Finding your own passion is the fundamental gauge by which one can find out why we have come into this world. Googling the definition we get multiple meanings : it means a strong feeling or emotion , an object of someone’s love, a strong liking or desire. Ikigai is a Japanese concept referring to being passionate and something that gives a person a sense of purpose, a reason for living.
Ironically, asking a lot of people about what their passion is, we don’t get a good answer and people struggle to tell what they are really passionate about.
Luckiest are the people who find their passion right at an early age, excel at it and then make their career out of it. Most of the people in entertainment business or sports belong to this category. This is an ideal condition and monetizing your passion is the best thing that can happen to anyone.
When we ask this question to kids these days, the most common answer we receive and observe is that they love mobile phones and the internet and I am sure this would be the common answer for a lot of adults too, considering this current world of social media and entertainment.
Finding your passion starts at an early age as a kid however, as an asian parent myself, we usually tend to force our inhibitions onto our children without trying to find out what our children want to do (finding their passion) and this can lead to children just doing things because the parents asked them to do. For example, parents may send their children to umpteen private coaching classes and if we are lucky, the child may find something that interests him or her and end up excelling in that and would want to make a career out of this passion. For these lucky children, if they start spending more time on their discovered passion, the next problem comes when the parents then would encourage them to focus on studies and thereby resulting in the children not able to follow their passion.
Most of us then end up taking up a career that would just make us earn money and support our families without trying to pursue what we actually would love to do. There are some people who get bored from mundane life and a sudden awakening would make them realize that they are born to do something else and they start following this newly discovered passion and their life changes dramatically. It could be a part time endeavour that could give them a necessary balance and happiness but will surely give them a purpose in life as they grow older towards retirement. Among these are some that join a mission towards creating a better world.
There is the last category of people who are unfortunately not able to find the passion and take the life as it comes and my suggestion to them is to read this blog which may guide you to ponder on some ideas and take that first step towards doing what you love and love what you do and monetizing your passion.