What is your Passion? Life Purpose?
Next Big Idea? Scrap that, Please.
For the past two months, I have successfully drilled holes into my brain, snatched my imaginary wigs and dragged myself into a low self-esteem, self-destruction & frustration pit (that I am still basking in ) trying to figure out my heavens-assigned mission on earth.
And, as someone who does not know how to seek support, I was unable to find the right people to offer me the guidance and support I need. Google was not helpful on this one too.
I am yet to figure out my mission on earth. I am still in the process of searching and finding out. However, while in this I have learned some lessons and I thought I should share them.
Lesson #1: I have been asking the wrong questions to the wrong people
Instead of asking ourselves the “what is my life purpose/passion/next big idea?” question, we should instead ask ourselves:
“What can I do with my current resources and time that is important and valuable to me?” — this will at least allow us to explore
WHY?
Because finding your passion/life purpose/next big idea is not picking the best apple from an apples’ basket. As, in such a situation, you already have an idea/criterion of what the best apple looks like.
Instead, I see finding your passion/life purpose/next big idea as tasting a bunch of new menus to figure out what suits your taste (skills/talents) and feeds your appetite (the intrinsic need to make an impact).
Consider your initial experience with Mauritian Food and how you discovered the peace-making hot panini, you did not know what to expect but your system/mouth somehow realized that the Panini is something that you would want to taste again. Even though, initially, the taste was not familiar.
Therefore, explore and taste, if you find something, hold on to it. If not, move on and explore. And please do not be so concerned with age, Sanders started KFC at the age of 65. Therefore, enjoy life while exploring. Live. Breath. You will eventually come across that passion/life purpose or next big idea.
Lesson #2 The 2 Voices that, if possible, I should not listen to at all
These voices just completely stop you from exploring and trying out new things.
The Outside Voice or The confidence building voice
This is the type of voice that builds your confidence. It is the people around you that make you believe that you were made for bigger purposes and you should only be aiming higher. This is because they believe that you have skills/qualities and talents for bigger things. And it is a good thing. However, too much of everything is bad.
Let me break this down for you:
When we are caught up in that “I am too good” bubble, you miss opportunities as well as you forget to invest in and build yourself. Because you are in the “I cannot attend this class because I will not need and/or I already have the skills” or the “this idea is too small for me” mindsets.
Consider this: If Rossano was caught up in the “I am too good” mindset, he would have followed the artist path in which people believed/told him he was good at. Instead, he became a barber (such a petty idea right?) who today shuffles a minimum of $1500 whenever he does a haircut and owns a beauty company.
So please, if you are caught up in the “I am too good” situation, do yourself a favor and step down a bit. You never know, you might be too good for your own good and your next big idea might come from the petty ones.
The Inside voice
We are all familiar with this voice. And most of the time, we tend to listen to this voice. This is the voice when an amazingly beautiful idea comes up, it lists all the reasons why the idea is not the one. Then, we end up discarding it before even trying it. So please, do not listen to this voice. Simple.
Lesson #3: I do have skills/talents. I am not Failing. I am not stuck
Most of the times, we tend to compare and evaluate our skills against our colleagues’. This results in two mindsets:
- The “I’m too good” mindset which we saw earlier that it is not that good
- The “I am not skilled/talented” mindset
The moment we embrace the “I’m not skilled/talented” mindset and see it as our reality. We tend to believe that we are failing and stuck.
However, this is necessarily not true. I see life or our success progress as a business cycle. The most important thing you need to know about this cycle is that whenever you hit a peak or trough is usually higher than the previous one.
While at our trough, we are not stuck, we are amassing the necessary resources that will propel us to our next peak. And while at our peak, we need to embrace the fact that we will experience a recession and be prepared for it.
Finally, if you happen to feel like your skills/talents are not good enough or you feel like you do not have them at all, that is because you are using them for the wrong reasons. Please allow me to remind you that those not-so-useful skills are probably needed in some other part of the world.
In addition, we are very lucky to find ourselves in an era where the world is getting connected and smaller every day. You should not be discarding and underestimating your skills. Your challenge should be trying to channel your skills to the people who actually need them. The process is not to start big. The process is to start small, learn, and then grow big.
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