How to Find Your Passion and Discover Work You Love (Hint: You Won't Learn THIS in School)

What you learn in school usually won't prepare you for the real world. Subscribe here to learn more of my secret SEO tips: https://goo.gl/ScRTwc Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/neilkpatel/ Read more on my blog: https://neilpatel.com/blog You could end up going to college. You could end up getting a degree in something, but the problem is what you learn in school usually won't prepare you to find your passion. That doesn't mean teachers are useless; my mom's a teacher, I think they are amazing, they help to educate the world. And they teach a lot of valuable lessons like critical thinking, especially when you're younger. But what I've come to realize is that you won't learn what you like, how to find your passion or what you want to do until you try things out. What do most kids want to be when they're growing up? They'll usually say, "I want to be an astronaut, I want to be a doctor, I want to be a veterinarian. I want to be a police officer; I want to be a firefighter." But as you grow older your interests change. And you usually feel lost, like you're 20-something, you're in school, and you're just like, I don't want to be a police officer anymore, what should I do? And you feel like everyone else knows how to find their passion and they just know that they're going to be a doctor, or they're going to be a lawyer, and they have their life together. Most people really don't have their life together. I know so many people who've graduated from law school, and they don't want to be lawyers anymore. They just wasted seven years of life and racked up $200,000 in loans. I'm not here to say college is good or bad; it has its reasons for everyone. But I think I would have made way more money, like two to three times more money in my life if I never went to college because I lost a lot of years in school. What I say is go out into the world and try different things. Every day go out and try something new that you may think you'd like or be passionate about. You don't have to get paid for it, just do it for free. By trying different things, you'll find some that you love and most you'll hate. If you like it, it may be the best experience ever, then do it for another day. Do it for a week, and eventually, you'll be like, okay, this is getting old, or I don't like this. You'll learn what you don't like. Most people find what they're truly passionate about in life based on experience. You'll try things and discover, this is what I don't want to do and eventually, it leads you down the path of what do you want to do. When I was younger, I wanted to be a doctor. As I grew older, I was like, alright, I want to be a computer scientist. But I soon discovered that I hated going to lab classes, and soon after I figured that that computer science wasn't my passion. Then I started my website and decided that I wanted to be a business owner. I failed miserably in my first business. But I learned that just popping up a business doesn't get people coming to your website. From there I paid some marketing agencies to help out with my business, and I was cleaning restrooms and toilets at a theme park to afford to pay them. But guess what? Those agencies failed. They didn't get me the results I wanted. Eventually, I had to learn it myself because I ran out of money. And by going out and doing it for myself, learning and trying things, I got good at it. It turns out, I'm good at marketing. And what you're good at is what you tend to like more and more passionate about. When you find your passion typically that's what you tend to want to do for your career. Like with marketing I got good at it, I fell in love with it and discovered that I wanted to be a marketer. I don't care if I'm marketing as a business owner and have my marketing agency or if I'm working for someone else and doing their marketing or I work nine-to-five for someone else and I'm helping them with marketing for their business. I don't care as long as I'm marketing because that's what I'm passionate about. But that's the thing; most people won't figure out what they're good at and passionate about. My advice for young entrepreneurs or college students is simple, go out there and try something different every single day. You'll figure out what you hate, you'll figure out what you like, and you'll figure out what you're good at. If you keep trying you'll discover your passion. For most people what you like and what you're good at tends to go hand-in-hand because if you like something and you're good at it, of course, you're going like it more and more. When you figure out what you like you'll do it more and more, and that's what your career path usually will end up becoming, and that's how you figure out what you're passionate about.