7 Questions to Help You Find Work You Love

  Would you like to get paid for doing what you love? Here are 7 questions to help you get started, or at least point you in the right direction:

1. What am I passionate about? What makes you come alive? What could you go on and on about for hours? What would you do for free?
2. What problem can my passion help solve? You are essentially asking yourself, how can I make an impact with my passion? To make a living doing what you love, you need to focus on helping people. You get paid for the impact you make, so you need to find a relationship between your passion and what people value. Find a problem that your passion solves. Then make that link work for you.
3. What am I good at? You need to find your strengths, your talents, the things that you’re naturally good at, and find a way to serve people using them.
4. How can I communicate my value? It’s one thing to be able to help people, and it’s another to be able to show them how you can help them and where you fit into their lives. This is where you need to develop a mission statement for yourself, and then find ways to let people know about it- email them, tweet, call, tell them face to face, offer them free trials or free gifts… just find ways to let them know!
5. What will I sacrifice? Sometimes it’s a social life, sometimes it’s a monthly salary…everyone gives up something in pursuit of their life’s work. You need to constantly multiply your value, and to do that, something’s gotta give.
6. When is the right time? Often, we fail to consider timing and we rush off to do the right thing at the wrong time. For instance, people who say “do what you love and the money will follow” often don’t mention that it sometimes takes a while for the money to start rolling in. Consider your financial readiness if you’re going to leave job security behind for instance (especially if you have dependents or are committed to a major project). You may need to put more money aside as savings before taking the big leap. And money is just one of the many aspects where timing factors in.
7. Will I say yes to myself? Many years ago when I first started writing, I was always reluctant to call myself a writer, because I wasn’t yet established. Yet, the day I gave myself permission to call myself that, my career changed. You know what you want to be? Own it. Say “yes” to yourself.

People out there need your gifts and your passion, so come up with a plan and commit to it! Oh and don’t forget, it’s still going to be work — sometimes VERY hard work. “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life” simply isn’t true, unfortunately. You’ll work hard, but you will love it!