Make Your Passion Your Business

Author: Gary Page
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Seventy percent of all workers hate their jobs. So says a recent Gallup poll. Job dissatisfaction leads to high absenteeism, employee turnover, and lost productivity. Enjoying what you do can make the difference between merely getting by in business and excelling in it. The greatest satisfaction, and the highest income, accrues to those who pursue their passions. Here is how to find yours.

First, make a chronological list of several peak moments in your life. Begin by recalling a particularly happy time before you started school. Then, note a peak experience that occurred during your elementary school years. The next could have happened while you were in high school. Then, think of one when you were a young adult. You get the idea.

Now, think back. What made these moments special to you? Was it the attention paid to you? Perhaps it was your feeling of accomplishment. Maybe it was the exhilaration of the experience itself. Whatever made each of these moments special then is what drives you now. That is what makes you perfectly suitable to do what you ought to be doing for your living. It is what makes you exceed even your own expectations.

Next, consider what you do well that others do not. Perhaps, you have a feel for what makes a great picture. Maybe you are a powerful encourager or team leader. On the other hand, you may be great with cars, or an expert sailor. What you do most effortlessly is also a signpost to your passion.

Finally, think about what you can create with your talent. For example, my friend, Barry Shainbaum, is an accomplished photographer who recently released his new book, Hopeand Heroes. Barry takes powerful pictures for which others gladly pay good money. Through his camera lens, Barry not only found his way out of bipolar disease, but also got to meet and photograph some of the most accomplished men and women of our time.

My wife, a people-oriented woman, has a passion for art. This talent she displayed early in life. During her many stays in Welland hospital, in appreciation for their care, she draws caricatures of the staff, then, gives them the artwork. She has also sold many of her paintings and drawings as well. Art thieves so admired some of them, that they deftly removed all of her pieces from one collector’s home.

An uncle had a passion for selling ideas. A visionary, he turned his passion into a career. First hired as a “copyboy,” he became Vice-President of Marketing for the largest retail chain in the Southern United States at that time, Maison Blanc in New Orleans, Louisiana.

You, too, have some special skill, interest--some “thing”--you can do better than anyone you know can do it. If you have not done so already, you can turn that talent into a service or product for which others will gladly pay you.

Get a handle on your passion. What you cannot do well, give to others. Do what you do best. Hire, or partner with, others who do what they do better than you can do it. Let everything else go. Focus like a laser-beam on your passion. You will love what you do and you will never work a day in your life!