Ever curious about how to find your purpose and passion in life?
For the last 31 years, I’ve struggled with figuring out my passion, vision, and purpose in life.
In the past, I’ve created articles about how to find your passion like:
- Screw finding your passion and do this instead
- Why passion isn’t quitting your job to follow your dream
- How to find your passion using the skills that you already have
- How to deal with anxiety from not knowing your passion
…but deep down inside I felt like an imposter because I didn’t know the direction of my life.
So how I could I ever give advice for others on how to find your purpose and passion in life?
If you’ve gone through this, the lack of direction is anxiety producing.
It feels like you’re taking a trip, but to an unknown destination.
As you’re preparing for your trip, you don’t know what to pack because you don’t know if you’re going to a tropical island or the North Pole.
So you stay stagnant in one place. You might YouTube videos about – “How I Pack a Carry On + Packing Tips”.
It might feel good learning or feeling productive, but at the end of the day you don’t know where the FUCK you’re going.
All you know is that you feel the pressure to just move, but you don’t know how to prepare because you don’t know where you’re going.
And it all starts with having clarity with the end destination in mind.
Why is it so hard to figure out where you want to go?
If you come from an Asian upbringing, you’re rarely asked – what do you want to do? Instead most of the time people just tell you what to do and that’s that.
So when I graduated from pharmacy school and started practicing as a pharmacist, I felt lost.
If this was supposed to be my end all be all career, then why was I so unhappy?
In 2014, Joe Jitsukawa introduced Simon Sinek’s Start with Why and introduced the Golden Circle concept to me.
And there started my search for my personal Golden Circle and to find my why. Here are the different things I tried:
- Researching different business models, like YouTube, options trading, affiliate marketing, digital marketing, and high ticket sales.
- Reading books, investing into online programs, and attending personal development programs
- Focusing on building habits, routines, and looking up life hacks.
But no matter what I did, it never felt right. Looking back, I was looking for the magic bullet and for an AHA moment to hit me one day.
And we all know how that goes… it doesn’t work.
Here’s where I started from
First I had really great friends like Rich + Niche, Lessons Unlocked, and Eric Yang take their time out of their day to help me figure out what I wanted.
The frustrating part was knowing that I needed to figure it out, but didn’t know how to figure it out. My friend Tom from Lessons Unlocked told me…
“I’ve worked with Top Fortune 500 companies for over 15 years now. The MOST important thing is for leadership and an organization is vision.”
Tom from Lessons Unlocked
So I tried following:
- Likable people like Joe Rogan, Mark Manson, and Matt D’avella.
- Online marketing authorities like Ramit Sethi, Gary Vee, Vanessa Lau, Jade Darmawangsa, and Noah Kagan.
- I even paid tens of thousands of dollars to events like Dan Pena, Scott Oldford, and consulted a hypnotherapist to figure out my purpose.
Why I’m focusing on finding my purpose now
As some of you know, I was preparing for Dan Pena’s QLA December 2019 Seminar and prepared a 26 page questionnaire and application.
…and it wasn’t until I filled out Dan Pena’s questionnaire when I realized, I’m completely fucking lost my whole life because I never took the time to intentionally figure it out.
And if I don’t make the time now, then chances are I’ll never make the time and continue being lost.
So in the month of December, I committed to figuring out my purpose and vision and building it from the ground up.
And today I’m going to share and document three things in December that I did to build my vision and add what I’d do differently.
My goal of this article is to help you figure out your purpose and get you closer with how to find your purpose and passion in life.
Keep in mind – I’m not a guru, but I’m closer to building my why. It cathartic knowing that I’m on the right path.
Identify and model after people you look up to
One of the things I’ve learned from consulting and business is don’t recreate the wheel!
If you’ve ever been in a snow storm, then you know it’s probably best to stick to plowed roads.
You can leverage someone else’s experience and time who did figure it out already.
Here’s what I did. I wrote down a list of:
- Cool people who had a lifestyle I wanted like Joe Rogan, Mark Manson, Matt D’avella, Tim Ferriss, Brian Rose from London Real, and Lavendaire.
- Online business/brand/marketing authorities like Ramit Sethi, Patt Flynn, Gary Vee, Vanessa Lau, Jade Darmawangsa, and Noah Kagan.
- List of business models that those people have done with authorities in that space
I printed out their about pages, YouTube about page, and company vision/mission and highlighted every word and phrase that resonated with me.
Then I physically wrote highlighted piece in my Tul Notebook. You can use a word document like Google Docs.
What I would do differently: You can look for certain themes and all that – but I didn’t because I ran out of time before Dan Pena’s seminar.
Writing down my perfect day and vision daily
If you’ve ever heard of Dan Pena, you probably know that he’s definitely not the “woo woo” type.
So I was pretty shocked when I found this Vision and Goals guide on his website just days before the seminar.
Here’s what I did with it. I wrote down my vision for my:
- Health and emotional wellbeing
- Relationships with other people including the types of friends and business associates around me
- Sales results, finances, and my work or business
- Ideal living environment
One of the things I loved about this exercise is that he has you writing these in the present tense. So it’s not I will make 7 figures, but it’s I am making 7 figures.
The other thing I love about this exercise is that he has you write it over and over again. For me, those small little daily tweaks built the most clarity of what I wanted.
Doing the exercise of modeling really helped me because there were aspects of all these things in my word document.
If you want some ideas, here’s my before and after for my affirmations and vision with an audio recording.
What I would do differently: At first I started handwriting everything, but it took a long time. I’d probably type it out, then start writing it after the two week mark.
Writing down my affirmations (after spending a week with successful people)
So to give you some background, I invested $20,000 USD for Dan Pena’s 7 Day QLA Castle seminar.
It’s a lot of money to some people, but here’s the most valuable lesson learned from the seminar was realizing that my goals were too fucking small.
I know most of you reading this are probably like… Kevin – you didn’t need $20,000 for someone to tell you that. I could have told you that!
And you’re right. You don’t need $20K to be told that, but you need to invest $20K to experience it.
I remember being in the room feeling like I was the poorest fucker in the room. Most people had about 30-50 million in net worth and still went to the castle.
The crazier thing was that these people were NO different than me. They were just normal people. And sometimes I felt like… there’s no way these people are smarter than me.
But what was the difference?
When it came time to read out our goals and affirmations, I was completely embarrassed because my goals were so small.
And when I looked at Dan Pena’s Wall of Fame, I realized their goals made the 30-50 million people look small.
I know laugh and insert your penis joke here – but the bigger the better. According to Dan Pena, there are three guidelines to affirmations:
- Not realistic
- Written, reviewed, changed, and affirmed
- No time limits
So here’s what I did:
- Read through Dan Pena’s Affirmations practice
- Wrote down a rough draft of everything that I wanted in life
- Took out everything that wasn’t really important to me
- Rewrote the goals to make them even bigger and unattainable
- Added imagery to the affirmations
- Recorded them on my phone
- Played at night while I was sleeping on a loop and read the affirmations twice a day
If you want some ideas, here’s my before and after for my affirmations and vision with an audio recording.
What I would do differently: I’d write bigger goals and practice this sooner! I’d also invest more time with more successful people to dive into their goals and model after them.
My final thoughts on how to find your purpose and passion in life
Building a vision is like building a house. Vision and purpose are built brick by brick with time – not serendipity.
After going through these three exercises I asked myself… why am I so damn scared setting bigger goals?
And I realized these three things after going through these exercises:
- I am terrified of risk and setting big goals because I’m scared of accountability.
- I hate being held accountable because if I fail the responsibility solely falls on me.
- I’ve waited for most of my life for things like “vision”, “passion”, and “purpose” to just hit me. But it’s a process that requires you laying one brick at a time.
A lot of the time, you’ll meet people who say these things aren’t important.
But having a vision and clarity about your end destination builds certainty. Certainty builds confidence. Confidence yields results
Finally, I’d love to hear from you!
Did this article help you figure out how to find your purpose and passion in life?
In the comments below share your purpose, vision, and affirmations with the Refugee Hustle family.
If you want some ideas, here’s my before and after for my affirmations and vision with an audio recording.
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