How To Find Your Passion And Make It Your Career
Hello there! Welcome to Hero TV. Today, I’m here with Paul Jenkins and by now you know how strongly I feel about living on purpose especially when when it comes to our job. We spend so much of our waking day at our job and if it’s something we dread, how can we? how come you commit ourselves to something like that for four years? So, we have a treat for you. Paul is going to talk to us about how to find your passion and make it your career As a psychologist, a lot of people talk to me about how to find their passion. You know? That thing that, that, just lights them up that they get to use as their purpose in their life. And then how to turn that passion into a way to make a living. Turn it into a career. So, let’s start out with with drawing the path. We’ll call this your path to excellence. So here’s excellence right over here. And on your path to excellence, We’ll, visualize this path as being very broad out here at the beginning and then it gets more narrow and focused as we get closer to your sweet spot. Whatever it is that represents your excellence. So at this end of the path over here, as we get started, I’m going to label this in competence. In competence! This is stuff you’re really not good at, at all. And there’s a lot of that. some people get tipped over by this and they think, oh there’s so many things that I’m not good at that I can’t do. Well, yeah. Welcome to earth. That’s kind of how things are. There’s always more things you can’t do than things that you can. So as we start onto this path, we’re going to notice that there’s a whole lot of things that we’re not very good at. That’s okay and it doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you. Probably means that you’re human so accept that and let’s continue along the path. Because as we get closer to our sweet spot, we pass through incompetence, to the next phase. Let’s label this area of the path, competence. Now, finally, we’re in the things that we can do. There’s a lot of things that you can do and it doesn’t mean you’re particularly good at it but you can do it. so an example for me, of my my path that includes competence, would be roofing for example. I can actually do this and guess how I know? because I replaced my roof on my house. Now I’m not very good at it. Had to consult with some experts and some contractors and it took a long time and a lot of work but I can do it. Now that part of the path is still pretty broad.
There’s a lot of things you can do but that doesn’t mean that that’s the stuff that you really should be focused on. So as we move past competence, and, and get into things that we do really well and things that were really passionate about, eventually this pathway leads to excellence. And that is where we get to experience what what we could call your unique… mission. I put it that way because I think that our skills and talents and passions all come together to create a specific purpose or mission for our life. That is what we find on our path to excellence. So as this path gets more narrow, you move past what you can do into what you’re actually really good at. What you are better at than most other people. What lights you up and there’s some criteria that help us to define what this excellence really is all about and we’ll go into those next. It’s so important to figure out what that excellent end of the path is for you. Because once you get there, things really start to get magical. Now you can tell that you’ve hit that end of the path that you really found your excellence when you meet four criteria. So these four things will help you to know that you’re there. That you’ve arrived at your path to excellence. The first one is that you have a passion for this. It lights you up. You love to do it. You know how a lot of things you don’t really love so much. Well this thing, you do. It gets you out of bed. You love it. Criterion number two, it adds energy to your life. So this kind of follows from the first one. If you love it, it’s probably going to energize you. There’s a, there’s a, very tangible effect here when you engage at this level. because it adds the energy to your life. You know how you get drained by other activities? Not this. And I can honestly say, since I’ve gotten closer to my excellence, at the end of that path, I go home from the office feeling pumped. Energized. Like, wow! that was so awesome That’s how you know that you’re that you’re getting to the end of your path.
The third thing is that you have exceptional skill in this area. So you’ve got to be better at this than most other people. Probably you’ve watched American Idol. Okay. So you know that a lot of people who have passion and energy around things don’t necessarily belong there on stage. Right? because their skill level isn’t quite matching their passion. In your sweet spot, when you hit that path to excellence, you’ve got both. You’ve got the energy and the passion and you’ve got exceptional skill. And then the fourth criterion is that you seek constant improvement. Now this comes from the energy that you get from. It’s actually your desire to innovate and to build and to upgrade Not only your own personal skills in this area, but the thing itself. I’ve got a friend who is a world-class expert. Sixth degree black belt in Taekwondo. Her name is Mary Louise Zeller. She didn’t even start this sport until she was 45. And she’s got eight World Championships under her belt. Something like 18 national gold medals. She competes in the 18 and over division. And as Mary Louise was teaching me about what it took to achieve mastery of the sport, I could see that not only was she seeking constant improvement for herself but she was upgrading the sport itself. And she was instrumental in getting the forms part of Taekwondo introduced into the Olympic levels of that sport. So the four criteria again. You have passion, you have, you derive energy, you have exceptional skill, and you seek constant improvement. If you meet those four criteria, you have achieved the excellence you’re at the end of that pathway. Let’s call it your sweet spot for a moment. And the sweet spot is where you do what you love for those who love what you do. What happens here is twofold. The first thing that happens is you love your life. Can you imagine spending most of your time doing those things that you’re passionate about have exceptional skill and that add energy to your life and that you seek constant improvement for? The more of your time you spend doing that, the more your life rocks. Now the second thing that happens, you generate wealth. Now, I kind of already said that. Because when you love your life, you’re wealthy. There’s also an economic exchange here because when you’re in your sweet spot doing that thing, You generate the maximum value for the most people. And those people never want you to go away. Think about it. How soon do you want your favorite restaurant to close? You don’t. Well, people who love what you do want you to keep doing what you’re doing. So it generates an economic exchange that becomes the economic engine for the mission. So doing what you love for those who love what you do, that is the sweet spot that allows you to turn what you’re passionate about into a career. A legitimate life’s work.
I hope you enjoyed this video as much as I did this is one of those videos that I think everybody needs to see. So recommend thinking of somebody right now, sharing it with them. Remember live on purpose, make a difference, and be the hero.