It can be so frustrating when people advise you, “Just
follow your passion!” Yeah, sure, you’d love to—if only you knew what your
passion was.
You’re probably the kind of person who works hard, with
commitment and persistence. When you know what you’re doing, nothing will stop
you. But before you can become unstoppable, you need to know what you’re
starting. Before you can follow your passion, you have to find it.
If you’re feeling stuck, here are five fresh ways to
discover what you really want to do with your life. Take time to work through
the process and know that, no matter what, you’ll be getting closer to where
you want to be.
1. Start With the Right Perspective
If you went into a restaurant with the strong opinion—“I’m
not hungry. There’ll be nothing here I want to eat. I don’t want to be
here”—the menu isn’t going to look appealing. You won’t explore it with due
time or attention, and it’s unlikely you’ll find food you’ll enjoy eating.
The same principle applies to passion-seeking. If you’re
convinced that finding your passion is hard, or that it’s not going to happen
for you, you’ll remain closed to possibilities. You’ll block the little nudges,
pulls, and signals that guide us all. After all, how can you expect to find
fulfilling work if you don’t believe it exists?
Choose to adopt the perspective that you can do what you
love with your life. One of the best ways to strengthen this point of view is
to surround yourself with people who are living examples. How many of your
friends and family are following their passions? If it’s not many, it might be
time to expand your circle; associate with—and be inspired by—men and women who
are inspired by their work.
2. Get Out Your Metal Detector
Once you’ve decided that your passion is findable, it’s time
to look for evidence of what you already love to do. If you scan the landscape
of your life, you’ll notice certain experiences peak up. It’s so valuable to
delve into these “peak moments” and extract the key ingredients.
Consider yourself a beach-trawler, discerning between the
gold and the cheap metal. For example, one of my favorite summer jobs involved
teaching English to teenagers. I might assume the key ingredient was the
English language, or young people. But when I paid attention to my metaphorical
metal detector, it become clear that the bleep went off when I was being a
leader within a community, and teaching that community something of great value
to them. That’s exactly what I do now in my work—but without the teenagers,
present perfect tense, or vocabulary tests!
Make a list of the ingredients that truly mattered in your
peak moments; don’t be distracted by the counterfeits.
3. Look for the Umbrella
When you look at all the ingredients that matter to you,
they might at first seem entirely disconnected. Let’s say you love French,
drinking coffee, playing with words, analyzing and categorizing, and being a
leader within a community. How could you construct a career from these? It'd be
like peering into your cupboard and seeing cocoa powder, tofu, and carrots and
wondering: How could I possibly make something delicious that includes all of
these?
This is the time to look beyond the ingredients and seek an
umbrella; something that all of these ingredients can fit beneath. For example,
my colleague Abby—whose diverse passions are described above—helps business
owners to find the right words to fit their brand. She analyzes and categorizes
copy into what she calls “voice values.” She draws wisdom from previously
running a funky French lifestyle boutique, and French words pepper her own
copy, giving her brand that special je ne sais quoi. She’s become known as a
leader for those who want to communicate effectively with their potential
clients. Oh—and she’s built a recognizable Pinterest profile showcasing her
favorite coffee houses. All of these passions fit under the overarching
umbrella of her business; they’ve all found a home there, and the variety
actually helps her to stand out and attract her perfect clients.
What might be your umbrella?
4. Discern Between a Hobby and a Profitable Passion
It might be that, through this exploration, you fall head
over heels in love with an activity that engrosses you—something that lights
you up and makes your heart sing. But now you have to ask yourself the next
question: Who would benefit from (and pay for) this?
Well, if you want to contribute your passion to society and
make an income from it, you need to get realistic about whether this could
actually turn into a career—and what you would need to do to make that happen.
Moreover, think about if you would even enjoy doing those things; for some
people a passion is just fun, and turning it into work changes it from a “love
to do” to a “have to do.”
For example, my client Lisa loves to draw. She makes art for
the sheer joy of it. When she attempted to turn this passion into a profitable
business, she realized that the market who were hungry for her talents were
business owners who needed illustrations for their blogs, websites, and
products. This felt like play to Lisa, but in order to make her services
marketable, she also needed to add tech skills to her toolkit, so that her
design work could be useable online by her ideal clients.
Be alert to who might need your newly emerging passion, and
aim to have conversations with them to get you clearer on how, where, and when
you can serve them.
When you seek your passion, there’ll be parts of you that go
into rebellion. I’d guess that this article itself might be provoking some of
those resistant parts! We all have a huge number of fears—around failure,
success, visibility, and vulnerability—that speak in sensible voices,
instructing us that we mustn’t do what we love.
If you let these voices win, your passion will remain out of
your grasp. Instead, look for the fear beneath each supposedly reasonable
voice. Uncover the years of conditioning—from parents, school, partners, and
colleagues—and reassure the mutinying parts that your ship is sailing in the
right direction.
6. Find the Limits of Your Bravery
On my own journey, I’ve mostly lived by the motto: “Leap and
the net will appear.” I’ve noticed I couldn’t find the new until I’d said
farewell to the old. With each step into the unknown—for example, handing in
notice on my part-time salaried job to go fully self-employed—my announcement
to the universe has been: I’m available. I’m serious about this.
I’ve been called brave, but I don’t see it that way; I’ve
simply been more committed to my happiness and freedom than to staying cozy
with the status quo. Find your own version of brave. Discover what risks work
for you. The path of passion is where you do things that scare you enough,
without leaving you in a constant state of fear. Expand your comfort zone,
rather than leaving it.
The world needs your passion, so decide right now that it’s
possible to find it, and use this guidance to gain clarity. When you find your
passion, be assured: It will always guide you right.
