How to Find your Passion

This is my guide on how to find your passion.

What if you don’t know what your passion is?

What if you want to quit your job but you’re unsure about your next steps?

I went really deeply into these questions with three clients this week.

Three unbelievably charismatic, creative and high-performing individuals.

One of them asked me the following questions:

How do you find what your purpose in life is?

I know the money will come but more importantly finding what fulfils me and drives my purpose to help others- that’s the job I am looking for.

How did you know what you would be great at?

I get really passionate when I talk to people who are looking for their passions!

In this article, I will share my thoughts and a reference to neuroscience on how you can find your passion.

How I Found my Own Passion

My passion is my people’s lives.

My passion is helping my people paint their life painting.

This is a long story of how I found my passion for coaching.

At age 15, I thought music was my purpose in life.

Yet, because I always got good marks in school in Greece, I studied computer science and I enjoyed it very much!

At the onset of the financial crisis in 2009, I booked my ticket to Canada determined to seek my fate abroad.

A month later, I received an email from an asset management firm in London saying that I’d been accepted to their trading internship programme.

I cancelled my flight to Toronto and I moved to London instead!

After a month, they kicked me out of the programme because my heart rate used to go crazy when I was asked to buy and sell.

My English was not good enough. I was still thinking in my own language back then.

After a month of sending resumes to everyone with no luck, I proudly got my first job as a Christmas tree seller.

The smell of the trees and working outdoors was a unique experience…

But because you can’t have a permanent job selling Christmas trees I applied for “normal” jobs again!

I got an IT support job for Polkaspots (Simon Morley, I love you, man!).

I used to visit cafes and set up the internet for them.

Simon later told me that they had given me the job because I was the only applicant! Lol, true story!

In the meantime, I connected with other Greek musicians in London and I started making money with live gigs.

But because I had not got finance and banking out of my system yet…

After eight months of late-night studying and several unsuccessful interviews…

I saw myself in a suit and tie working for Merrill Lynch! YES!

Exciting times.

Lots of money, learning, growing, but… there was an issue.

My life was flashing by.

It was all work and accumulating money.

Monday to Friday was home — work — and back home.

No exploration, no excitement, no hobbies, no new memories!

After four years I said goodbye to investment banking.

Sorry, that was not for me. There was more to life!

Then, I launched a fashion-tech startup with my partner Fragi.

But how come fashion, Angelos? You have no clue about fashion, man!

Yes, but it’s a profitable idea! I can make it work and get rich!

Money failed to motivate me enough. Both I and my partner gave up within six months.

I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do next.

I thought I’d try random stuff that I wanted to explore.

Yes, just for the sake of curiosity and pleasure and … let’s see what happens.

I dived into the Russian language first. Self-study. Full time. 8 hours a day. My job was to learn the Russian language.

After three months, I was invited to give a talk at Oxford University about how I learned Russian.

I started a blog and a YouTube channel about language learning, cognitive psychology, the memory and the brain.

I moved to Ukraine where I wrote and published my first book, Learn Russian Diversified.

And then, new interests entered my life. Self-development, effective learning, productivity, mindset, human potential, psychology…

I read and researched academic papers to find deeper answers.

I moved to Lefkada, Greece for 5 months and spent hours writing every day.

I ended up writing another four books.

And then it was time for more travelling. I moved to St. Petersburg, Russia.

And because you need to have a job to live in Russia long term…

I got a job as a teacher of English in a private language school.

But I realised that I didn’t teach my students only English grammar but, also, goals, mindset, confidence, self-development, careers…

It was more coaching and mentoring rather than teaching English.

And because teaching English and writing was not making me the same money I used to make in banking…

I launched an online marketing agency helping businesses with their branding, social media and marketing.

But what always fired me up was not so much the Facebook ads and click-through-rate conversions as…

Motivating my clients to create content, show up in front of the camera, build a relationship with their own clients, humanise their brand…

So, I ended up doing coaching again without ever calling myself a coach.

Until one day, real coaches became my clients and asked me to help them with their marketing.

Wooow!!

“So, tell me guys, what is coaching?”

“Really???”

“Is this what coaching can do for people?”

Wooow #2!!!

The more I was working alongside coaches, the more I was falling in love with that profession.

It was seductive.

All these success stories, deep conversations, the power of listening…

Wooow #3!

It looked like I’d found my passion.

I soon got my own clients.

My calendar was full of names of people all around the world.

I’d never found anything more beautiful in my life…

Partnering with another human being to improve their life became my passion, purpose, calling, and all these words together.

Coaching for me is an act of love.

I found it!!!

Look for Create your Passion!

Some of us find their passion in childhood and get married to it for the rest of their lives!

Brilliant!

But, as you see, that was not the case for me — and it’s not the case for most of my clients.

Still brilliant!

If you want to find your passion, be prepared to turn every stone upside down.

The only way to find it is by actively looking for it and taking action.

Turning stones upside down involves lots of sweating!

Finding one’s passion requires more doing than thinking.

Finding one’s passion is more like writing your book, a pile of blank pages waiting to be written by you.

You can’t choose your passion. It’s not there.

Finding your passion is not a multiple-choice exercise.

It doesn’t look like anybody else’s passion. You’ll have to create it.

Finding your passion is a commitment to a journey, a commitment to exploration, a commitment to the unknown.

If you’re passionate enough about finding your passion, you will find it!

You Always Find your Passion at the Right Time

When you finally find your passion, you’ll bring to it all the lessons and experiences you had while looking for it!

No, no, no. You didn’t waste your time looking for it.

Had I not been in a corporate job and quit, I wouldn’t be able to coach people now on quitting their job.

Had I not studied mathematics, I wouldn’t be able to use logic and prove by contradiction that the stories that my clients tell themselves are not real.

Had I not worked with hundreds of students as a teacher, I wouldn’t have gone that deep into things like confidence, fears, learning obstacles, mindset, etc.

Had I not taken action by quitting my job, I wouldn’t be working with my lovely people today, I wouldn’t be writing this article, I wouldn’t be helping others to find their own passions and write their own stories.

Had someone told you ten years ago “hey, this is your passion, don’t waste your time”, you probably wouldn’t have been able to see it.

You can only connect the dots going backwards as Steve Jobs used to say.

All my failures and long passion-wandering in life have now become my coaching credentials.

And I teach the same to my clients.

Luke quit his job in finance to become a language teacher.

And now he can teach business English, and help his students with their resumes and job applications.

Because there are students who want to learn English with a guy who was in the corporate world and did all that Luke did before becoming a teacher. Simple.

Sometimes speaking to Luke and seeing the love he brings to his teaching makes me think that had he not gone through all his previous experiences, he wouldn’t be inspiring his students the way he is today.

Another analogy comes to my mind right now. Isn’t it the same with finding love?

A lot of us find love after having failed a few times.

And it’s not only because the love of our lives didn’t turn up earlier.

It’s because we evolved, we learned to suppress our ego, we learned to love unconditionally, we learned to love and now we’re ready to welcome love to our lives.

How to Find your Passion according to Neuroscience

Now, forget my own stories and experiences and let’s have a look at what science says about finding one’s passion.

This is what Art Markman says in his book “Bring your Brain to Work”:

The regions deep in the brain don’t have extensive connections to the areas of the cortex that control the social and cognitive brains. As a result, people have little ability to introspect about what drives their motivational system. Instead, the motivational brain communicates with the cognitive and social brains largely through feelings.

The feelings you have (what psychologists call affect) are actually rather simple. When you’re making progress toward achieving your goals, you feel good. When you aren’t, you feel bad. The more deeply invested you are in the goal the motivational system is pursuing, the stronger the feelings you have.

These feelings become emotions when you reflect on them. You don’t consciously realize what factors are driving your motivational system to produce your “affect”. You experience a particular emotion only after giving your own interpretation to those feelings.

Passion arises from strong positive feelings. When you believe that the object of those feelings is your job and your work — when you are deeply invested in what you’re doing and you believe that you’re making progress toward your goals — you experience excitement, joy, satisfaction, and passion for your work.

So, in simple words, how can you find your passion if you don’t explore life and try a few different things to see what motivates you and generates those positive emotions?

No matter how many hours you sit in your chair looking up at the ceiling… you’ll not find your passion.

Passion comes from positive emotions that arise from making progress because you failed a lot after taking action!

Find your Passion Being of Service to Others

Art Markman continues in his book Bring your Brain to Work:

Quite a bit of research provides evidence for the importance of seeing work not just as a job but as a calling or a vocation. Bryan Dik and Ryan Duffy suggest that a vocation involves focusing on any task (work, parenting, social action) as something that gives a sense of meaning or purpose to life, particularly if the goal is to help others rather than the self.

Jane Dawson reviews the use of the word vocation to refer to work and points out that the German sociologist Max Weber thought it would benefit people to see their work as something connected with selfless service to others. Contemporary research suggests that people who view what they do as a calling commit more strongly to their work than do people who view it as just a job or a means to make a living.

A story is told about President Kennedy on a visit to Cape Canaveral, talking to a maintenance worker and asking him, “What are you doing here?” The man replied, “Sending a man to the moon.” Although this story is probably apocryphal, people often clearly view the specific tasks they perform as serving a larger mission — even when the tasks don’t seem very interesting.

Have you experienced something like this?

Isn’t it a lot more uplifting when you work on a bigger mission that goes a lot further than yourself?

Talking about myself, I now make my money by transforming my clients’ lives.

I am on a mission to help 100 people to quit their corporate jobs in 2020.

My “self” is not there in that mission.

There is no monetary goal in my mission. But guess what?

If I manage to transform 100 lives and help my people feel more fulfilled and happy, they will eventually reward me with a lot of money and most importantly with a ton of appreciation.

That’s what happens when you get passionate about being of service to others.

Your Passion is not an Eternal State of Happiness

We usually have this fallacy that once we find our passion we’ll tap into an eternal state of happiness and fulfilment.

I found my passion now! No stress, no frustration, no friction!

Not really…

Do you guys think it was easy to write this article?

I got stuck a few times, I didn’t know how to express my thoughts, I got frustrated because it was taking longer than I expected, I ate five dried figs because I didn’t know what to do (seriously, I did!), I went out for a bit, I came back to the office…

But I had to do it! I was on a mission as Art explains in his book. I needed to find answers to my people’s questions. That was my motivator.

After every sentence I write in this article, I think about all my clients, Amy Sheldon who inspired me to write all this, my friends, and all human beings who are looking for their passions and want to feel more fulfilled.

While I’m writing all this I’m not thinking about the time I invest, the money I’m losing, the session that I could have accommodated into today’s schedule, had I not spent all these hours writing…

My passion for being of service to my people often drained me in my early coaching career.

I used to forget that I was also part of the service if I wanted to serve my people.

Think now about someone who’s pursuing a PhD degree.

You would say that a researcher who’s doing PhD research must have some sort of interest in his research field, right? Some sort of passion…

Still, almost every PhD student has several stories of disappointment, moments they almost gave up, hitting walls, not getting the results they’re looking for.

But they kept going because of the genuine interest and their curiosity about their work, a bigger goal of advancing science, finding a cure to a disease, etc.

“People often assume that their own interest or passion just needs to be found or revealed. Once revealed, it will be in a fully formed state,” said Paul A. O’Keefe, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale.

Nonsense, of course, he said. “By that logic, pursuing one’s passion should come with boundless motivation and should be relatively easy”.

Dr O’Keefe and his team found that people who hold a fixed theory had less interest in things outside of their current interests, were less likely to anticipate difficulties when pursuing new interests, and lost interest in new things much quicker than people who hold a growth theory. In essence, people with a growth mindset of interest tend to believe that interests and passions are capable of developing with enough time, effort and investment.

A Better Question for Finding your Passion

I always advise my clients to change the question “What’s my passion?” to “Why would I like to explore next?”

The second question is less intimidating and carries less expectation.

You want to pursue a career in law but you’re not sure if it’s the right thing for you?

Why don’t you take some action by doing a little job-shadowing? Spend a whole week in a lawyers office. What emotions did you get that week?

Go to the court and see what’s going on over there. Hang out with lawyers. Find mentors.

Do you want to build a business? Who would you like to help with your service? Is there a problem you’re curious to find the answer to? Is there an area you have a genuine interest in?

Do you want to become a fitness coach? You don’t have to be ripped. You can get on a journey of reaching your own fitness goals and drive others to this journey. Remember, your failures today will be your credentials tomorrow.

Whatever you decide to do, you’ll be learning along the way. You don’t have to be an expert. Be a student instead. A student learns, grows, develops curiosity and is keen to find the answers for themselves and others.

I didn’t mean to write this long article today. I decided to explore this topic and go deeper.

What do you want to explore today?

What steps are you willing to take towards finding your passion?

PS: If what you read speaks to you, send me an email or connect with me on LinkedIn. I might be able to help you find your passion.