How to Find Your Passion, Discover Your Strengths, and Rule the World

I’ve discovered all my strengths by making myself uncomfortable. What I mean by that is that all my life — on a pretty regular basis — I’ve put myself into these situations that made me deeply uncomfortable.

It meant living in a country where I didn’t speak the language; jumping out of a plane (with a parachute!); speaking in front of hundreds of people, and more.

Every time I do something that expands my personal comfort boundaries, I discover some strength I didn’t know I had.

It turns out I am more than capable of learning a new language. And facing my fear by jumping out of a plane was fun! And people enjoy my presentations when I speak.

If I’d never made myself try those things, I wouldn’t have discovered those strengths.

[On using strengths to find your passion]

It’s funny, more than using my strengths to pursue my passions, I think I’ve used that sense of “just go for it!” to pursue my passions.

The “nothing ventured, nothing gained” approach has served me well both in my personal life and in my business life.

That’s why I’m continually pointing people toward taking action. At some point, you have to take everything you’ve learned and step out and apply it.

Go ahead — jump out of that plane. There’s a beautiful view on the way down. 🙂

I discovered my strengths from the simple yet powerful quote: ‘If you want to be…do.’ – Unknown.

I wanted to be a Podcaster, so I just had to Podcast. As I podcasted my way to the now over 1000+ episodes of EOFire, I uncovered strengths I didn’t even know I possessed, and it all stemmed from DOING.

You discover your strengths by trying new things. Eventually you will find out what you are good at and what you aren’t.

It’s almost like experimentation…

[On using strengths to find your passion]

Whatever you are passionate about, you want to use your strengths to move you forward. No one is a jack of all trades, so focus on using your strengths to help you accomplish your goals. As for what you aren’t good at, find other people to help you out in those areas.

I discovered most of my strengths as a child. I was always a curious little fellow, trying out different things, making messes, never afraid of looking stupid or making a mistake. To me, it was always part of the fun.

I think that’s the biggest part of discovering what you do best: the willingness to look stupid. If you try 100 different things, you’ll suck at 95 of them, and you have to be willing to put up with the failures until you find the areas where you are genuinely gifted.

Personally, I realized I was a gifted writer really early. I was reading books and writing stories before I even got to kindergarten. For me, it was as natural as breathing. I can’t imagine struggling with it.

I think everyone has something like that. You just have to keep trying new things until you find it.

By trial and error. I think we are notoriously bad at knowing what we are good at. I realized my strengths were a combination of what I loved doing, but also what I was good at and what was useful to people.

When I think of strengths, I think of things that give me energy, don’t take it. So I am constantly looking at what I’m doing and asking, “Is this fun? Does it energize me?” If not, how can I turn this into something that is fun and energizing or move on to something else.

We only have so much time on earth, so we might as well spend it doing things that are worth our time. For me, doing what I love (even on days when it’s difficult) is something I have to make room for.

Often people focus on their weakness and spend most of their time trying to get better. In my case, I do the opposite. I try to focus on my strengths and see how I can get even better.

I have discovered my strengths through variety of means. Sometimes it was just a gentle nudge from someone else telling me that I was good at something. At other times, it was from my quarterly reviews of what went well and what didn’t.

I discovered my strengths by trying new things, thinking about what I’m passionate about, considering what things I do that really make me feel energized, asking friends for their input, and challenging myself to keep stepping outside my comfort zone.

[On using strengths to find your passion]

Honestly, my strengths and my passions are mostly intertwined. For instance, I love writing. I can’t not write. I always say that if you were to leave me on a desert island with nothing, I’d find a stick and write my thoughts in the dirt. I just can’t help myself.

I also love encouraging and cheerleading other people. So one of the ways I use my writing is to challenge and champion women to be the best versions of themselves that they can be. It’s the perfect mesh of both my strengths and passions.

Honestly, it took me a little while to understand what my strengths were.

When I created StudioPress, I was wearing many hats, so I had to run all facets of the business. Through that experience I was able to determine the areas I enjoyed, and areas that I think I was strong in.

Like anyone, really — I stumbled upon my strengths by sheer accident.

I think discovering strengths isn’t really so much a specific quest we undertake: “Today, I’ve decided to discover whether I’m excellent or terrible at playing billiards.”

I think people find their strength more by undertaking an activity out of fun, interest, curiosity, need or obligation, and then realizing after the fact that, hey, they have a knack for it.

For example, I didn’t realize writing was one of my strengths until I’d written several pieces. I didn’t realize determination was one of my strengths until years of perseverance proved it so. I didn’t realize quick wit was a strength until… you get the picture!

[On how to follow your passion]

It’s more than just using your strengths, really. You can know your strengths, and apply them to your pursuits, but you also need to be aware of your capabilities and interest levels of said strengths.

It’s like this: I’m strong in math skills, but I don’t like math much, and it doesn’t really interest me — so naturally, it makes more sense to delegate number-crunching to my accountant.

That sort of self-awareness is a crucial element of successful entrepreneurship, and that’s why with every project I undertake, I don’t ask whether it falls within my strengths; I ask whether I’m the right person, or whether someone else would be better suited to the task.

From an early age I’ve had a knack for figuring out how things work and using that understanding to build scalable processes. Even with little to no subject matter experience.

It seems obvious to me now, but I only discovered this about myself in my mid-20s.

Although, looking back, I can see the signs – I dismantled my Dad’s VCR when I was 3-4 years old to try and figure out how it worked.

I taught myself to build websites using Dreamweaver when I was 12 and launched an online record label when I was in college.

When did I discover my strength exactly?

In 2012, I landed a job at a marketing agency based on my experience of building niche websites.

For reasons I didn’t understand at the time, I was put in charge of developing processes & systems for a new service offering.

I was the guinea pig. The canary in the coal mine.

I had to figure out whether the service could provide an ROI for the client, whether it was profitable, how our team would implement it, and the tech stack that would power it.

Feeling like I was in over my head? That would be an understatement.

But I persevered and got the job done. So well, that I became the go-to person for solving marketing-related challenges.

And eventually it hit me. Jason, my boss, figured out what my strength was back when he first interviewed me.

Here’s the thing:

Progress isn’t easy and personal development doesn’t magically happen. The pressure was real and there were moments when I did feel like pulling my hair out when dealing with nightmare clients.

Sure, there were moments where I felt like throwing in the towel but I pushed through and I’m glad I did. After all, we don’t know what we’re capable of until we’re challenged.

Discovering my strengths comes in two steps:

1) Knowing what goal I want to achieve;
2) Then accepting every roadblock as a personal challenge & opportunity to gain experience.

No true growth comes without opposition.

Sadly, humans desperately try to avoid what’s uncomfortable.

But what would you do if you knew you could not fail?

That’s where my own perspective differs from most:

What others call ‘failure’, I call “success in motion.”

[On using strengths to find your passion]

I find it a little ironic (and also humorous) that every skill developed during my hardest challenges in life became critical to achieving my successes today.

Being forced to learn podcasting & editing skills to create Wanted Hero shows for readers allowed me to earn $12K a day for a corporation disgruntled with their current media company.

Having to learn various web skills to build my Wanted Hero sites helped me secure dozens of jobs, including a high-paying annual contract requiring only 90 minutes of my time per month.

The best result of all?

Welcoming opposition in my life has provided the skill set to write, publish and promote my fantasy creations to the world.

Luck played a big role in finding out my strengths, and I learned that my strengths were quite different from what I’d always thought about myself.

I used to think I wasn’t creative, and I definitely didn’t have a talent for writing, but years ago I was working in corporate marketing and good content became key to my job. No one else wanted to write blog posts, so somehow I ended up writing our company blog. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it.

After taking Jon Morrow’s guest blogging course in 2011, I got published on Copyblogger and KISSmetrics and I had to admit to myself that I wasn’t so bad at writing. I became braver at trying out new things, and learned I had a knack for teaching and coaching. Who would have thought that I’d create a business to teach people how to write better!

I rely on the Strengths Finder test to find my strengths.

We recently had everyone in the company take the test and then placed them on a grid so we understood everyone’s core strengths. It was very insightful.