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It’s Not Your Passion, But Your Purpose

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Everyone feels lost sometimes.

Everyone feels lost sometimes.

I don’t think I know anyone who hasn’t been lost in their head at one time or another — even those folks overachieving all over the Internet. We all find those moments that we wonder about who we are and what we want. But the question is not whether everyone gets lost, but how we get ourselves back on the road to the life we want.

Ask everyone how to get back to moving forward, and soon enough someone will say, “Follow your passion.” Follow your passion? What if my passion is sitting on the beach, listening to music?

When faced with the questions of who we are and what we want, the road to moving forward follows your purpose. Passion is only half the story. However you define success in business or in life, a critical component is finding your purpose — your unique ability to help others that involves both your mind and your heart.

Purpose is both credibility and passion. Credibility is at the heart of knowing who we are. To find your credibility, ask yourself what you’re already known for, what you’re good at, what you’ve accomplished. Passion is at the heart of knowing what we want. To find your passion, name what you talk about, think about, and do every day — without payment — simply because it makes you feel like you’ve got a contribution to make. In other words, concentrate on combining what you do well with what you really like.

If you’re an ex-lawyer fascinated by marketing. You might find your crossroads showing lawyers how to market their business. If you’re a mother who wants to start a small business, research small businesses for mothers or by show mothers how they might get started in business. Then help others who feel lost find their unique space.

It’s hard to feel lost when you’re helping people find their own way.

Be irresistible,

Liz

Put Your Mind to It

Set your mind to find the crossroads of your credibility and your passion. You’ll find a problem that you have solved for yourself in your own, unique way. Consider how you solved that problem for yourself. Then go solve that problem for everyone else.

More from Liz . . . about Not Passion, But Purpose:

Are You Seeing the Things that Make a Difference to Your Business and Your Life?

Choosing and Deciding: How Do You Sort a Path to Opportunity?

What Is the True Story about You?

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My father has his story. I have mine. You have yours.
My father has his story. I have mine. You have yours.

My father was a storyteller. It seemed that if he wasn’t telling a story, he hardly had anything to say. It was on his lap, by his side, sitting across from him at the table, listening to his stories that I learned how the world worked and how to understand people.

Stories not only help us make sense of the world; they help us define who we are. When we share our past with others, we link events together in a narrative — a story. My father had his story. I have mine. You have yours.

We all can experience an event, but our retellings of the same facts will differ. The story will change based on what we brought to the event and how we interpret what occurred. Though I might retell my father’s stories, my voice changes those stories making them my stories now, not his. The same is so about the stories we tell about ourselves. Everyone experiences us differently. So how do we know the true story about ourselves?

In telling our life story, we have to draw our own conclusions about what is true.

Refuse to decide and we give our future to people who don’t have to live our lives. We let others choose who we are and what we can be. The fact is that we can, should, and have to decide for ourselves.

Be irresistible,

Liz

Put Your Mind to It

It’s never too late to edit your life story. You’re the only one who can write the true story about yourself. Take the time to decide what are the best true stories about you. Send the out-of-date stories about you back to the past.

More from Liz . . .

about Your True Story:

What Is the Best True Story You Could Tell about You?

Are You Using History Strategically . . . to Claim Your Business and Life Future?

Trusting myself enough to decide to take the first step

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Make the decision to take the first step toward claiming your voice.
For more on decisions, trust and claiming your voice — signup for our weekly newsletter.

It started with a decision. And it was a simple decision at that. To park my car and get out. To get out of my car and go in. To go in and meet people. To meet people and share my voice. Yes — to share my voice – with people I didn’t know, at a conference I had never been to before.

Looking back on that day, I realize I learned something very important. Getting to the next place in life always begins with a decision. In my case, I had been quietly hesitant about sharing my voice for a long time. I lacked trust in myself and in what it was that my voice could lend to the world. And because of that I had chosen to circle the block — literally and figuratively — in a great many areas of my life.

Parking the car and getting out was all I needed to do. Get out of the car without stopping or stepping back. Sure — it was easy enough — but in reality it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

From that moment on, I was on a journey. I came to understand that in order to truly share my voice I have to claim it first. And claiming my voice always begins with trusting myself. Trusting myself enough to decide to take the first step.

Put Your Mind to It

Is there anything holding you back from claiming your voice? Are you circling the block in certain parts of your life? The next time you realize you are having difficulty making a decision — challenge yourself to actually decide — especially if it relates to claiming and sharing your voice. Decide to trust yourself.

Related Posts on Decision Making & Trust

Trust is being who you are 

My experience with cliffs and decisions

Trust is being who you are

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There we were at my dining room table, discussing the future of GeniusShared — it was a conversation that was one part ideation and another part candid truth. While I absolutely excelled at the ideation part of the conversation, I failed miserably at the candid truth part.

Liz said “You don’t trust me!”

To which I replied “Yes I do — I just don’t trust myself.”

Liz said “You don’t trust me enough to hear yourself argue with me.”

Liz saw me hiding my truth and she called me on it. Kindly. Gently. And firmly. After all, trust is the hard truth spoken gently.

I just wasn’t getting it — so I asked Liz “What is trust?”

She took a deep breath and summoned her patience to say – “Trust is when I don’t need to think about who I am with you. And you don’t need to think about who you are with me.”

You see — it was the part of the conversation that required me to trust beyond Liz. Yet for a million reasons, that today no longer seem to matter, I chose to hide. The reality was that I needed to trust myself too. To trust that my ideas were good enough, that I was smart enough and to believe that my voice was an integral ingredient when it came to the partnership we were building. And because I did that —  my voice couldn’t emerge.

It sounds so easy — but it wasn’t. At least not for me. The simple reality is that it took me months to see it. And to understand the power that comes from trusting myself enough to share my own truth.

Today, we have lots of different conversations related to GeniusShared, life, friends and the world. There’s never a shortage of areas for us to cover — and we have some of the most amazing discussions. Guess what? I no longer hide my thoughts during our conversations. I share them — without thinking about who I am. I just share myself. I do this because I know the difference it makes. And I’ve found my own way of saying what trust is — You need to be who you are and know that I’m not going to walk away because of it.

Jane Boyd is a Partner in GeniusShared. She is also the CEO of 45 Conversations Media & Education Ltd, a Canadian education and training company based just outside of Vancouver Canada. She works with educators, business, community and government in the areas of early learning, work-life, community development and employee engagement.

My Experience with Cliffs and Decisions

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2016 GeniusShared Read from Liz StraussI’ve been thinking about falling off cliffs.

I’m fairly sure I was born with a fear of heights.

My uncle, the photographer, didn’t have such fear. And as I recall, the rest of my family didn’t either.

And my uncle — the one with all of the expensive photography equipment — would find every opportunity to take pictures that involved standing my cousins and I near dramatic scenery.

I was always the one who ended up on the cliff side. It was always impossible to find my smile.

Even now, I can’t walk up to the edge of a cliff without thinking that the stone will give way. My imagination has me tumbling, down, down, down . . . even though, I’m fairly certain that’s not meant to be a scene in my life.

I used to have the same experience with decisions. Choosing any option would leave wondering whether the choice would fall out from under my feet. Then I realized the only thing between me and every success I every won was a decision that I would succeed.

Maybe it’s the awe inspiring beauty of the world that sets me on my heels.
Maybe it’s the awe inspiring idea that I can determine the course of my life.

I still respect cliffs and decisions, but now I place my feet firmly in where I stand so that down, down, down isn’t on mind.