Imagine every day being excited about your work and your life.
With a little creative thought and exploration you can discover your passion and find ways to integrate them into your work and your life.
Try these 10 steps to bring passion into your business and your life.
I. Get to know yourself
Take a really close look at your life from your earliest memories to your current reality. Look at all the times you’ve had fun and loved what you were doing. Also take a look at the things that caused you pain or that you felt on a really deep, emotional level. Write them down with a short description.
Pick one example from your list and try to find the reasons why you felt the way you did. Go beyond what you love doing. Break it down into the underlying characteristics.
The question WHY is a powerful tool for your explorations. Asking why will take you to a deeper level of understanding.
2. Brainstorm
Now that you have a better understanding of what your passions are, you can brainstorm some ways that you can work these passions into your business and your life. Make a list and keep it with you so that you can add to it whenever you have another insight.
Be creative and add even your wildest ideas. Just have fun with this exercise.
3. Explore
In this part of the exercise you’re going to do some research to see who is talking or writing about the things you identified as being your passion(s). Take some time to contact them. Ask them questions about their passions. Tell them you’re exploring your options, looking for ways to integrate those passions into your life and business. It’s a great way to get some new ideas you haven’t already thought about. And you might make some great contacts and develop some relationships while you’re at it.
4. Take Baby steps
Don’t overwhelm yourself with these exercises. You need to reserve some energy to actually incorporate your passions into your life and business. If you don’t like to jump off the cliff into the abyss all at once, just take baby steps down. Some people are great at just going for things and others need to take their time. If you keep your focus on the long-term goal you can begin creating your passionate life.
5. Identify your obstacles
Now that you know what your passion is and you’ve looked at what you’d like to do in the long term, and how you can bring it into your life in the short term, you need to identify your obstacles. What is getting in your way?
Now what things are getting in your way? Make a list. Maybe they’re real – financial obstacles or perhaps the need for training. Maybe they are internal obstacles like fear and uncertainty. Figuring out what’s in the way will help you plan for how to minimize its impact. But be careful not to fall into the trap of letting your obstacles take on a life of their own. You’re looking at them to reduce their power, not enhance it.
6. Create a Dream Team
Create a Dream Team to support you in your pursuit. Friends, family, and others can all be a great source of support and inspiration as you make your journey. It can be an informal support network, or a regularly scheduled meeting to exchange ideas and brainstorm solutions to challenges.
7. Consider your definitions of success and failure
What is your definition of success? Is it getting in the way of really pursuing what resonates at a deep level for you? We live in a society that places a lot of emphasis on material accomplishments, power, etc. Unfortunately, that gets in the way of real happiness for a lot of people, who choose to stay on the treadmill in pursuit of that version of success.
Perhaps you’re not at a point where you can or want to change that definition of success. That’s OK, don’t. Instead, try identifying one or two less common ways of identifying “success” – ones that come from the heart – and try to move towards them as well.
Our definition of failure, which tends to be all or nothing, also gets in the way. If you try something and it doesn’t pan out, how do you see that? Is it a failure? Or is it an opportunity to learn from what you did and apply that knowledge to your future efforts.
If you “fail” in an effort to move toward your passion, it’s not really failure. Think of it as a step in the right direction. Taking a longer term view can help with this.
8. Make a plan
Creating a plan will force you to think things through and add some comfortable structure to something that can seem very up in the air and undefined. It will also offer you those critical next steps when you aren’t feeling motivated.
9. Act! Today!
Don’t ever use the excuse of waiting for the right time because the time will never be right. Something is always going to be less than optimum. With that in mind, don’t wait! Do something right now that will move you toward your passion.
10. Commit to making it happen
Let it out of your brain and into the open. Say, “I am going to do this.” Say it out loud to yourself. Say it to a friend. Put it in writing and put it where you can see it. Once it’s out in the open it will have room to grow. And that’s exactly what you want!
What two things can you do right away that will start the ball rolling? They don’t need to be earth-shattering, they just need to happen.
Good luck!
