In Part 1 we started laying the foundation for the passion conversation so if you haven’t read it yet, please, go familiarize yourself with it and then come back to continue here.
Here’s a quick recap of the first part.
We started by looking at the roots of the problem and understanding the bigger picture. We talked about conditioning, feeling stuck, authenticity, and connecting to your deep desires.
I also gave you a couple of simple activities that you could perform to get the party going.
As you remember passion is a blend of discovery and creation. So let’s keep peeling those layers of discovery and talk more about it.
In this part, I’m going to share a powerful distinction that I mentioned in part one. It’s certainly helped me understand my natural tendencies and inclinations, things that are easy and effortless, things that made me feel empowered and at my best.
And passion is just like that. It’s not the one and only thing in the world. It’s more like 50 shades of gray.
Remember my childhood story? Well, let me remind you and then we’ll see if you can relate.
I wanted to become a pilot. But, really, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew what I liked – and those things were changing as I was growing up.
I really liked flowers and house plants and, at some point, it got out of control: we had over a hundred of them. Then I got into aquariums. Then I decided that I was going to play piano for the rest of my life; that never happened.
So my interests were evolving. And if there was one thing I was sure of, it was this: I was very different from my brothers. I knew I could never be like them, and I’ve actually tried.
My youngest brother was a great soccer player, he competed in national championships. Guess how long I lasted after joining the training?
2 months.
I pushed myself as hard as I could. Not only was I lacking certain physical characteristics – I simply didn’t have that much muscle and strength in my legs. I mean, my legs are fine but they are not going to provide me with world-class performance.
But also there was a bigger problem: I really wasn’t interested. In fact, I was bored.
I’m pretty sure you’ve been in a similar situation before.
Think back to when you were at school. Even then there were disciplines that you were just getting, easily and effortlessly, without paying much attention or much preparation.
In those classes time flew by while in others it felt like an eternity. Those were not necessarily your passions because they were affected by different factors like teachers, schools (if you were attending several of them), friendships, hormones that started hijacking your intelligence at a certain age. Well, you get the point. All I’m saying is that they were things that were easy and fun and those are the clues we are after.
The world can be a great place. It can be a place where you get to be challenged just in the way you like to be challenged and make the kind of difference only you can make.
Unfortunately, the research shows that only 2 out of 10 people get to live like that. And if you follow the path of the remaining eight then one day you are going to find yourself at a job where you really don’t feel engaged or excited just putting in the hours until the weekend comes, where you really don’t care or worse, where you feel burnt out, drained, exhausted, trapped, ultimately living the second version of someone else’s life, not even yours, because you never wanted this for yourself in the first place.
Question is: how do you get to build that kind of passionate life?
Well, in order to do that, we’d have to blow up a couple of myths.
1. As you grow older your personality changes
The opposite is actually true. I’m not saying people don’t change, sometimes they do. But hear me out on this: if you are great at making friends right now, you are going to be even greater at making friends in 20 years; if you are a “clean freak” now, you are going to be an even “cleaner freak” at 50 or 60 or later in life; if you are an “idea man”, it’s very likely that you will be an “idea man” for the rest of your life.
Our dreams may change, our skills may change, our values may change, even some of our beliefs may and will change but the core of you will remain the same.
If our inclinations and tendencies will remain pretty much the same throughout the course of our lives it makes a lot of sense to find out what they are.
We’ve been raised to believe that our strengths are the things that we are good at, and our weaknesses are things that we are bad at. But that’s not so. Think about it: you’ve got some stuff that you’re really good at but you hate doing.
What do you call it when nature gave you a ton of ability but no appetite at all? When a thought of doing something you could just nail bores you to death or worse makes you anxious. Is that a strength?
You know, I sing. A few years ago I was sitting in a class looking at my teacher’s process while she was working with other vocalists. At that time I was far from having a solid technique (and maybe I’m still far now). Anyway, you know what started happening?
More and more often she started turning back to me asking me to explain to other students what they were doing wrong. That’s because I could hear everything without even special training.
After a while, she started saying that I was so good that I should become a music critic or a voice teacher. Maybe she thought I wasn’t that good of a singer. Hmm.
But I knew in my gut that I didn’t want to do any of those things for a living.
So what do you call this awesome hearing talent?
In this framework where we are trying to find a passion that we’d be excited to work on and make a living off of that’d be called a weakness. And of course, a strength would be the opposite.
You need to pay incredibly close attention to how you feel before, during and after an activity. Because those are the best clues towards your strengths.
If before performing an activity you find yourself looking forward to it, that’s a sign of strengths. During – you’re in the zone, time flies. And after you feel fulfilled or even jazzed, that was a sure sign of strength.
Muy importante!
Here’s what you can and should do.
Go on a weeklong self-discovery adventure!
Every time you find yourself looking forward to something, jot it down. You can use a notebook app on your phone or just plain pen and paper. Any time you find yourself being in the zone thoroughly enjoy the process, take note of that. And every time you find yourself enthused after performing an activity, note that too.
The important thing is that you do it right there in the moment. Be descriptive, be vivid and specific.
Don’t wait until the end of the day or the end of the week to write it all down – you’ll be too vague then.
Try to use lots of actionable verbs. For example, I felt strong when I helped an elderly lady cross the street. Or I felt empowered when I organized my desk.
Then, at the end of the week, you’ll have a long list of activities. Just scan through and pick three, those are the best clues to your strengths.
Now, you might be saying, what about being a well-rounded person? Well, let’s see about that.
2. A myth of being a very well rounded person
If you want to get ahead in life, you need to figure out what you are not good at and fix it, right? Wrong!
Remember when you would come back from school with an A, a B, and an F? Everyone – your parents and the teachers – what would they focus on? The F!
I remember going to my first performance review at work. My boss spent about a couple of minutes saying what I did well and really drill down for the rest of the hour telling me what needed to be fixed. Of course, what needed to be fixed were my weaknesses.
The point here isn’t to ignore them. You can’t ignore the F at school just like you can’t ignore your weaknesses at work. But if you focus your time on fixing your weaknesses, I can assure you, you’ll never grow much in those areas nor will you feel particularly passionate.
You are going to improve most, grow most, learn most, develop most, bounce back fastest when you are working on your strengths. You’ll be most productive, effective, resilient and joyful when you figure out how to play to your strengths.
Think about the most successful and effective people you know. Don’t they seem to spend a whole lot of time doing what they love? And you think to yourself, how the heck do find this thing that fits you so perfectly?!
The truth is that they built it gradually by dedicating more and more time doing the things that energized and motivated them and staying away from those dreadful things until one day the best of their job became the most of their job.
You gotta deliberately push your time towards working on your strengths.
It can be as simple as focusing on one single strength you are going to be working on this particular week.
I know, it’s hard to stick to your guns in a world with so much prejudice. Where everyone tells you what you should do, what education you should get, what job you should try and get to make it in life.
It takes a strong person to hold your ground. And I must say, there is a risk to this journey. I never said that passionate life was safe or secure. Quite the opposite in fact.
You might be misunderstood and criticized and lacking support. Anything and everything will try to derail you.
Just about when you get clear on who you are and what you want to do with your life, the universe will start challenging you. Unexpectedly, you’ll get that raise at work you’ve been “dreaming of”. Only now you know that it was perhaps someone else’s dream and your own vision is different.
And if you are not careful you may wind up overly promoted at in a job that you never wanted in the first place! Some say it’s a nice problem to have. Believe me, it’s not. I’ve seen too many people who are getting a very generous pay, and yet they don’t feel that this is it. Unfortunately, at some point in their lives, they’ve bought into these myths that we’ve just demystified.
Here’s a final question that I have for you: do you think that at some point in life the risk of remaining a bud will be greater than the risk of blossoming?
You’ve got strengths and no-one else has quite the same configuration.
Let tomorrow begin with you looking into the mirror and saying, let me today play to my strengths. And then go and do it!
In the next post, I’ll continue talking about passion and will share a powerful tool that’ll propel you in your journey towards discovering your passion.
Until then, go do your homework. Get on that week-long self-discovery adventure and see what you can learn about yourself.
\What are your strengths? Have you figured them out or are you still looking? What did you learn about yourself during that week-long experiment?
XO,
Peter
