The Passion Challenge - Four Easy Steps To Total Fulfillment In Your Life

Article #3 - FROM CRISIS TO COURAGE AND PAIN TO PURPOSE. The LinkedIn Guideline For Creating the Greatest Expression of Your Life You Can Imagine.

Are you an entrepreneur wondering how to start or build your business? Or even a dreamer who is dreaming of a more fulfilled life? If that sounds like you, then welcome friend, you’re reading the right article!

Did you know that:

·        87% of individuals are unhappy with their careers.

·        The trend of unhappy married people is growing.

·        Globally, more than 300 million people of all ages suffer from depression.

You see, most of us are walking blindly. We are bound by ideas like “you need a college degree,” or “you need to get a job and save for retirement,” or even “you have to go to church every Sunday.” We’re afraid to even think higher for ourselves and so we stay stuck. Stuck in our unhappy careers, marriages and lives, trust me, I’ve been there (I share more details about fear and being stuck in the previous articles in this series). The good news is that you don’t have to live your life being unfulfilled anymore! You can stop believing that only certain people have this special power to shape their world according to their passions because you can too!

So the question is… how do you create a life of fulfillment where your passion connects with your purpose and your most desired dreams are manifesting before your eyes?

I’m going to share with you an exercise that’s so simple anyone can apply to their lives. What makes the exercise even more effective is that it’s backed with neuroscience to help enable you to start ascending beyond what most people are doing, to become extraordinary and living out your dreams. It’s called The Passion Challenge. But why is passion so important? Simple. It’s a profound focusing mechanism. We pay more attention to those things we believe in and so focused attention becomes the ultimate gateway drug. It drives performance and it increases productivity and is among the most addictive states on earth. Any experience that consistently generates this state is an experience we will go extraordinarily far out of our way to get more of. Sounds pretty amazing right? Here’s how to get there.

Step One: Make A List

The easiest place to start is with a pen and a piece of paper. For reasons that have to do with the relationship between writing and memory, it’s better if you do this with pen and paper instead of a laptop and keyboard.

The first thing you want to do is make a list of 25 things you’re curious about. And by curious, all I really mean is that if you had a spare weekend, you’d be interested in reading a couple of books on the topic and maybe having a conversation or two with an expert.

The most important part here is to be as absolutely specific as possible. In other words, don’t be interested in jogging or singing or food. These categories are way too vague to be useful. Instead, be interested in the proper jogging and running techniques; the physical effects of singing; or the potential for plant-based foods to become a primary human food source in the next five years.

Step Two: Hunt for Intersections

Now look for places where these 25 ideas intersect. Take the above example. Say both plant-based foods and the proper jogging and running techniques are on your list. Well, if you’re into understanding proper jogging and running techniques, you’re probably also interested in the nutritional requirements required to jog and run most effectively. Plant-based carbohydrates are very important for energy. Would they help to maximize nutrient absorption and muscle recovery after jogging and running?

The point here is simple. Curiosity alone is not enough to create true passion. There’s just not enough energy there. Not enough focus or commitment. Instead, you want to look for places where three or four items on your curiosity list intersect.

If you can spot the overlap between multiple items on your list—well, now you’re cooking. There’s energy there. Why? It’s neurobiology. When multiple curiosity streams intersect you create the necessary conditions for pattern recognition, which is the linking of ideas together.

Humans love pattern recognition. Whenever we recognize a pattern, the brain releases a tiny squirt of the neurochemical dopamine and, for cultivating passion, this is a very big deal. Dopamine serves a ton of different functions in the brain, but for this discussion three are critical.

1.      Dopamine is a focusing chemical. It helps us pay more attention to the task at hand. Obviously, this enhances learning and drives progress and both are key to cultivating passion.

2.      Dopamine tunes signal to noise ratios in the brain, which is a fancy way of saying it helps us detect more patterns. Meaning there’s a feedback loop here. We get dopamine when we first detect a link between two ideas and the dopamine that we get helps us detect even more links. This is why creative ideas tend to spiral—one good idea leads to the next and the next.

3.      Dopamine is a feel-good drug. It’s one of the brain’s principle reward chemicals and is extremely addictive. This addiction is key to passion. The more dopamine you get, the more addictive the experience, the more addictive the experience, the more you can’t wait to do it again.

Step Three: Play

Now that you’ve identified that overlap, play in that space for a little while. Devote 10 or 20 minutes a day to listening to lectures, watching videos, reading articles, books, whatever, on the topic. Feed those curiosities a little bit at a time, but feed them on a daily basis.

This slow evolution strategy takes advantage of the brain’s inherent pattern recognition software. When you advance your knowledge a little bit at a time, you’re giving your subconscious a chance to process that information. It will (automatically) start looking for connections between the bits you’re learning. This means more patterns, more dopamine, more motivation, and—over time—a bit of expertise.

For a while—in step two—a lot of what you’re doing is learning a bit of history about your new chosen field and the language spoken by experts in that field—as this is the only way to get to real expertise.

Step Three: Go Public

The thing about cultivating real passion is it’s not just enough to locate those spots where multiple curiosities intersect. Sure, those are spots with lots of energy. Sure, playing in that arena will help with cultivation, but to really seal the deal you need some “public success” in the area.

What do I mean by public success? For starters, positive feedback from others. Once you’re at this point in the process - take things public! Join a meet up on the subject. Join an online community. Start a Facebook page. Talk to other folks. We, humans, are social creatures and adding social reinforcement to your passion is key.

Step Four: Turning Passion Into Purpose

Passion, for all its upside, can be a fairly selfish experience. Being all consumed by something means just that—you’re all consumed. There’s not much room for other people. Thus, it’s critical to turn passion into purpose—that’s both how your build businesses around your passion and how you guard against being swallowed whole by your new love.

Here’s how it works. Get out another piece of paper. Take up your pen again. Now write down a list of 15 massive problems you would love to see solved. And by massive I mean something everyone has to deal with. Remember, the world’s biggest problems are the world’s biggest business opportunities!

Now look for places where your passion intersects with a grand, global challenge. A place where your passion is a solution to some giant problem. That linkage—now that’s purpose. Suddenly, you’re looking at both a golden business opportunity and a way to use your new-found passion to do some real good in the world. A true recipe for a fulfilled life!

Go get ‘em, you’re worth it!

Always,

Leah