What If I Can't Find My Passion In Life? 30 Things To Be Exercise + 8 Tactics
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Last Saturday we had our first social distance outdoor bbq, bringing close friends together not seen in person for over two and a half months. Video conferencing is an amazing tool, but will never replace the live, spontaneous one on one discussions formed sitting outside with friends at a bbq, where you talk about anything, nothing, or one of the most important concepts in life - discovering your passion.
One such discussion on finding your passion in life caught my attention...
"You're lucky you found your passion, we wish we felt as passionate about something in life as you do for your writing and your content," a friend said as he sat holding his partners hand.
Those five words "finding your passion in life" became stuck inside my head as the night progress. I'd heard them from a good friend in Edmonton as well, and again from another friend via text just a few weeks ago.
So the question was, how do you find your passion in life?
How do you find your passion in life?
I realized in developing the content for The-Inspired, I'd overlooked this incredibly important topic. With over a 120 articles and counting, I hadn't specifically covered tools or tactics to help you find your passion.
After all, this website was designed to help you reach your goals, and surely that also meant finding your passion in life first.
So I went back to my research to find a place to start. I knew right where to go.
So that's what this article is all about. Today I'll provide tactics and an exercise that will help you find your passion in life. No small thing, but worth a try.
And it starts with a story.
My Story, and How I Rediscovered My Passion in Life
In 2017 I finally decided it was time to put the authentic me first. I resigned from my corporate job to begin working on Goran 2.0. This would begin a 10 month journey into who I really was and what I really wanted out of this life.
I was burnt out from 12 consecutive years of fast paced, high intensity, business grind. I'd poured my heart and soul into my work and didn't feel the return. What I was building wasn't mine. And it didn't align to who I fully was.
From the never ending projects, meetings, politics, deadlines and from the constant push of moving someone else's vision forward, I knew I needed not just a break, but a new focus.
I loved the people on my team, but I was tried of working on someone else's dream. I knew it was time I started working on mine.
So I put a plan in place to take time off and let my journey begin. And that's when the problem started.
You see I had seven major goals, seven big things I wanted to be.
Seven. That was too many.
A friend heard this and he knew it was too much. He told me. I knew it too, but for some reason I needed to try them all, and in reality, it was the best decision I made.
The reason is, after starting on seven big goals, I realized that five of the seven were ideas born of the wrong reason. Five of the seven had nothing to do with my passion in life.
Those five ideas, I wasn't doing for me, I was for my ego. But as obvious as it might be for an outsider looking in, you just never know until you try.
Finding Your Passion: Tactic 1 - Experience Building Your Passion
You'll need to literally start working on things you believe you're passionate about to see the truth. Schedule in the time, the hours, the days, the long nights, the missed appointments or postponed meetings with friends, because you put your passion first.
I needed to go through the process of trying all seven major goals out until I realized how unhappy and unsatisfied some of those goals made me.
But cutting out the excess fat around perceived dreams, you'll see the true ones.
After two months I realized what I really wanted to be and do.
I realized my life's passion through experience.
Finding Your Passion: Tactic 2 - How You'll Know For Sure?
You'll know you've found your passion in life when optimized experience kicks in. When you experience and discover yourself in Flow. In other words, when you spend time doing something that gives you some or all of these:
a. Aligns with your talents and puts your creativity into action,
b. Creates anticipatory enthusiasm, an excitement to get started on your activity
c. Unleashes a deep desire towards success in learning, doing, creating, or mastering,
d. Challenges you in mind, body and spirit.
e. Brings inner peace, a strong sense of satisfaction during the process and after
f. That you do truly for you, and no one else,
g. Causes time to stand still. Hours pass because you are so fully immersed inside the activity
This, whatever it is that does this for you - is your passion in life.
For me, my biggest passion is writing. When I write, time stops. Hours go by. I'll look at the clock and it will say 730am and then I'll look again and it will be 9am and it will feel only as if minutes passed. But this only happens when I'm fully immersed in the experience.
Writing an email does not give me flow. But writing high quality content that moves the spirit, touches the soul, sparks emotion, and inspires the reader, does. That's when I know I'm experiencing my life's passion in action.
But what if you're not sure exactly what you want to do or be?
