What do you do when it feels like everything is going wrong? No matter which way you turn, the opposite of what you want ends up happening. You push, try to force, and still there is nothing but resistance.
It’s frustrating when you don’t get what you want.
Is a successful life about trying to find out what you like to do, what you are good at, and then trying to get someone to give you a job doing that? They say that you should figure out what you love to do and then find a way to get paid for it.
They are right.
I was always in love with horses. I was able to turn that into a career, both raising and racing them and then in an analyst role talking about them. It’s still what I am known for, even though I have branched out into other areas. It still feels like it’s my passion.
The wonderful world we live in is so full of opportunities that not to be able to find something you love doing should be almost impossible. You can start your own business online, sell products through Amazon or Shopify with very little investment, write and publish a book yourself, take courses online in your spare time, and then make a course to sell to other people who want to do the same thing you are doing.
There are so many options, it is easy to become overwhelmed. It’s actually easy to give up before you even try. Sometimes having too many choices makes you feel lost, almost as bad as having too few. It can be difficult to narrow the field down to the one choice that makes the most sense.
That’s where the problem is. We can pursue the life of our dreams, but the most important thing is knowing what the dream-life looks like and then being able to focus completely on one thing to get there.
The most successful people are the ones who started with one idea. Warren Buffet’s only focus was the stock market. Jeff Bezos built Amazon on the idea of creating an online marketplace, seizing the opportunity and having the foresight to know that it was the way the world was headed. When you think of successful people you can pretty much describe what they do in one or two words.
Specificity of focus – when you put all of your energy into accomplishing one thing, it can be incredible what you accomplish. That’s why it is important to do something that you love, not only because it needs to become the one thing you think about all of the time, but because usually what you love is also something you are good at doing.
There’s no sense trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. If you aren’t interested in something, then don’t force yourself to do it. How many kids get pressured into going to university to become something they don’t want to be? How many lawyers and doctors and MBA’s are walking around, miserable yet outwardly successful, going to jobs that make them feel dead inside?
Passion is a beacon of guidance to take you where you are meant to go. If you aren’t passionate about what you do, then maybe it’s time to reexamine what you are doing. Life passes by anyways, and there are only so many more days ahead of you to figure out what you want to accomplish.
Take one step at a time. Know that you can do whatever you want to do, and see clearly what that is. It’s your precious time that you are trading for making a living, so at least be in charge of how that looks.