Passion (part 3): How to reveal your passion; make this your Number One goal!
Article Three (of Three) on the fundamental importance of Passion - our most valuable internal resource.
In the last two articles of this series, we explored in a fair amount of detail what we actually mean by passion. We discussed how our passion is an incredibly powerful internal resource that we can all tap into, and how it can literally transform our lives when we do, and catalyse our future success.
You can refer to the two earlier articles here: Article One and Article Two
So, this leaves just one key question: What can we do from today to reveal our passion in the first place?
While we cannot simply turn our passion on like a tap, there are definite steps we can all take that will enable us to create the right conditions to reveal it (as described in our first article).
But first, we need to find our direction.
Some of us may be fortunate and will already have a good idea of what we want to do with our lives... But for many of us, we may still be looking and exploring…
When we have a purpose already
Many will argue that we all have ‘a purpose’, and if we can simply align a particular career with that purpose, then our passion will naturally be revealed.
That all sounds fine, but in most cases, it may not become apparent what our purpose might be until sometimes much later in life. And when we are young, we are still expected to make career choices and head off in ‘some direction’, even when we may have no clue what we might eventually want to do.
But sometimes, we may love doing an activity when we are young that naturally points us towards a particular career. It could be selling lemonade at the school fair, for example, or doing deals in the playground, and we eventually become an entrepreneur.
Occasionally, we may be drawn towards something because it’s within an area we already truly care about. We then naturally align the career we want to pursue with our values, which then becomes our purpose. For example, we might especially enjoy being around pets and animals and be drawn to becoming a veterinarian.
Sometimes, we feel a deep sense of duty or even a calling to help others or to make the world a better place for everyone. We care deeply about these things, and this becomes part of our personal value system. We naturally develop a profound sense of purpose and a real desire to make an impact. Many of the most deeply passionate people we can meet are those whose lives revolve around helping to improve other people’s lives. Or perhaps, helping to solve some of the big challenges the world faces at the moment, such as our climate, the environment, or various humanitarian issues.
Occasionally, we may discover early that we really love a particular activity like a sport or something in the Arts or the performing Arts, and we have a real talent for it. We dedicate a lot of our time to it, really enjoy it, and naturally gravitate toward making a career out of it. We become inspired once again when we develop our passion for it.
When we don’t yet have a purpose
But for most of us, we tend to start off with a blank sheet of paper and have to try to work out for ourselves what it is that we may want to do for a career.
To eventually reveal our passion for something is then, usually, a three-stage process…
Stage One: we choose an area that we think we might like to work in, that makes sense to us, and that suits our talents. We can then concentrate our efforts on finding something within that area (and the education we may need to pursue it).
This may not necessarily be where we will ultimately reveal our passion for something, but it’s a start, and hopefully, we will be heading in the right direction. It’s all part of our journey of exploration.
Stage Two: We make some good choices over time, as we move through our careers, and eventually find a role that we really enjoy and can ultimately love doing.
Stage Three: As we then immerse ourselves in our work, we love it even more, and we realise that this is what we are meant to do, we begin to reveal our passion for it.
But life, of course, isn’t always that simple…
We may often begin at Stage One and then find ourselves changing direction as we navigate our way forward. We end up getting to Stage Two (where we find something we really love doing) in a completely different direction from where we started or even in an area far away from where we may have anticipated we would be.
The point here is that we are all on a journey, and most journeys tend to meander through twists and turns, ups and downs, and are mostly quite unpredictable, even when we may have a clear idea of where we think we are heading from the outset.
But it all starts with choosing something we think we may like first, and then we progress naturally from there.
Make this your number one goal
Sometimes, it takes just a short while to move from like, to love and then to reveal our passion for something. And sometimes, it can take many years to find an area we really enjoy working in. However, occasionally, some people never really do… But that’s more often than not because they end up settling for where they have got to and then lack the motivation to move further. Or they are simply afraid of change.
Sometimes, it’s easier for them just to wait and see what happens… But this is also a relatively short step from simply giving up on finding something that they can really love doing.
The key to revealing our passion is to find something we love doing first!
I firmly believe that we all have a duty to ourselves to find something that we can genuinely love doing. And we must not stop looking until we find it, however long it takes. Because we are all going to spend a great part of our lives working, so finding something that we can really love has got to be the Holy Grail.
This should always be our number one goal from the outset!
We often talk about love, in the romantic sense, and how empty the lives are for any person who doesn’t get an opportunity to experience it… Well, I think the same also applies to finding something that we can genuinely love doing as a career.
Once we do find something that we truly love, we then have a really great chance to reveal our passion for it - and this can literally unleash all of the attributes and benefits that we have been examining across these articles, which can then lead any one of us to achieve extraordinary success in life.
The process of exploration
When we are young…
Finding something we can eventually love doing, in itself, will always be a challenging and unpredictable process.
When we are young, the key to getting started and getting to Stage One is to explore.
We need to explore externally and cast a wide net. We need to tap into all available resources and learn everything we can about what is actually out there that we might like to consider. There are many hundreds of occupations or roles, some of which we may be incredibly good at, and love doing, that we don’t even know about yet because we simply haven’t explored wide enough...
We need to explore internally, too – we need to look for clues within us: what does our heart tell us? And what is it that we may ‘feel’ we may enjoy doing? What might be ‘calling us’, and what do we really care about? And most importantly, what talents do we have?
One of the best things that we can do is to talk to people close to us whose opinions we value and trust. Ask them for their advice. What do they think we may be good at?
It’s often a wiser and more experienced person than us (especially when we are young) who can spot the talent and the potential within us, even when we can’t see it in ourselves… Remember, history is dotted with countless hugely successful individuals whose journeys began when some significant person suggested a path they could follow and simply pointed them in the right direction.
Apart from exploring, both externally and internally, we need to plan. We also need to dream. And we need to make time to do these things in a disciplined way.
When we are older…
As we become adults and already well into our careers, the same principles apply; to reveal our passion, we need to find something first that we can really love doing.
If we are not happy with where we are right now... If we don’t love what we are doing… then we need to think hard about making a change. This may involve taking some risks... We will probably have to step out of our comfort zones... We will sometimes need to be brave. But the real point is this: the risk to us personally may be far greater that we will never find fulfilment, success, and even happiness in life if we simply stay where we are and carry on doing something that we don’t love doing.
Ask yourself these questions:
Do you genuinely love what you are doing right now?
Do you feel that you are making a real impact through your work on your colleagues, for your organisation, your customers/clients, or on the wider world?
What do you really care about?
We must always think of every role that forms part of our career journey as just a stepping stone towards finding something, eventually, that we will truly love doing.
We should give every role a chance, of course, but if, after a while, it doesn’t work for us, we should then look for change.
We owe it to ourselves to find something that we can really love. Remember, this should always be our number one goal.
And finally, this is what the legendary Sir Clive Woodward once told me a few years ago when we were talking about passion:
“…If you think a particular role or career makes real sense and you are able to do it, just follow your dreams, follow your passion, throw everything at it and work really hard.
The worst thing that you can possibly do is to have a dream but not pursue it and then look back years later with regret and say,
‘I really wish I had made the effort to try that’…”
Sir Clive Woodward, OBE - World Cup-winning England rugby coach
One thing to stress in closing is this. While each of the many enormously successful individuals that I have met when putting together A Few Wise Words will have talked about their passion, many of them did not necessarily find it straightaway.
For some of us, it may take a little while to find something we really love doing first.
All we can do is pick our initial direction carefully, keep an open mind, keep exploring, and never give up.
We should also be prepared for all the twists and turns of our journey and, above all, keep believing that one day, everything will align and that our love and passion for something will eventually flow.
In the meantime, we should just enjoy the journey!
Related articles:
Article #1: Why revealing your passion is crucial to your future success
Article #2: The three ways passion will catapult your career skyward
Lovely article as always. Here's to enjoying the twists, pivots, and unexpected detours.
And to the quiet belief that it’s all coming together, even when we can’t see the full picture yet.