Discover Your Passion by Answering These Simple Questions

In 2016, I started a new job, in a new town, with a new car, and I was on top of the world.

All my goals seemed to have fallen into place. I had the opportunity to build relationships with a new group of leaders, I had more autonomy over my work and full access to the senior leadership team. Not to mention a hefty bump in salary.

But about a year in to this position, I stopped feeling the high that brought me to that role in the first place. I enjoyed the work I was doing; it was challenging and rewarding. I liked many of the people I worked with (okay – some of the people). So what was missing?

Challenging work and a good team weren’t enough for me anymore. The missing piece was passion. I didn’t feel anything for the work the way I did in my previous position.

Then I remembered something my mentor told me, “things come into your life for a reason or a season.” Was my season up? Was I meant to do something more with my life? But what?

I started doing some research on purpose and passion. I listened to audiobooks on my commute and read articles on my lunch break. The resources all pointed to similar things: asking ourselves deep, thought-provoking questions.

These questions are designed to make us pause and think deeply about the answers. We don’t often give ourselves the luxury of time and solitude to figure things out. But when we do, we have the power to transform our lives.

Discover Your Passion

Here are the seven questions I asked myself to discover my passion:

1. What makes you forget to eat and pee? In other words, what do you get so lost in that you lose track of time?

Often, the answer to this question comes in the form of a hobby or activity. It doesn’t have to be something we are currently doing; it can be something we did in a previous job or before we had kids. Think about something you could do for hours, that when you look at the clock, you can’t believe how much time has passed.

For me, the answer to this question was creating. Creating in the form of PowerPoint presentations, writing articles, making flyers, documents, posters… Anything that tapped my creative side and put my ideas to paper.