How to Find Your Passion
Always Start with Happiness
Some time last year, I noticed that I was becoming quite unhappy. After I got home from work, I felt so tired that I felt like doing nothing apart from laying on the couch and watching Netflix. This eventually made me very bitter and frustrated. Even my relationship with my wife suffered. She wanted us to go out or do something together, anything that didn’t involved laying on the couch and watching TV. I just didn’t want to do anything because I felt drained of energy.
I was also very unhappy because of this. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed my work, my colleagues were really good people and I enjoyed their company and the work environment was great. However, the work itself was draining. I don’t know if it’s just me but, I go 190%, if I get involved in something. After about a year, this left me empty.
I had things that I wanted to do, personal projects that I wanted to finish and I was bitter and unhappy that I couldn’t do them. These feelings spilled over into my relationship with my wife and so, we found ourselves fighting more often than we’d like to admit. I mean, it’s understandable considering that we were spending barely any quality time together.
So, I made a decision to cut my work in half. This translated to having my salary cut in half as well, but this was a compromise I was willing to make. Fortunately, we could still survive even with half my pay. It did mean that we had to cut down on our spending a bit, but nothing major.
After I told my boss, who was extremely understanding, I began working part-time and coming home at 12–12:30pm. Man, that felt great! I had time to relax, read, write, learn stuff, do some personal projects and it was all great. I must admit, at the beginning, I was still troubled by a sense of guilt that I was letting somebody down and by the fear that I would be missing out on the money I could make. Nevertheless, I stood by my decision. Apart from some episodic guilt trips which decreased in frequency and completely ceased after about a month, I felt happy and pleased with the decision I made.
The whole issue was quite simple. When I worked full time, I slowly became miserable. I had more money, but less time and energy to enjoy that money. I somehow knew deep down that reducing my work hours to half would improve my life. I just didn’t know by how much. I felt that doing it would make me happy. And it did. This happiness ended up overflowing in other areas of my life. I was happy and, suddenly, I had more time to do the things that made me happy. I started podcasting and writing again. Not to mention that my relationship with my wife got much better. The only downside to my decision was the drastic decrease in available money. But, as I said, that was a compromise I, we, were willing to make.
Now for the funny bit. A couple of months after, I received an email asking me if I wanted to work on a short-term project. I was excited about it, as I could decide my own schedule and the project was quite small, so it didn’t require my involvement for too long. The project lasted around four months and I worked considerably less than I would have if I still worked full-time. The only difference is, that after these four months I earned more money than I would have by working full-time in my day-to-day job… for a year.
So, yes, I was pretty amazed and excited! But I didn’t write about this to boast. I am writing about my experience so that you’d get encouraged and start listening to your heart and start going where your happiness is. I’m not saying that you should quit your job or even start working part-time like me. That’s not the point. The circumstances of your life may be different, you temperament may be different and so, what you derive happiness from will be different. But with all these differences in mind, we all have the ability know what we want. We may not have the courage we require to pursue what ignites and energises us, what lights up our being and makes us happy. However, we can all feel what the next step towards happiness is for us. I wrote this to encourage you to take it.
When you follow your happiness, you are happy. Or, to put it another way, you follow your happiness by being happy. And when you are happy you create more happiness for yourself and for the people around you. You expand what you are. Always. The universe is expanding continuously. And you are it. You are, at the same time, the universe and a part of the universe.
When somebody pinches your arm, you say “Stop pinching me”. You know that your arm is you. In that very same way, you are the universe. If somebody pinches you, that somebody is pinching the whole universe.
So, if the universe expands, you expand. And you can only expand what you are. Choose happiness. Don’t postpone it. Own it. Be it and you’ll see it all around you.
Following happiness will show you the next step. You might not be doing the same thing for your whole life. What you end up doing might be totally different than what you started with. But you will be guided as go along. You need to calibrate to your own happiness. And this will very likely not be an immediate thing, but a process. And this will be a process that you enjoy because it starts with happiness. It doesn’t start with toil and a promise for better. It starts with better and a promise for the best. And the equation is simple: doing what you enjoy makes it more likely that you will do it again and again. It makes it more likely that you will become a master at it.
When you start with happiness, you slowly become more sensitive to what you enjoy. You slowly begin to find out more about yourself and what you enjoy doing. But don’t forget it’s a process. Don’t expect to find out what you’re going to do for the rest of your life in the following five minutes. It may take days, weeks, months, years… I don’t know. I’m still figuring out what my path is. But there’s no other way of finding what you path is in life but by walking it. If you’re listening to spirit and following your happiness, chances are that you will find yourself on a unique path, a path where you’ll have nobody to look towards for directions. Who could ever guide you on your own path?
You’re making the map as you walk. That’s why fear may still creep up on you. The unknown is scary but it’s also where the treasure lies. And you’ll be enjoying every step of the way because you’ve started with happiness.
