Pejman GhadimiThe majority of people become passionate about something at one point or another, but few turn their passion into a successful business venture that enable them to work on what they care about every day.
It’s important to note the fine line between what you love and what you’re passionate about. I’ve always loved learning about cars; however, I never considered that my passion. Sometimes it can be misleading to follow and do everything you love. Since retiring from my successful career in finance, I discovered that teaching leadership and entrepreneurship is my passion. I’m able to do this every day through my company, Secret Entourage.
In my book, Third Circle Theory, I have now coached hundreds of successful people on finding their passion and applying it into their business. It starts with these four steps:
1. Understand the Difference Between Love and Passion
Love is a very strong word, and so is passion, but we experience love far more than passion. I may love cars, but I sure don’t find happiness being around them every second of the day — even if that means never being able to drive them. Passion, just like love, starts with an emotional reaction, but where it differentiates from love is when it requires you to take action, create change or simply remain involved. That is why it is important to be passionate about the line of business you embark on, as passion becomes the fuel needed to keep getting up after each failure. While both traits share many similarities, it is important to understand which emotion we are feeling in order to be able to make sure we do not follow many dead leads. One of the best ways to eliminate wasting time on things you love is to focus on activities that help you increase a skill or potential talent you can charge for. Let’s assume you love cars and while you may talk about them all day, it won’t actually get you anywhere. However, if you chose to start a blog and write about them, or actually start working mechanically on them, you are now shifting your love to passion and engaging in activities that can later turn a passion into a business.
2. Have a Heightened Level of Awareness
Self-assessment is crucial. As mentioned in my first point above, the biggest obstacle in finding your passion is following all the wrong things because you simply love them. Part of the process requires you to be able to identify when you are chasing a dead lead, which requires you to be honest with yourself. Being conscious of our environment permits us to identify verticals of opportunities within things we love. If we love animals for example, then perhaps our passion lies in helping them. By seeing beyond just the idea of creating a shelter or some other form of care, we may be able to identify other ways to help our cause enabling us to create passion from the love we have for something.
The idea of finding your passion is once again to elevate yourself to act on something you love. Once you identified something worth pursuing, study the industry as a whole and not just what you understand of it. Start by using free resources like search engines, such as Google and identify businesses you may not have heard of before, or even positions within organizations related to your passion. For example, start the search with the word “animal care” and simply read various ways others are involved in the field. Then narrow down your search on each type of care you find interesting such as, “animal shelter care” or “ animal rescue.” The more you explore, the more aware you become and the easier it becomes to link your passion to the actual direction to take.
3. Find Your Natural Talent
Acting on your passion requires you to have skills. Passion and purpose also share a very fine line, as people who find their passion often evolve to finding a sense of purpose within it. Skills and talent almost hold that same relationship. You may learn skills, but are naturally better at some things than others. It doesn’t mean you can’t improve, but it means you naturally are good at it. Some people are simply more talented than others with math for example, despite having the same education level or going through the same training. That is what differentiates talent from skill and is often a very big part of how one finds their passion in life.
When it comes to business, you can focus on your forte while finding ways to compensate what you are lacking, like getting a partner or hiring someone else fill in the gaps – or anything that is necessary. That is how resourcefulness is born, which is a critical skill to have to turn a business into success. When we can combine our natural talents with something we love, then we can typically take action much faster as our confidence and belief is heightened very strongly. I personally found my talent through all the years in helping people unlock their potential. While I applied my passion to help others to unlock their talents daily, I also made time to learn new skills like how to design a web page, how to write books, how to make great online videos, etc. If you quickly identify your talents, then you can learn the skills you need to transform it into something you are paid to do.
4. Belief Holds the Final Key to Discovering Your Passion
What you believe in is frequently based on your perspective and past observations. Since what you love is regularly also related to perspective and belief, it is clear that belief plays a very big role in finding your passion. Think of belief as the direction your passion takes, love as the support for why it goes a certain direction and confidence as the best way for you to keep going with a stable velocity.
When thinking of the force described as passion, you must think of it as the adrenaline of fear, but reversed. When you are hanging from a cliff and your life is at stake, you are given wings and your strength multiplies by almost five times its normal level. This never before felt strength manifests that failure is not an option. The same reaction occurs with passion minus the death part. It is simply the first appearance of purpose-driven living. Failing on your belief is like letting go of the side of a cliff, which is not an option.
I am good friends with a famous chef who, after having a failed restaurant business in Italy, moved to the United States because he believed his cooking was more appropriate for our market. With no money, no capital or partners but with a lot of belief and talent, he started again in a new territory. He never let go off that cliff, instead he pushed harder to climb another. His work ethic, coupled with his talent, landed him a job at restaurant that would later become his own and continues to part of his 100+ of restaurants 15 years later.
When the emotion of passion comes over you, it seems like all things one previously considers as work becomes easy and routine which is often why people say: “do what you love, and you wont work a day in your life.” Doing what you love all day means you are reinforcing your belief, so it demonstrates the domino effect of love, belief, and confidence triggering one another until the completion. You can’t give up until the very end; it is almost robotic in nature and unbelievable to those who have never experienced passion to know and realize how hard you work. But this power is setting you up for success to the greatest level and allowing the understanding that you have no limits.
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