These techniques will help you if you are struggling to find your passion: the one thing that would light you up, something that wouldn’t feel like working at all.
If you look around, all you see are people who dedicated their lives to something they love more than anything else? Just not you… You have a hard time finding one thing you are passionate about.
As a matter of fact, you might be passionate about many things. You have awesome hobbies, things that make you happy and give you energy.
If you think none of them could be done for a living, check out the following steps.
1. Answer the following questions:
Maybe people open up to you easily and tell you about their life, problems, achievements, dreams.
You might be good at numbers and used to help your colleagues with excel sheets, accounting or monthly reports.
Do you love to decorate, draw or paint and used to prepare personalized gifts, little artworks for everyone?
Have you noticed you love working on projects rather than having a job with recurring situations and tasks?
Analyze the answers and look for patterns.
2. What is the one topic you keep thinking of, reading of every single day and don’t get tired of it?
Something you love to talk about with your friends or basically anyone. This is a good place to start from.
3. How would you spend your days and weeks if you were financially free?
Set aside and describe what you would do, how much time you would spend on different tasks and activities.
Visualize your life if money were no object.
What would fulfill you on the long term? Start with that.
4. Make a list of things you like to do – big or small. Just start writing.
When you have at least 10-15 items, prioritize them.
Do they have something in common? Which one are you the most passionate about?
5. Start executing your list.
Yes, try out all the things you’ve listed. You have found some activities you like and now you have to check if you would like to do them for a living. It’s very simple: You can’t know if it’s really for you until you do it.
You have to impersonate the new identity and everything it requires, you have to feel it.
Do you want to live in a different part of the country or the world? Go and book a vacation there.
Well, you might say, you have to have that position, that special job to really try it and it’s not possible right now. You can volunteer, do an internship or simply pick a job that is in a similar environment you want to work in. Focus on the activities that come with the job and start testing them.
What if you want to be a surf instructor? During your next holiday, be it!
Plan your days as you would in that position, help beginners, spend the necessary time on the beach explaining to them the basics and in the water supporting them. Act as if you would be living that life already.
What if you want to be a location-independent VA or content manager? With half of the world being in lockdown and working from home right now, it’s the best time to try it! It’s important to test if you could really be productive at home, in a coworking space, on a bench in the park all the time.
The point is to get creative and have the closest possible experience of your desired future. You have to be clear about the ups and downs of these lifestyles.
Bonus: Future Friday
In my last job as an employee, I made a deal with my boss: We agreed that I took every Friday off until the end of the year. It was October 2020 and I was very happy about having short weeks and long weekends for 3 months. My job at the company did not fulfill me at all and I was looking for ways to bring my future self a step closer. So, I invented Future Friday, a day when I acted like I was already living my life as a successful entrepreneur: I went to a lovely little restaurant and worked from there on my website, took a long walk in the forest in the middle of the day, wrote an article for my blog from a fancy café. These moments were so precious to me. They gave me the feeling the life I wanted was accessible and believe me, it’s an amazing feeling.
Dr. Joe Dispenza says: “Nobody changes until they change their energy. When you change your energy, you change your life.”
Future Friday is exactly this, a day you change your energy and feel your future. This way, you get one step closer to it.
These techniques help you get clear about your passion, which activity is worth planning a living around it, and how to test them. Try them out and let me know how it goes.
Have fun!
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