Follow your passion isn't good advice.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be passionate about something, just that conversations about passions should eventually lead to one about purpose.
One book that makes the case for pursuing your purpose over your passion is The Purpose Factor, by Gabrielle and Brian Bosche.
They make a great point that the definition of passion is "barely controllable emotion". It may not be wise to put all of our time and effort following where our barely controllable emotions lead us.
"Follow your passion" is great for a fortune cookie, but a future fueled by fortune cookies is probably not going to take you far.
Purpose, on the other hand, while not always easy to identify, will. How to find your purpose and live it out depends largely on who you ask, the most important of which is you.
The Boche's book has a helpful framework though.
When you combine your:
Natural advantage
Acquired skill
Pull passion
Origin story
You get what they call your "Purpose Factor."
Another one that I like and you've probably seen is Ikigai, a Japanese concept that literally means 'reason for being' or 'reason to get up in the morning”
It is typically visualized like this:
For businesses, Jim Collins, writer of Good to Great and several other books calls upon the Hedgehog concept. It asks these questions:
What are you great at?
What do you love doing?
What does the world need?
You may not know what your purpose is. That's ok.
You may know exactly what it is but it doesn't fit into a framework or concept.
That's ok too.
The important thing is that you give yourself the time to explore what it could be.
The exciting thing I have learned about purpose is that it is less about finding it and more about discovering yourself.
So even if you dont have a step-by-step, succinct, and certified "this is my purpose" statement, remember:
YOU are a great reason to get up in the morning
