The Secret to Finding Your Passion Isn’t What You Think

Nobody knows what their true life calling is but it can be found.

To make you feel better, we are all pretty much making it up as we go along.

I can tell you from my experience, whether it be a business or a hobby, that having a passion can take your life to a whole new level.

If you don’t want to hear my story, continue to scroll down but…

Let Me Tell You About My Passions.

I literally wake up excited to live every single day because of my passions.

I began my career sixteen years ago as a designer and developer. I also worked in video games for a decade. I am a creative at heart and still love running my creative agency however in the last few years, I realized my true passion was writing.

When I was working a full-time job, I always came home to write whether it was on my blog, Twitter threads, or captions on Instagram (which of course, no one reads).

But the point is: I wrote for myself! I didn’t care to make any money off of it.

Two Passions That Compliment Each Other

The other thing I am extremely passionate about that compliments writing is cycling. They both get me deep into flow state and let me sort out the billions of ideas and thoughts circulating in my mind.

Cycling not only prevents me from sitting at my desk all day but that’s where all the magic happens and why I never run out of ideas or face creative blocks.

Insights only happen when your rational mind shuts down and being immersed in nature does exactly this.

New correlations between completely different subjects are made.

Absolute clarity is found.

Aside from my day job, I spend at least 1–2 hours per day on my bicycle. Then I dedicate a couple of hours to writing — professionally and personally — because I like to do things that keep my mind healthy, stimulated, and energized. I would always choose meaningful work over a high paycheck.

First, Let’s Reframe Passion

Let’s drop the word “passion” because we are going to use my favorite word: ENERGY.

Instead ask yourself: What energizes me? What expands me? By doing this, you are focusing your attention on activities that energize you because energy creates momentum. You will naturally gravitate towards it, spending more time until you become an expert.

Some things that could energize you:

• Solving problems.
• Creating teams.
• Saving costs.
• Enhancing relationships.
• Creative/Innovate thinking.
• Inventing products.
• Inspiring people.

The secret is that passions aren’t found — they are developed.

Writing and cycling didn’t fall into my lap. I followed what energized me and maintained momentum.

I write almost daily even though no one may read it. I’ve been blogging for 17 years and physically writing in my journal daily for 3 years. I even spend a lot of time crafting captions on my Instagram posts knowing 99.9% of people don’t read on that platform.

But we do these things for ourselves.

I’ve been clipping in on my road bike daily for a decade, rain, snow, sun — it’s hardwired into my brain like brushing my teeth.

Because I stayed consistent, the benefits took my well-being, happiness, and fulfillment to a whole new level:

• Writing allows me to sort out my thoughts and create a side income I do purely for passion and doesn’t feel like work. I’m also obsessed with learning and writing about a subject is the best way to learn.
• Cycling allows me to burn thousands of calories seemingly effortlessly, live in a constant state of awe, build insane resilience and mental toughness, have confidence in myself, be able to enjoy productive time with friends, and go on indescribable adventures around the world. The best thing is that cycling contributes tremendously to my creative process.

“Anything that gets your blood racing is probably worth doing.” — Hunter S. Thompson

Lighting A Spark: How to Begin Exploring Your Passions

First of all, don’t quit your job because you have bills to pay but this is something you should consider doing on the side. Besides, you want to keep this process fun because once something becomes a chore, you will lose interest quickly.

1) Time Travel To Your Childhood.

It’s time to revive your child-like curiosity. What did you like to do when you were little? Were there things you resisted doing because it deemed unconventional or odd?

• If you were passionate about sports, make workout videos on TikTok daily. This could lead you to become a trainer selling programs online.
• If you loved writing, choose a platform and start writing every day. You can become an expert on a topic and generate an income by doing affiliate marketing or storytelling which is crucial in marketing.
• If you loved helping others, find a niche and get a life coach certification.
• If you loved to cook, create a cooking channel on Youtube that you can work towards monetizing.
• If you were always building things, look into engineering. There is no shortage of jobs out there.
• If you were always drawing, look into the design. Better yet, couple it with user experience design which is a necessity in every industry.
• If you were always finding ways to make money like a lemonade stand or selling used items, perhaps you were meant to be an entrepreneur.

Remember, don’t expect to earn any money from it right away. Do it because you love it.

2) Intentionally try different things until you find something you like to do.

Curiosity is the new intelligence so let it guide you.

It will come naturally if you consistently push yourself to experience new things. Being exposed to endless information creates opportunities.

For example, if you are interested in digital marketing, you need to learn multiple skills such as copywriting, sales, SEO, and understanding design thinking — which may force you to try many of these. Then you realized you really enjoyed figuring out algorithms. From there, you discovered you love data. Then begins your journey as a Data Scientist and you discover you are quite good at it! You come up with an idea to create SaaS company to help others manage data. You are suddenly an entrepreneur. You realize you are passionate about building products that solve problems and it fills you with excitement every single day.

Of course, you could have stopped and settled anywhere within that journey but that’s just a high-level example.

Whether it be an entrepreneur, a writer, a coach, an engineer, a nutritionist, or selling a product — you won’t get anywhere unless you started from zero.

Don’t rush and trust the process.

It is your pursuit of passion that will be what you remember.

Why People Never Find Their Passion

They quit too soon.

Stanford did a study on finding your passion.

People who find their passions have a growth mindset.

Those who can’t seem to have a fixed mindset — instead of luxuriating in the power of yet, they were gripped in the tyranny of now. They want to go straight to their passion without going through the journey.

As the cliche goes: life is about the journey, not the destination.

If passions are developed, you need to do things consistently. Habits are formed by taking small actions daily even if it’s reading five pages per day or watching one online course or Youtube tutorial per day. Consistency rewires your brain.

Nothing worthwhile comes easy.

Now ask yourself: how bad do you want it?

No one is going to do this for you.

Now go get it!

Stay curious. Plant seeds. 🌱