What are you passionate about?
You must not wait for passion to find you
So what?
You need to find your passion. By finding your passion, you will have:
- More personal and professional freedom;
- Improved self-awareness and confidence;
- Increased safety circle; and
- Simpler life.
This post is about why you can’t wait for passion to find you and why you need to find your passion and cultivate it. We will discuss how to find your passion in another post.
The great excuse
People either expect their passion to appear in front of them or use the absence of passion for their inaction, stagnating job prospect or progression, crappy relationships and financial stress. Whilst these circumstances may have valid reasons, lack of passion is not one that you can stand your ground on.
Some people go as far as blaming their “lost” passion as if passion just walked out on them.
Areas of passion
Passion can be found in just about anything you do. It can be separated into three main areas as follows:
- Interpersonal: Activities that you do yourself such as gardening, writing, blogging, collecting, cooking and drawing. These involve no one else except for yourself.
- Intrapersonal: Activities that you do with others such as online gaming, travelling, volunteering and public speaking.
- Professional: Activities that involve your job, career or your business. These can be anything and involve you partaking them in exchange for money.
Follow your passion
We all know the saying “follow your passion”. It’s the most common piece of advice you come across when you are looking for a new job or hobby. As the saying goes, following your passion requires you to have identified your passion. You will not have anything to follow if you don’t first find your passion. In order for you to follow something, you need to identify what you are following.
As important as finding your passion is, you need to realise that it’s a lifelong journey. Finding and cultivating your passion, that is. Passion can’t be found by simply thinking about it. Passion comes and lives in your emotions and feelings (i.e. your heart). It’s what gives you energy and enthusiasm. You sustain at what you do longer and people will take notice. Procrastination and resistance will no longer be part of your dictionary.
Something as important and rewarding as this will not just appear in front of you or simply leave your side. You need to work for it. To close with another cliche, your life is not served on a silver platter.
My experience
I admit that I was never smart. I’m not the smartest, fastest or strongest in any room. The only thing that is going for me is that I work hard. That is how I found my passion for accounting. After graduating high school with average marks, I got into an average university. A lot was riding on my uni enrolment as the first one in my family to attend university for a four-year degree and having come from a poor background. Costing AUD45,000 a year, it was not cheap or easy to attend. Not wanting to waste my opportunity, I spent every day at the uni library studying and never missed a class. All the while having two part-time jobs to pay for tuition, room and board. Through hard work, I did well in my classes and eventually graduated at the top of my class. I learned (and almost forced) myself to become passionate about accounting which I eventually landed a job with and have been practicing for more than a decade.
What now?
- Bin the belief that passion will find you.
- Stop using passion as your inaction.
- Follow your passion.