Question

Kirk, “How do you find your Passion?”

Expert Answer

A lot of people go around looking for their passion, or don’t even know what their passion is. The way - and I’m not saying this is the only road that will lead you to your passion, but the way I found my passion I went about - I didn’t stay a long time doing things that I didn’t love. I didn’t stay - I left jobs and so I’ve been known to quit jobs in 24 hours. I got there, “Oh my God. Oh this is not working. I’m sorry, I’m gone. Bye-bye. Thank you.”

 So most people won’t do that. They believe, especially me being an immigrant coming from an Jamaican background, we believe that you have to stay and you have sweat it out, and you have to work 40 years, and you have toil, but you find your passion by a process of elimination. “Okay, this doesn’t move me. Let me try this. Okay, that doesn’t move.”

Like when I got into speaking I started doing poetry. “Okay, I love this poetry stuff but I want to do something more. It’s not enough. Okay I want to speak, do I want to do this?” And I kept going over here, and going over there, and just playing with it until, “Oh yes. This one really works.” And I found it.

 But some people are fortunate enough to come into the world knowing “My passion is singing. My passion is making movies.” While other people they have to learn, they have to do the process of elimination. I learned by doing a process of elimination. “Okay that didn’t work, that didn’t work.” And I’ve quit maybe 30 or 40 jobs before I found speaking and poetry.

 My son, at four years old I said to him, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” He said, “Oh daddy, I’m going to make video games.” Now he’s 16 in high school, “What are you going to do when you get out of college?” “Daddy I’m going to make video games.” He came in knowing his passion.

 So if you don’t know it you have to look for it. A lot of people come in and they know exactly what they want to do, but if you don’t do the process of elimination. “Okay this is not working for me. What works?” And also look at what do you spend your time doing in your free time? What do you enjoy doing the most?

 Now a lot of people figure “If I can’t make a living from doing it then it’s not my passion. If it’s not a job, something I can go out and actually turn into a career I can’t make it a passion.” But if you love it enough you could find a way to make it work for you.

 I never knew that I could make a living standing on stage performing poetry and then it would evolve into me being a speaker and traveling and going all over the world. I never knew that. But it was something I loved so much that I decided “I’m never leaving this. There's no way I’m ever going to divorce this woman by the name of poetry. This woman by the name of public speaking.” And I stayed with it, and you what? We fell in love, and we’re growing old together.