Have you ever thought about what you wish to do in your life? During our growing years, we all have heard the phrase, “Just follow your passion.” But how often have you been asked about it?
Following the ideas that make you feel fulfilled can help you gain success in your life. Always remember, it’s not a “job” but a passion leading to your successful career. Along with this, remember that the idea behind having passion in life is simple, but defining a path to pursue it is difficult but not impossible.
“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember you have the strength, the patience, and the passion for reaching the stars to change the world.”
Quote by Harriet Tubman
Let me ask you one thing before we proceed. We are discussing passion right from the beginning but do you know the true meaning of passion?
Passion is an intense desire, liking, or devotion for a particular activity, concept, or object. Sometimes your feelings, too, become your passion.
However, If you ask me, “How do I find my passion?” I’d say that finding a passion is a lifelong journey. It takes many moments of thoughtful attention & self-reflection to find the things that might excite you. Therefore it is essential to find & follow your passion, as it could help you create a new story of rags to riches.
If you are feeling stuck, let me make it relatively easy for you with some most common steps to discover your passion in life:
- Pay attention to the topics you love to talk about or discuss.
- Think over your strengths.
- Discover what you are.
- Explore ways to tie things you like.
- Differentiate between Hobby & Passion.
- Ask around.
- Take guidance from an expert (either a coach or trainer or someone you admire the most in your life).
- Connecting yourself to people with a similar passion.
Now, let’s elaborate on every single point to help you comprehend it in a better way.
Pay Attention to the topics you love to discuss
We converse with numerous people daily and often find a common subject to interact upon. Therefore, paying attention and discovering common communication topics will help us find our true passion in life. Thus, it will become easier to pursue our passion once we know what we like/ enjoy.
Think over your Strengths
I would love to share my father’s teaching, which he always asked me to do even till now, is self-analysis to know the inner me. And whenever I do so, I get rid of my most challenging situations. While self-analyzing, I go through my shortcomings, fears, strengths, goals I’ve achieved, and goals I want to accomplish in the coming future. Only self-analyzing could give you a better picture of your strengths. This practice will not only help you to find your passion but will also enable you to know yourself in a better way.
Discover what you are.
One of the best methods of discovering yourself is self-analysis, as discussed in the previous section. Now let us discuss one more exciting way of doing this. Take a sheet of paper and write SWOT on the top of it where ‘S’ stands for strength, ‘W’ stands for weakness, ‘O’ stands for Opportunities, and ‘T’ stands for Threats (threats here refers to the fears inside you). Then, write all your strengths under S, weaknesses under W, opportunities under O, and your personal or professional concerns under T.
Upon undertaking this analysis, you will be able to comprehend the areas you must work on and the pragmatic steps that must be taken to pursue what you desire.
Prevent yourself from the comfort
Comfort blocks you from finding your passion in life just as familiarity breeds contempt. A fixed job with regular income gives social recognition, but how many people have actually planned it? Most of them accidentally fell into a profession. Our work always accounts for our proportion of living unless we make conscious choices leaving it over to destiny. The decisions we make at an early age decide our future. Surprisingly, this point in our life only leaves ‘what if’ moments. Remember, this is the time to listen to our conscience and decide where to concentrate our attention.
Differentiate between Hobby & Passion
Until now, you might have understood that passion is something inside you; it stays with you every minute. In contrast, a hobby is something you like, a fun activity that helps relieve stress/ anxiety. For example, you have a dream/passion for becoming a cricketer. Therefore, practicing cricket is following your passion, but if you like listening to music while practicing, it is your hobby as it helps you relax.
Let’s understand it further with the outcomes:
For some people, their profession is their passion, and this passion has productivity – it might give you rewards, compensation & recognition. On the other hand, a hobby makes you feel engaged but is not productive. In the above example listening to music is just engaging the cricketer, but it is not constructive. On the other hand, practicing cricket is adequate for him because his practice will make him a recognized cricketer and give him fame, money and everything he wants from life.
Ask people around you
We meet many people daily, and we admire some of them. We want to replicate some of their qualities in us. But how? This can be done in numerous ways, like meeting the person that admires you, spending time with him if possible, and trying to understand their thought process, interests, and struggle to reach his current position.
These people will serve as your motivation to help you find your passion in the long run. Remember, the more people you meet, the better you learn.
Take Guidance from the Expert
Experts are integral parts of our lives who assist us in finding our passion. An expert here can be a coach, trainer, mentor, or someone you admire. They help us shed the external working pressure from outside and focus on what we want to pursue in life.
Connect yourself to people with a similar passion
You might have listened to or read the phrase companion complexion (which actually in Hindi means “Sangat ki rangat”). Finding people with similar passions is not an arduous task. On the contrary, it makes you feel encouraged, confident, and secure. Finding similar qualities in another person ideally means that you have achieved your goal of finding your companion.
Exploring these factors could take time, but it will help you find your passion.
Now, a question might arise in your mind, “I’ve found my passion. What should I do next?”
Suppose you have discovered some of your areas of interest. Now let’s consider it from a professional point of view.
Try spending some time exploring different career opportunities. You can also browse some open job opportunities online, reading the description carefully to find a job with skills you are passionate about, and you can turn it into real value.
But this is also true that not every passion will lead to financial satisfaction. Sometimes, it might only give you mental joy, but it depends upon how you take it.
For example, you have noticed that you are passionate about spending time at home with your family, so it doesn’t mean that you couldn’t work because there are numerous work-from-home opportunities through which you can earn money following your passion.
Conclusion
So, here are the steps to help you discover your passion in life. Remember that following these steps would be a lot of work, but I guarantee you that this would be the best investment you’ve ever made in yourself. Remember to identify the things that will make you satisfied, motivated, excited, and fulfilled, as it is the key to finding your passion. Turning passions into careers happens only by researching opportunities. Thus, find appropriate possibilities that will help you enhance your career graph and find your true passion.
