So, you wanna find your passion!?

How I built my passion?

I attended my friend’s wedding a few days ago, I was one the greeter or usher at the wedding ceremony during which I met and talked to countless amazing people.

One of those people was Nate, an 18 years old young man and high school senior from Nebraska. During our small talk, I asked him: “what are you going to do in college?” To which he replied: “I’m undecided, I don’t know what I wanna do with my life!” then He added: “choosing what to do is too much asking for 18 years old!!”

What struck me the most wasn’t that he didn’t know yet what he was going to do in college but rather the fact that he thinks, choosing a major or deciding what He was going to do for the rest of life was “too much of a decision for him to make at age 18”.

He then asked me: “how did you know you wanted to become a software engineer? how did you know working with computers was your passion?” to which I replied: “I didn’t know software engineering was my passion specifically!” I developed an interest in computer and technology and I have been following it for years.

Now, Throughout my journey of following my interest with the intent to built something around it (check out My journey to becoming a Software Engineer), I also developed the love to travel and been fortunate enough to travel around the world since 2008. To date, I have traveled to 4 continents, 21 countries 324 Cities.

I’m 27 years old and getting my master in software engineering. One thing I have noticed during my years of education in the United States is that most people don’t start college because they don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, which result to not being able to pick a major in college.

From those enrolled for an undergraduate degree, a fairly good number of first and second years students in college( freshmen and sophomore are undecided, meaning haven’t chosen a major yet). Most of them think they have to find their passion first. The follow-up big question usually is:

How do I find my passion?

Tom Bilyeu stated, Asking how do I find my passion infer that your passion has been lost somewhere or it’s something located somewhere for you to be found. I believe, your passion is something you personally have to build!
When Nate, the 18 years young man asked me: “how do I find my passion, the only thought in my mind was: “your passion has not been lost, it just has never been developed.”

Most people have this great misconception about passion which is believing that passion is something hidden inside of us. I personally believe that passions are created, constructed, developed and it starts with interest.

For Illustration, Tiger Woods didn’t randomly woke up one morning and realized he loved Golf, Michael Jordan wasn’t born dreaming of slam dunks, Bill Gate’s first word wasn’t Microsoft, Elon Musk didn’t start by reaching for Mars, Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings didn’t stop at obstacles while creating Netflix.

Even though these extraordinary people have some of the amazing minds of our time, their accomplishments and achievements are not something they were born with. The things they have done or made didn’t even exist before. They had to learn to build them brick by brick.

Now, once you have that interest into something you want to build or become. You have got to start going deep into gaining mastery and it’s in that process of gaining mastery that you are going to find out if that interest turns into a love, then into a passion.

People who are passionate are willing to fight through the boredom. They are not doing it thinking: “oh my God! this is so much fun!!”. They are thinking: “I want to win! I want to become something! I want to play at the highest level and I am willing to break myself in half.”

If you wanna be great, you already have in you what you need. Which is the ultimate evolution to prove and the ability to improvise, adapt, and overcome. So you can change to get great. You can change to become whatever you need to. But it takes more than a will to achieve your goals and dreams, you have to go far behind the aspiration and literately, consistently working hard to achieve susses or to get the result you want.

Your passion isn’t something hidden inside of you that is magically going to reveal itself or manifest some day over a cup of coffee. It is something you have to go out and build. The people that have the discipline to do that, those that are willing to put in the “hard work” of building their life’s meaning from the ground up-Those are the ones with enough grit to really make it, the ones that don’t stop at just building a passion, those are the ones that don’t stop until they have changed the world with it.

The balance: Passion + Talent + Money

At the beginning of summer of 2018. I met 19 years old girl, a freshman from the University of Minnesota who asked me for advice on choosing her major. She was conflicted and concerned about the fact that her domain of interest will not guarantee her a decent job after 4 years of college and definitely not a stable financial future.

In those situations, I would recommend that you find something available in the job market, closely related to your domain of interest and still pursue your main interest. The simplest way to achieve that will be doing a double major, getting a major and a minor or vise versa.

For illustration, if you are interested in photography or something of the sort. You can pic graphic design as a major which in demand in the job market and closely related to photography, and study photography as a minor or vise vera.

To sum up, Alibaba founder, Jack Ma gave the following tips that I believe are very inspirational.

• In your early-20s be a good student, read books, learn as much thing as you can, try few things just to get a little bit of experience, do part-time jobs, internships, even unpaid ones.
• Any mistake you make in your mid-20s is an income for you, a wonderful revenue. The company or the person you work for plays a big role in your personal development. It’s not about which company you work for but it’s about which manager, supervisor or boss you work for. A good manager or supervisor teaches you differently. Make enough mistakes and learn from them, fall and stand up, keep at it, Enjoy the show!

• In your late 20s — early 30s, follow somebody. Find someone that aspire you in your field of study or work, for me one those people is Chris Shellenbarger, the founder of CloudRepo who has been my mentor since 2017. Look for a job in a small company, It’s a great learning process and a better way to develop your skills or personal values.
• In a big company, you are just a part of a big machine. A small company provides an environment necessary to learn how to do a lot of things at one time, the passion, the dreams because everyone in a small company including the CEO aspire to something bigger, greater and work hard toward that goal.
• In your mid-30s to your 40s, you have to think carefully and determine if you are going to work for yourself and for somebody else until you retire. Whichever option you choose to pursue is going to require preparation from your side (what is your retirement plan?).
• In your late 40s and early 50s. Focus your time on doing all the things you are good at, don’t try to jump from one company to another or drop into a new area because I might be too late. You might be successful in doing so but It will require more energy and a huge extra amount of work from you. Not counting the rate of dying is too big. I share Ma Yun’s opinion on this one, focus on things you are good at.
• In your 50s and behind, work for the young people, share your passion with them, invest in them, mentor those interested in following your steps and inspire them to do better and be better.
• In your 60s, spend time for yourself and your loved one. You already worked hard, now play hard. Enjoy the sunshine on the beach! Travel or not! whatever works you!

How do I know that I have found my passion, dream job and I’m working for love?

Chris Shellenbarger has been my mentor for about a year, he is one of the people I look up to and inspire in my field of work. When we first started working together he asked me a question: “What is your dream job?” I didn’t quite know a simple way the answer that question. He then used this analysis to help me find out what is my dream job:

Now, imagine a scenario in which you have enough money that you don’t need a job to make a living. Would you still consider waking up in the morning and look forward to going to work? well! now you know and what you do next is up to you!

Whatever you chose to do with your life, pursue your passion to the level of excellence!

If you enjoyed this story, you might also like “I learned that I still have a lot to learn!”

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Cheers!!!