Passion? What's That?

Passionbubble

*Note: This is the second in a series of posts leading up to the launch of Sokanu. In this series we will be discussing the core purpose behind the Sokanu vision as well as outline what our product does. For a full list of posts in this series see the left hand column of the blog.

In our last post we discussed the purpose of education and how it relates to finding your passion in life. What we left unanswered was the primary question: what does it mean to find your passion? While this is a different problem than actually wondering how to find your passion, it is an important question at its core. Without first understanding what it means to find your passion, how can we look for it?

What Does It Actually Mean To Find Your Passion?

Simply put, it means that you have found a driving force that guides your decisions, actions and overall life direction. This is a very general oversimplification of the term, but it can be incredibly complex. Why? Human beings are not linear creatures. We all don't progress at the same rate, interpret the world in the same way, and like the same things. We are instead organic, growing at incredibly different rates. This is what makes the world so brilliant. And as we progress in our lives, we change shape. We morph according to what people tell us, what we read, what we watch. We change, positively or negatively, based on our relationships - both personally and professionally. 

Throughout all of this change, amidst all of this opportunity, we are supposed to choose "a passion" that we are meant to follow for the rest of our lives. What a daunting task. The key, I believe, is to spend a lot of time thinking about optimizing the things that you love right now versus where you want to go in the future. There are a couple of different methods that we use to try and co-ordinate these thoughts. One is called the hedgehog concept, and we have written about it before here: http://blog.sokanu.com/finding-your-personal-hedgehog-concept-with-s. The second way to finding your passion is actually synonymous with finding a purpose in life. There is a wonderful article on this topic here: http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1. We will speak about this more in the next section.

Overall, finding your passion is unique to you. But once you have found it, all of a sudden waking up in the morning no longer becomes a chore. It is another step in your path along your life. When you have found what you love to do, you can build amazing things and become incredibly successful. Remember, success is just a synonym for happiness. Let me leave you with a very thought-provoking video I found explaining what it means to find your passion.

 

The Path To Purpose

The second thing we want to talk about is the four types of individuals that make up the majority of people today. While finding your passion is a global mission, understanding the types of people around you are essential to gaining perspective. The four types of people we are going to talk about today are: the disengaged, the dreamers, the dabblers and the purposeful.

The Disengaged

These are the people who express no purpose or passion at all for anything in their lives. They are currently not active in any endeavour that may lead into a passionate pursuit, nor do they show any signs that they are looking to find such pursuits. Some people in this group are detached from the world, while others are completely ego-driven and don't care at all about the world outside the self. However, this group is not "the worst" class of people. They have just been raised and nurtured in a very poor environment relative to what we need to be happy. Hopefully the power of the internet and mentors who have been in their shoes can help lift them out of this group.

The Dreamers

This group are those who express ideas about passions they would like to have - which sometimes stirs imagination. However, most of them have done very little or nothing to try out any idea they may have had. They have flashes of what they want the world to look like in the future, but creating an actionable plan towards that vision is often where they fall short. When it comes to a career, these people may envision themselves helping people or having a meaningful career, but may not take any steps towards that goal. Once again, a conducive environment and mentors to guide this group can very easily get them to create actionable steps to find their passion.

The Dabblers

These are the people who have engaged in some of their passions but have showed little awareness of the meaning of those activities. As a result, usually these people show few signs of committing themselves to one pursuit. They often skip from one activity to the next without any coherent sense of what they wish to accomplish with their lives. They have probably tried many different things that they had a passion for, but have not found their true passion in life to commit themselves to. These interests are too tentative and fleeting to become a personal identity.

The Purposeful

These are the people that have found their passion in life and have sustained this interest over a long period of time. They know what they want to accomplish in the world. It does not matter the discipline or career (with the exception of malicious purpose), it is the fact that they have found a cause or ultimate goal that inspires their effort day to day. This helps them fashion a coherant future agenda and a sense of why they do what they do. This is what we mean when we say you have found your passion.

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In the next post, we will describe how Sokanu's mission is to help everyone reach this fourth level of purpose. How are we going to do it? Why is this so important for every single person to achieve? Stay tuned.