Welcome to Day 4 of Five Days to Discovering Your Passion. Yesterday we uncovered themes and patterns related to passion. Today we’ll share avenues for exploration and ways passions can morph into careers.
Reflection:
A developing passion often has small beginnings. A great start is to set time aside for exploratory trips outside your normal routines.
Hit up the public library - not so much to borrow books (although that’s fine) but to browse. Observe which topics jump out at you and what subjects you feel drawn to.
Browse a directory of online classes or community college classes. Be adventurous and take a class you’ve always wondered about. You might love it or hate it. Remember, crossing things off that you don’t like can help narrow the field.
If you have some level of expertise in an area, volunteer to write a guest blog post or an article for a local paper. Volunteer to teach what you know to others. Get out of your comfort zone.
When you’re pondering turning an area of passion into an income, there are practical ways to strengthen your confidence that your passion is indeed career worthy:
Interview a person or two employed in your area of interest. Find out the path that took them there. Ask what the biggest challenges have been.
Ask to intern with or “shadow” someone who’s currently working in that field. Offer to do it without pay and ask tons of questions.
Start by adding what you’re passionate about as a side-hustle to your full-time job, and then slowly grow it into a business.
Action:
Resources online are virtually boundless, and many are free. Sites like Coursera, Lifehacker, Khan Academy, Instructables, LinkedIn, and many others provide education on almost any topic you can think of.
Google “free online learning resources” and spend a few minutes scrolling through the results. Look for topics that pique your interest and select one or more. If you’ve already determined areas of interest, look for those topics specifically.
Either way, is there a free course you can start this week? It’s FREE, so if you get into one and lose interest, just move on to another.
Alternatively, see what free or low-cost courses are offered through continuing education in your community.
That’s it for today!
Tomorrow we’ll finish up with ideas about making room in your life for passion.
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