Really, this passion searching thing has been the topic of self-development for ages! Almost anything possible to be done on passion has been said or written somewhere over the internet and in our life. What else can you be getting out from this post of mine then?

Well, you might be surprised as to how useful the tips are. I’m saying that because I’ve spend a lot of time reading blogs/books about finding your passion, thinking about them innovatively, and using them to help find my own passion. I’m sure you can at least use one of them to bring you closer to your passion.

Alright, I will share with you 7 great ways to find your passion (Why 7? Because 7 is my lucky number! Seriously, I think these 7 are the most useful ways to get you started):

1. You don’t need to find your passion right away

Yes, you don’t have to force yourself to find your passion now! I know you want to, but since you’ve already spent at least 20 years not having a passion, why are you in a rush to OWN one now? It takes time and patience.

Having said that, you do have to be proactive in the search. You should always think about finding your passion and be curious about the things around you to see if they fit your passion criteria. Tune your mind to look for your passion, and don’t expect for instant results.

2. You can have more than 1 passion

When people talk about passion, they always narrow them down to 1 thing. But, you can have multiple passions! You might love entrepreneurship and computers, so you build a business selling computers (think Michael Dell).

As for myself, I’ve combined 5 of my passions: entrepreneurship, writing, personal development, money management, and Information Technology –> Think Big Think Money blog. It’s tough to limit yourself to 1 passion, but it’s easy to combine all your passions into one and save yourself some headache deciding which one to go with.

3. Dare to be different

Do you notice how many people try hard to please their friends and family? Even though they don’t enjoy what they do in the pleasing process. But this is your life, you gotta take charge of it and do something different from others. How can you find your passion if you behave like the majority of the population who either doesn’t have a passion or doesn’t want to have one?

Remember the last time you met someone full of passion? Don’t you think he is a little bit different? A person with passion literally lives life to the fullest, and acts according to his heart and will. He doesn’t fear to go beyond the ordinary path. Sure, he might get a lot of criticisms from others, but nobody can please everybody, so stop trying!

4. Don’t read about the things you’re interested about

Right, stop reading about the cars, clothes, gadgets, etc on magazines or the internet, for at least a week. If you feel that it’s tough to do and it’s killing you inside, it’s a good sign that you might be in for the real passion! Think of ways to turn that passion into a working model (think money and success).

Be proactive in the ‘transformation’ process, the key to finding your passion often lies at your ability and willingness to be innovative (ideas + actions = innovation).

5. Don’t ask yourself questions

This might be counterintuitive, and might not work for you if you love to answer questions in schools/colleges. I’m sure you’ve come across many different books and articles that pose questions for you to answer in order to identify your passion. No doubt those are helpful, but NOT for everyone! Furthermore, most people would probably just ignore them or tend not to follow up afterwards.

If you fall within the category, use your guts instead. You don’t have to ask yourself questions to know what you really love to do. Close your eyes for a moment and think about what you might be passionate about – visualize it, feel it, live it. Do that at least once a day for a few minutes, keeping in mind that your passion might change from time to time. It’s 1000 times better than answering a question and not doing anything about it at all!

6. Find out as much about something that you don’t like to do and make it your passion

Reverse psychology, you can call it. But it works. If you understand how our brain works, you should know that we don’t always act according to what we really should. In the long run, however, we would be most happy if we act according to our subconscious mind (read: your guts).

So why not do something against your conscious mind and make something you thought you didn’t like to do your passion? You might just find that it’s actually something that you’ve always wanted to do but has been suppressed by your rational mind because it was against the social stigma or some ridiculous societal influences.

7. Tomorrow’s your first birthday!

Happy Birthday! You know Steve Jobs’s famous commencement speech:

I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

I’ve been trying to treat every day as if it were the last day of my life, but I find it very difficult to do because I would probably just spend my entire day with my loved one, friends and family. I still care about my blog readers of course, and I’ll definitely post some last words here on the blog, but realistically I wouldn’t spend my last 24 hours blogging, even though it’s my passion!

Instead, I thought the opposite might work just fine. Before you go to bed every night, ask yourself: “If tomorrow were the first day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do tomorrow?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, you know you need to change something. (Note the exception: this is the only practical question you want to ask yourself because it’s just too effective to ignore)

Unfortunately, most people don’t think outside the box

They follow the traditional ways of doing things and end up like everyone else. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but if you want to succeed, you need to think outside the box and change the old and ineffective mindset.

So, 7 new and unconventional ways as I promised. I’m confident that you can use at least 1 way here to bring yourself closer to finding your passion if you put them into actions. But really, just by reading this post a few times might already be changing your paradigm (the old mindset). Finally, If you’ve found your passion through this post, feel free to email me your newfound passion and I will post them on the “Post My Goals!” page.

Passion, here I come!

You Don’t Keep Walking Because You’re Halfway Through, You Should Keep Walking Because You’re in the Right Direction

I was recently inspired by a person dear to me about choices that we make. I’ll spare you the details if you will, but the general idea is that a person has to keep walking because he or she is halfway through a journey, wherever the destination might be. Or, is it true?

I beg to differ. I’d say this, “You don’t keep walking because you’re halfway through, you should walk because you’re in the right direction.” Imagine that you’re lost in a jungle, but you’ve walked for 10 miles, but do you keep walking because you’ve been walking for so long? When the sun rises, you realize that you’re in the wrong direction, wouldn’t you change course and turn around? That’s common sense for sure. But why don’t people do the same in life? How many times have you done something simply because you were told to, because it was the way that’s been done for centuries, because you didn’t have a choice? I definitely have.

We often get stuck in a rut because we don’t raise our head and look around to see if we’re heading in the right direction. If we keep walking without looking at the sky, without a compass (could very well be this blog or a mentor that you have), without a GPS, how would we know if we would get out of the jungle? You have to be conscious and find out if you’re on the right track. If you are, congratulations! Otherwise, stop doing what you’re doing and reassess yourself. You might want to use the free success checklist I’ve built by signing up with your email address on the sidebar. If you find out that you’re not really supposed to be doing what you’re doing, be it studying, working, daydreaming, stop doing it for the sake of doing. Steve Jobs said it well: “”If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

So how do you make sure you’re on the right track? I’ve designed a simple Venn diagram for you to identify if you’re on the right track.

You’re passionate about what you’re doing

You have to love what you do, otherwise you will only achieve so much. Steve Jobs doesn’t only like creating MACs and iPods, he LOVES what he’s doing and would do it even if today were his last day on earth. Follow your heart and you will succeed in your own way. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll consider having a post on how to find your passion. But this is only 1/3 of a way to identify if you’re on the right track, you might be passionate about movie dramas, but you’re not gonna produce one! (Okay, you might, but you get the point.)

You’re putting a lot of genuine effort into what you’re doing

You work hard! This is the part where you really gonna produce a movie drama. Working hard tells a lot by itself. It shows your dedication, your commitment, your resolve. Warren Buffett spends most of his waking hours reading company annual reports to spot good investment opportunities (other than playing Bridge with Bill Gates), because he wants to be the best at what he does – value investing. But I emphasized ‘genuine’, because you might be working hard at a job that you don’t really like, but you’re required to work overtime, or else you’ll be fired. If that’s the case, you might not be on the right track. If you work hard because you really want to, because you want to learn more, that might be an indication that you should keep going.

You’re good at you’re doing (better than average)

You gotta have the talents. If you don’t have the natural talents are what you’re doing, you might still reach your goal, but it’ll take you 5 years instead of 1 year for someone with better talents than you. If you and Michael Jordan started playing basketball at the same time, do you think you’d be as good at basketball as he was? You still can do it if you’re passionate and you want to put in a lot of genuine effort, but you should question yourself, “Is it worth it?” Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses, because your strengths will definitely outgrow your weaknesses by a gazillion light years.

Find the intersection point

So, to know if you’re on the right track, find the intersection point in the Venn diagram – do what you’re passionate about, what you’re willing to work hard for, and what you’re good at. If you do that, I truly congratulate you on your journey of success.

Put it another way, you might even be very successful at what you’re doing, but if you’re in the wrong direction, you might actually be worse off than you were at the start, because now you’re many more steps further from your true destination.

So how do you find your purpose? To me, it comes from developing your passion. When you know what your passion is, you will have a better idea about what exactly what you want to live for. Successful people live with their passion. Delatorro McNeal said it well, “Donald Trump doesn’t just like real estate, it’s his passion. Tiger Woods doesn’t just like golf, it’s his passion.” So, what is your passion? What would you be willing to do for the rest of your life, with all your heart and soul? Remember this, you’ve only got one life, one chance. Don’t waste it!

As usual, let’s talk about money. I’m not rich yet, far from it. But I learnt this from those who are rich: you gotta have a reason for wanting to get rich. Maybe your dream is to travel all over the world without having to worry about the credit card bills that come haunting you after; maybe your dream is to retire young and unwind at the Hawaiian beach whenever you feel it. Whatever it is, you’d better have a good reason. After all, money is only an idea. It’s the dream behind it that matters.

So now you have reason, what’s next? Napoleon Hill said, “Decide on the exact amount of money you want.” Because you and I know it well, money is NEVER enough. If you do not set the target amount, you will never be truly rich because you’ll be a slave to getting more money! And we want to be the masters of money, not slaves. We want the money to work for us, not the other way round.

So, are you living with your purpose, passion, and reason? Share your story!

Summary:

1) Find your purpose. Find your passion.

2) Know the reason why you want to get rich. Then decide on the exact amount you want to earn.

Do you want to be successful and wealthy? Who doesn’t?! This is a serious serious to developing your behaviors for personal growth and managing your personal finance. If you have the dream to be bigger than you are, please join me in this journey of success!

Hi, My name is Ken, creator of this blog, “Think Big & Think Money!”. Feel free to read about my background in the profile. I will provide a summary at the end of this post that lists the takeaways, and I will do the same for every post in the future. (I think the picture fits exactly what my blog is all about, credit goes to “rossgram” from Flickr.)

So, Why Think Big?  Because you’re really bigger and better than you think! Why would you rather stay little and powerless when you know that you can do better than this and live the lifestyle you’ve always wanted to live and do the things you’ve always wanted to do? I know this well, as I talk to my friends and family, and as people grow, they realize that they need to do something more meaningful than what they’re doing now. They want to start a business, get a beautiful girlfriend, get a new job that they like, etc. But they never got started because they didn’t think they could! Unfortunate, but true, and it’s happening everywhere — the person sitting next to you, your neighbor, and maybe yourself…

And you know what, all the successful and rich people in this world have essentially disagreed everything under the sun, except this — you become what you think about. It’s simple truth, and I learnt that through a “Six Minutes to Success” program by Bob Proctor, a great motivational teacher, author, entrepreneur. {Feel free to sign up through me by clicking on the banner on this blog, it has a 7-day trial and I totally won’t even bother cancelling it!}

Come, let us explore this secret of success together, and if we hit bumps along the way, we can always stand back up and do it again. As no successful person in this world has never failed along his or her way to finding the gold mine of success, I don’t foresee myself, or yourself, to succeed in everything without setbacks, or failures. It’s part of life and as long as we learn from them and be courageous enough to continue the journey, obstacles will only be things we see we take our eyes off the goal, as Zig Ziglar put it perfectly.

You might wonder, “Okay, thinking big makes sense now, but what about think money?!”. Alright, this is both a personal investment and a motivational blog. I believe they go hand in hand, because I’m not just going to write about the ways to invest our money in stocks and mutual funds, but also ways to live free from the boundaries of paychecks. I’m only writing based on the teachings of the books I read, and most of the authors, if not all, are very successful people who have learnt the art of life. I’m simply sharing the ideas in this blog so that we can all benefit from them. Not everybody enjoys reading non-fiction bestsellers, although I do, so a great summary would be good enough so that you will have time to proceed through your life as usual, and drop by to check out what’s new and how you might best use and apply in your daily lives.

Summary:

1) Think Big! Because you become what you think about.

2) You might fail before you succeed. Just believe in yourself, stand back up, learn from the failures, and charge again!

3) I will summarize the main ideas from the great books that I read, and come up with suggestions so you could use them immediately!

I look forward to reading your thoughts, comments, or experiences!