Put your passion to work

Flourish through your job so you can say #ILoveMyJob.

If someone had asked me 20 years ago, when I started my corporate career, if it was possible to live doing what you love, my answer would have been YES. Today, 20 years later, I think the same. Am I doing exactly what I was doing 20 years ago? NO. Do I love the same? Yes and no. There are passions in my life that I have since I was a kid and others that I’ve discovered over time.

Today, science (Grit by Angela Duckworth) backs up my experience and knowledge about “passions”: interests you’ll discover and develop through practice and perseverance.

To be successful in life, to achieve and therefore to flourish, depends on your GRIT, which is PASSION + PERSEVERANCE.

Thanks to scientists studying human behavior (Mindset by Carol Dweck), we also know that the key is in knowing that ALL OF US can develop our intelligence, our capabilities aren’t fixed, we can pretty much do anything we set our mind to, with the right amount of coaching and practice. When you think about “innate talent”, you need to watch out because it could become a barrier, specially if you think you only accomplish things thanks to your talent. This belief keeps you from growing, learning and evolving your talent with practice. Just looking at how many child prodigies drop out confirms this.

Talented people that develop their talent with long hours of practice can achieve a lot. The issue is we don’t “see” that process of becoming successful because we tend to believe that being talented means no effort.

There’s at least ONE GOOD REASON FOR YOU TO BE ALIVE, so let’s get you to #LoveYourWork:

Step 1: Discover what moves you.

The word “discover” is a verb that implies an ACTION: to do something. Passions are not discovered just by "thinking", you must combine: curiosity + experimentation + reflection.

CONNECT: Write a list, starting from the day you were born. (Yes, that’s right, from that far away time), about all the things you were interested in. Go year by year, remember what your aunts, grandmas, childhood friends say you used to do a lot, or what you remember. Write EVERYTHING until today. This could take about ten minutes, it doesn’t matter if you can’t remember all, just let it flow and write.

TRANSFORM:

• Reflect on what you just wrote, look for similarities and ask yourself why you liked that so much and what you got from it. That answer is important to find your motivation and purpose.

For example, in my case I always loved to talk to people, friends, strangers, grown ups, ask them things and listen to their stories for hours. When I think about why I liked it so much, it was a mix of wanting to know that person, as if we were connected through their story and learn something new. I’ve always loved to LEARN, from people, books, anywhere. And, the connection gives me a sense of UNITY. Until this day, I listen to people EVERY day, which is a key driver in my work as a coach.

• Think about how much you intentionally encourage (focus, time and energy) your interests TODAY. Angela Duckworth, discovered that the INTENTIONAL PRACTICE of an interest is what distinguishes the successful people from those who aren’t.

Intentional practice:

• Clearly defined goals.
• Complete concentration and effort.
• Immediate and informative feedback.
• Repetition with consideration and refinement.

I’ll give you an example: helping people to flourish is my passion today. I have a clear goal: to inspire and teach to over one million people before I’m 50, help them take responsibility of who they are, what they need and be 100% invested in their lives, sharing with others what they have to offer. I set a date and a number so that I could make a solid goal and make a plan to achieve it. This year that goal translates in the release of my book in Panama, reaching 500 people that lead families and can make them flourish. I’m focused in learning everything I need to learn in order to achieve this, I’m learning how to flourish and how to get to that many people the best way possible. I have a daily feedback with the persons I coach, always asking: What helped you in this session and what can I do to make it better next time?. Besides, I can measure the results to see if I’m going in the right direction and each week I talk to my team to come up with new ideas to achieve the goal. I change whatever it’s necessary and keep trying. I am UNSTOPPABLE in getting up and going on, which brings me to the next key step, but before that is YOUR TURN:

TAKE ACTION:

Remember everything you’ve done and write about what moves you, what sparks that joy in you and what you do to encourage it. Now, answer this:

What could you do to discover more about your interests?

What could you do to encourage that passion in a more intentional way?

From what you’ve done so far, make a promise to yourself:

“I’ll find out more about my interests… and I’m going to encourage them intentionally by doing…”

Step 2: PERSEVERE with OPTIMISM.

What differentiates people that make a living doing what they love? Perseverance. It’s not just about going forward no matter what, but building up your OPTIMISM learning to get up every time you get derailed from your goal. It is about learning from mistakes, knowing they won’t push you entirely apart from what you want.

When I started playing tennis in Panama people would tell me: “You’re a warrior, you keep fighting and never give up!”. That comment helped me keep doing more of that: persevering until the end. Everything in my life is just like that, even my mentor @FredKofman wrote it in his recommendation to me on LinkedIn: “Whatever it takes”, that describes me. Like a lot of things in life, that strength has a dark side which makes me conscious of protecting my values as a I move forward towards my goals.

In order to persevere, you need to cultivate your optimism. The great news: you can build optimism, too. There are people who tend to be more pessimistic, and unfortunately this is proven to be related with depression, anxiety, illness, poor quality of life, and even less longevity! Optimism, on the hand, makes you happier, helps you achieve more and live healthier and longer. Optimism is a HABIT, to think that you can learn from everything, and that tomorrow will be better than today because even mistakes make sense and you grow thanks to them. It's not about drowning in regrets, guilts or the past, is to continue building yourself day by day.

Now, TAKE ACTION again:

CONNECT:

• Grade your perseverance: Are you following your passion even through hard times? (From 0 to 100%). If it’s lower than 100%, what do you need to close that gap and make it to 100%?

TRANSFORM:

Encourage your optimism: write 3 positive things about mistakes, those “bad things” that happen to you that keep you apart from your goal. Turn them around!

FLOURISH:

Make a promise to yourself:

“In order to achieve my dreams, I’m going to encourage my perseverance and optimism (by doing)...”

Step 3: Guided by your passion, change your reality today.

Just “thinking” you need to do something different in order to flourish is not enough. In my experience coaching thousands of people, I can say that 8 out of 10 start saying that they think they have to change their job, their boss, their partner, they think they have to change their life to get what they want. By the end, all of them find out there’s something IN THEM and not external to them, that keeps them from being happy and that they can achieve everything they want by just transforming themselves.

How? Again here is some guidance for you to TAKE ACTION:

CONNECT:

• Which passions are you not living in your everyday life, your job or your current relationships?

For example, one of my clients told me her boss was controlling and demanding, he would ask her all the time what she was doing and wanted to know everything in detail, while asking for more and more things.

• How would your life be if you could live those passions? What would and wouldn't you have?

In my client’s case, she wanted to live more peacefully, with time to learn and grow without so much pressure or control.

TRANSFORM:

What can YOU do to change your reality?

I made this question to the client I told you about before. At first, she was surprised and hesitated by saying: “Me? But my boss is the one that is obsessive and controlling. I would have to quit and get another job.”

I answered: “Maybe, it’s an option. But first you have to see yourself as part of the problem or you won’t be able to be part of the solution. The worst thing about that is that it'll keep happening to you until you learn your lesson. Now, what are YOU doing that makes you feel demanded and controlled?”

She thought about it a bit more and said: “Perhaps I say ‘yes’ to everything and then, when I can’t do those things, my boss doesn’t trust me anymore and tries to control me to make sure I do what I say I’ll do.”

And that’s it! We worked on making commitments she would accomplish, building more trust and avoiding the need of her boss to control. In fact, when she played the role of her boss, she understood she wouldn’t trust anyone that would say ‘yes’ to everything, and how important it is to say no, or a yes with conditions.

There’s always something YOU can learn and change to transform your current reality into what you desire.

If your job is not related to your purpose or passions, ask yourself: Which sides of my job are closer to my interests or what can I do to transform my job into something I feel passionate about?

FLOURISH:

Promise yourself something that will change your current reality. Something measurable, actionable, even if it’s "Learn to ..." something you feel you’re not very good at and could transform your reality, as it happened to my client.

It’s really exciting for me to learn to create a life that’s full, passionate, exciting and that is full of possibilities of learning, growth and sharing.

I hope you can find the path to flourish. If you get stuck or if this post is not enough for you, have questions o you want to work deeper, we can schedule a coaching session for you to make it. Ask me anything, I’ll write you back. You can do it here or to my email [email protected]

Love and gratitude,

Denise.

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Denise Dziwak works as a transformational coach, business consultant, author and speaker.

She connects deeply with people helping them learn that through inner connection they can create a flourishing life for themselves and those around them.

She works independently and also for highly prestigious organizations such as Vistage, the largest CEOs organization in the world, Axialent, the consulting firm funded by Fred Kofman and pioneer in the use of Conscious Business, and BetterUp, the first mobile platform that provides evidence-based personalized coaching to boost your confidence and performance at work.

Expertise: Business coaching, Spiritual & Life Coaching, Applied Creativity to Problem Solving (Design Thinking), Building Community & Culture.