How to find your passion is a great question to ask throughout your career. If you are anything like me and about 90% of the work force, then finding your passion is not an easy journey.
When I was a senior in college, I asked myself this question and couldn’t come up with an answer. So I applied to 5 different type of jobs and chose the one that gave me the most skills to do whatever I want afterwards – a McKinsey Analyst. I have since asked myself this question every 2 years and only now, 15 years later, do I have a clearer picture of one of my passion – helping people with work smart and live more through this website.
In this article, I want to share with you what 3 common mental obstacles we encounter when trying to find our passion, one exercise you can do to overcome these mental obstacles, and 3 questions you can ask yourself to find your passion.
How to Find Your Passion – 3 Common Mental Obstacles
- Feeling too Responsible – Usually this comes in terms of financial responsibilities to pay rent/mortgage, car, kids’ education. Sometime, pursuing our passion requires some financial sacrifice initially and many of us can’t even acknowledge what our passion is without considering the financial responsibilities we have on our shoulders.
- Fear – what if I can’t do it? We dismiss passions we may have for painting, or starting a new business immediately because we are worried about failure.
- What Others Think – Whether we admit or not, what others people think of our career move matter way too much in our lives.
How to Find Your Passion – Do This Exercise
- I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
- I wish I didn’t work so hard
- I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
- I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
- I wish that I had let myself be happier
Reading this prompted me to come up with this exercise on how to find your passion. In our 20s, 30s, 40, even 50s, we rarely think about dying. It’s morbid and depressing. However, knowing you will die soon also give you clarity and can quickly help you break down the mental obstacles (crap) you hold in your logical mind. So to do this exercise, allocate an hour somewhere in your house or a cafe and imagine what if you are told you have just one more year or one more month to live, then ask yourself these 3 questions in order to find your passion.
- As you face death, what is your biggest REGRET of what you didn’t do in life? This question overcome the fear mental obstacle. There is no bigger fear than death, so assuming you will die soon, what do you wish you would have tried to do in your life regardless of success or failure? This will give you some ideas about the passion you have been too afraid to try.
- If you had financial security already, what would you do for free? It doesn’t matter how much money you have and what fancy cars you drive, you cannot take any of it with you when you die. What you can take with you, as the article indicates, is the feeling that you allow yourself to be happy in your life and you were true to yourself. So setting aside financial responsibilities, what would make you happy? What do you want your legacy to be when you die? This question overcomes the responsibility mental obstacle and also gives you an indication of your passion
- As you face death, what one thing you wish you had done that you know others may disapprove of? By asking the question this way, you overcome the what other people think mental obstacle. Death makes us face reality about what we really want in life and how we really feel about things. The truth is people are usually too worried about their own lives to disapprove of any of your decision.
I leave you with the final sentence from “Five Regrets of the Dying” article – “Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.”
– Lei
I’m in my second semester as an MBA candidate and am taking a Career Management course. I stumbled upon this while doing other research and read quite a few articles already. I enjoyed this exercise because I do think about death (not in a morbid way, but more-so “would I be happy with my life as I’m living if I died” way) and it put into perspective. I just don’t know what to make of my answers. 1. I would join the military (fear, absolutely, and my family have kept me from this) 2. Build homes with Habitat for Humanity… Read more »
It sounds like you are a very giving person and find true happiness from defending our country, helping the poor, and/or becoming a mother. I would take action as motion creates emotion. Explore options as to how you can use your business degree to give back to the community
– maybe join a non-profit.
– maybe find out if the military need business people
Keep exploring so you can figure out how to merge your talents with your passion. Best wishes,
Lei
I was helping a person, who was close to retirement, transition into a new career and my client said there wasn’t anything that he wanted to do but take an early retirement and go fishing. I looked way back in his career and noticed he used to work on helicopters. When I asked him about this I could see (and feel) the passion. Long story short my client went to work for Bell Helicopters 2 months later. His position would be viewed as a few steps back by some but now my client is loving life and he views his… Read more »
Ron, thanks for sharing this story. Very helpful
I’ve tried. But I think that, maybe, at some point in your life you (me) have already realized that your passion(s) wouldn’t conduct you to succeed. I am 45, and I love singing, and listening to music, and writing about my feelings and thoughts, and reading; enough to realize that I am not going to make a living on any of this – moreover, I wouldn’t be able to do what is required to professionally sing or write. There has to be something else besides passion, then… or maybe I am still blocked by one of those three obstacles… Interesting… Read more »
Maria, Thanks for sharing your thoughts. If I may, it sounds like you are still blocked by two of the mental obstacles 1. fear, as you said ” I wouldn’t be able to do what is required” 2. feeling responsible “I am not going to make a living…” Since you like to sing and write, perhaps you can think of more options than doing it professionally. What about teaching singing or writing? Try to brainstorm as many options as possible that would involve writing or singing or both. As I read your comment, I realized perhaps there is one more… Read more »
Although Carlos Castaneda has been discredited, he did introduce to a larger audience the existential exercise of using death as an advisor. (Many of them admittedly stoned at the time.) In Castaneda’s mythology, death was a crow that sat on your left shoulder. It’s mere presence filtered much of the trivial. An awareness of mortality and transience is also at the heart of the Japanese aesthetic. In our culture a momento mori on the mantle is considered morbid but then our culture isn’t noted for self-awareness.
Thanks for your comment. Glad you tried the exercise. Based on your comment, it sounds like you are trying to figure out what your legacy is and how to best provide for your children. That’s also good to know but I think different from discovering your passion. I think you are still blocked by the first mental obstacle – feel responsible in this case for your kids. I have two kids myself so I understand the instinct. Finding your passion however should be focused on what you would love to do. The theory is if you do what you… Read more »
I did the 3 questions to finding your passion, and realized because I have a toddler, my answers are different than they would have been prior to not having a child. Much of my focus in my answers related to creating a future for my son and recording my voice so he could know me if i died…and telling him life advice to help him as he got older. I don’t know if most other people’s answers revolved around their children either…