What’s your real passion? What’s that thing that you could do all day long, without even thinking of being tired, with deep focus and endless joy? Finding your true passion is one of the most important breakthroughs you can hit in your life.

Choosing A Personal Path

It surely was quite a breakthrough in my life, that I know for sure. 10 years ago I started my own business, as an independent online publisher. Took me several years to understand that my real passion was only partially congruent with my business, and several other years to solve this situation.

I didn’t know from the beginning that I was on a slightly wrong path. Having an online business is a great play. And I mean it, it’s something that you should really play with. But it wasn’t my true passion. Being an online entrepreneur was connecting with my true passion on several points, but it wasn’t a perfect match. The rest was a really consuming activity. I was confused. Some things I had to do while having an online business were nourishing me, some things were draining me out. I just wasn’t complete.

Being an independent online publisher had a lot of nice things attached. I was my own boss (I still like this, by the way), I was playing on a revolutionary field, I was facing challenges all the time. I even learned programming and that was a thing that proved useful to me for years. But it wasn’t enough. Although I enjoyed my new status a lot, something was missing from the puzzle.

Most of the people I met during that time admired me. Some of them for the courage of being an entrepreneur, some of them for the quite visible success I had in my niche. But I never felt very comfortable in that position.

Passion Is Power

Most of the time you go for the things you admire. There’s an inner mimic approach in our human nature that makes for a constant, magnetic attraction towards the things or the persons we admire. We tend to be like them. We chose role models and spend our life trying to be like them. Most of the people are living by imitation.

Being an online entrepreneur was surely something I admired a lot at that time. Unconsciously, I assumed that if I would become an online entrepreneur I would be happy and fulfilled, I will live my life with joy and happiness. And, partially, I did. But only partially.

And after a few years I realized: your true passion is what empowers you the most, not what you admire the most. It wasn’t an epiphany, but rather a gradual process that took several years. It was a subtle, but extremely important perspective shift.

As an online entrepreneur I did a lot of things: programming, managing, selling, lobbying. But only some of those things were really important to me. I liked to code, to write website applications, to put my ideas on servers, as I used to say. I wasn’t very much into managing or into selling. I also did some lobbying when I had to, but it wasn’t at the same level with programming.

I felt powerful whenever I created something. Whenever something valuable emerged as a direct result of my efforts I had an unspeakable feeling of  happiness, and, yes, power. I really felt powerful when I launched each and every of my websites.

And I finally realized what was my passion: to create, share and enjoy value for me and for anybody who will need that. That is what I’m doing right now with this blog: with each post I feel like I’ve created something. Each time I hit “publish” I’m happy. And powerful.

Years after I started my business, and several months after I sold it, I put my passion into a personal mission statement. I read this statement each day and it still sounds fresh and natural to me. I’m not bored, nor filled up with. It’s my passion.

Admiring With Caution

As opposed to passion, comes admiration. These are completely different things, yet so easy to mistake for somebody who’s trying to find his own personal path. This confusion was one of the biggest lessons I had to learn so far. Took me a while, but I learned it well. And it is such a simple and easy to understand lesson: don’t go with what you admire, go with your gut. Don’t imitate, be yourself. Don’t walk on somebody else’s footsteps, chose your personal path.

It’s so easy to mistake your admiration as being your passion. But in fact, what you admire the most is your highest distraction. The thing you are doing with the highest commitment is your real passion. The thing that makes you powerful and independent. The thing that makes you smile and be happy. The thing that you could do for hours, days, month, years. And still not feeling tired.

Admiration is taking your energy from you and send it to your object of admiration, being it a role model, a social status or a specific object you want. Becoming “like” somebody else is usually the end of your true self. If you are “like” somebody else you can’t be “like” yourself anymore.

I tend to be more cautions with my admiration impulses these days. I do admire a lot of people and I acknowledge the influence they had on my life until a certain point. But I use admiration mostly as a trigger for inner assessment. Do I really want to be like that person? Do I really share all of the values involved? Do I really know how is it to be in his shoes?

Find Your Passion

Your passion is your power. It’s the hidden link between you and the endless ocean of opportunities on which you are sailing. You don’t need power to find your passion, because your passion IS your power. All you need is focus and honesty.

Focus on what is making you powerful. And be honest about it. That’s all.

If staring at walls makes you powerful, do it. If meditating is making you powerful, do it. If talking with other people makes you powerful, do it. If understanding other people dreams is making you powerful, do it.

Whatever works for you.