How to Find Your Purpose in Life and Do what you love
Over the past four years I have been focused on learning as much as I possible can about achieving happiness and personal development. Topics such as figuring out why only three percent of the population possesses 90 percent of the wealth. One of the most motivating patterns I’ve seen since studying successful people is that they all do what they love. Someone like Steve Jobs who innovated the technology industry, and Tony Robbins who inspired millions of people to attain success and believe in themselves. I believe the passion of such individuals is nurtured from a deeper purpose and a passion for growth. A desire to help other people and add value to peoples lives. Many people go through life not necessarily doing what they love, but doing what feels safe.
Imagine if everyone did what brought them excitement and happiness. How different would society look? I see more and more people everyday pursuing their passions and taking action in the direction of their dreams. I believe we are living in a time where more people are claiming their power and not settling with the old paradigm. With technology progressing at a fast rate, it opens up opportunities for jobs that didn’t exist a decade ago. Many people make a living expressing themselves online through YouTube or a blog. People can promote ideas and start movements simply by posting it online. The power of the internet is the most powerful form of technology because it connects everyone to each other instantly.
It’s a beautiful time we live in and the opportunities are endless. Through researching and studying highly successful people who are living their passions, I have found some consistent characteristics that I believe can help people find and live their passions and help you learn how to find your purpose in life.
The First key to figuring out what your passion is to simply ask the question. What do you love to do? What are your dreams and aspirations? What do you read about in your spare time? These questions begin to open up a space within you that contains the answer to what you would love to be doing as a career. It could range from drawing, writing, playing sports, doing outdoor activities, teaching, etc. If what you love to do doesn’t seem like you could do it as a career it’s a good time to redefine that belief. Get creative and find an angle that would allow you to do what you love. You are uniquely special and no one else on Earth can do whatever you do the exact same way as you. I believe we all are born with a burning desire to accomplish our dreams but that gets dulled down when our dreams go out of our awareness and we settle with less. The first step is knowing what that vision is. You must be able to see it and visualize it before it manifests in your life. You can have, do, or be anything that you want in life and you harness unlimited potential. Make the intention to figure it out. Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know right now and put pressure on yourself. As long as you put out the intention and ask the question more you will be bringing the answer into your conscious awareness. Allow it to come.
The Second key is to expand your comfort zone. When you become comfortable with your daily routines and activities you are stuck inside that personal bubble. This is one reason why I am starting this blog. It is my desire to add value to people through creating content that may help people and to also push outside of my comfort zone. Pushing to indulge in new activities expands your realm of experience and increases your confidence. When you do something you haven’t done before, you make the unknown become known. Any inspirational person who’s attained massive success has had to push themselves past their comfort zone in order to grow and create opportunity. Try something new, go somewhere you’ve never gone, and be someone you’ve never been.
The Third key is you gotta be hungry. Have a burning desire to always be learning and growing as a person. It will motivate you go in the direction of your passion and to not give up when challenges present themselves. I’ve learned a powerful tool that helps with this key. It’s the tool of pleasure and pain. The way we are wired is that we will always move in the direction of what we perceive brings us pleasure and move away from what we perceive gives us pain. The best part is, we give the meaning to what that is! Perceptions are objective to the person and can be changed by changing how you relate to the external environment. If you were to change your thoughts or beliefs about what feeling a certain activity gives you, you would get a different feeling from it. For example, when you take a puff of a cigarette you may feel pleasure because you’ve trained yourself to associate pleasure with the act of doing it (along with the effect of Nicotine). However, if you change the association of what the act of smoking cigarettes gives you, perhaps you think about someone close to you who passed away because of it, you can rewire your brain toward feeling pain and sorrow with that memory or thought. This is a technique from an area of Neuroscience I love to study called NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programing (I’ll go more into this in a future post). The power in this is that you can use this tool in any area of your life. I have begun associating pleasure with taking action towards my passions and dreams of being a motivational speaker and author and pain with procrastination and passiveness. This habit has caused me to accomplish many things over the course of the last couple months and my hunger and ambition is growing with every action I take. I encourage you to examine your thoughts and to reframe them in a way that brings you closer toward your desires. Within each of us is unlimited potential and the ability to have, do or be anything we desire.
One of my favorite quotes by Steve Jobs: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”
Strive to be better everyday and to learn from your experiences. Believe in yourself. Better-yet, know yourself. Know you can achieve your dreams and desires and that you can enjoy the process along the way. Belief is a powerful thing. Before 1954 running a 4-minute mile was considered impossible. Until Roger Bannister did it, and then within 1 year around many people went on to do it too. All that occurred was a shift in personal belief and a determination to achieve it. If you change the thoughts you think and stretch your limitations, eventually the external reality will begin to reflect that. Change begins within and with the choice to start and I encourage you to start taking action toward achieving your dreams.