Tom: This is a guest post by Jeremy Montoya. As the co-host of The Final Clock Out Podcast and creator of While You’re Sleeping, Jeremy’s passion is helping entrepreneurs get clear about their life mission and purpose.
Is it to make money? Work?
There are 101 ways to help supplement the need from job-income… eBay, freelancing, mowing lawns, you name it.
However, if your mission is anything like mine, you want to build something that not only puts food on the table, but brings you happiness and sparks a fire inside of you.
How do you light that fire that will spring you out of bed in the morning?
You can search high and low, or you can join me in what I call the Playground Principle for getting clear about your future.
More on that in a moment.
Another Typical Friday
It’s 4:49 PM on a Friday afternoon and you’re preparing for the longest ten minutes of your life.
You checked out mentally on Wednesday, and you were never concerned with “what happened in the break room” like your fellow co-workers are.
Most of us, when staring a life-sucking job in the eyes, would do anything to get out as fast as possible. But, at the same time, we need income to keep our bills paid and life going.
It can be hard to not give up.
Employment makes it tough because money is made dependably, and you’re already used to it or comfortable. And to use phrases like “find what you’re passionate about” are too general to get you anywhere fast.
How Do You Get Clear and Move On?
Forget the money. Forget the passion.
For just one second, imagine a world where money wasn’t important and working wasn’t a necessity. Would you even need work to provide income anymore?
Now, as you are pondering, imagine what you would be doing with all of your new found time.
I could recommend finding or chasing your passion, but I know first hand what it’s like to be ‘passionate’ about something that will never bring value to the world or create the motivation to push it forward everyday.
For instance, I’m passionate about cake.
Am I trying to solve the worlds cake shortages? Heck no. But if you’re having a party, let me know when the candles are going to be blown out and and I’ll be there with a plate and fork I brought from home!
The Playground Principle
How did I get clear and stay focused on leaving work behind? I simply took a look at things I was naturally excited about and doing as a kid.
There were a lot of phases in my childhood: action figures, pokemon cards, skateboarding, just to name a few. When I would start a new phase I always found myself trading or selling what I had to others, often for a nice profit or upgrade.
I wasn’t good at skateboarding, but I figured out how to optimize them better than the shop around the corner and my friends loved it.
More importantly, I loved it.
It didn’t feel like ‘work’ and I would be doing it for myself regardless if my friends needed it to be done or not. It was natural for me, and making $5 dollars here or there put a lot cash in the pockets of this 6th grader.
If you want to take a look deep into yourself and find where your heart naturally goes, think back to what you were doing at the age of 11. Some of us could draw small masterpieces, a few had the entrepreneurial itch, and others had a tendency to help others.
You can call them pastimes, phases, or hobbies – it doesn’t matter really – they can be extremely helpful and profitable when some energy is put behind it. And because we were so young back then, most of it was done for free.
Not because we didn’t care about the money, but because we didn’t know any better besides being ourselves.
When you’re being yourself, nothing else matters. [Tweet this]
On top of that, chances are you’ll be more interested in doing something you enjoy by being yourself, and everything learned along the way can be applied to future ventures.
Conclusion
In a world with so many options to choose from, using a wide term like ‘passion’ is the quickest way to staying in the same place you’re in or getting led astray.
If you’re curious at the impact you can have on others’ lives or are ready to solve a problem and bring value to the world, look no nowhere besides your past for the lessons you’ve gone through to guide your way.
Did this post help you get clear about your vision or do you know someone it could help? Please share it with them and most importantly, follow up with them to see what they took away from it.
Before you go, where were your efforts going when you were 11? Can you are think of ways to leverage that lesson for profit? Have you been doing that already?
Be sure to tell us in the comments! I’ll be reading, responding, and sharing my favorites on Twitter.
Photo Credit: striatic