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.
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, 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.
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.
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.”
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.
5. Find the Limits of Your Bravery
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.