“Everyone is gifted—but some people never open their package.”
Are you hitting the snooze button twenty times in a row on the days you have to get up for work? Have you settled into a “ho-hum” routine? Do you wait in eager anticipation for the weekends so you can finally enjoy life?
Does this describe you?
If so, you’re not alone. A 2013 Gallup Poll on the State of the American Workplace showed that 70 percent of 150,000 people surveyed were “disengaged from their work.”
That’s a nice way of saying people hate their jobs.
Maybe hate is too strong of a word, but think about this: only 30 percent of those polled actually enjoy their work. We don’t even know whether those people are passionately in love with what they do—just that they enjoy their jobs and their bosses.
A couple of years ago, that was me. I worked in a company that I liked with a boss whom I enjoyed. I just wasn’t passionately in love with what I was doing. Some months I did my job well—I was the third employee to earn the highest monthly bonus for sales. Yet something was missing:
Passion.
So I set out on a journey to learn from people who were madly, passionately in love with life and what they do. This book is a result of that journey. In each chapter, you will find stories of people who unwrapped their passions and created lives of joy and fulfillment.
What I hope you get from this book is the ability to unwrap all the layers of you and get to the nitty-gritty of “This is who I am. This is what I was born for. This is what I love to do.”
It’s a common question: “How do I find my passion?”
This is a question I’ve been exploring with others ever since I unwrapped a long-buried passion of mine at the age of forty-four. I will dive into my story about this passion in the next chapter. Meanwhile, let me share another passion of mine.
I love to write. I unwrapped the gift of writing when I was nine. One summer day, I was quite bored at home, so I decided to write a story. It was a fiction masterpiece that was all of four paragraphs long. As I sat at my father’s typewriter (Typewriter? I know some of you are scurrying to Google right now) and pounded the keys, I discovered I really enjoyed the process of putting my thoughts in written form.
Over the years, I dabbled in that passion, writing for the school newspaper, a writing company, a non-profit organization, and various newsletters. Then I became a blogger and wrote for online sites like Disaboom, Parenting Squad, Ricky Martin’s Piccolo Universe, and Chicago Moms. For a short time, I wrote for the TribLocal section of the Chicago Tribune. It was fun to see my columns in print each week.
I could interview people for hours and then turn around and tell their stories using the written word. In the early years of unwrapping this gift, people would call me nosy. I always wanted to know what made them tick. I wanted to know what they were feeling. I wanted to know their dreams, their joys, and…their passions. I used to ask questions until people told me I was getting in too deep—and then I backed off.
One evening, I was taking a long soak in the bathtub and reading through underlined passages from the book Aspire by Kevin Hall. I had just finished reading The Passion Test by Janet and Chris Attwood. I sat there for a long time, pondering the different passions in my life.
As I was meditating upon the question of my next book, suddenly a book appeared before my eyes:
Unwrapping Your Passion.
On the cover, I could see a large, fluffy bow. The entire book looked like a gift. I thought about how I had unwrapped my own passions, and I wanted to share my newfound knowledge with others. I was so excited that I jumped out of the bathtub, threw on a towel, and ran downstairs to see whether the domain, www.UnwrappingYourPassion.com, was available. It was. Right then and there, I purchased the domain.
But the time wasn’t right for me to begin writing. I had some passionate living of my own to do first. There was no way I could write a book about passion without experiencing it firsthand and learning from others.
In the beginning, I was stumped. Where to start? How would I find people who were truly living passionate lives? I reached out to Kevin Hall and asked him those very questions. Here is what he told me:
“Dive in with all your heart, follow your bliss, and people will appear to help you with what you want most.”
So following Kevin’s advice, I dove into my passions. I barefoot water skied every chance I could get. I wrote and I wrote—blog posts, magazine articles, newspaper articles, and books. I became a Certified Passion Test Facilitator and used that tool to help other people discover their top five passions. I became a speaker and traveled internationally to Canada, Austria, and Russia.
Sure enough, just as Kevin predicted, people appeared in my life left and right. Time and time again, Kevin’s wisdom proved to be true. At every turn, I crossed paths with some amazing people. The same thing will happen to you on your own journey of passion—the key is to be open to the possibilities and opportunities that show up along the journey.
During a flight home after a trip, I started writing down the names of people I wanted to interview for this book. After I wrote a couple of names down, I looked at the dismally short list and wondered how I was going to meet even more passionate people to fill this book. At that point, I was still at the beginning of my own journey of unwrapping my passions and most of my friends were living the same typical “Midwest suburban” lifestyle as I was.
My eyes drifted to the guy sitting next to me, who was reading a book. I strained to see the title. The very first word that popped out at me was:
Passion.
My heart started to beat faster. The title of the book was How to Turn Your Passion into Cash.
Okay, that was a sign if I ever saw one! I turned to the guy, pointed to the book, and asked him, “So what’s your passion?”
As it turned out, Pete Gluzsek was passionate about fishing. He loved it so much that he dove into it full-time and made his passion his profession. He left a nice, solid job with benefits to become a professional bass fisherman. Every chance he gets, Pete is out on the water reeling in bass. If you open a fishing magazine, chances are you’ll find a picture of Pete holding his latest catch. You may even see him on ESPN during a fishing tournament. You’ll find more of Pete’s story later in the book.
For many of us, the typical way of life is the safe, complacent one. We’ve been taught to go to school, do well, get a job, and then live for retirement. If you play your cards right, you’ll have enough money and good health so you can finally play and enjoy life in retirement. Only then can you release your passion and pursue the things you love to do.
In reality, that’s a risky gamble. At any given moment, life can change on a dime.
When I rediscovered a long-buried passion of my youthful days, I found joy again. The joy was evident in the pictures I posted on Facebook. One day, a coworker said to me, “I want what you have. That.”
“What is ‘that’?” I asked.
“That passion on your face. How do I get that?”
So right then and there, I gave her the Passion Test, a tool developed by Janet and Chris Attwood, which identifies and prioritizes your top five passions. To her complete surprise, the number one thing on her list was to ride a tandem bike with her husband. The couple had become so entrenched in reacting to life’s routine that they kept putting off the one thing that brought them pleasure.
A month later, I received a happy email from her. She and her husband brought their bike out and rode together.
In the snow. In the middle of January, mind you. On a mountain, no less.
Passion doesn’t have to wait.
So what if, instead of the typical life, you incorporated passion into your everyday life? How much different would life be if you aligned your skills, gifts, and heart into something you really love to do?
You might be afraid of what you’re going to find if you peel back those layers toward passion. You might be holding back because the dream is too big, too scary. And deep down, you might be scared of this thought: What if I fail?
But what if you succeed? What if you discover a life aligned with your passions so you look forward to each day with relish? How much different would life be if you could wake up knowing you could dive deep into something you truly love to do, something you’re gifted with, something that fires up your soul?
That early lesson from Kevin Hall was a powerful one—he taught me to focus on bliss. The Yes to Success workshop by Debra Poneman opened my eyes to a whole new world. The Passion Test by Janet Attwood changed my life. Dan Miller’s books and workshop set me on the path to writing books. Throughout this book, I will share even more lessons with you from all the awesome, passionate people I met on this journey. They all had their own individual journeys to unwrapping their passions.
Now let’s unwrap yours.