Uncovering Your Passions and Their Applicability

It is well known that passion is the single most significant source of success. Why then, do most people fall prey to the external environment and not pursue their passions? Life happens, stuff happens, things happen. Reasons may validate the detour from the pursuit of passion; however, getting back on track mandates self-awareness leading to awakening and surfacing the destination all over again.

The clues reside within the phases of the journey each one of us has taken so far; the hints lie in the aspirations we have for our time on this earth. A personal mission statement therefore becomes the map to maneuver and accelerate toward our passionate destination.

Here are some guidelines to help a person rediscover the path to passion:

Take an inventory of your key decisions, journeys and detours you have taken. If we are products of our past, then a snapshot in time as of today will be a past phenomenon for some distant future milestone.

Map your onward journey with a mission statement. If you buy into the mission of an entity or an organization, everything else will become a cinch. Do you, therefore, have a mission statement of your own? Have you mapped out your own onward journey? Do you have a destination? Do you have a milestone? Do you have frequent measures of gauging the appropriateness of your path?

Exercise your freedom to choose. Make every interaction a learning experience. How do you do that?

– Think of the last 100 interactions you have had with people. Which ones have stayed in your memory as unique experiences? What was unique about those interactions? What happened?

– Now that you have these answers, what attributes can you apply to your next 100 interactions, so that the others can begin to have similar unique experiences about interactions with you.

– If you don’t think for yourself, who will be for you? If you only think about yourself, what are you? Be selfish in your interactions. Be selfish by giving others the gift of an interaction better than your last one. By that you will have given them an interaction that is better than they have had from others in the past. Simple. Actionable. Result-bound lesson from each interaction.

– Live passionately, lead energetically, believe that Aspirations, Integrity, and Mindset, this trio for success will provide you sustained triumphs over all else.

When you uncover your passion, you turn your hindsight into your insight. What do you want your insight to do for you today?

[This article has been reproduced with permission from Knowledge Network, the online thought leadership platform for Thunderbird School of Global Management https://thunderbird.asu.edu/knowledge-network/]