How To Find Your Passion

Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.

How to find your passion, is a question frequently asked by persons like you, who are feeling unfulfilled in life no matter what you do.

Are you feeling stuck or burnt out with your job?

Do you hate Sunday evenings because it’s so close to Monday mornings?

Do you hate the thought of doing certain tasks as much as you hate actually doing them?

Are you swamped with the feeling of dread each day when you get ready for work?

Do you spend your days at work planning your escape?

Does the thought of clocking out for the last time excites you?

I could go on and on but you get the picture.

If you are feeling like this then you are feeling the same way I felt before I found out the answer to the question, how to find your passion.

Instead of feeling all of that what if you felt all of this:

 

• Excited and pumped the moment you open your eyes in the mornings

• Enthusiastic about your to-do list

• Peaceful and grounded

• Free

• Unstoppable

In this post I will share with you how I found my passion and you can use the same strategy to find yours.

Now let’s clear the air on one thing and this had me messed up for a little while. Your hobby is not your passion. Read that again.

You may be going around in circles the way I was because you are “interested” in and “good at” a bunch of stuff.

I am a DIYer. I love to make beautiful pieces for my home like paintings, wall hangings, and a bit of upholstering.

I would bedazzle everything I got my hands on. I also love to crochet blankets and stuff toys for babies.

At one point I thought those things were my passion but they weren’t.

You see, I could only do those things if I was in the “mood.” I could not see myself doing any of those activities every single day.

I had to make a clear distinction between my hobbies and that one thing I could get up and do everyday almost without effort.

What is Passion

 According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, passion is a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something.

It is an energy that you possess inside you. It manifests in different forms such as gifts, talents or strong ideas. You can’t turn it off.

One of my habits is taking a notebook, piece of paper or napkin and a pen with me wherever I go.

My ideas would come to me at totally random times without being triggered and I made sure I wrote them down the moment they hit me.

 

Is Passion Inborn or Developed

 There are some people that think that finding your passion is awful advice. I am not one of those people.

I would encourage everyone to find their passion. The problem is the mindset that some people have regarding this.

If you are of the opinion that “ when you find your passion you won’t have to work a day in your life”, then you are off to a very bad start.

Things don’t just magically happen when you find your passion.

As I shared with you in this post, my passion is writing. It is now 1:45am and I am sitting at my kitchen island writing this post which means I am working.

I am not slaving away at something I hate and have no interest in. I am passionate about writing and I am happy to do it so it doesn’t seem like “work.”

 

Now to answer the question “Is passion inborn or developed?”

 I believe we were born with passions that are more general than specific. The specificity comes after the passion is developed.

As far back as I can remember, I loved the written word. Even today, I would much rather read a blog post than watch a video about the same topic. I would choose reading a book over watching a movie about the book.

My love for the written word led me to develop a passion for writing and I haven’t stopped.

 

7 Steps to Find Your Passion

Here are some steps that will help you find your passion.

 

1.Make a list and check it twice

Brainstorm and make a list of all the activities you love to do and do very well.

You will also use this list to separate your hobbies from your passion.

Any activity that you only do in your spare time or when you are in the mood is your hobby and not your passion.

2. Track Your Time

 You can use the last week or month to do this exercise.

 How much time did you spend on the activities you listed in step one?

Could you go for hours forgetting to eat or sleep while engaged in any of those activities without feeling burnt out or demotivated?

Pay extra attention to these activities. These are your passion, not your hobby.

 3. Check your browsing history

 What have you spent time researching and learning about?

 What blogs and books have you been reading?

 What videos are you watching? What kind of webinars have you signed up for?

 The answers to these questions will be a good indication to what you are really passionate about. These answers will help you to further narrow down the list you created in the first step.

4.What are you constantly talking about?

 What are you excited to share with others?

 You can talk for hours about this. The conversation is effortless and seems to flow from a well deep into your soul.

 

5. You always find the time

 24 hours hardly seem enough for your busy days but you always seem to find a little time to do something related to your passion.

 What activities are you squeezing into your already tight schedule?

 

6. Align yourself to like minded people

 Great minds think alike. Align yourself with people who share your passions.

 Through networking with this type of support system you may find untapped resources you never knew were available to you.

 Look for and join forums that deal with your passion and interests. This will keep you focused, on track and motivated.

 

7. Be Aware of Your Strengths

 You may be underestimating your strengths because you assume other people are good at the same things you are.

 What do your family and friends praise you about constantly?

 What do they seek your input and advise about?

 The answers to these questions will help you take stock of your strong points.

 

Not it, Then What?

Here’s a bonus step.

You may have ended up crossing out every item on your list just because they all don’t match up to the basics of passion.

You need not feel downcast about it. Instead, groom yourself for the challenge ahead of you. Everyone has a passion and it is up to you to find yours.

A nice step will be to take a trip down memory lane. Revisit your growing stages and think about those things you just wanted to do which basically had no other attached benefits added to it.

However, your childhood is your phase of innocence where nothing about you is being influenced by the shortcomings in the world.

You may need to rekindle that spark which will light the fire illuminating your true passion once again.

This is the step that totally did it for me. I was confusing my hobbies which are plenty with my passion until I took a trip down memory lane.

 My English teacher had given my class a story writing assignment. She gave us ten topics and told us to choose one and write a short story on it.

I couldn’t pick just one topic so I wrote a short story on all the topics and submitted them all in a notebook.

Not only did she read my stories to the class but she kept my notebook to use in her other classes.

The feeling was euphoric. Just like that I had found my passion.

Finding your passion may not prove easy, but my advice to you is to bide your time.

Push through any failures you may have along the way. Take it easy and don’t take the pleasure out of it.

Don’t give yourself a deadline to discover your true passion. This will only make you stressed and anxious. It may come to you swiftly or it may take a while.

As George Elliot puts it, “It’s never too late to be who you might have been.”

Here is a free guided worksheet that will help you to find what your passion is.

Let me know in the comments if these or other strategies have worked for you.