How to find Your Passion: Figure Out Your Life
Kent R.
Figuring out your strengths and values is foundational to finding passion. But there's more to the story.
Strengths are meaningless if they aren't applied. You need to know how to put your strengths to work for you to have an impact. And knowing your values doesn't make any difference if you aren't uncovering the areas of your life where you are honoring or dishonoring your values.
In this episode of the Stop Hating Mondays Podcast, we're talking about one the most important steps you can take on your path to finding your passion: figuring out your life.
TRANSCRIPT
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Kent
In the last episode of the Stop Hating Mondays podcast, we discussed just how foundational knowing your strengths and values is to finding your passion.
That might surprise some listeners, but I'd imagine that it was confirmation to many advice that – when they really consider the topic – they probably already knew. But here's something that surprises most everyone we share this information with, there's another critical step in the search for passion. And that's the need to do a deep and thorough examination of your life.
Why is it not enough to just figure out your strengths and values? Well, strengths and values are meaningless if they aren't applied to a life that's doing a variety of different things. You need to know how to put your strengths to work for you to have an impact. And knowing your values doesn't make any difference if you aren't uncovering the areas of your life where you are honoring and dishonoring those values.
So, today we're talking about one of the most important steps you can take on your path to finding your passion. Figuring out your life.
I'm Kent here with Caanan, and this is the Stop Hating Mondays Podcast.
Caanan
OK, so every episode now we're going to say “this is the most important tip. This is the most foundational and critical.”
Well, we're saying that because it's true; they are all very critical tips. Especially these first three episodes. We're providing some information that is crucial to your journey to find passion, find purpose, and get fulfilled. And this one is really important. It's so important, in fact, that we rolled this out in our very first podcast about passion, and it demands that we repeat it.
So the first tip here is: create your life wheel.
Kent
Yeah, kind of piggybacking off of what you just said. in reviewing the notes of things I wanted to share in this season of the podcast, I noted something that I think I've noted before out loud on the podcast, and that is that a lot of the tips we talk about – a lot of the advice we give – tends to center around the exact same concepts. Sometimes worded slightly differently. Oftentimes a repeat of similar concepts. And I just want to point out, you know, if you haven't gone back and listened from the beginning, please do that. Please check out our website.
One of our chief goals is to keep things very simple, very straightforward, very interrelated, so that you can see how finding your passion, your purpose, your fulfillment – what we're talking about in this season – relates to finding a better job. Having a better life. Getting along with a work group.
Caanan
Being a better partner.
Kent
Yes, the interrelatedness of all of this is what forces us to kind of repeat a lot of the same things. So I want you to know that the simplicity of this is intended, but – a reminder that I also seem to always give – don't be fooled by the simplicity, because it's these very simple tips we often give have real heft and meat behind them.
Yes, there are the things that people are avoiding, which is looking at yourself doing some figuring out of you or your life – as we're talking about in this podcast – in order to move forward.
So creating your life wheel – tip number one – it's so critical.
I'm going to give you the real quick version. Again, this is something that could be so deep, but we can give you enough info now to meaningfully get started.
This is just creating a wheel – or many clients like to call it a pizza with slices…
Caanan
Let's call it a pizza.
Kent
Yeah, so your pizza.
You name each slice with a critical component of your life. Now, many of these are the same across people. You want to have career. You want to have relationships. You want to have family. You want to have, you know, many people have, finances. Things like that. So you usually want to have eight to 10 key areas of your life.
And then to create your life wheel you're just going around that wheel. After you've named each slice.
Now I'm mixing wheel pizza.
You want to go around that pizza after naming each slice and number, how you feel about your success in that area between one and 10.
Then you've looked at your life, all the elements, and you're able to say, “hey, you know I'm feeling about a 7 for my career. But my health, oh, I'm feeling about a 2.”
So you're inventorying all these key aspects so that you kind of know what's what with your life.
Caanan
Yeah, it's a great tool to look at your life objectively to step back. And yeah, it may be a little uncomfortable to rate the different aspects of your life, but as we'll get into, that discomfort you're feeling, that's part of the process.
And you're going to have to overcome that in order to be successful here and successful going forward.
Caanan
So, I said it might make you a little uncomfortable to evaluate your life in this way… to rank the different major components of your life. And that discomfort may in fact keep you from being honest. Because who wants to rate their fitness at two? Well, it doesn't do you any good to lie to yourself in these when you're doing this rating because, frankly, you can't fix what you're unwilling to see. So the second tip here, it's real simple.
Get honest.
Kent
Yeah, and let's go back to the very beginning of this season where we talked about the foundations of passion and then in this second episode we got into figuring out how strengths and values contribute to this success. This is something that is a hamper from the get-go. And we're mentioning it right here at the midpoint.
Getting honest is essential.
An inability to get honest about your situation and how you feel about things – honestly evaluating things – is what keeps people from addressing these things in the first place.
It's too heavy. It's too much to think about.
But you've got to be willing to get honest, because what you're doing here is you're figuring out your life – you're looking at those ratings that you've given each key area of your life and then looking back at the work you've done on strengths and values that you learned in the last episode and you're continuing to use, of course.
You're applying that learning to how you can improve those scores in each area of your life. We'll so you're not being honest from the jump, you're not doing yourself any favors, and you're perpetuating that pattern that, Caanan, you referenced in a previous episode where people won't do anything until whatever it is gets unbearable enough to make them want to throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks… to try something new.
Caanan
The hope disappointment cycle.
Kent
Yeah, the hope disappointment cycle that never ends because you're never putting any real muscle or introspection into the process.
Caanan
Yes, you know, I wanted to jump in here too and say that this can sound like a negative thing. Like you're only going to be dishonest with yourself about things that aren't going well in your life.
But the opposite can be true, too. In doing this work with clients, we often find that people aren't honest about what's going well in their life.
Kent
Very true.
Caanan
They're so in a mindset of – what's the term I'm looking for? – like a “lacking” mindset.
Kent
Oh yeah, well, I mean, as we talked about in previous podcasts, we're conditioned – people are conditioned – that way at work, too.
They're kept feeling just less than enough.
Caanan
100%.
Kent
To where you think, you know – remember this happens so much in our day-to-day work – and we've talked about in a podcast where people can't even take credit for things they've accomplished. “My boss said that didn't matter” or “our leader said, well, there were twenty people that worked on that. You just had a small part,” or we're so conditioned to diminish.
Caanan
There's a reason that a lot of people aren't honest. Yes, either around things that they're uncomfortable with, or things that are going well for them… that they're unwilling to recognize are positive aspects of their life.
And that is shame. Shame keeps them from being honest. And. So, our third tip – and this one is really important – is get rid of shame.
Kent
Yeah, get rid of it.
Here's something that helps across the board. We could have this as a tip in any segment of any sub podcast that we do, but here it is in this real critical season about passion – in this really important episode about figuring out your life. Getting rid of shame.
Just as important as being honest, people not feeling good enough because they're coming back to work after being a stay at home Mom or a stay at home Dad. Not feeling worthy enough because they don't have the degree that their counterparts do. That they didn't go to university. That they didn't go to a good enough university. That they've got too many kids at home and too many distractions that'll hold them back. It's just a shame spiral and you've got to get rid of it. You've got to know – and this goes back to the FOMO thing we've been talking about this season – you've got to know that everybody else has their own version of… – you know it's not the same, well, oftentimes it is the same – but everybody, everybody thinking the exact same thing you are. Nobody is better than you are. Nobody is worse than you are. We are all just people on a journey with some valleys, hopefully more high points and mountains than valleys, but this idea of “oh, Joe doesn't have this background. He's better than me. He got the degree at Yale or whatever.” That's what keeps us from doing this good work.
It's the ultimate barrier to success.
Caanan
Yes, shame is the ultimate barrier to success. And it's really, a valueless emotion.
Kent
So, we've just wrapped up the figure out your life segment of our find your passion season. Our first tip: create your life. Our second tip: get honest when you're applying your strengths and values to growing your success in that life wheel. And, similarly, get rid of shame as you're growing a better life.
