How To Find And Pursue Your Passion

I hope that you're really excited for a live interactive workshop where I'm going to take you through a series of exercises, challenges, and interactive workshops where you can actually find out more about yourself. Today's theme is all about how you can find your passions and pursue them. How do we understand what we're passionate about? How do we connect with it? And how do we make that something we can pursue, make it a reality, and have an action plan that lets us experience those benefits? I wanted to start off by talking to you about a specific model that I think is really interesting, which you may or may not have heard of. But why are we exploring passion in the first place? Research shows that when you live your passion, you're adding eight hours of joy to your life. Scientific research proves that the more we live our passions, the more joy, energy, and enthusiasm we bring into our lives on a daily basis. That has a trickle effect into your relationships, your work, and how you feel. So connecting to our passions is something we all need to take into account, especially if we want to increase our fulfillment. Now, there are a few stages that it starts at, and I'm going to take you into this model, which is a brilliant model. It's a Japanese model called Ikigai. That's I-K-I-G-A-I. You may have heard of it, or you may never have heard of it. But what it means, if I translate that, is a reason for being. In Japanese, Ikigai means a reason for being, or what we would call today, the reason you get up in the morning. What really motivates you, what gets you pumped to be up and awake in the morning, and to do something. This model has a few really interesting parts. It talks about the four things we need to find a reason for being. The number one thing it talks about is what you love doing. What do you do that you love? Another thing is, what do you do that you're actually good at? People actually say to you, think of something in your life now that you're good at. When you finish that exercise, people say, "Well done for that." They congratulate you, they notice it, they recognize you. Think about them right now, and I want you to write them in the comment section. So think about the things that you love, write them in the comment section. What are they? I'll read them out. And also think about the things that you're good at. Write them out in the comment section as well. The third thing, the area where we're not really going to go into today, but we will do in the future, is world needs. What does the world need? What do you have that you can contribute to making a difference in the world? And finally, it talks about what you can actually get paid for, to make a living. Today we're going to focus on these two sections. This intersect here is called passion, which is exactly the intersect we are talking about today. This intersect here is called mission, which we won't go into today so much, but definitely something to consider. This intersect here is called your job, and this intersect here is called a vocation. So that is Ikigai, reason for being. Maybe you've seen it before, maybe you've never seen it before, but hopefully, this is giving you a perspective of where we're going to start. So we're going to dive in here. What do you love doing, and what are you actually good at? What do people notice? How many times have you ever been told, "Follow your dreams"? We've all heard that before. But where do you start? What do you start working on? What else helps you uncover those things? When we're young, you went to school, you were doing so many things. I want you to start off by thinking about one thing. I want you to think back to a moment where you felt you were in your element, where you felt you were in flow. It may have been a challenging situation, but to you, it felt somewhat effortless. You were performing an activity, you were doing some sort of teamwork with another group. Now, the challenges that we usually think of, when someone asks you to think of your passions, we immediately start thinking of hobbies like art, music, drama, science, whatever it is. We start thinking of containers because for a long, long time in our lives, we've been trained to believe that everything comes in boxes, everything comes in containers. We think of careers as containers. We think of careers as boxes. But the incredible thing about finding your passion is that our passions are more like environments that we thrive in. Our passions or our natures, as they're called in ancient traditions, are actually environments. A group of elements coming together that means someone can thrive. It may mean for you that you work better in teams. It may mean for you that you work better alone. Those are environmental signals that you can find if you're just conscious and aware of when you're in flow, when you're excited, when you're making a difference, when you're making a change. That can be part of yours too. So let's start by looking at this model that I created a while ago. This is something that I came up with that I think will be really useful today, and I hope that you connect with it as well. And what advice do you have for someone in their 60s and is starting a new chapter? I'm so happy to hear that. The incredible thing about Ikigai and nature and finding your purpose, from when I lived as a monk in India, I was taught about this, and we were thinking about these themes. There's no age limit. It never says that once you're this age, you can't have a new chapter. So first of all, it's phenomenal to hear that. I'm really happy to hear that. And my advice would be to try and apply this model right now because with your time, you can maximize the impact. So this is called what I call the quadrant of success, and it breaks down our core activities on a daily basis. And I want you to draw this quadrant on a piece of paper right in front of you right now and fill it out. So I want you to mark the first area of the quadrant, what you love and are good at. What do you do, and you're good at it? Now, the best way to know this is to ask friends for feedback. Your friends will tell you, "Oh, you're really good at that." "You're really good at that." "Oh, maybe that's something that I've noticed that you excel at." Another way of asking the question is to go up to your friends and say, "What difference do I make in your life?" "Like, why do you like having me as a friend?" They may think you're weird at the start, but I promise you the answer will help you answer this question. Asking them, "How do I make a difference in your life?" "Why do we connect?" "You know, what is it that I add to your life?" "What value am I adding?" And your friends will be able to tell you. So what you love and what you're good at, that is your passion, right? So I want you to write a list of things. You may have one thing, you may have ten things, you may have five things. It doesn't matter. Write them out. Don't worry about humility at this point. Write down things in the most honest way. Things that you know you're good at and connect with. Jamie, what if you are good at many things? Awesome, Jamie. Write them down in this quadrant. It doesn't matter. That's absolutely fine. Arun, I don't know what passion is. I'm good at multiple things, but I'm not sure what to start to figure it out. That's absolutely brilliant. You're in the right place as well. So write this out. A long list of what you love and are good at, right? Passion. Now I want you to write down the second quadrant is what you don't love but are good at, right? And I'll give you some examples as well for me. And this thing is what I called paying bills, right? This stuff pays the bills. This stuff's your passion. So I'll give you an example. What I love and what I'm good at. I love reading and I love sharing what I'm learning. That's something that I love doing, and I hope that I'm somewhat okay at it. It's something that I enjoy. It's something that I like learning about. What I don't love but I'm good at is maths, right? I'm pretty good with numbers, but I really don't like numbers. I can do them, but I don't really like them, right? Think about the things in your life that you don't love but are good at. Normally, these are the things that we do to pay the bills. They're things that make money. They're jobs. They're professions. They're careers, right? Think about what they are. Write them out, right? It's the things that you don't love but are good at. People know you're capable at them. How many of you ever get asked to organize weddings, organize parties, organize events? Now, if you love doing that, put it in this column. If you don't love doing that, put it in this column if you're good at them, right? I hope this is making sense. I hope you're with me. Make sure you're doing this exercise as we go through. Now, the next thing I want to ask you is the fourth area is what you love but are not good at. What do you love? What do you love learning? What are you always open to finding more about, but you're not quite there yet? You wouldn't call yourself an expert in that space. You wouldn't call yourself even a semi-professional in that space, right? You're still an amateur. This is your potential, right? This is what we call potential. It's something that if you were given the time and tools to learn about, you would just go all in. You'd get excited about it. You'd get enthused about it. You'd have energy about it. Write in that column what it is. So I could add a load of things to those comments. I think one of them for me would be scriptwriting. I'd love to learn more about film writing and video writing and scriptwriting. So I'd go into that, and I'd look at that, right? That's not something that I've worked on. In the past, I've had things in this category that I now do. So this is your potential. What do you love but are not that good at yet? Yet being the keyword. You love it. You have a passion for it. You want to learn about it. And finally, the fourth and final quadrant of success is what don't you love and are not good at, right? What do you not love and are not good at? These are the daily tasks we all have to do, right? And we may not be good at them. You may be good at them, but it's things like washing up the dishes, right? It's things like taking the dog for a walk. Maybe you love doing that, so that can go in a different category. But it's the stuff that you don't love and are not that good at, right? Write down what they are. Patrick, what if I don't love but I should be doing it about my profession? Patrick, exactly. So what are the things that we find with this quadrant is we spend most of our lives in this space and this space. We spend most of our lives focusing on what we don't love but are good at and what you don't love and are not good at. A lot of our time is spent in these two quadrants. Now that's absolutely fine. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm not putting out a message that's saying everyone needs to change their job. I'm not saying that if you're not loving what you do every day, quit today and go out there and do something else. What I'm saying is if we want to live a life of fulfillment and passion and purpose, we need to increase the amount of time and priority we dedicate to these two, right? These two deserve more time, more priority, more energy, and we need to find that. We need to create that. We need to create space in our lives where we can start focusing in on these two segments of the quadrant and not these two. These two are things we have to do. These two are the things we want to do, love to do, and will drive that joy, drive that passion, drive that fulfillment and happiness in our lives. So I really want you to identify these first of all. The reason why we never give these time is because we've never had time to identify them, and this gives us an opportunity to start doing that. So I hope that answers your question. Tina, I love helping people and I'm a good organizer, but at 56, I feel the need to change but not sure what to do. Well, that's what I'm talking about. These are things that you can start doing on the weekend. It's things you can start doing in the evening, right? Creating joy in your life doesn't mean you need to make it your nine-to-five. It's awesome if you can make your daydream your day job, right? That's brilliant. If you can make your passion your paycheck, that's awesome, and I encourage you all out there who have that risk, who want to make that happen, go out there and do it. But if you're on the side of you need to think about security, stability, really think about investing in that talent first. And this is another interesting and incredibly important point and critical point I need to make is that these two areas require deep investment and learning, right? Just because we love something and we're good at it doesn't mean that level of expertise, that level of experience is enough. We need to go all in. We need to go full throttle. You know what the challenging thing is? We've always built this conveyor belt idea of life. We've built this thought process that we go to school, we get a degree, we graduate, we get a good job, get married, whatever it is, like this conveyor belt of activity. And all of a sudden when we realize that that conveyor belt doesn't actually work and that conveyor belt may not even be right, it surprises us. It shocks us because it's almost the conveyor belt we always saw. And what I always say is that we were made for a lot more than to go to work, pay bills, and die, right? We all have a lot more meaning in our lives than that. Tell me if you believe you've got a lot more meaning in your life than that, a lot more ambition than that. And we all do. So the way to uncover it means we've got to sometimes say plot twist and pivot, right? Sometimes life changes and more often than not change is the only thing that's certain in life. So the more we open ourselves up to that principle, the more likely we are able to make these changes. Now I'm going to do a quick switch here to show you the next phase of what I wanted to talk to you about. And this is where you're really going to learn about yourself. This is where you're really going to understand more about the way you work. Now I'm going to ask you two questions, and I want you to answer these two questions, right? Think about these two questions very closely, and I'll explain what I mean by them. Do you believe that you're more outgoing or more reserved, right? Answer this question for me. Do you believe you're more outgoing or more reserved? Now I'll explain to you what I mean by those. Outgoing people are the people who are always in the center of the room. They pull people to come out with them. They're the ones who organize the party. Or even if they didn't organize it, they're the one who is going to steal the show, steal the party, right? Outgoing people. Reserved people doesn't mean you're not as confident. It just means that you're more likely to sit on the periphery of the audience. You may be dragged out last minute. You may not really have wanted to go, but you made it out anyway, right? Recognize neither of these are strengths or weaknesses. Neither of these are advantages or disadvantages. It's just our natural disposition. It's the way we naturally function. It's the elements we like. Outgoing people generally lead conversations. Reserved people generally observe conversations. Which are you? Choose one or the other today. I'm asking you to make some extreme choices. Of course, there's no black and white. There are grays in life, but I want you to choose. So answer this question. Are you more outgoing or more reserved, right? Question number two. I'm only asking you two questions, nice and simple. The second question I'm going to ask you is, are you more people-oriented or are you more task-oriented? I'll explain what I mean by that. People-oriented people are always thinking about what is people's experience. Are people enjoying this? Are people connecting with this? Are people having a good experience? Task-oriented people are thinking, what time is it, right? Is everything on schedule? Are we going to meet the deadline? Are we going to make sure things happen? Are we going to connect? You know, they're always thinking about the deadlines, the times, the focus. People are focusing on people. Task people are focusing on the task, right? For example, I'm a people-focused person. So right now I'm thinking, are you guys all having a good time? Are you connecting with what I'm saying? Are you listening? Are you taking part? And my producers are wondering, is he going to go over time? Has he talked too much, right? Is the scheduling going okay? That's the difference between people-oriented people and task-oriented people. Don't answer what your job makes you do. Don't answer what your jobs made you become. Answer what you do at your gut instinct. See, when people-oriented people become tasked for the workplace, they then feel guilty. When task people become people, they never feel guilty, right? They know what they're doing. So if you start feeling guilty when you do the other, you're probably the other one. So are you task or people-oriented? Think about that for a moment and answer the question. So, taking a look at our little diagram here, let me know, write down in the comment section, are you people or task, right? Remember, neither is an advantage, neither is a strength or a weakness. It's our natural disposition. I'm an outgoing with reservations. Okay, brilliant. That's fine. People-oriented, awesome. Keep those comments coming. Let me know what you're writing down. Now, so if you're outgoing and task, you're what's known as a D-style personality, and that personality is known as dominant, right? If you're outgoing and task, you're a D-type personality. Now, if you're outgoing and people, you're known as what's known as