Why Following Your Passions is the secret ingredient to success and happiness

Following your passions is one of the secret ingredients to happiness and success.  

Here’s what a lot of people don’t get the benefits to following your passion outweighs the negatives. There this notion going around that to be successful you

have to follow the career path that moves you in that direction. It is ridiculous because as you know times are different. The days of starving artists living in

one bedroom flats eating ramen noodles is no longer the case. The secret ingredient to success and happiness is following your passions.

I am not discrediting education, there are a lot of people who graduated and got great jobs. It is unfortunate that this isn’t the case for many people.

Nowadays, people who are making money aren’t college graduates. Wait for it! There are authors, bloggers, YouTubers, and Podcasters who chose to choose

the other route.

CNBC wrote an article stating that people who follow their passions are less successful than those who choose a career path that works. It stated that

Stanford researchers decided to do a study where they followed a group of people who followed their passions and they wanted to see if success was

correlated.

From my experience, I have seen a lot of people who have followed their passions and it led them to places they never thought of. However, the difference

between them and those who don’t succeed is a plan. A concrete plan that gets them from A to B and to the top.

Those are simply opinions, success is all about passion and execution. Without it well you end up being that starving artist who tries to find themselves but

can’t.

Jeff Goins wrote an awesome book about it and you should check it out. And here is a post I wrote about why people don’t pursue their passions.

Why do I call passions the secret sauce if it gets a bad rep?

Following your passions motivates you

When you are motivated you work harder and because there’s more than one incentive for your hard work you push past your obstacles. I hated running more than anything and I sucked at it. It took me hours to get to the finish line, but there was this one year when I was so motivated.

I wanted to win a trophy so I worked hard at it, ran every day, even beat my sister a couple of times. After a while, I became great at it. Most of you might scoff at it, I was a kid, but I think about that day I realize what motivated me was my passion.

If I wasn’t passionate about winning, well then I wouldn’t have been motivated. That is the difference. Dead-end jobs can motivate you for so long until you question why you are even doing it anymore. When you follow your passions, it will motivate you to keep going even on days when you don’t feel like doing it.

Money isn’t all that

I get it money can buy all the things you want, but when you work for money there are strings attached to it. There’s a saying in entrepreneurship and it says that money can either work for you or you can work for your money.

There are twenty-four hours a day, most people spend that time working for money, doing their best to get enough so they can travel. I don’t believe in that lifestyle because there are so many restrictions. I get it, life happens and sometimes it feels that’s the best choice.

Your happiness is more important. Life is a journey, a beautiful wonderful journey, but most of us never experience this. Our parents paved the way for our education and yet most of them have dead-end jobs or haven’t made much from working.

Not everyone’s story is the same and what I have come to understand is that in a year we don’t have enough time to enjoy life.Monday to Fridays, we go to work, spend more than 40 hours a week working and what do we get from it. Our happiness is more important. I am not selling you an illusion. If they weren’t people out there who travel the world and still make $100,000 dollars from a blog I wouldn’t be preaching this.

What makes them different from you or me? It isn’t that they were born into wealth or they have an incredible talent. They were like you and me. Average Nancy’s, Joes and Mary’s who chose a different route. Money comes and goes, when you follow your passions, it makes the journey a lot more rewarding. So, even if you are broke or rich it doesn’t strip you of your happiness.

When you figure out what your passion is you can easily make a business around and make money from it. The process of going through it, makes it so much worthwhile. 

Also Read: Make Money Blogging in 2019

Freedom is a given

Passion gives you the freedom to explore the world and create an impact. Unless you work at Facebook or Google, it is hard to do that. To live a life of purpose and experience all that life has to offer.

At seventeen I lost a friend, I still talk about it because it was as if life shifted. Her death was profound because I started asking the hard questions and I promised myself I would be a better person, live a purposeful life and leave an impact. Before she died, there were a lot of kids I knew who didn’t make it to their eighteenth birthday. So, her death was a final blow. So, I have spent years after her death living purposefully.

Passion helps you leave an impact and do all the things that you want to. Hell, it gives you a platform to do just that. I can tell you life is short, but we all know that. It has been jammed into our minds for so long that we understand it. So, I am not going to do that, instead, I want to ask you a question. What is your story? What do you want to be known for? And don’t people deserve to hear your incredible journey?

Following your passions will give the freedom you so desire. You will wake up on your own timing, be free do as you please and that freedom will give you so much peace. 

The Choice is Yours

In 2016, I met Adrian Hayes and my perception changed in a moment. Adrian Hayes had spent the past couple of years climbing the highest peaks, he had been featured in the Guinness World Records thrice. He traveled the world speaking to people about his journey.

We have this perception about success and even entrepreneurship. The problem with this is that we don’t think it’s accessible and because of that we never try. We never step out of our comfort zone and that there is the issue.

Not everyone is meant to be an entrepreneur, just like not everyone is an artist, but I do believe there are things that we all want to do, but we don’t. You never know where something will take you unless you go on that journey and explore that path.

A lot of people will call you crazy and stupid, but my wish for you is to live a life of happiness and success. To explore the unknown and truly be happy by living a life of purpose. It is there that you understand what it truly means to be happy and free.

What was your one takeaway from this post and if you had the opportunity to follow your passion, what would you do?

                                                                                            KEEP  PUSHING

                                                                                               VANESSA