Find your LOVE guide

‘Everything you can imagine is real.’ - Pablo Picasso

It took 40 long years in finding my love. My true love is writing and reading. I am in love with my passion but it took a long time to realize this. I often take out time to write but have been extremely unorganized. I never knew that writing will altogether change my perspective towards life. When I conceptualized these words of my book, ‘Dots will Connect’ more than two years ago, I had no idea that this will bring a remarkable and valuable change in my life.

I wrote this book to overcome my inner fears and depression on the request of my friends Anand Joshi and Ramesh Banke. I am thankful to both of them. They believed in my writing skills. I wrote a story which is nothing more than a reflection of the changes that had been taking place in my life, sharing a bit about what I learnt from them.

I never imagined that two year later, I will write and publish a book. Although it is self-published, almost 1,000 people are currently reading my book and are connected to me. Now I am looking for a publishing contract of my first book. I’ve also started writing my second book. It’s a fiction.

That’s the amazing realization here that we rule out the possibility of great change, because it doesn’t seem realistic. For nearly two decades I focused on working at a day job that I sometimes enjoyed but often dreaded. Starting and closing my own business, pursuing my dreams, doing something I loved? Crazy talk.

Crazy talk is what I’m going to give you today, in hopes that perhaps one of you will expand your possibilities. It is possible — I did it, all while working a full-time job, doing free-lance designing, writing on the side, and having a wife and two kids. I did it, even if I never dared to dream it for the first three decades of my life.

I am not someone who likes to give career advice, or teach people to be online entrepreneurs. So I’m not going to do that here. I’ll just tell you this: it’s possible. Yes, it absolutely is possible.

And I’ll share what I’ve learned, in small snippets of goodness, about doing what you love.

Explore yourself. Life is a gift and you are destined to learn. Listen your heart and follow the route. Explore yourself. Do a small easy test in what you want to do. You want to start a blog. Don’t think you can do? Sign up for a free WordPress.com or Blogger.com account and do a short post. Don’t tell anyone about it. Just write a post. Don’t think you want to be photographer? Take the camera/mobile phone and start taking photos things/people around you. It costs nothing, risks nothing, and takes almost no time. But you will learn you can do that one little thing, and if you pass that test, you now know your theory of impossibility was wrong. You can do this with any skill.

Do and Redo. Now you have passed the first test, do another small one. Then another. Keep going and notice your confidence grow. Your skills grow along with the confidence. It’s amazingly simple. Do and re-do as long as you are having fun. If you do anything continue 66 days, you will start loving it. So what and after that you don’t fall in love, leave it try another skill and again do and redo.

Don’t know what you love. If you don’t know your love, don’t have to commit to one thing for your entire life. You can do a dozen a year if you want, for a decade. You’ll probably find something by then. Try something that someone else is doing, and see if you think it’s fun. Stick with it for a while and enjoy the learning, then enjoy being good at it.

Find mentor. Follow other who are best in what you are doing. Contact them and seek their help. Don’t pitch them on anything. Just ask for their help, and say you’d love for them to mentor you in a way that won’t take up much of their time. Don’t demand a lot of time, but go to them when you’re having trouble making big decisions.

Follow mentor. Who else is doing what you love doing? Who is excited about it most? Follow them. Learn about them. See what path they took. Watch closely how they execute, what they do right. Learn from the best.

Do 1thing at a time. Some people have many interests and don’t know where to start. Pick one or two randomly if they’re all about equal, and just get started. Don’t let choice paralyze you. Get started, because in the end it won’t matter if you started with the wrong passion — you’ll learn something valuable no matter what.

Discover your time zone. If you can practice your skill on morning 5 AM, practice in morning. Discover your time zone in which you enjoy most and love to do. I will never suggest to be night owl. Night is meant for sleeping and perfect rest.

Get good at it. You get good at something with practice. Allow your friends and family to be your first audience, readers, and customers. Then take on a few others at a low cost, or increase your audience slowly. But always have an audience or customers if possible — you’ll get good much faster this way, with feedback and accountability. Read about it. Watch videos. Take a class. Join a group of others learning. Find people to partner with. Before long, you’ll be good at it.

Help others. One of the best ways to get good at something is to help others learn. Making someone’s life better with your new skill is also an amazing way to get satisfaction out of what you do, to love what you do. Help as many people as you can in any way possible — it will pay off.

Find your voice. Eventually, as you master your skill, you will learn that you are different than the thousands of others doing it. You will find your uniqueness. It’s not necessarily there at first, because you might not have the technical skills to express yourself. But eventually, find that voice. Find the thing that sets you apart, that helps you to stand out from the crowd. Then emphasize that. Read more.

Dream bigger. Once you’ve overcome the initial fear and started to become good at something you love, dream bigger. The first stage is small steps, but don’t stop there. You can change lives. You can change the world. Doing so will change you