Find yourself then connect the dots
- BirdieChao
- Apr 30, 2017
- 7 min read
This is Birdie's 7th personal article
Guys, I’ve realise a real problem over here. Most of us don’t know what we want for our life. Please, don't tell me money. Everybody wants money, but purely going for money won't give you happiness. What I mean here is, what’s your passion. What do you want to do for the rest of your life, that can bring you happiness even though you do it every single day. And believe me, due to the generation we live in, any sort of passion that you have can bring you money as a side product on top of your ultimate happiness.
I had also faced this proble before. I used my whole Sec3 & 4 to think about what path should I take after my O’levels. I’ve taken lots of tests, asked my teachers and my parents. But in the end, I still do not know what’s my passion. And I bet, most of you faced the same problem as me. Because we are all afraid that we will go into a job that we don’t like or go into a career that has nothing to do with what we've studied.
But now, I have found my passion. Which is to become an entrepreneur and a motivator. And the funny thing is neither of these appears to be inside our traditional route as a career. So after some reflection and observation. I have come up with few points that maybe is the reason why you don’t know your passion yet.
1. Not Exploring Enough
Guess all of you have heard this quote before. “You don’t know what you don’t know” And personally, I can relate to it very much especially during my selection for the 12 choices after O’levels. I don’t even know what each course do, how the hell do I know if I'll like it or not?
How many of you have actually regretted going into your course of study because you thought you might like it but in the end, it’s totally different than how you expected it. It’s messed up, isn’t it?
But for me, I’m a lucky soul, I bet it right. I did not regret going into my course, yet I’m very thankful that I got in my course. It’s this course that has made me who I am today.
With that being said, I’m not trying to brag to you but to tell you guy that sometimes, life is all about betting. There are so much more things in the world that we have yet to explore. And if you have yet to find your passion or your purpose. The best way is to just get yourself other, grab any and every opportunity that came up to you and just go for it.
Let’s just put our studies as an example. If you really dislike your studies and whatever you do inside. You will find out that your studies have nothing to do with your passion. However, if you are like me , you find something inside your studies really interesting and excites you. Explore deeper because there might be the place where your passion lies.
No matter what. Just keep exploring, maybe it might seem like it’s a waste of time sometimes. But you will never know what you can get from just attending one more event or talk. A friendship, a connection, an insight. All of these may help you somehow or another in the future and that’s just the bonus while you are on your way to find your true passion.
2. No determination
One more quote that I want to share, but you might not hear this before. “Passion is not something you found, it’s something you developed” It’s a bit of contradicting to my previous point. But if you think deeper, it actually complements each other.
If you recall what I said in the previous point,“ if you find something that’s interesting and excites you. Explore deeper because there might be the place where your passion lies”. You’ll then realise that these 2 quotes then compliments each other.
All passion starts from an interest, it’s something that must excite you and make you feel pumped to do it every single day. For example, I’m sure I have a passion for basketball because of just how much I love playing it. But at the start, of course I’m bad at it and had no passion for it. The only reason why I go to play basketball is me wanting to lose weight and to look cool while playing basketball. And that's the thing that excites me. Till now, my original purpose of playing basketball is gone but I just fall in love with it already. And I believe it’s this passion inside me that allows me to become the captain of basketball for my secondary school even though I’m not the best player in my school.
But what’s the problem now with us. All of us got so impatient in everything we do. All of us want an immediate result. When you go to the gym hoping to get a shredded body but not getting the results you wanted in one month’s time, you give up. When you start to learn programming hoping to create the next facebook but, after 10 lessons and you still can’t create a simple web page, you give up.
There are so much more examples where people go into something and hope to achieve something great in that region. But after not getting results, they blame everything they can. “This is not for me”, “I can hire people to do this” , “My genetics is designed this way, I just can’t….” .
One time my friend saw me playing Tetris in class. He wanted to compete with me. I asked him to download and play himself first then to familiarise with the game first then play with me. But guess what? He only played 2 rounds, each round 2 min, and he made the follow comment, '' Aiya fuck it la! Lousy game， I don’t want play liao ''. I'm not saying all of you are so impatient. But with this example, we can easily see that all we want is immediate result. I have played the game for few months b4. And he wishes to reach my level within 5 mins. Not only that, after he failed. He didn't reflect upon himself instead, he blames on the game for being a lousy game.
Why can’t people just stay awhile longer and take in some failures while doing something that they actually have some interest in? Give your passion a little more time for them to build up and they will show you great you can be if you stayed.
The reason why NBA players are NBA players maybe because they had missed more shots then you even dribble the ball.
3. Reflection
Reflection is really important in every aspect of our life. By performing self-reflection, we can actually see a lot more things than we think we actually can. And for finding our passion, reflection is just as crucial as finding and strengthening your passion as well because by reflecting, you will know how to grow your passion or maybe that’s not the right one to go for.
With that, I literally means that some of the passions are not important. You can't go for all your passion and pursue them as your career. Some of your passions are meant to be hobbies and allows you to go to them whenever you want to destress or to simply have fun.
I'm not sure for you, but for me, basketball lies under this part. Because after Secondary school competition ends. I’ve got scouted by another school coach to play for clubs before, my coach also told that me he can recommend me some places to go if I want. But after much reflection for myself. I decided not to pursue basketball anymore. Not meaning I stop playing at all, but I stop playing for competition. Reasons are the I got too many injuries from it and the space for growth for basketball in Singapore is not very high.
Any passion can be in both the spectrum. For example like gaming, dancing, singing, drawing or being a photographer. All of these can be both hobbies and your career. So after going into you specific field long enough, you really need to reflect upon yourself if you are happy to do that ( your passion) for the rest of your life.
If you answer with a astounding “YES”, congratulations you have found your passion and work your ass off in that field and you will be the greatest you have ever been. As the only way to succeed is to go all in.
With all of these being said, I think what I shared is not really 3 points to take note to find your passion, but instead is 3 steps to make your passion your career. So if you unsure of what you want for your life now, just go out and explore. One day when you look back, you won’t regret what you have gone through, but instead, you will be glad on your choices.
Just like what Steve Jobs has said, “Stay hungry, stay foolish” and “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards” All the best in your journey on finding your passion.
Leave a comment below and share with me on what’s your passion and we will all grow together from there! Also, if you find this article useful, feel free to share with your friends. Every share, like and comment are highly appreciated!
Its your choice
To live your dreams or to be living your dreams
-BirdieChao
Having a timetable to follow isn't easy at all. Not very used to the arrangement yet but surely I will follow it by one day. By the way guys, I found this app called " TimeTune". It's really good if you want to design yourself a timetable and follow it. It helps me to keep my focus on the timetable I''ve created. It can even have notification settings if you want every activity to be notified. This is not a sponsered message but I really want to share this app with you guys. I find it so useful and hope it will help you guys to progress as well. As usual, subscribe to my blog and we will improve together every week. And for now, I'm out! See you guys next week!
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