in the world, you were done splurging and traveling abroad and you could just spend your time doing what you want to do? Most of us already know the answer to that. But for some of us, there is a mental block that keeps us from truly realizing it. That mental block can come from a number of different sources. Regardless of the source, the result is that you are not able to fully recognize what your goals/passion truly is.
There are a number of reasons you may have trouble realizing what your true passion is. One is pressure from family members or others you respect and admire to pursue an expected vocation or profession. Usually, the vocation or profession is high paying, has a high social status or is a long-standing tradition in the family. They may have the best of intentions, even playing match-maker with you and a career that seems to be a good fit... to them. In this case, your inability to realize your true passion can stem from not wanting to disappoint people you admire or care about. Your desire to make them proud may stifle any desire you may have to do something else.
Another reason your passion may be difficult to recognize is that you may feel trapped in whatever situation you currently are in. To you, the doors for other opportunities are closed. You may even feel trapped by your own lack of confidence in your ability to make your dream a reality. "If there is no expectation, there is no disappointment," you rationalize. Or, you may not see a way to make it happen financially. This is especially true if you would need to pay for education or training. You may also think that you are too busy, too young, too old, or that it is too late. You do not allow yourself to entertain the possibility of attaining your dream because you do not want to desire something you think you cannot have.
Our amazing minds have the ability to unlock these mental blocks. You can put your mind into the state where the seemingly impossible suddenly seems possible. If the barriers are gone, you will finally see past them and understand what your true passion is. The simple way to do this is to change your "I can't..." to "What if I could?" Just imagine yourself in a situation where your barrier is now gone. You do have enough money. Your family is supportive of your decision. You receive a scholarship for the training program you need. You have all the time in the world. You are old enough or young enough. You were unable to see your passion because your mind wanted to protect you from the pain of disappointment. Imagining yourself in a situation where you would not be disappointed can help you see it more clearly. Because the reality is that it is never too late. There are no missed opportunities; there is just someone else who takes them. Doing what you love to do is the key to finding success in all areas of your life. Take the time now to find your goals/passion.
Must Read
Personal Development: Get a life! Passion and Goals
4 Effective Ways to Develop Persistence and Achieve Your Goals
How To Take Control of Your Life In 7 Easy Steps
0 Comments