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What is your passion? Plus take the how to find your passion quiz?
Pick one of these 5 reasons you need to discover your passion:
1. You’ll uncover your authentic self.
If you’re asking the question, “What is my passion?” then you can’t be living authentically. Being authentic means being true to who you really are. Many of us don’t figure out who we really are until we’re far down the road being who we aren’t. Once you ask the question, you open the door to discovering your authentic self.
What is your real personality?
What are your natural interests and inclinations?
What gets you excited and inspires you?
As you search for your life passion, these questions must be answered. As you uncover the answers, you recognize how your current life does and does not reflect your answers. You see what must be changed, and you begin to resist anything and anyone that feels inauthentic. When you recognize your true self, you feel compelled to shed anything that undermines it.
2. You’ll get clear on your values.
Part of recognizing your authentic self requires that you define your core values. In fact, one of the reasons you might have been flailing in life or unsure what direction to take is that you never defined your values. These values should be the guiding principles for your life. They serve as the barometer to help you make all important decisions. When you don’t live in alignment with your core values, you will inevitably be unhappy and off-center.
If you don’t know your core values (both for your personal and professional life), then take a few minutes to define them.
Here’s a list of value words to help you. Narrow them down to your top 5-10, and then use them to help you make the right decisions moving forward. Always ask yourself, “Does this choice support or undermine one or more of my life values?”
3. You will define your life priorities.
When we think about living our life passion, we invariably bump up against conflicting life priorities. Yes, we want to find work we love, but everything else seems too important to compromise. We don’t want to live with less. We’re afraid to move. We don’t want to cause upheaval for our families. We don’t want to risk making the “wrong” decision.
One of the most enlightening things you learn as you uncover your passion is how quickly it puts priorities into perspective. Think about something in the past you were really excited about and how quickly you were motivated and energized to make it happen. You figured out a way to overcome obstacles and inner resistance because your excitement overrode these issues.
As you ask the question, “What is my life passion?” and come closer and closer to finding the answer, your life priorities will gradually become more and more clear. You’ll be amazed at your own resourcefulness and determination when you have your eyes on the prize.
Many people stop asking the question because they worry about their life priorities, so they never reach that point of excitement and motivation. Find your passion first, and the details will take care of themselves.
4. You’ll get your financial house in order.
There are definitely practical considerations to address when you seek your life passion, and money is one of the most important. You need to make money, and you need to have money saved to pursue your dream or prepare for time without a job. If you are in debt, this needs to be paid off before you can save.
You might consider taking an additional part-time job in the evenings or on weekends, selling some of your stuff, and cutting back on entertainment and non-essential expenses until you pay off debt and create six months to a year’s worth of savings. This sounds hard, but it’s for the short term and will give you a lot more wiggle room when deciding on your passion.
Your passion may lead you to a career that pays you more than you make now. Or it may require you to make less, which generally turns out to be OK if you are much happier and more fulfilled in your job. It’s hard to put a price on career satisfaction.
If you do make less, then you’ll need to plan your finances accordingly. That means scaling back and learning to live within your means. You’ll discover when you’re happy, you really need far less than you once thought you did.
5. You’ll grow comfortable with uncertainty.
We all want to know for sure that everything will work out. We want confirmation that what we think is our passion really IS our passion. We want the assurance that we won’t fail at it. We want the security of having a regular stream of income. We want a guarantee that things will definitely get better — not worse.
As much as you want everything under your control, you have to know that nothing actually is in your control. Life might appear certain and safe now, but anything can happen at any moment. Just look at Facebook or the news to see how many unexpected events happen to people every day. No one is immune to it.
Don’t be fooled into thinking the status quo is safe. Maybe it will be for a while, but in the meantime, you may die of boredom. Accept that uncertainty is around you all the time, and by pursuing your life passion, at least you’re corralling uncertainty in the direction of your dream.
You are making things happen rather than just waiting for them to happen. Over time, uncertainty won’t scare you as much. In fact, you may learn to enjoy the adventure of it.
