7. Cultivate Purpose
"I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want."
- Mark Twain
There's a lot of talk in the world today about finding your passion and living a life of purpose. I'm encouraged that we're thinking about such things because they matter.
I just don't think we can "find" our passion. Countless people have tried and have come up short. I tried for a long time. Is it over here? Nope. Maybe I left it on the table. Uh uh. How about under this rock? Shoot. Fruitless efforts. It's not a game of hide and seek.
Since I couldn't find my passion, I thought I should get good and clear on what a passion is. To me, having a passion for something means that it speaks to your soul... who you are and what you're good at. A passion encompasses your interests, your values and your strengths. It feels so good that you just want to keep doing more of it. You lose time while doing it. You get in a zone... a flow state.
Ok great, now that I know what a passion is, it should be easy to spot, right?
Not so fast. There are a few things to watch out for.
4 things we get wrong about passion
We get focused on searching for one true passion. We can't find it because we don't have just one passion. We have many.
We're looking for something radical. Most passions aren't all that revolutionary. In and of themselves, they probably aren't going to change the world.
We discount our passions. They can seem too easy or obvious to us... because by their nature we're good at them so we take them for granted.
We allow other people's thoughts about our passions dictate whether or not we follow them. Fear of judgment holds us back.
So, we're on the look out for multiple passions, that don't seem all that life-changing, we think are too easy to be good, and other people may judge us.
That'll take the steam right out of a good old fashioned passion hunt!
Our passions might seem obvious and boring to us and weird to others because to qualify as a passion, they must be in alignment with our personality and talents. Too often, we look outside ourselves because we believe the really exciting stuff must exist "out there." It doesn't.
And our passions can seem pretty meaningless or mundane to others because it's not their passion. And it's ok!
You just have to own your weird and get over any judgment here and now!
Take my obsession with personal finance, for instance. I find it endlessly fascinating. There's something so intoxicating about the simplicity of math and discipline to get you to where you want to go! But at first, I didn't see what I was doing as unique enough to be a passion. It seemed easy enough to me. And everyone was spending countless hours researching how to maximize their financial situation, right?
I now recognize it as a passion of mine. It aligns with my values about money and minimalism. It's a good fit for my personality type and what I'm good at. It allows me to flex my endless desire to learn. I can use my Maximizer strength to turn our great financial plan into something superb! What could be more exciting?!?
Lots of things... to lots of other people.
My husband enjoys my beloved personal finance for the 10 minutes he needs to learn about a particular topic and put it to good use. He just doesn't get my desire work and rework financial projections into the wee hours of the night. It just doesn't float his boat. Go figure.
It's up to us to collect these quirky things we like to do and accept them as our passions. When we group them together and start right actions in accordance with them, we're on our way towards purpose.
WHAT IF I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MY LIFE?
First things first. Most people have no clue what they're doing in life. We just pretend like we do.
Sure, some people know from an early age exactly who they are and what they want to do. And in rare cases, some even pursue that childhood dream. In even rarer cases, it was everything they hoped it would be.
The problem I have is that like many, many people, I had no freaking idea what I wanted to do with my life.
It's not that I didn't have any ideas on what to do. My problem is that I have too many ideas. I'm interested in lots of different things, across multiple disciplines. According to Emilie Wapnik, I'm a multipotentialite.
While I was pleasantly surprised to find that I wasn't a lone freak, my abundance of ideas caused me to spin for years. I was having such a hard time figuring out what to do, that I just kept doing what was comfortable. I pushed myself the only way I knew how... in the traditional system.
People who struggle with what to do usually fall into two groups:
Team Overwhelm - Those who have so many interests and ideas that they become paralyzed by seemingly infinite choices.
Team Igotnothin - Those that have no clue what they are interests are, and even if they do, they have no idea how to make something meaningful out of them.
Team Overwhelm can't figure out how to sort out their ideas, group them into something that makes sense and take action. Team Igotnothin may not be comfortable enough with themselves and their strengths to understand that there are countless ways that they can provide value in the world and enjoy doing it.
Regardless of which group we struggling folk fall into, it's very unlikely that we'll wake up one day with a flash of inspiration about our life’s purpose. Rather, cultivating purpose is a process that requires discovering our strengths, passions and interests, expanding and narrowing the options so we can craft and shape it
Ok great, so how to we get on to the task of cultivating purpose. A big long to-do list? Great, I love tasks!
Nope. Sorry. It's much more transcendental in nature.
how to cultivate purpose
Alright. Alright. You can make one list before we get to the deep stuff.
Jot down any activity you can think of that brings you joy. What do you do that you would consider doing even if no one asked you to or paid you for? What things make you lose time while doing them?
Those are the gems. The passions you've heard so much about.
Once you have a list of those, start doing more of them. Incorporate them into your right actions. Do a few things in pursuit of your passions that scare you. Over time, you'll start to make connections about how your group of passions might fit together. That's the process of cultivating your purpose.
For example, a few of my passions include:
Writing
Photography
Travel
Personal development
Positive content
I put those together and what did I get? A blog. For me, starting a blog was a right action. Some other related right actions include: dusting off my photo editing skills, learning how to start a website, and starting my own business.
You get the idea.
Let's revisit right action and add a layer of purpose to it. Take enough right actions and you will live in your YOU-niverse. You'll be headed toward fulfillment and living your best life.
THE DEEP STUFF
If you try to reason your way to your purpose you will fail. You may come up with something better than you had before, but you'll be inefficient if you get there at all. The more likely outcome is that you will get stuck overthinking things instead of actually doing things.
So, what does it take? It's something like the action of inaction. This is where you slow your planning, plotting mind. You take a step back and allow your purpose to reveal itself.
What the?
Hear me out.
While it's up to us to know ourselves well enough to take right actions to get us closer to who we are and what will make us feel fulfilled, purpose can't be forced.
All we can do is take a series of right actions to allow passions to grow, develop and merge. Only then will a new perspective begin to emerge, one that could not be reached by reasoning alone. The power is in the doing.
Then we need to relax a bit. Not try to rush or force purpose. We need to let it breathe. Otherwise, we will be tempted to make decisions about it to hurry it along. When we do that, we tend to fall out of alignment with who we are and our purpose is ever more elusive.
Just trust me on this one. Once you get going, you'll see what I mean.
Oh, and don't forget to mediate. Calming your desire to over analyze everything will bring the answer much sooner.
In no time, you'll be on your way to living a life you love.