PREVIOUS NOTE: You can do the exercises I propose in this post to find a job you love at once or taking more time for it, going back to what you are writing two or three times to leave it ready to move on. I didn’t take more than 1-2 days of those 40 days we spent building this online project from scratch, I’ll later explain the process step by step in subsequent posts. This could possibly be step 0, in order for you to know yourself better and hit the mark with your next job choice.
A LOT OF PEOPLE NEED TO FIND A JOB THEY LOVE TO ENJOY A BALANCED LIFE.
You’re possibly one of those people who would like to find a job you really love. Maybe is because you’re not working at the moment, or because you’re not satisfied with your actual job (studies say that more than 70% of the working class don’t actually enjoy their job and would like to change it). As you may see, is normal for you to feel this.
Although we believe that the best way to have a job you love is creating it yourself and looking for financial freedom with it, if you would rather be an employee and for someone to hire you, this may be the first step you should take: Deeply know yourself and then connect that knowledge with the real world. And now, I’m going to tell you how I did it before I started this new project, so you can do the same.
HOW TO KNOW YOURSELF TO FIND A JOB YOU LOVE IN 3 SIMPLE STEPS
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Discover your talents.
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Discover your passions.
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Connect them with an exterior necessity (or generate a necessity if you’re capable of… That way you’ll be the first one on that job!)
Now, we’re going to expand the points one and two to detect them, distinguish them and discover the connection they have in a way that would bring you happiness in your job for the rest of your life. Regarding the third point, it’ll be better if you check this post about How to start your business from scratch after doing the exercises I’ll show later on.
TALENT AND PASSION, DEFINITION AND HOW TO DISTINGUISH THEM
Many people normally confuse talent and passion. Maybe you know how to distinguish them, but when you’re trying to find a job you love, you have to know how you can relate them in order to achieve your goal. Besides that, as you may see in the image above, passion and talent need to be next to another important concept: to solve a necessity (ideally, a big one).
Let’s erase any shadow of doubt regarding these important concepts:
PASSION IS WHAT YOU LOVE:
Before anything else, I’d like to share with you what Wikipedia says about Passion. However, now I’m going to explain how I see it:
Passion is in what you, willingly, invest your time, energy and even money if necessary, because is something you love to do and something you’d every time if possible.
Nevertheless, having something you’re passionate about doesn’t mean you’re good at it. That is to say, there may be passion without talent. I’m passionate about playing the guitar despite I’m a complete disaster. Even if I invest time and money to improve I’m still going to be very distant to what I’d like to play with it. This doesn’t mean that you have to abandon a passion if you’re not good in it, is just that if it clearly isn’t part of your talents, it’ll be much more complicated to obtain a sustainable job out of it.
TALENT IS IN WHAT YOU STAND OUT:
Here, this is what Wikipedia says about Talent. Some people may relate this word with aptitude, that is why I’m going to tell you how I define talent, in a direct way.
Talent is all activity you’re capable of doing particularly well, even without the effort most people need to do it. You can be very good at cooking, running, writing, etc. It also happens that the talent aforesaid concentrates in a personal competence. For example, personal relationships, leadership or data analysis to name a few. There is an uncountable amount of talents and lots of them are combined with other talents, that’s why the list is infinite.
But just like it happens with passion, you may have a talent, one that could even use to solve an existing necessity in the world (and that would be easily turned into a business), but you’re not passionate about it. This is a huge inconvenience. Because if I’m trying to help you find a job you love, we cannot allow your talent being the only variable if Passion isn’t one of the ingredients.
TO BE TALENTED IN SOMETHING YOU DON’T LOVE IT COULD BE REALLY BAD
For many years I used to do an activity in which I was very talented about (I was an international business manager in a multinational) it was demanded in big corporations, but I wasn’t passionate about it. I decided to drop it for my own mental health and because I’ve always believed that you have to be part of a job where you can couple talent and passion, and at the same time, generate incomes with it. I found it, and now, we’re here so you can find it too.
HOW TO DETECT YOUR PASSIONS TO FIND A JOB YOU LOVE:
To discover your passions you can use a very simple tool: Using a paper and a pencil, let your thoughts flow and answer these questions:
1.- When you were a child, what was your favorite activity?
In this question, if the answer is something like “playing” you can go a little deeper, thinking for example what kind of game? Being a doctor, a businessman or an athlete? Was it related to teaching, to being a member of any group or making someone laugh? You used to play by yourself or accompanied? Was it something about nature or technology?… You can go as deep as you want.
2.- What do you do in your free time?
This is about those activities you do besides the ones related to your work or house. Maybe you love analyzing stock exchange even if you’re not an expert, or you really like programming and you’re learning new programming languages on the weekends. Maybe you like gardening and you spend all your free time growing your own garden in the back of your house… Write anything that comes to your mind.
3.- In previous workplaces (or when you were studying if you haven’t worked yet) which were the activities you actually enjoyed?
Now we’re looking for passions related to work. We can’t forget that what we’re looking for is to find the job you love. Here, you can write about those activities you had to do in your job, but that you actually liked, and also the ones you decided to do because you enjoyed them, even though they weren’t your responsibility; or even new activities you brought into your work because you were passionate about them and wanted to incorporate them in your work procedures.
4.- If money is a limitation, in what would you invest most of your time?
Money is usually the biggest limitation to everyone living in this current society. Therefore, we tend to quit our passions, or we don’t even listen to them, because we understand we won’t be able to do it for the reason that there’s a final economic limitation (either it is costly, or because you have to spend a lot of time you don’t have).
So now, we’re going to dream that this limitation just disappeared and that we are able to do anything we want. If the only thing you can come up with is lying down, remember this limitation is gone forever, not just for now. You wouldn’t want to be lying down for the rest of your life if money isn’t a limitation any more, would you? Well, it’s time to write everything you’d do.
HOW TO FIND YOUR TALENTS
Just as it’s suggested by Pat Flynn in his book “Will it fly?”, you can take advantage of the people who know you to ask 10 of them the following [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation when you purchase through this link. Thanks!]:
1.- Which is my superpower?
Surprise them with this question first (this isn’t something you ask every day!).
Then, try to group together similar answers, until you reunite an actual and identifiable group of talents, that could be connected to a superior talent. For example, if you’re told you can make commands, that you’re excellent explaining what others don’t understand, and that your empathy allows you to get what everyone’s going through… You could say your talent is LEADERSHIP.
2.- What kind of stuff do people ask me to do because I’m really good at?
In this case, you’re going to add things they may have not told you, but that you can remember when you think about favors people around you ask in your workplace or personal life. Do they ask you to review a document because you’re very good at detecting mistakes or improving the writing? Do they look for you when is necessary to mediate a conflict between two people? Are you required to make weekend plans? These answers will help you find your talents.
YOU CAN NOW MAKE THE ROBOT PORTRAIT OF YOUR FUTURE JOB.
Until now, if you’ve answered all the questions I’ve proposed, you must have a lot of written information about you, some obtained by yourself and some given by the ones who know you the best. It’s time to look at the future now.
At this point, you have to start imagining how do you want to live in the future. It seems simple, but it’s not. Now you know you have talents worth developing, and passions you’d love to take part in your life, so you have to make a robot portrait of yourself where you can link talent and passion and take leverage of this combination to find the job you love.
For that you’re going to make this last list, the “could” and “should” list.
THE “COULD” AND “SHOULD” LIST.
I’m a huge fan of this kind of list. I learned about this in the awesome book “The One Thing” by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation when you purchase using this link. Thanks!]. Probably I’ll make a review about this book for our Book Club really soon.
Now let’s write and differentiate which talents could be in your next job, and which ones should be, that is, which ones are indispensables when your goal is to find a job you love. We’re equally going to write and differentiate in your passions the coulds and shoulds. Don’t worry if you only found one talent and one passion, this makes it simpler… They’re both a should. 🙂
If you made a list distinguishing the indispensable factors and those that could be or not in the job that's going to define the next years of your life, then you already have a clear robot portrait of your PROFESSIONAL TRUTH - Luis Gil Share on XIf you made a list distinguishing the indispensable ones and those that could be or not in the job that’s going to define the next years of your life, then you already have a clear robot portrait of your truth. This set of talents and passions define very well the grounds of what you are, of your worth, and possibly your vital purpose. Now you can go out there and look for those activities that respond to the majority of the elements of your list to find the job you love.
BUT WHAT ABOUT CREATING INSTEAD OF FINDING?
In my case, I prefer to move forward in the analysis in order to create the job of my dreams instead of waiting for someone else to do it. Besides, I think that is the best way to define a job that not only I love, but that remains that way for many years. And that’s because I’ll be the one who is defining all the details of my routine and I also have the flexibility to adapt it to the possible changes of my life, my motivations, etc. This may happen to you too, that’s why maybe you’re right here on this website where we lead the way of people who want to reach their financial freedom.
- If you want to know what could be the next step now to generate an online business like ours from scratch, here you go: How to start your business from scratch
- But if you already have a business idea, you trust it, and you want to start accomplishing it, you can go directly to this “resources page“, where you have everything you need regarding tools to take the firsts steps just like we did.
DID YOU FIND THE JOB YOU LOVE DOING DIFFERENT THINGS? SHARE YOUR IDEAS WITH US!
And remember you can join our community of “freenancers”. Register to the Freenancial Exposed Newsletter here.
Luis “The freenancer”.
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