Can You Find Your Passion?

I feel I could write a thesis about this, but let’s stick to a blog post! I spent years of my life with that nagging feeling that my career was great but it wasn’t what I was meant to be doing. I knew I wanted to own my business, but couldn’t figure out what to do. I listened to podcasts, read books and blogs for inspiration… even attended conferences. But could not move an inch forward, plagued with indecision. All I did all day long was ask, how can you find your passion? Or “what is my life’s purpose”?

Where Not to Look

I did countless online tests and exercises and downloaded all guides I could put my eyes on about the subject. They told me to seek what liked to do, list my talents and skills, and answer a long list of questions that never helped me. As far as I knew, I was skilled only in what my profession required me to do (systems programming), and I was trying to leave that. All the things that I liked involved me paying for someone else to service me, like traveling, or eating at a nice restaurant; they had nothing to do with something I’d want to make a career of.

Same thing about the exercise “what would you do with your time if money was not a concern?” or “what would you do with your extra time if you could choose anything?”. For me, it was always to travel. But I didn’t want to work as a travel guide, so what was that supposed to mean? Again, it didn’t bring me anywhere.

What Really Helped

What most of these guides failed to say was to look at the intersection of what I loved to spend my time doing, and how to serve people. I tend to agree with Mark Manson when he said, if you’re looking, it’s probably not a passion anyway in his blunt “Screw Finding Your Passion” article.

What you are meant to do, you probably spend some time doing, dabbling with, or dreaming about already.

What I enjoyed was spending my time learning all I could on self-improvement, self-awareness and mindset. All I needed was the link between that and how best to serve people who also wanted to learn about it! Then Blissful Road was born.

The other major click happened during an online business conference I attended a couple of years ago. Everyone there had their own online businesses, by the way, but me. Still, I enjoyed being in that type of environment and making connections with that type of people. I felt that’s where I belonged.

To what the lesson was: (a lot of entrepreneurs seem to have this in common, by the way) they didn’t start their business with 100% certainty that what they were doing was the thing they were going to stick with. Nevertheless, they started! They had a hunch of what it was, and when they started implementing, imperfectly, they learned something. Then course-corrected. And so on. Some ended up with completely different lines of business than what they had started.

Action Brings Clarity

This was the biggest learning in that conference. I was stuck for years waiting for a divine door to open in front of me and say: “This is what you are supposed to do. Now go forth and do it”. I mean, some people know exactly what it is that makes them fulfilled and have innate talents that can’t be ignored. These people are rare, though. The usual, is what it is with me, and with you: we are not really sure but if we stop and listen, deep down… we already know what it is.

Give it a Go

Many times it’s the fact that we don’t want to believe it or give it a chance. We have too many ingrained beliefs of what it should be like. Of what people in our circle will think. Or we’re too attached to the career we built already (but feel miserable going to work each day).

It may be a lack of confidence that we can make it work that makes us look away and keep trying the beaten path. The path we follow others to, but leave ourselves behind. We just don’t think we can make it. We think with our rational brain that sticking to a rational decision is going to keep us safe, but ignore our heart when it whispers what it truly wants. And we all have that unique thing only we can bring to the world. And while we don’t follow it, it’s going to gnaw at us, one way or another. So listen. Give it a try. I’m not saying to quit your day job (not if it’s not time). Try it at night, on the weekends, part time. See how it feels.

Trust

So can you find your passion? The answer is, the question is incorrect. When you ask it that way, it seems you lost it, or that it’s somewhere else. Your passion has always lived within you, you just need to accept it. It’s what makes your heart sing. It’s what you do effortlessly where other people could not. What you naturally lean to when you allow yourself. It takes trusting yourself, listening to the clues from your gut and following them with actions. I spent so much time looking outside for answers and inspiration. Only when I stopped to look at myself was when I found them.

For example, you work as an accountant but in your free time you really love oil painting. Or fixing your friends’ websites. It’s the thing you do with ease that you’re surprised when you find no one else has the skills to do.

One of the questions usually seen in those guides is also: “what do people come to you asking for?”. That didn’t work for me because I was not doing anything on the side, but it could apply to you. One mom I know started baking birthday cakes for her friend’s kids parties and when I saw the photos I was blown away. The cakes looked like they were out of a magazine. It became a business. Another one discovered she really felt happy coaching business owners as opposed to being an accountant. So many stories of people following their passions. That’s what the question should be.

How can I follow my passion?

That could be an entire new article.