Not Finding Your Passion? This Is Probably Why
Plus 3 steps to help you unlock your purpose
Do you read countless articles everyday about how to achieve your dreams, fuel your passion, live the life of your dreams alongside the ultimate guides to productivity? Still struggle to make sense of it all? This is because before you can implement it all, there’s one important step missing. How can you achieve everything and be productive if you don’t know what you want to do in the first place?
You probably have questions such as these often ruminate in your head.
How do I know what I am really passionate about?
What is my calling?
What is my purpose?
Answering these questions is not simple. For many of us, myself included, I was not born knowing exactly what I wanted to be when I grow up. Those who do are gifted because they don’t have the arduous journey to figure it out. Like many, I focused on school and eventually went on to study finance because I was good at numbers. And more importantly, because it would offer me a lucrative career. Or so I believed. The part I didn’t really understand was a great career does not equate to fulfilling your passion or purpose. For me, the bureaucratic culture, my lack of personal impact and the cutthroat culture would eventually make me feel suffocated. How could I thrive if I didn’t actually fit in? What many often don’t realize is that finding your passion and true purpose is not an activity for our intellect.
Our intellectual beings are adept at checking the boxes. We go to school, go to college, get a job, buy a house — our logic dictates the steps we all must take in life. We are always in our thinking mind, spending our minutes and hours in our heads. The part nobody talks about is that finding your passion comes from the heart. It is not an intellectual activity. No amount of rumination or thinking will bring us closer to it. We aspire to feel fulfilled in our lives, not think fulfilled.
The reality is so many of us are caught up in the busy rigamarole of life and its duties that we never make the time to pause and align with our emotional self. According to an article published in the Harvard Business Review, “studies have shown that a high emotional quotient (or EQ) boosts career success, entrepreneurial potential, leadership talent, health, relationship satisfaction, humor, and happiness.” As per psychologist Daniel Goleman, “IQ makes up a mere 20 percent of the factors that determine life success.”
It is then no wonder that so many of us are not where we want to be in life.
To find your passion and cultivate it, following these 3 steps can bring you closer to living a life of your dreams.
1. Do More. Think Less.
This is the only way you can feel what it is that truly aligns with you. Pursue different activities, which you enjoy and find focus in them. Set goals to improve. Explore. And most importantly, don’t diminish activities. For example, if you feel really passionate about fitness and the gym, have you ever given serious thought to learning how to be a personal trainer? It could just be something you pursue on the side. The endless chatter in your head will tell you to focus on your job and opt for stability since creating a career in wellness will be challenging. But why can’t you just start by spending a few hours every week dedicated to improving your knowledge?
All it takes is to start.
Internet sensation and fitness guru, Kayla Itsines, recollects being initially intimidated by the gym until a personal trainer encouraged her to just “start somewhere”. She loved the way workouts made her feel and started working in a gym nearby. Eventually she started to craft her own workouts for members and posted them to social media. Itsines became an internet sensation eventually leading to the rise of her multimillion fitness empire with books, videos and nutritional guides. Had she diminished a fitness career, she wouldn’t become the fitness idol we admire today. Instead of thinking through what can be considered a wild decision, she engaged with it and pursued it.
2. Bring Intentionality and Passion to Everything You Do
We are all inundated with chores and daily tasks we’d rather not do. As a society, we often complain about them and bring about a lot of negative energy surrounding our day to day existence. As such, we need to learn to be more intentional in our approach to everything we do. Maybe when you unload the dishwasher you can listen to your favourite podcast or playlist, or when you go for a walk you can catch up with an old friend. While we cannot always alter what we do, we sure can change how we do it.
Sometimes it is purely this mindset shift that gives way to the energy you need to cultivate your authentic self. When you are always trapped in disliking your life, it becomes a vicious cycle, which you have to break. You need to flow at a certain frequency. Attitude is contagious and often times how you perceive the small things in life will magnify onto the bigger aspects of your life.
Successful people who pursue their passions don’t necessarily adore every aspect of their life. Nobody lives in a fairy tale. At some point, it is all about approach and intention. Smile more. Laugh more. Celebrate each day more. As cliched as it sounds, it is for this same reason that adopting a gratitude practice everyday has such a resounding impact on our happiness, which you can read more about in this article.
3. Look for Patterns
When it came time to reinvent myself, I had some major homework to do. I took a whiteboard and broke down my life into decades and tried to look for patterns across my life, especially in years, which I deemed to be my best.
Ask yourself these questions:
What do I constantly talk about?
What gets me fired up?
What recurring patterns keep appearing in my life?
In my case, I noticed that I always loved communicating a message. In school, I loved presentations, at work I loved presenting sales pitches to our clients, as an entrepreneur, I enjoy public speaking to motivate other entrepreneurs. This recurring pattern of communicating and inspiring people makes public speaking something I am passionate about. It is important to note that just because you are passionate about something it does not mean it doesn’t feel difficult or terrifying at times. Like everything else, practice, practice, and more practice is essential to mastering the skill.
In many cases, you can incorporate your passion into your existing line of work. For example, if you like to public speak you can take on more opportunities at your existing job. And that is the beauty. Exploring your passion does not have to lead to drastic outcomes. It can in some cases but it doesn’t have to. Maybe you just like to post inspirational quotes on social media or draw beautiful images for your Instagram. These are all passion projects that are important no matter how insignificant they may seem. It is important to not let your logic take you away from what makes you happy.
By following these steps, you will be able to see your life in a different light bringing focus to areas of passion that you may otherwise have dismissed. Society glorifies people who pursue their passions only when they reap the potentially large rewards of fame or monetary success. The media does not like to shed light on the long and winding path most visionaries who followed their heart had to go through. Instead, our psyche is constantly bombarded with stories of “overnight success,” which in reality are a decade in the making. Be patient. Become more self aware about how your project your energy. Bring intentionality and enthusiasm to all aspects of your life. Radiate the energy you hope to receive. Experiment. Be consistent. Don’t be afraid. If this finance girl can shift gears to spend more time lost with words and pursue her ambition to publish a book, anything is possible. You just have to start.
