When we are children we naturally do and follow what we are most passionate about. We ARE the astronaut landing on the moon, the soccer star scoring the winning goal, the adventurer sailing the high seas and climbing the highest mountain.
We don’t know limits and the world is alive with infinite opportunity for achieving our dreams. However, so often this passionate pursuit is slowly downgraded to a more realistic goal, one where you are more likely to achieve and to get a job doing.
We can suddenly wake up an adult, doing a job that pays the bills, provides the financial stability but still leaves us subtly or majorly empty of inspiration. So what can we do?
Asking the Right Questions
This is the first stop to shake yourself out of the stagnancy of habitually doing the same routine work by default. Questions that give you direct access to the core of your being, that let you feel clearly your inner truth of what you truly love doing.
Here follows some of the most powerful questions I have come across for finding what one is truly passionate about (inspired by Scott Dinsmore’s cool work at Live Your Legend.
Signposts to Passion
Take some time to answer all the questions writing down your answers. Go with a brain-storming gut feel response style of answering to eliminate as much as possible rational thinking which normally has fear floating around it always.
- If you knew you could not fail, what project or job?
- You have won a record sum in the lottery. How would you chose to spend your days?
- What topics do you argue passionately about? What beliefs do these stances take?
- What activities do you naturally find yourself experiencing flow, completely losing awareness of time?
- Where in life do you massively over-deliver with no wish for monetary gain, purely doing the act for pleasure?
- What makes you happiest in your life?
- In moments of your week that you may feel invincible, what are you doing or what are you speaking about?
- What do people spontaneously thank you for?
- On reflection, what are you ridiculously good at? What do feel are your most precious gifts to give to the world?
- If you could choose one mentor, literally anyone in the world, who would it be and why?
- What humans inspire you to the depths of your being with their gift to the world? What is it about these people that inspires you so much?
- If you had the belief that you could be, do or have whatever you want, what would you choose to create with your life?
- What are you most afraid of for the next generation?
- What makes you angry with the world?
- What do you love helping friends with?
- In a bookstore, what is your favourite section?
- If your art or gift could support your life, how would you live?
- At your funeral, what would you love to be remembered for most by those whose lives you touched during your life?
- What was your dream job as a boy?
- You have free time to surf the net…What do you look at?
- If you could publish one book to help change the world for the better, what would it be about? What would the title be?
This One is For Free
This last question, is the one that when I answered it honestly I decided to change my job immediately.
You have your three favourite books by experts you admire in your current field of work and your three favourite books of the topic you are most passionate about. Given just thirty minutes spare time in your day to read which stack of books would you enthusiastically reach for most and why?
Follow Your Bliss
Joseph Campbell wrote we should follow our bliss as the road to our greatest success. Doing so unlocks the purest inspiration to burst from deep within us to give our gift to the world.
Such a power, never experienced in mundane work, has the capacity to overcome any obstacle placed before us.
Leaders Take The First Step
Take whatever steps you can to awaken your most inspired self in your current work. Offer only your best self to the world.
And if needed, allow yourself the freedom to check out what are the infinite possibilities to live the dream job you may have unlocked from these reflections today. You never know what sort of crazy, beautiful future it may help launch you into manifesting before your very eyes.