During our professional journeys, we can at times find it challenging to incorporate our passion into our careers. However, in this blog, we will uncover 6 tips to help you find a purposeful career that also fulfils your passion. Having a purposeful career has multiple benefits, including driving efficiency, achieving high-quality output and contributing to experiencing a great sense of achievement which is highly rewarding.

Passion: “Any form of activity that directly provides you with a great sense of fulfilment, purpose and joy. There is no defined time-bound limit to practising this activity.”

Write down your passions

Our first secret tip – allocate time towards reflecting and writing down all the passions that you have. In doing this, you should include any passions that previously existed; however, for one reason or another, it is not that prominent anymore. If possible, we strongly advise utilising a pen and paper as there is a strong neuronal connection with handwriting reflective accounts and the ability to build a stronger relationship with the information that has been documented.

We should feel comfortable having a safe and open conversation about our passions with others, including a support network, friends, family, and colleagues. We may even discover that those with who we share our passions may have similar interests which we were not previously aware of and this can strengthen our relationships. Equally, we must be mindful when sharing this information that others may not have the same energy and excitement regarding our passions. It is important that we do not get disheartened as we are all on our individual journey.

To help with staying connected with others, we can even support our mental health by sharing our passion during an outdoor walk. Being out in the open can help stimulate conversation and drive positivity.

Discover your why

Once you have written down and shared all of your passions, you can take the next steps and reflect on your passions that you have documented. Utilise a journal and implement a mindfulness practice approach to uncover the ‘why’. This will help to focus on achieving a purposeful career that is also a strong passion.

To help you get started, here are a few questions that you can ask yourself:

How did this passion begin?
What do I enjoy the most?
How has this passion positively impacted my life?
If I could not practice this passion again, how would I feel?
What are my current challenges?

When journaling the reasons behind our passions and uncovering our ‘why’, we may reveal a few aspects: observation of a serotonin and dopamine boost whilst practising our passion, development of a lucrative and technical skill, or just that we simply enjoy it. Whatever the reason might be, understanding our ‘why’ is important and will assist with securing a purposeful career.

Can I monetise my passion?

Now we have discovered our passions and the various reasons behind them, we are able to focus on one and assess whether there is an economic opportunity. This builds on the journey to finding a purposeful career. Ideally, the ultimate goal is to combine a passion we have and create a purposeful career at the same time. This is highly rewarding to us and others around.

We should remain focused and have the end goal in the back of our minds, starting small and slowly growing the business-passion venture over time. Start by brainstorming ideas and prioritise activities that will help achieve your goal, for example, market research, networking, and target audience segmentation.

If it is not feasible to build and create a business whilst working and balancing personal-life commitments, we can take time to assess if the passion and business idea can be implemented within our current working practice. Have an open discussion with colleagues/managers, human resources department and be appropriately transparent about the idea. The worst that can happen is rejection, however, taking the first step is closer to getting a yes.

Find others who have the same passion

Let’s take a deeper dive from the point made earlier regarding sharing our passions with our support network. Through this activity, we can gather whether other people have the same or similar passion to us. To go even further, can we identify people who would like to implement their passion into a purposeful career. This may take some time to recognise and even make us go out of our comfort zone, however this a process and a journey we should be kind towards. Platforms to consider but not limited to include utilising social media, networking events and colleagues. These tactics may take time to execute, so remain persistent and patient to achieve a purposeful career that is your passion.

Having conversations with like-minded individuals provides us the opportunity to learn from their experience and journey, understand how they have utilised tools to build a purposeful career which is held by their passion. Take the opportunity to share best practice, whilst also raising awareness of challenges. The gift of giving our knowledge on these topics is priceless.

Overall, finding other people who have the same passion is mutually beneficial, as we can grow together in leading a purposeful career that we enjoy and is our passion.

Lead on this passion

Now we have identified our passion and the area where we are going to monetise, either in our current working practice, side-business or both, we must conduct a series of market analysis. This process involves understanding our current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). Through gathering information on our current gaps which need to be upskilled, ensures we are at the appropriate expertise level. We must also develop tactics to action these elements.

We are likely not the first person to implement our specific passion into a purposeful career, thus, it is ideal to carry out extensive research on our competitors. This includes learning how they began, factors that are working well for them and also areas in which they invested in and did not result in a positive outcome. This will help in ensuring we take the appropriate steps to build a purposeful career.

Another tactic to consider is teaching and upskilling others who have the same passion interest. As time evolves, we can be identified as a leader organically in this passion and these skills can be implemented in searching and securing a purposeful career.

Be patient

Lastly but by no means least, the art of being patient and mindful towards the process is an important tool to keep at hand. We can at times become heavily focused on only reaching the end goal and be disappointed with hurdles we encounter in between which delay our expected timeline. However, all these experiences shape us as a holistic professional and are useful in career development. To assist with dealing with these situations, account for challenges, document these occurrences and learn from them.

Take time to celebrate the small wins and be grateful!

Remember success, does not happen overnight, compounding efforts will pay off.

Let’s round off our 6 secret tips to finding a purposeful career this is your passion

We have outlined 6 tips to help you find a purposeful career this is your passion and the relevant steps in order to achieve success. Remember this goal is a journey, which will undoubtedly have both ups and downs along the way. Remaining positive and focused will allow you to achieve the desired result.

To help with maintaining a positive mindset, follow our Mindfulness Monday campaign on Instagram: @thedynamicmind

All 6 tips do not need to be executed immediately, but getting started is the first step in reaching the goal of finding a purposeful career that is your passion.

We would love to hear if you have any further tips – comment below.