Your passion and purpose

Your idea might be the thing that frightens you more than anything else. It might be the thing that means you turn away from everything you’ve been taught to do and carve your own path. But they usually come from one, honest and true place; an understanding of what you love and what you’re good at.

It is a great privilege as an entrepreneur that you can actively contribute to your own happiness and inspiration. That is rooted in the ability to first listen to your ideas and to be open to them, to have the awareness of how that idea sits within your own ability and then consider how you can make it a reality. Yet not every idea is a doozy. Not every thought that crosses your mind is something you should put all your energy behind.

Many who aren’t in the same position think it’s just about following your dream and passion. It’s more nuanced than that. Being happy and following your ideas needs a great deal of self-awareness and being completely honest with yourself. You need to know what you do well, what you want to do with both you time and your skills but also recognise what people will actually pay for. Your skills might be the ability to see things clearly. Like unravelling a big ball of yarn, your skill might be to be able to patiently and carefully turn a knot into a single piece of string. But how do you get someone to pay you for that?

Learning how to monetise your skill means being able to say no, sometimes, but also recognising where the gaps in your ability lie. When it is your idea and your passion, sometimes we can be too close to it, too involved and need to step back and take perspective. The happiness, the sense of security and satisfaction comes from knowing we have overcome the obstacles, perhaps had to make concessions and compromises but that we are fairly close to marrying what we want to do, what we’re good at and getting paid to do it.