Let me ask you a personal question: do you have a passion problem? I’m not asking about your hormonal levels but about your life’s passion. Money, responsibilities, others’ opinions aside, what do you really want to do with your remaining days?
This can be a really hard question for a lot of people to answer. It was for me too. There I was, for decades, working in a respectable career that I was pretty good at and which paid the bills — but I always a had a little itchy sense that I should be doing something else.
I just didn’t know what.
These days I am finally following my passion. I spend all day making stuff. I write. I draw. I read. And I talk to my friends about the stuff we make together.
I never dread going to work. I’m never bored. I don’t hate my boss. In fact, my biggest problem is that I don’t really want to ever take a day off. Weekends and vacations are less fun that pursuing my passion.
How did I get to be so lucky?
Perhaps that’s the key to discovering your passion. Or should I say re-discovering your passion.
Ask yourself: What did I love to do when I was a kid — before I had to worry about earning a living?
Did you love dressing up? Playing games? Telling stories? Making believe? Playing cops and robbers? Climbing trees? Building forts? Reading stories? Singing and dancing? Riding your bike? Playing with your pets? Coloring? Watching cartoons?
How true to that are you now? What element of that thing you loved to do is still present in your life? Is there a hint of it? This was the root of your true passion and calling. How could you reclaim some part of it?
When I was a little kid, I was obsessed with books. I made them. Illustrated them. Wrote them. Read them. Arranged them. Collected them. Dreamt about them.
And now I spend my day writing books and running a company whose middle name is Book. Despite all the things I do, that is still my love. But it took me quite a while to be honest with myself and figure out how to live true to my passion.
Have you found your passion? Are you living it every day?
