To reach the highest levels of success you’ve got to be doing something you’re passionate about. No surprises there really.
To me that tip was always about as helpful as “you’ve got to be saving more if you want to be rich.” Yea. Thanks. But I’ve got a mortgage, car payments, and a family to feed. I need a little more to go on to be useful.
Figuring out what you’re passionate about and then turning that into dollars isn’t exactly straight forward (at least for me it isn’t!).
Maybe I’m an untapped reservoir of stock tips and investment strategies. Or perhaps I have a knack for rescuing marine animals from endangered habitats. I don’t know, I’ve never tried either of those things.
And that’s exactly why this becomes so overwhelming so quickly. There’s so many options. Too many choices.
Growing up we’re told we can be anything we want. But now that we’re up that’s just too many choices!
Where To Start Looking
Jon Acuff has a great solution to this in his book Quitter:
[box]Finding your passion is not a first date, it’s a reunion.[/box]
The place to start searching for your passion is not in the endless sea of possibilities. The place to start looking is inside yourself – in your past.
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If you want to move forward, you have to dream backward.
- Jon Acuff
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- What have you done in your life that was the most fulfilling?
- What do you do that makes time accelerate? When do you lose track of time?
- What accomplishments are you most proud of?
- What do people tell you you’re great at (and you shrug it off most likely)?
These are just a few questions to help you begin your search.
Recapture Your Past
Get a notebook and start writing these things down. Write down anything and everything that comes to mind. If you love bombing down the slopes through this powder, write it down. If you lose track of time reading twitter posts, write it down.
Beware: Your brain will try to filter the results before they make it to the paper. Don’t let it. Write down everything no matter how off topic or useless it seems.
Start exploring the things that make you tick.
Take your time. Do this over a week slowly building your list. When you’ve got a few pages of ideas start going back through them and look for patterns.
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If you’re really interested in finding your passion check out Brent Green and Josh Bulloc over at Pursuing Your Calling. I’m listening to their free audiobook “True North” right now it’s full of awesome ideas from two talented coaches in this area.
Here are three questions Brent recommends in True North to help you uncover your passion:
1. What are the recurring themes in your life? What keeps coming back up over and over again?
2. What activities are you compelled to do? What must you do or it drives you crazy?
3. What movies are you drawn to? What are the common threads in these movies that strike a chord in you?
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What’s something you do that makes time accelerate?
Hi Deacon,
You say, “To reach the highest levels of success you’ve got to be doing something you’re passionate about.” I agree with you – to an extent.
For instance, I am currently working on a niche site whose content I have little interest in. So you could certainly say that I am not passionate about the content. However, I am passionate about the success that working on such a site can bring.
My passion in building something that serves as a useful resource for many people, and my passion for that bringing about success for me, is what feeds my determination on a daily basis.
So whilst I am not passionate about the content of the site, I am passionate about what I am trying to do with it. That is enough for me!
Great point Tom. I know you’re a Smart Passive Income reader and I’ve followed Pat’s adventures closely as well (especially the niche-site-duel). For me I could never follow through on projects where I wasn’t passionate about the content. I was really good at doing 75% of it, but I could never get it done. I guess I’m just not cut out for niche sites, hah.
I do agree that they can be really valuable though and I like your point that focusing on building that resource that helps people helps you maintain motivation. I’d be interested to hear how other niche-site builders feel about this too.
Dude, first of all, +50 points for the Back to the Future screengrab! YES!
And second, thanks for bringing up a topic that’s been on my mind a lot lately. I feel like for most of my life, I’ve been struggling with finding my passion (just like everyone else I guess). But lately, I’ve been having some different thoughts on it.
I’m still forming these thoughts, but I’d love to talk to you about it when I get them more honed down. I think it’ll be along the lines of believing that for most of us, there isn’t ONE single passion in life. That there are a lot of passions that we will enjoy over our lifetime and we shouldn’t be bummed about trying to pick just one. I dunno, lemme think this through more lol.
But you’re for sure right on when you say, “What do you do that makes time accelerate? When do you lose track of time?” I feel like that has to be the single most important discerning factor in the things we’re passionate about…whether that’s spending time with someone you love or getting lost in writing…losing track of time always is a good sign
Love to chat about finding your passion sometime! I’ve been iterating on this for over two years now and it’s a tough problem! Before I started actively working on it myself it seemed like such a straightforward problem. Very deceptive!
I really love listening to people like Dan Miller who are so talented at helping people take a passion and shape it into something profitable.
Excellent eye on the Back to the Future photo! I couldn’t find any good pics of the flux capacitor (which is what I really wanted). Looking forward to your thoughts on the subject!