How to Define Your Passion and Discover Your Purpose

I’ve spoken with so many talented people who are not happy – personally and professionally. Most know what they want to be doing, but they see so many obstacles standing in the way.

What I’ve come to realize is that you already have everything you need to get started on making a change in your life. You only really need three things, as defined by Webster’s Dictionary:

• GIFTS: A natural ability or talent
• PASSION: A strong and barely controllable emotion
• PURPOSE: The aim or goal of a person

Let’s start with your gifts
Everyone is good at something and some of you are good at a number of things. I define these as your gifts. The challenge is in learning how to creatively use the gifts you have.

Once you discover how to use your gifts in a creative ways, that becomes your passion. Once I figured this out, it became my mission to discover more and more creative ways to use the gifts that I have. I became passionate about this mission and I came up with so many ways to use my gifts, I had to pick and choose between the options. People would say to me, “You’re all over the place.” That was because I was so passionate about using my gifts in different ways, it became hard to narrow them down. I think I needed to be all over the place, before I landed on a few things to pursue.

Passion leads to purpose
It feels good to use what you’re passionate about for a greater purpose. That’s how I landed on consulting and coaching. I wanted to help more and more people balance career and the rest of life, using the gifts I have a passion for sharing. I also wanted to help people by allowing companies to bring their complex projects to me, let me figure out a plan to get to the end result and then help them execute.

But What About The Money?
Great question and I’m often asked, “How do I make a living and provide for my family?” I asked myself this question time and time again. I later learned that I didn’t need to focus on the money. I needed to focus on my purpose – and the money would follow automatically.

I invite you to start today by writing down your gifts – those things that you have a natural ability to do.  Often times other people see the same gifts within you – and they keep coming to you for help or advice. You become a go-to-person without fully realizing it.

Then, rank those gifts. Put a star by the things you absolutely would love to be doing every single day. It’s that special something that you can spend hours upon hours doing, and never get tired of reinventing new ways to do it. You are passionate about these things.

So, there you have it. Now comes the hard part, merging your gifts and your passion into something that could be of benefit to someone else in some way – a need that people will pay for. I advise you to start thinking seriously about this as your next step.

If you have questions, drop a comment below.