Top Ten Ways NOT to Follow Your Passion

Are you following your passion?

There’s a lot of talk about discovering your gifts and finding your passion these days.  In fact, following your dream through creating a dream job seems to have become a national pastime.  When I started The Called Woman Conference and wrote the book, The Call: Perfect Dream, Imperfect Life in 2012, it was a relatively new concept and hadn’t quite reached the fever pitch of today.  Now the whole world seems to have incorporated the idea into a search for a fulfilling career and lifestyle. 

However, knowing there is the possibility of a more fulfilling life and making the necessary changes to make it happen are two different events.  I still talk with a lot of clients who feel stuck.  They know they are unhappy where they are but don’t see a way out. They have a dream but don’t know how to take it to the next level.  There are a lot of reasons, excuses really, that we all can use to avoid turning a dream into a goal with a deadline.  Here are some of the most common:

1. Decide that you don’t really have a passion or dream. You must have been napping when God was passing out the talents and gifts.
2. Decide that you don’t have the money or resources… maybe one day when you win the lottery. Of course that means that you will probably need to buy a ticket.
3. Decide you don’t have the time… maybe someday when you retire or the kids are grown, then you will follow your dream.
4. Decide your circumstances have to be perfect before you take a step and of course, you aren’t any where close to that.
5. Decide the critics who discouraged you must be right and put more faith in them than in yourself.
6. Decide to give in to your fatal flaw; depression, poor health, attention deficit disorder, dyslexia—we’ve all got one and how can anyone expect you to succeed when you are coping with that?
7. Decide the one half-hearted try that failed was surely a sign that you weren’t meant to succeed and give up.
8. Decide the past ten+ years that you’ve put into researching your passion aren’t quite enough to pull the trigger. You need to check out a few more things.
9. Decide you’re too old to go for it now. Maybe if you’d started when you were younger.
10. Decide you’re too young to go for it now. Maybe when you’re older and more experienced.

Have I left anything out?

Guess how I know so many excuses?  I’ve used most of them myself. 

At one point in a mastermind group that I was a part of, I voiced my concern that following my passion and creating my dream business was going to take a long time and I was already well into middle age.  What if it didn’t work out?  Wouldn’t I have wasted my time?  Know what my brilliant coach asked me? 

“You’re going to be doing something for the next several years anyway, right?  Why not follow your dream?”

So what about you?

You’re going to be doing something for the next several years anyway, right? 

Why not follow your dream? 

I’d love to help. Let’s talk: Book a Complimentary Clarity Session

I would highly recommend Lynne as a Life Coach for two reasons, especially if you are highly motivated. The first is because Lynne has actually lived what she is teaching you!! She is a product of her own approach to living your dream–and that’s what she so wants to help you do. The second is that she is so affirming and encouraging, she believes in you–so why not believe in yourself??  Diane Calhoun