When
considering a career and a lifestyle, people often offer the advice
to follow
your passion.
It seems like solid advice, but what happens if you don’t know what
your passion is? People ask me all the time how to find their
passion, which is always a hard question for me to answer.
Until
my conversation with Elizabeth
Gilbert.
You
might know her as the author of the New
York Times
best-selling book turned movie, Eat,
Pray, Love.
What you might not know is that her perspective on following your
passion is much different than you may have ever heard.
Since
she was 6 years old, Liz knew that she wanted to be a writer. She
focused on who she wanted to be and never expected her book to take
off the way it did. Her focus was never on how the audience would
respond, but always being the best version of herself as a writer.
With her success with Eat,
Pray, Love,
so many doors opened up for her and eventually led to her being
invited by Oprah to be a speaker on her SuperSoul Sessions tour. It
was during one of her talks that an audience member changed her
perspective on passion.
As many creative individuals do,
Liz also offered the advice of following your passion. She always
said that you know what you’re passionate about when you would do
anything to do that one thing. However, this audience member asked
whether not knowing what one’s passion was made that person a
failure.
It dawned on Liz at that moment
that not everyone could say that they have always known what they
wanted to do. So how do they find what their passion is? They follow
their curiosity.
To Liz, there are two categories
of people when it comes to this subject: jackhammers and
hummingbirds. The jackhammers, which she identifies herself as, are
the ones that have always known what they wanted to do; they’re
loud and impulsive and determined. Then there are the hummingbirds.
The hummingbirds exist to cross-pollinate, taking ideas from multiple
places, and are responsible for keeping the culture open to new
ideas.
A
lot of times, society doesn’t give enough credit to the
hummingbirds. These individuals often explore many different areas,
whether it’s through careers or hobbies, in order to find what
their passion is. Finding your passion isn’t about looking for a
big sign to point you to it but being open to the invitation of
creativity. As Liz points out, if you are truly following
your curiosity,
your eyes have to be on the ground looking for the next clue on your
scavenger hunt.
I consider myself a
humming-hammer. In my business, I am constantly testing new things,
but when I do, I go all in. It aligns with how I always describe
living my life like a sports season.
There are many things that I
have been able to bring to my business as an athlete, and the
mentality of living in seasons is a powerful one. There is the
pre-season, the regular season, playoff season and post-season. The
pre-season is when I research new ideas and see what is working in
other businesses, which then of course flows into the regular season,
when I am testing to see how everything is working. If everything is
working according to plan, we make it to the playoffs, where the
focus is on the championship (or in this case, creating the best
product possible). During my post-season, I evaluate the season and
from there determine whether I want to continue on the path I’m on
or change the path.
It’s
not always easy to cross into the unknown and try something new, but
that’s what I love about Liz describing this as curiosity.
Oftentimes, whether in business or in life, fear holds us back from
discovering what our purpose is. It can be disguised in anxiety,
apathy or acidity, but if we give ourselves permission to explore our
curiosity, it can lead us to finding our passions.
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