Since posting about Finding Your Super Power, I’ve had some folks reply and ask me how to find their passion. They’re into lots of different activities and organizations that they love, so how do they narrow it down? It’s a good question and one I had to really think about before coming up with an answer.
Experiment
Finding your passion will mean failing at some point. By “failing” I simply mean you will hit a dead end. This is a good thing. To find your true passion you’re gonna have to weed out the things that don’t really matter in order to focus on the things you love.
Start with a list of things you really love to do. Focus on them individually and keep track of your thoughts about each one on a separate piece of paper. Take as much time as you need to discover your thoughts and feelings for each one. Begin experimenting and eliminating the activities that lead to dead ends. If you burn out too quickly or the subject doesn’t consume your interest, then it’s a dead end. Mark it off the list and move on. It’s simple trial and error discovery.
Don’t be afraid to try something completely new. Growing up I had plans to be a musician or a basketball player. While I really enjoyed those things, they never completely consumed me the way Girls Can’t WHAT? does. I live, eat and breathe this web site. I think about it constantly and that passion keeps me grounded in my interactions with the people I meet every day. Had I not started experimenting with computers and the web, I might never have discovered this about myself.
Phone a Friend
Whether we want admit it or not, our friends often know us better than we know ourselves. They see things about us that we don’t – both good and bad. I’ve had moments where I was trying to describe myself in some manner and a good friend will come up with the perfect answer in seconds. They see the real us.
Friends also know what we are passionate about, even when we can’t figure it out. They know our strengths and weaknesses often better than we know them ourselves. Find a close, mature friend and ask them what they think your passion could be. For best results, ask more than one friend. Your friends may not be able to pinpoint it exactly, but you should be able to take their ideas and begin experimenting on your own.
Be Adventurous
Being adventurous is not the same as experimenting. Experimenting implies that you have a hypothesis and you’re doing a very controlled study. Being adventurous means you have no rules, no plan and you’re taking the bull by the horns.
I believe in making mistakes. I like to take risks, learn from them and then take another risk. It’s how I learn and sometimes it’s a scary process. My theme for this year is adventurous. And although I know that my passion is helping women break through stereotypes, I’m really trying to push the envelope this year by growing this web community, making new connections and removing things from this site that don’t matter. I’m taking the content up to a new level and really focusing on where we, as women, can make a difference.
Finding your passion may mean you set sail on a pirate ship and head out on your own path of discovery. It may mean you buck the system or break the rules. It may take you out of your comfort zone and make you squirm. But when you can own it no matter what happens… when you stay awake late at night scribbling down ideas… when you can’t stop thinking about it… then you’ve arrived.
Welcome to your passion.
