When we decide to start a new business. There are a few main drivers or goals we can have in mind:
๐We want to make money.
๐We’re doing it for passion because we enjoy it.
๐We’re doing it for a purpose that moves us.
However, once you’re in the business, if things move along properly, the need for money might become fulfilled, heck, even you might become an obsolete element in your business, and thus, the new drivers to stay in the business or a new one are:
๐The passion for which you started.
๐The routine/habit of working on your business.
๐New passions or purposes found while working on that business.
Doing things just for routine or habit is not a very interesting way to approach life in general as we’re all looking to expand and experience fulfillment in our daily activities. Also, things change, we change and, what may have seemed an unsurmountable mountain in the past, may have now become something trivial, making our original passion obsolete.
I believe that finding new passions is the best way to achieve this. How do we do this though?
I think passions start as interests. For example, you’re learning how to improve your supply chain and after some focus on this aspect of your business, you start developing more interest, maybe because its useful or just because you find it amusing. The thing is, this newly found interest can become a passion if it grows enough.
Now, this raises three main questions.
How do we make something interesting for us? Or, how do we find interesting things during our daily work activities?
How do we turn things that we deem interesting into burning new areas that we want to dive deep into?
Can we be selective with the things that bring passion to us or do they just happen randomly or unconsciously?
I believe that passion for activities, disciplines, topics or things, in general, is similar to physical attraction. You can’t choose them. However, they’re also similar to having a relationship in the fact that the initial appeal wanes down once you spend enough time in such an area, and then, discipline and habit may become more relevant. Another thing that can keep the passion fire burning is the perception of constant growth.
So, there are a few main things that one can do to keep the fire burning:
Have an open mindset and belief that everything has something to teach and that there’s much to learn even in the simplest most basic things.
Actively seek new things to learn, either by attending courses that teach things you don’t know or by experimenting yourself. I like to make little experiments to see the response.
Try to improve every day, and always look for ways to provide more value to the world through what you do.
Even when you’re going through obsession runs ( and you feel like you can’t stop doing your work because you’re enjoying it a lot) try to keep a balanced life, otherwise, you may get sick or tire your eyesight, affect your sleep cycle or damage your personal life and nobody wants that. You need everything else to be in order so that you can properly focus on your purpose.
If you do this properly, the fire will stay alive, end it will burn brighter than ever before.
This interest is only going to exist if you decide to have a mindset of believing that you can grow anytime with anything that you do. Anything you do or meet this day can teach you new things, and it can become a part of you and you can master it if you decide to do it. And also, that it is useful.
I do believe that we need to make an extra effort in learning to enjoy those things we hate in particular. When there’s internal friction when we do something, this means that this activity is somewhat related to a bad experience, however, we can change this perception. We can turn the worst activity into something fun and interesting if we can stop our heads for a moment and change the script.
I used to hate doing administrative work in my company, however, I’ve decided to look at it through a different lens and now I enjoy it. This has allowed me to become a lot better at it and develop a lot of tools and strategies to do these things way better and faster, now, I have everything I need to hire someone to do it. But, if I kept on hating it and never really took the time to learn to do these things properly, then I’d not be able to train an assistant properly.
