Find Your Passion- Change Your Life

What’s Your Passion?

Confucius said, “choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Of course that’s a very romantic sounding notion and looks fabulous as a typography print when you run across it on Pinterest, but Confucius didn’t have to worry about making a car payment on time or paying for piano lessons. I believe every single person has a gift to offer the world and your gift usually is your passion. Uber-passionate people tend to be very creative and creatives tend to have difficulty staying focused. I would consider myself an extremely passionate person and I suffer from a serious case of what I call Creative Attention Deficit Disorder or CADD for short. The symptoms include incomplete projects, constantly daydreaming of the next great business idea, required menial day-to-day tasks not getting done like laundry and so on.  Perhaps you’re in this hamster wheel of life and you desire true passion but don’t know where to start. Based on first-hand experience I’m here to offer some advice. 


Answer This Question- If you had hours of uninterrupted time what would you choose to do? 
Do the hours feel like minutes when you’re enveloped in this bliss? If you’re thinking “hey...I’m passionate about surfing the net looking for a cute dress to wear to a wedding I’m going to. I can’t turn that into a job!”. Think again. Maybe you’d be fabulous at spotting fashion trends and blogging about it. 

Ask your friends and family

Maybe you don’t know your passion but the people who love you probably do. Your BFF might tell you that you’re the go-to person for advice. People get paid lots of money to tell other people what’s wrong with them. Just ask Dr. Phil. Perhaps your husband sees a motivated artist in you. This was the case in my life. As a former business owner, my husband saw that I had a natural business sense and the eye for color and design. In fact, one of the first things he ever gave me was the book ‘The Girl's Guide to Starting Your Own Business: Candid Advice, Frank Talk, and True Stories for the Successful Entrepreneur’ by Friedman and Yorio. His confidence in me and feeling that I would learn from a book written by women for women made all the difference in the world. This is a great read, by the way. The authors do a phenomenal job of spelling out all the confusing and boring aspects of starting a business in a fun way. Who knew reading about whether you should form an LLC or a S Corp could be entertaining. 

Stay focused

This can be very hard to do if you’re CADD like me. But it’s absolutely necessary to find your true passion. If you want to dabble around in various passion-finding adventures just pick one at a time. You can take an art class or a sewing class, check out books at the library on a certain hobby or even find someone to show you the ropes.

Start Small- Grow Big

Whether you’re working full-time or you’re a SAHM (the ultimate full-time job) you must carve out a little bit of time every week to find your passion. Once you think you’ve found ‘it’ determine  what you can do to be even better. I started out painting on store bought ceramics with a paint pen and then baking it. I knew I was good at what I was doing but I wasn’t happy with the look of the finished product and felt limited with with what I could do with this method. With zero experience in ceramics and no art background I learned everything I could about kiln-fired ceramics. Slowly but surely I got better and now...I think I’m pretty darn good at what I do!

Your Passion and the Big Bucks

Being really good at something doesn’t always mean you’ll make money at it but you’ll be rewarded in other ways.  Maybe your passion is in ministry or education. Not to say teachers don’t make any money but I bet many would say it sure feels like they’re not getting a paycheck. Maybe your passion is being a mother. If you’re lucky enough to be a SAHM  be passionately good at what you do.

Do Your Homework

If choose the path of self-employment (LOVE!) I suggest you take the time to research and find out what else is out there and work to be different enough to stand out. Small businesses are growing like weeds right now and many of these businesses are SAHM’s turned entrepreneurs. Offering a product or service that’s similar to what someone else has already worked hard to grow will likely be an uphill battle. You want a look or concept that stands out and becomes your signature style. 

My mom often told us growing up that whatever career you choose in life you should be passionate about it. She would say “we need great garbage men as much as we need great doctors.” This has always resonated with me and has changed me in such a way that I don’t believe the most educated person in the room is necessarily the smartest. As cliche as it sounds, life is short and why waste it doing something you don’t love. I feel incredibly blessed to have found my passion. Offer the world your passion and you will be rewarded.