I have done a few videos on this, checked out the half dozen books that exist on this topic, and watched a lot of lectures/videos/content AND read a lot of articles on this. In addition to that, I have talked to many people in person or online who have found their passion, or are successful, or are farther along the way.
I am still learning and growing and figuring it out but I sure have a better grasp at it than most people. If you’re reading this, you may have already come to the conclusion (the right conclusion) that passion and love of what you do (again, not every part of it may be enjoyable but let’s not worry about the details for now) is essential for success and happiness.
Or maybe you have realized that this is the true key to achieving wealth and success in your field. Doing something you hate will not get you far in the long run, and especially will most likely get you to the top 5 percentile of the competition, which is where you want to be. I have a lot to say about this and some of my youtube videos are outdated.
Below are just a bit of content I believe have been useful in my search (again, this is through sifting through the tons of crap videos/books/etc). This whole thing is not as simple as it seems and the deeper I dive, it seems to involve history, economics, politics, evolutionary biology, and more. But generally, you don’t need to know most of that. It does, in fact, involve things like tasks, behaviors, signs to look for, and other actions that will help you find and recognize where to go.
Larry Smith gives a fuller explanation and answer to the problem but I don’t think he answers everything. I highly recommend you watch the 2nd video I listed above at least though (from start to end).
Search “Warren Buffett mba talks” or “warren buffett student speeches” or “warren buffett find your passion”. He talks about this quite well but logn story short he would have done the same thing he is doing now if he was rich or poor or made no money. He loves what he does and is very happy he can do it 8 hours a day. In fact, he did do it for a lot of time while poor.
Tai Lopez
He has a paid product for $10 I bought which is 67 videos on health, wealth, happiness, and happiness. (No, I wasn’t paid to advertise this). I bought it and it has been infinitely useful in understanding the process. It is called the 67 steps.
The biggest thing I got was that you don’t have as many infinite choices as it seems in this world with seemingly infinite possibilities for job choices. You have to play to your strengths and be in the top 10 percentile to even consider being competitively viable and make money out of it.
However, I slightly disagree to a small extent because there are many case studies of individuals who persevered despite being told by everyone it is not a viable career or the industry has not been created yet or there is no future or he has no skill to ever succeed in it. And they end up becoming one of the most successful people in history in that field. So it varies and requires a bit of personal calibration and luck. You never know. Just don’t be those fools auditioning on American Idol who can’t carry a note and think they sing like Mariah Carey.
We live in a world where marketplaces, industries, services, technology, companies, and careers are being created everyday. So you can’t say stuff like “there’s no occupation or money in photography” anymore either. Ask the founders of Instagram. Again, creating and making money through your passion does require a lot of work, planning, thinking, and a little bit of luck too. So there’s that judgement call of risk and reward. But I would always go for it. I probably would personally spend all my free time trying to figure out how I could make a living off photography or singing if those were my sole passions and the marketplace or career pathways currently didn’t offer it. I would slowly work towards it and start with attempting to take baby steps and see if you can make a dollar… then ten dollars… then so on.
Additionally, many successful people have wanted to spend years working for free or charged nothing for the product they have created, which ended up being the wisest thing to do, because they gained tremendous knowledge that allowed them to make a lot of money later or took a tremendous amount of growing market share over time because of it. (Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jack Ma of Alibaba)
If not, he has a youtube channel with free content which is decent. And you can find interviews online that are decent.
https://www.youtube.com/user/tailopezofficial
If you want my content, you can search it up on my channel.
http://youtube.com/willyoulaugh
I do agree with Larry Smith that many people are discounting entire career paths and possibilities and squandering tremendous potential because they don’t want to waste time or energy risking failure or other reasons like their parents told them to stick to only the safest, riskless jobs like engineer or doctor or lawyer.
One other important thing is that there are different pathways to a end goal of achieving the successful outcome you want (in this case, a job you are passionate about). It is not always a straight line and often full of zig-zag’s. A lot of academic institutions ask you to be fairly specific for your end goal position. Sometimes, this is a good thing. You have to be very specific and detailed. “I like sports” is not good enough.
Well, do you want to be a coach or referee or therapist or player or Youtube game commentator, or a ESPN commentator or a play-by-play commentator or a sports interviewer? In this case, you have to be more specific to figure things out. Other times, as detailed in a great book, Life is What You Make It by Peter Buffett, you cannot be too specific but you need a general area to run towards because you do not know that very specialized position that you want (perhaps it is because you have to invent it yourself in the future or because it is just too obscure for you to be aware of OR because the industry won’t be invented yet until the technology is ready ten or twenty years from now).
From there, the only way to go is in plunging yourself in and going through zig-zag’s. You have to plunge yourself into this career you think you may be interested in to find out you hate a certain aspect of it, which will direct you to a similar job that removes this area you or particular segment you hate about this job you would otherwise love (for instance, you think you want to be an abstract painter but find out you want something more concrete and you want to merge your hobbies of science and physics. Therefore, you end up moving to a position as an architect. Just one zig-zag of the entire process.).
For these sort of innovative folks in the latter group, you may need to be innovative, hard-working, have tremendous focus, and/or execute constantly to create that fantasy or fantasy job you have envisioned like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, or Richard Branson. (Watch Star Wars or read Branson’s books on his ventures with Virgin or watch the end of the Follow Your Passion Part 2 video by Larry Smith I showed you where he notes a successful man who loves dinosaurs and thus created a business with little competition which manufactures dinosaur parts)
Be very careful with how far you take this, because, again, there are plenty of people, like myself, who love music or singing or video games and have tremendous competition of millions for those few spots on the top to be a famous mainstream musician or a video game streamer.
These game plans require, in my opinion, a lot of factors like talent, luck, perseverance, networking, passion, hard work, hustle, fearlessness and even then there’s a good chance you’ll fail. In my opinion, that still seems like a much happier life enjoying the journey of attempting to get there than just giving it up and doing something you hate for your whole life out of safety though (take this with a grain a salt and a generalization on something that requires a lot more details and explanation). Even if you fail, as long as you get those basic needs of decent clothing, food, and a place to sleep, heck, that seems a lot more fun than something you hate to do but is risk-less and tolerable programming in a cubicle.
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
Almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”
“If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.”
-Steve Jobs
Almost all jobs require skills, which take years at times to develop fully to play versus the competition. To excel at a job, you want to be extremely better than the competition. Therefore, it is almost always better to find it earlier rather than later. I have listened and talked to quite a few people who said they were lucky to be able to find their passion at a young age. That was not me. Maybe that isn’t you either. Perhaps, you are quite old already.
Like Larry Smith says in this video below, too many people stop looking. Don’t let this be you. Rarely will you be chased by what you want out of life. You find it by looking.
Sometimes, though, you already found it as a child but for one reason or other, maybe your parents, you forgot or ruled it out.
I do think this topic is a lot deeper and more complicated than you would think. This is just a chunk of my opinions on the topic. I will most likely post more articles on here about more about it as well as express my new opinions on the topic after absorbing new knowledge in my videos.
If you liked this article, please share it with someone you think would like this or be helped by it.
-Will
