Look for the clues to find your passion
Look for the clues to find your passion. There are small clues that can be found to find your passion. Are you stressing out about how to find it? It doesn’t need to be a journey of stress. If you haven’t found what you love yet follow the 9 clues below to lead you to a place where you can discover what you love, and find your passion.
Clue 1: Do you hate what you do?
Are you in a job you hate? Do you come home with zero energy? Not because it’s a physically demanding job but because the job sucks your spiritual energy out of you. If you answered yes to either of those questions then you have your first clue that you may need to make a change. I have had a few jobs in my time that did this.
The worst job
The worst job I ever had was during a summer holiday at uni. I registered with an agency and they sent me to a clothes factory which was run from a dark cellar in a large building in Leicester. The machine that carried the clothes down a rail had broken. The clothes should have automatically travelled down the line and hooked up to a larger hook, but that part was broken. Enter my job. It was my job to stand on a box, wait for the clothes to approach, and then hook them manually to the larger hook, one by one.
Yes, this was an actual paid job. After an hour of doing this I imagined what I’d done to deserve this punishment. Then I remembered I was being paid to do it -so not an actual punishment then but a life sucking job. It was an eight hour shift, time went very very slowly. My spiritual energy was not fed. Time stood still. I lasted two days.
When you find your ‘passion’ time flows.
On the other hand you lose your sense of time when you find your passion. You won’t clock watch. The spiritual energy that you have is fed doing what you love. When I was a young jobbing actor, rehearsals always felt like this for me. I loved the energy, the process and the creativity. Time flowed.
Ask yourself, does time flow? What activities do you do where time literally flows? Ask yourself how you feel afterwards? Energised or drained?
Clue 2: How has God made you?
It is in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for.
Ephesians 1:11-12 (Message translation)
How has God made you? The good news is that God has wired you a specific way. God has wired you with unique gifts, talents and skills that no one else in the world can use in the same way as you. Your individual wires are the clues to your passions and purpose. Are they laying dormant waiting to be discovered or do you need to re-discover them?
Clue 3: Other people confirm it
One of the ways you can know if you have found your passion is if it’s confirmed by someone else. Someone else will confirm you are good at it or you will receive positive feedback in some way.
Clue 4: Look to your childhood
God already knew you before you were born. He already knew your skillset and gifts. Ask yourself if there are clues in your childhood. Did you talk a lot, were you a good writer, did you like sports, were you creative? Were you confident? What are the breadcrumb clues in your childhood that reveal your true passions?
Clue 5: What have you given up?
What have you given up that you loved maybe in favour of being sensible or because you were holding down a job? What do you dream about doing? What do you look forward to doing or wish you could spend more time doing?
Clue 6: What would you do even if you weren’t being paid to do it?
Ask yourself what you would be doing even if you weren’t being paid to do it? This is a good way to dis-entangle the word ‘job’ from your passion. There are those that make a living from their passion, there are those that do it outside of their main job (the side hustle). Then there are those that don’t want to be paid for ‘it’ they just want to use it. There isn’t a right or wrong answer. Identify where you are now within these categories and also in the future where you would like to be.
Clue 7: The Rocking Chair Test
Use this exercise to help you focus, think about and reflect on your life and purpose. I also think it helps identify what it is you feel truly passionate about.
Imagine you are old and nearing the end of your life, you are in your eighties or nineties, reflecting on the life you have lived. Sitting on the balcony of your house in a rocking chair, you remember your life. Think about what you would have liked to have experienced but didn’t? What dreams are unfulfilled, what is it that you would have liked to have done but didn’t get to do? Write down your answers. What can you see that will help identify your passion?
Clue 8: Are you in Flow or out of flow?
Passion is about what feeds your spiritual energy rather than consumes it
Ken Robinson- Finding your Element
Don’t get it confused. Your passion is more than a hobby and more than a job. Your passion is a unique element that lies within you. It’s ‘what feeds your spiritual energy’. It’s what gives you fulfilment when you are doing it. Your spirit feels alive and you feel as if you are in a stream of flow.
Now it might be that your current job enables you to fulfil your passion or it might be that part of your job already does this. It may be something that has nothing to do with your career. Identify what activities or things in your life, feel in flow or out of flow to help you identify your passion.
Clue 9: The Pivot
Life is a journey and God is continually developing your character through life’s experiences.
Both the good and the bad experiences. Your specific passion at age 15 may not be the same at age 30 or the same at age 50 but the underlying skill set that makes you who you are will be there. What do I mean by this? Let’s look at Venus Williams.
Venus Williams is a world class tennis player. Her passion is tennis. When she stopped playing tennis professionally all the skills that made her a world class tennis player were still there. They didn’t disappear because she stopped playing professional tennis. She is still driven, determined, competitive, persistent, courageous. How she uses these skills in the next phase of her life will depend on what she pivots into. All the experiences that she has had up to that point are not wasted, they are part of her journey. It’s all used.
Do you need to pivot? Are you at a point in life that requires a pivot, a change?
Do something, try something
Still struggling to find your passion? Do something, try something.
Doing nothing will result in being in exactly the same place this time next year. So, if all else fails, do something new, try something. In the process of trying you’ll discover something about yourself, even if you discover what you don’t have passion for.
Take a step
Take a step. Finding your passion is going to take some thought, reflection and a lot of action. It’s going to take some testing and some effort. Feeling fulfilled and using the gifts that God has given you means you are in God’s will for your life. As God’s chosen child he has your back so you can confidently take that step. Charles Spurgeon said; ‘When your will is God’s will, you will have your will’. Finding and using your passion is all part of God’s will for your life. This gives us the confidence in our search to discover what it is.
To sum up….
We go in search of our passion with the slow realisation that we’re not happy with where we are currently, or we have a deep frustration with what we are feeling and doing. Feelings of frustration can be a great way to make the changes necessary. Rather than staying in a state of frustration use it to explore ways that move you on in your journey.
Don’t focus on making money, focus on finding what fulfils you, this will help you to discover your passion.
Which of these 9 clues has helped you? What else has helped you to discover your passion? Was it a slow process or did you have a specific moment when you realised you had found your passion?
Read 10 steps to help you know God’s will for your life for further inspiration.
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