I have made an observation. Lots of people, specifically teens and tweens, seem to struggle a lot with figuring out what they want to do, who they want to be, and who they want to become. Especially in this day in age. This problem typically seems to stem from not knowing your passion. So that’s why in today’s blog post I’m going to be helping you figure out what your passion is and even how to turn it into a career.
What is a passion?
The first question that may come to mind is what exactly is a passion? Well, the definition of passion is a strong, intense, or barely controllable emotion or enthusiasm for someone or something. Today we’re going to focus on the something. What is the something that gives you purpose and joy?
The three P’s
The three P’s are, Passion, Purpose, and Profession.
Passion = Purpose, Purpose = Profession.
If you find your passion, you find your purpose. Your purpose becomes your profession. And that my friends is how you have a happy, fulfilling life.
Hobbies VS Passions
There is a difference between a hobby and a passion. A hobby is something simple. Something that you enjoy doing, but not something that you would necessarily devote your entire life to.
A passion is something that you love doing so much that you could spend your entire life doing it and learning about it and talking about it. Whether something is a passion or a hobby doesn’t depend on what that thing is. It depends on your devotion to it. For example, you might enjoy baking or jewelry making, but that doesn’t mean you would spend your entire life doing it.
How to actually find your passion
Now that we’ve got all of that stuff understood and out of the way, let’s get into actually how to find your passion.
Ikigai:
You probably have heard this term a lot in your journey of finding your passion and you probably even groaned just now hearing it again. But just stay with me here.
So as you probably already know, Ikigai is the Japanese term for “a reason for being” or “a reason to get out of bed in the morning”. As you might know, there is a formula to help you figure out what your Ikigai is. Now, many people have probably told you to use this formula and you’ve tried it over and over and over again, but can’t seem to get it to work. Am I right? Well, don’t worry. Because today we’re going to be throwing that out of the window. I have made my own set of questions to help you find your Ikigai.
This formula that I have created focuses purely on just trying to find your passion first and then figuring out how to turn it into a career later, rather than the traditional way where you figure out your passion, purpose, and career all in just four questions.
To find you passion, ask yourself these questions and find one answer that is the same for all of the questions–
- What could you do on a daily basis and never get bored of?
- What are you talented at?
- What could you learn about for hours on end?
- What could you talk about passionately for hours on end?
- What makes you blissfully happy?
- What could you not live without?
- What have you liked or been drawn toward ever since you were an infant? (this question doesn’t always apply)
If you’re finding it hard to find an answer to all of these questions, don’t beat yourself up. And don’t start thinking that you are a nobody who has no talent whatsoever. Remember, everyone has a passion. It’s the way of life. Everyone has a role to play in life and that role coincides with their passion. We are born with passions and talents because our passion is our purpose. Everyone has a purpose. Even you.
Trying new things
You can’t find your passion if you don’t try new things. Sometimes your passion is staring you right in the face, sometimes you haven’t even discovered your passion yet, maybe your passion is disguised as something else. But either way, you need to explore. You need to find things that you enjoy doing that’s not something like playing video games (although some people do have a career with this) or talking to friends. You need to try new things like maybe doing pottery, or playing an instrument. You can even just try learning about these things and if it sucks you in, great! If you find yourself getting bored, then move on.
The hard part is finding the time to explore. For most teens nowadays, by the time they are done with school, work, homework, and spending time with family and friends, they’re exhausted. They don’t have time to say, hey, I want to take a nap, but instead I’m going to spend one hundred dollars on a pottery class that I might not even enjoy. And on the weekends they’re either working all day, or spending time with friends and family. It’s their only freetime…and sometimes it’s not even freetime! So then by the time they graduate and it’s actually time to start their career, they have no idea what they want to do…this is a big problem. So how do you prevent this from happening? Well, you’re going to have to take some time away from your social life and explore. I know, this sounds hard. But sometimes you have to make sacrifices for your future self. You could also just homeschool, of course. But that’s not always an option.
Turning your passion into a profession/career
Okay, so typically this is pretty easy…well, at least getting the idea of what career to do is easy. Actually doing it is something else, but we’re not going to get into that right now. Anywho, if you found what your passion is you might already have a career in mind. Like if you answered writing music to all of the questions you obviously are probably like, okay, I’ll become a music artist. But your answer may not have been that clear. Maybe you answered reading to almost all of those questions and you’re like, okay, how in the world would I turn that into a career?
Well, typically in a profession there is the giving side and the receiving side. In a career, you are the giver. You give your product to your customer (the receiver) and get money, right? But maybe your answer to all of the questions is on the receiving side, like reading. Of course a book is a product and if you are using that product, you are on the receiving side. So how do you make that into a career?
Well here’s the thing. The fun thing about a passion is that typically you love everything about it, right? So that means that you probably like being on both the giving and receiving side. So all you have to do to turn your passion into a career is go from being on the receiving side to being on the giving side. For example,
If you have always loved to read and you find yourself always daydreaming, then try writing a book.
If you love to learn, try teaching.
If you love to listen to music 24/7, try picking up an instrument and learning how to play it.
It’s really simple. And honestly, this is the easiest part. Once you actually find what you want to do for your career, you have to pursue it. And that is the hardest part.
That’s basically all I have for you today my friends. I really hope this blog post was helpful and that I was able to help you find your purpose. Now, remember, just because you love doing something doesn’t mean it will always be easy. It’s going to take a lot of work to get where you need/want to be. But I believe in you. You can do it! We are all capable of doing hard things. It only makes us stronger. And it will all be worth it in the end. Once you find your passion and start acting on it and figuring out how to use it, I promise you will start to see a change in yourself. You will be happier than you ever have been before because you’ll finally know what to do with your time. You’ll be working, but working on something you enjoy. And that is the ultimate goal in life.
I love you guys and I will talk to you in the next blog post.
Hugs,
