Adam RicoOur passions can often seem elusive but there’s a reason for this.
This happens because our drive to find our passions is grounded in our own needs, comfort, interests, and desire for significance.
So in order to find our passions we must first ask ourselves why we want to find our passion.
Does it come from our own pride, envy of others, or a place to find our worth?
Or is it something more?
The solution to finding your passion lies in the very thing we often avoid.
To truly find our passions in life we must sacrifice our freedom for someone else.
This can sound almost foreign to someone living in western culture.
Our culture tells us there is nothing of more value than our own happiness and our own individual freedom.
Yet, it’s only when you shift your focus from serving your own needs and desires to serving the needs of others first that you will truly experience passion.
So How Do You Know If You’re Being Selfish or Selfless?
Ask yourself these questions:
Why do you work? Most are working to make money but ultimately money is an empty motivator. What most people don’t realize is they’re also working to avoid a sense of insignificance. When you’re working only for yourself to feed your desires for money, significance, power, or respect you will never experience the feeling of truly working in your passion. It’s only when your motivation becomes a way to selflessly serve others that you can experience the level of satisfaction you are looking for from your work.
Who will benefit the most when you find your passion? If you were working in your passions today is there someone who would benefit from your work? Would they benefit more than you? It’s not wrong for you to benefit as well, either monetarily or otherwise, but are you providing more value for them than they are for you? This will be a clue as whether or not you’re working in your passions.
Who would you be thrilled to serve and help even if no one knew about it? If you could do work you weren’t allowed to tell your family and friends about would you still do it? If you were to gain nothing from it would you still want to do it? Again, there’s nothing wrong with getting something from working (i.e. money) but would your motivation come from a place of desiring to serve another person? When you can answer yes to those questions you’ll know you’re on the right track to finding your passions.
We all want to know what we do with our lives matters.
So often we look to work to provide us with a sense of significance and identity.
However, when we let go of working in our passions to meet our own needs and focus on how we can serve others we can truly do work that is meaningful, enjoyable, and prosperous.