Too often I hear, “I know I hate my job, but I don’t know either what else I would do- I don’t know where my passion is”. I don’t find it surprising at all! As a matter of fact I have had the same question a while ago; it took me months and years to find out where my passion is.
According to Wikipedia, Passion can be expressed as a feeling of unusual excitement, enthusiasm or compelling emotion towards a subject, idea, person, or object. A person is said to have a passion for something when they have a strong positive affinity for it. In my personal definition passion is something that makes our lives more exciting, meaningful and fulfilling.
As a coach I have learnt a simple methodical approach to help my clients figure out their passion. Basically my approach is to find out the values [see footnote for definition] that are the basic ingredients to make the client excited. My assumption is that if the client is involved in activities that contains those ingredients, they will feel their passion.
I ask the client to do following tasks sequentially:
a. List down some occasions from past when they felt excited and great about themselves.
b. Notice what value or set of values is a recurring theme of those occasions.
c. Try out some activities where they can possibly enjoy the same values (or a subset of it)
d. Notice how it feels – do these activities recreate similar excitement?
As a software engineer I am very much tempted to draw a flow chart and show that this process can repeat until client finds the activities they are excited or passionate about – but you get the idea.
It is very important that the client keeps an open mind, learns from the experience, is ready to take some risk and stretch them in order to find the “perfect” combination of values and the activities to apply those. This is when they will discover their true interest or passion and get excited about their lives once again.
The bigger question however is – how serious is someone to find out their passion? How courageous one can be to face a truth? How ready are they to trade in their personal or financial comfort to make their lives more exciting and fulfilling? All the answers to these questions have to be “very” before they start the quest for their passion.
Note:
Value - Each person has his or her unique priority for personal values. While people tend to feel quite strongly about these qualities, values are neither positive nor negative, nor are they good or bad. They do, however, have a profound influence on the quality of life. Some example of values: courage, innovation, love, care, learning, spirituality, nature, autonomy, accomplishment, community, challenge, etc.
