Can you say with certainty what your passion is? It’s amazing how many people can’t. In fact, the vast majority of people go through their entire lives without ever finding their passion. Many probably don’t ever make the effort to look for it. They struggle through life, on a day-by-day basis, just getting by. They may even have what is considered a good job, but in their totally truthful moments, they admit that they are only doing it for the money.

What about you? Are you happy with what you are doing? Do you believe that you have found your passion, and are making every endeavour to follow your dreams?

A couple of years ago I sat down and went through the process of deciding what my passion was. It was indeed an eye-opening experience.

I was in a rut, a very bad part of my life. I was going nowhere, and I did not know what to do. Indeed, I did not feel like doing anything at all. Everything just seemed so hard. Day followed night. Night followed day. My life ebbed away, one day at a time. It wasn’t so much that I wasn’t achieving what I wanted to do … I simply didn’t have any idea what I actually wanted to do.

Luckily I met Larry, the other Reinvention Man, who has been a successful life coach for many years.

He took me aside and taught me the importance of determining my passion. Because if I were going to reinvent myself, to rebuild my life to resemble one from my dreams, I would have to have those dreams first. I needed to find some passion that would get me out of bed in the morning; that would give me the impetus to go out and determine some actions I would need to take, and then put those actions into practice.

In my case, I discovered that my passion is helping people. I may no longer be the schoolteacher I was for 26 years, but I have some primal instinct to help others find their way and to help them have a better life. The Reinvention Men is partly a result of me wanting to follow through with my passion.

I could have put this in the “too hard” basket. I could have decided that it was beyond me. But I could always remember Larry imploring me “never be afraid to follow your passion!” So despite being an introvert at heart, I have become a Reinvention Man, to help people to reevaluate their lives, to enable them to create a better future for themselves.

Sometimes following your passion may seem just far too scary. If your passion, for instance, is to see the world, you may feel nervous about leaving friends and family behind. Maybe you will even need to lose the security of having a place you can call home while you are travelling.

Yet ask any seasoned traveller whether they regret how they have spent their life, and I bet they will all say “No. Not a minute of it”. It will be the happy memories of the places they have visited, the people they have met and the experiences they have shared, that will stay with them for the remainder of their lives.

Similarly, think of any top sportsman or woman. He or she has had to work incredibly hard to get to that point of physical perfection; that has enabled them to reach the pinnacle of their success. They must have faced many scary moments along the way. But they have clearly had a laser focus towards following their passion, and they have willingly taken pushed themselves and taken risks to get to where they are.

So, I ask you once again. What is your passion? If you removed most of the limitations of your current mindset, what would you truly love to spend your time doing? What can you now do to make the remainder of your life fulfilling, rewarding and totally enjoyable?

photo credit: Richard Branson Dreamers make the changes that make the world a better place via photopin (license)