HOW TO TAKE A BIG ENOUGH STEP BACK TO FIND YOUR PASSION CAREER

Looking for your passion career, but find it difficult to take the time to do a personal and career inventory?

If so, this post is for you as I go through how you can take a big enough step back to find your passion career.

The desktop, Mac computer and stationary of someone who has found their career passion

Finding your passion career isn’t easy.

Especially when all you can see are all the things you do not want to do.

All the things, which make you dissatisfied and unhappy with life.

Or believe you are incapable of doing due to a lack of experience, knowledge or skills.

Therefore, why I’m writing this post.

As I am going to provide you with the solution to this by showing you how to take a big enough step back to find your passion career.

Before we do that though, let’s clear something up…

Why I’m referring to finding your passion career, rather than finding your career passion?

I believe your passion, must follow your career in order for you to find work fulfilment and satisfaction.

Because if you look for your career passion, you will always attempt to try and fit yourself into a box.

You will always look outside yourself first to see what’s available in the world, before then deciding what it is you want to do as a career.

However, I believe to find your dream career, you must first start by looking within.

Since more often than not, what we’re looking for in the world, doesn’t yet exist.

So, it’s up to us to find a way to create it.

Usually, through starting our own business’s, whether it’s blogging, vlogging or anything else.

Although, this might sound daunting to you at the minute.

Which is another struggle this post will be providing you a solution to.

So, let’s dive in.

1) Work with a Counselling Psychologist/Psychotherapist

Board next to a plant with the words difficult roads lead to beautiful places, therefore, how therapy helps you to find your life passion

Oprah Winfrey says two of the most important questions you can ever ask yourself are:

Who am I? and
What do I want?

However, your ability to be able to answer these two questions with any sense of clarity and confidence is dependent on three factors:

Your knowledge, understanding, and acceptance of:

1) Who you are (and are not) in this moment in time

In other words, who you are today at your core, the key qualities you possess, and your temperament.

Not who you ‘believe’ or ‘think’ yourself to be, or who you want to be based on your observations of how others are.

And what you deem as desirable or not desirable based on societies standards.

Or who you were 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 years ago.

But who you really are today.

2) What your capabilities are (and are not) TODAY; and

3) What your interests and needs are TODAY

And, as a result, your willingness and confidence to unapologetically and without shame or embarrassment, proclaim to yourself (and others), that this is ‘who I am’.

Therefore, a large degree of honesty with ourselves about what we’re thinking, feeling, and believing about ourselves, our capabilities, wants, needs, and desires is necessary.

Why your struggling to find your passion career

Man sitting in a booth stressed trying to find his passion career

So if you are struggling to find your passion career.

(Like I was before I decided to work with a Counselling Psychologist/Psychotherapist).

I suspect it’s because you are struggling with answering all the questions listed above.

As you doubt who you are and are not, your capabilities, wants, needs and desires for you and your life.

Therefore, somewhere inside you, you are lacking the confidence and self-belief in who you are and what it is you want, need, and desire.

It’s not that they don’t exist or you don’t have any.

It’s just you can’t see them for what they truly are because they are clouded by a bubble of fear, self-doubt, insecurity and indecision.

The result of not knowing who you are and what you want

As a result, you have instead been going with the current.

And settling for less than what you want, need and/or desire.

In other words, you have been operating from the outside in.

Seeing what’s available to you in the world, assessing what it is you believe you can achieve and is possible for you.

Then going for it, without considering who you are as a person.

Or what it is you want for yourself and your life.

Because you don’t know what else to do.

And you believe by doing more you’re going to figure out.

But are increasingly finding it doesn’t help.

Therefore, why working with a Counselling Psychologist/Psychotherapist is essential to stop you from going around in circles in an attempt to find your dream career.

2) Pause, stop and reflect

Woman writing in her journal reflecting to find her dream career with a mug that says be happy

Once you have committed to the above and have resolved to be in therapy for a year at an absolute minimum, although I recommend longer…

(The longer you commit the more depth you’ll uncover about who you are, your likes, wants, needs, and desires, and how not to be afraid to claim them as yours)

…Use weekends (yes plural, because often, once isn’t enough) to pause, stop and reflect on the points I’m going to list shortly.

Since, if you have been making decisions from the outside in, rather than the inside out, you will likely have been ignoring or minimizing the feeling signs you’ve been getting when you’ve engaged in a particular activity due to your self-doubt, fears, and insecurities.

Therefore, I want you to use these exercises as an opportunity to really listen to yourself as you’ll not be able to hide from the truth these exercise will present to you.

Your temperament

Man sitting on a red couch with his laptop thinking about his life passion

By temperament I mean…

Are you a mellow person?

A person who likes to work at speed or not working at speed and likes to take their time?

Who is able to handle pressure or not be able to handle pressure.

Someone who likes to learn new X, Y, Z or doesn’t like to learn new X, Y, Z.

A person who likes to work in a team or not work in a team.

Whatever you list, there is nothing wrong with it.

This is just who you are and that’s okay, you don’t need to be any different to who you are.

All you need is to be able to own it.

Your qualities

By qualities, I mean things like:

Courageous
Ambitious
Independent
Caring
Understanding
Patient
Determined

A good way of doing this is by remembering any positive remarks the people in your life have made about you.

And putting a scenario next to the quality of each one you have listed.

And it doesn’t matter whether you’ve shown it in your personal or work life or how big or small it might seem to you.

As not only will this give you confidence and an ego boost, but it will also show you that you do indeed have positive qualities about yourself.

The opposite to what you might be currently believing about yourself and your capabilities.

Hint: Your qualities can be found in the toughest of challenges you have faced in your life. Since it’s likely these challenges will have forced you to develop a certain quality in some way.

What you admire most about the people in your life (past and present) and those who you follow on Youtube or social media

Man admiring a statue of Abraham Lincoln and his qualities to find his passion career

The reason we admire certain people in our lives, on TV or on Youtube is, we admire certain traits and qualities within them.

Therefore, we wish we were like them.

However, you don’t need to wish you were like them because you are already like them.

Because the reason you are observing and admiring these traits and qualities within them is because you have them in you too.

And they are actually showing you what it is you want for yourself and your life.

Along with, the truth of who you are.

Except maybe you haven’t tapped into the qualities and traits that they have fully.

Or you’re unable to see them because you’re so busy believing you’re far off from where they are.

Therefore, list out the people in your life (current and past) who have added something to you and your life and have really left a mark.

And list out what was it about them that left such a big mark.

Then ask yourself, where, in your own life have you demonstrated the same traits and qualities.

And it doesn’t matter how big or small it is or how often you have displayed this trait and quality.

As long as you’ve demonstrated it, it can be added to the list.

Once you’ve done that, identify any similarities between their story and your story since you wouldn’t have been drawn to them for no reason.

What you are good at

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman

Often what we’re good at, is what we enjoy doing.

And vice versa.

What we enjoy doing, are usually the things we are good at doing, to some level or degree.

However, this of course isn’t to say, just because we are good at doing something, there isn’t any room for improvement because there always is.

This is a good way to look at it, however, because if you do lack confidence and self-belief, oftentimes it’s easy to get tripped up on coming up with anything you’re good at, isn’t it?

Doubting yourself and believing unless somebody else has told you you’re good at it, then it mustn’t be true.

Or unless it’s in the ‘working professional sphere’ it doesn’t count, when it absolutely does count.

However, with the logic I’m offering, even if somebody else hasn’t told you you’re good at something, you’ll know you’re good at it because you will have felt a sense of aliveness and excitement when taking action on a particular activity you enjoy doing.

And, by the way, this can be from anything as small as cooking, cleaning, helping people in some way or another.

What you’ve worked hard to be good at

Man with muddy hands to show how you become good at certain things and how these inform your passion career

In addition, for you to be good at something, doesn’t mean you need natural ability in it for it to count.

In fact, similarly to how we develop qualities during challenging times, oftentimes the things we consider ourselves to be good at, are the things we’ve worked really hard to be good at.

Or are the things we’ve needed a little extra support in, from the people around us, to become good at them.

For fear of the consequences were we not to work hard to be good at them.

So make sure not to neglect any of these circumstances either.

As it’s nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about to have had to work hard to be good at something and to have been helped by the people around you to be good at something.

For instance, without a friend of mine encouraging and showing me how to be good at writing when in school, I probably wouldn’t have been very good or confident at it.

Yet before I started working with a Counselling Psychologist/Psychotherapist, I still wished I was good at writing.

As I still believed I wasn’t good at it because I wasn’t good at it in the way my friend was good at it (i.e. creative and imaginative).

But what I’ve learned since working with a Counselling Psychologist/Psychotherapist and starting this blog, is you can be good at the same thing as someone else, just in a different way.

The practicalities of what you want in a job

Man on a platform with a train going by to discover what travel arrangements he wants in his life passion. if any

This involves writing out the hours you want to work, the location you want to work, the commute time you want (if any).

And remember not to go for what you believe exists in the world.

Just go with what you want.

Even if you don’t believe you can make it happen.

Including if it turns out to be wanting your own business, then seriously consider this.

As you would get to work towards reaping all the benefits listed in this post here. And they are pretty neat I have to say.

However, all you’ll need is to build your confidence and self-esteem, which you’ll get from looking within with the support of a Counselling Psychologist/Psychotherapist.

A good example of someone who did this (minus working with a Counselling Psychologist/Psychotherapist), is Kristina Karlson who runs the Swedish stationery brand Kikki.K.

And who I talk more about in my blog post Review your year: Stationery you need to complete a Year in Review.

All the things you want to do and/or try

A golden notebook with a 2021 diary behind it, which says if you want it work hard for it to show what you need to do to find your dream career

Once you’ve got all the above lists, list everything you want to do.

Then measure it up against the criteria above.

For instance, does it match up with what you’ve said your temperament is, what your qualities are, what you’re good at, the practicalities of what you want etc.

And it’s here again where you’ll be able to see, whether starting your own business…

Doing something you’re good at and which adheres to your temperament and qualities, along with the practicalities of what you want in a career.

Is actually what your passion career is supposed to be.

And if there is a fear around that, working with a Counselling Psychologist/Psychotherapist to support you in overcoming your confidence and self-belief struggles.

Along with these motivational videos.

Make note of what you’re afraid of in following your passion career

This exercise is great to do since by you writing out your fears around following your passion career (likely a business venture), you will be better able to manage them.

And identify solutions and plans, to overcoming your fears.

Follow your ideas

No matter how big or small the idea, whether for monetary gain or not, follow the ideas, which match up against the criteria you’ve said is you.

And in doing so, you’ll develop the confidence of following and believing in your ideas and yourself.

Even if they don’t work out as planned.

Although, I do believe this works best in conjunction to building your confidence and self-belief while working with a Counselling Psychologist/Psychotherapist.

Since this will give you the chance to raise any other struggles, which arise as you seek to find and follow your life passion.

3) What to avoid doing

Woman holding out her hand to say stop to show what you need to avoid when looking for your passion career

Often what stops us from listening to ourselves and following our passion career is our fears of what the people around us will think about our decision.

And whether they will support us in pursuing our dreams.

However, often the people we are around on a frequent basis, haven’t set out to do what we want to achieve.

Therefore, we cannot look to them to affirm what it is we want to do.

Instead, we need to look to the people who are already doing what we want to be doing, to affirm what our passion career is.

And ignore those whom we do not want to follow in the footsteps of.

4) Take a career break

Two people looking down on the pavement reading the words passion lead us here (symbolic of finding your passion career)

Once you have followed all of the steps above (I’d say give yourself a year), it’s time for you to take a career break.

Why? So you can put into practice all you have considered above.

And this will give you enough time to save what you need to save, to be able to leave your job and pursue your passion career fully.

Since if you’re currently struggling to find and follow your passion career, you’ll likely keep finding excuses about why you haven’t found or followed it yet.

Spinning your head round and round.

When the answers are all within you, but you’re ignoring the answers, letting your fears, doubts, and insecurities take over you.

Summary

So there you have it, how to take a big enough step back to find your passion career.

Work with a Counselling Psychologist/Psychotherapist and undertake the exercises I’ve suggested above within a minimum of one year.

And in doing so, you’ll figure out who you are and what you want.

Along with your passion career.

As it’s these knowing these two things, which will support you in finding your life passion.

Now over to you…

Let me know in the comments section below, what you’ve already tried to find your passion career, and whether it worked or didn’t work.

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