Note: This article is part of an article series. Please read all parts for maximum effect.
Step 2: Finding Your Passion
Especially as an entrepreneur, it’s crucial to be able to motivate yourself. To do this successfully, you need to know what drives you. If you’re more up for Option 1, this will help you define what field you’ll be working in.
1. Remember What You Loved as a Child
Often, our truest passions emerge in childhood, only to be squelched by real life pressures. So think about what you loved long before you had to worry about your career. Writing? Science experiments? Taking care of people? Getting back in touch with those instincts is an important step in finding your passion.
2. Eliminate Money from the Equation
If money were no object, what would you do? Would you travel? Spend all of your time with your children? Would you start a charitable organization to help children in africa? Of course money can’t be ignored, but don’t let financial pressures dictate your choices. Your career should ultimately lead to financial security, but if financial security is the defining motivator, it’s unlikely you’ll end up doing what you love.
3. Ask Your Friends for Feedback
Sometimes you’re just not the best judge of what makes you happy. Ask the people who know you intimately when you seem the happiest and what you do the most enthusiastically. Their answers may surprise you.
4. Read through a University Course Catalog
Find some quiet time and see which courses naturally interest you. What would you study if you could do it all over? What courses do you think you could teach? Which subjects scare you to death, and which ones do you find boring? Revisiting these possibilities will help point you in the direction of subjects and topics that you love.
5. Identify your Professional Hero
Of everyone you know, either personally or in your extended frame of reference (from your dermatologist to Oprah), whose career would you most want to emulate? Reach out to her to learn more about how she got to where she is, or, if that’s not possible, read everything you can about her career and life.
Please take a minute and go through this now. If you are not quite sure afterwards, also write down the things you don’t want to do. This will also narrow down your options. Feel free to post your passion in the comments! When you are done, move on to step 3.
Step 3: Defining Your Signature Strength
Yorick Tran
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