How To Be Truly Happy In Life

Many people say the secret to living a happy life is to find your passion. The truth is there is one more step past finding your passion that will truly lead to a happy life! 

It's finding the challenge you are passionate about!

Have you ever taken a hobby or passion, and destroy it by turning it into work? Have you worried about taking something you find joy in and turning it into something you dread? 

Find Your Passionate Challenge; Passion + challenge = happiness

1. What are the big challenges or problems you are fascinated by?
2. What things do you find fun AND Challenging
3. What does the next level of your passion look like? Like, what needs to be solved?
4. How does society or humanity end up better if this problem is solved?
5. How do YOU change by solving this problem

So, find Your Passionate Challenge, and GET AFTER IT!

TRANSCRIPT:

Most people say that the secret to living a happy life is to find your passion and chase that with everything you have. And the truth is there's one more thing past finding your passion that will help actually help you lead a happy life. So continue watching to find out what that is. Hey everyone.

I'm certified high performance coach Shawn Buttner, and today we're talking about how to live a happy life. So have you ever had a hobby or passion that you wanted to double down on? Maybe take a side hustle into your main hustle, but you worried about turning it into work or that you'd lose the passion you had for it because you were so focused on the.

A thing that, that is now a job that you have to do and you stop doing it for fun and for play, or that it'll turn into something you dread. Now. I've done this in my life before. Real quick. So I originally went to school for business and had computers as a hobby. And, so I had a couple of semesters of computer science in high school.

Took I think one set of classes in grad school and was able to turn that into a very successful software career at places like Walmart, corporate and Apple. So how did that happen? It. I just love computers. I love technology, I love video games, and so I naturally just kept around that space.

My schooling allowed me to step into that from the business side having a master's information systems. But what happened is the first couple of years where there's deadlines to get software done, so instead of solving problems, that was super. It turned into this slog of never being able to have enough space to, to learn to, feel and, celebrate, and I got burnt out.

And so something that I loved from like as little as, I can remember being around computers and being super fascinated with them through learning how to do HTML and Java and all that kind of, To take, making a career out of it and being miserable all came from that. This problem of taking something that I was passionate about and not having this extra step that would allow it to turn into a life's passion.

And so what is. That next thing that you really need to focus on once you, you like, this is a passion, this is something I want to work out on, and that is to find the reason why you need to solve that challenge. It's a challenge. Focus on, okay. I love software. What problems do I wanna solve in this field?

Or what are things that I think are important for the world to know about this? And how can I ride my challenge line to where I'm growing with this passion versus getting tossed into the deep end way. Into an aspect that you don't love about it, that you didn't know about, or that is just way outside of your skill zone so you feel crushed by it, right?

And that takes the joy out of it. So that's what we're talking about today. And so for me, I needed to switch jobs a little bit in my tech career. In the middle of it, I became a business analyst, so it was less focused on writing code and more. Working with business people and engineers that kind of helped rekindle that, passion.

Years later, I was able, I had enough distance from the grind of, trying to keep up and had a little bit more experience under my belt and was able to translate that at Apple as a quality assurance engineer. So writing code to do automated tests and being able to pick that up really quickly because of that experience was a.

Changing that. When we talk about now what is your passion and where is that challenge line? Because again, having both of those aligned where you're not someone over your head or so bored with it, that it becomes exciting is, where we want to be. So I got five different ways to help you find your passion and challenge because.

One of the big ways to open up a lot of joy because when you are at that edge of your skill or edge of your capability and you're able to grow and you're able to solve interesting things, that's where a lot of that dopamine gets released, where you're like, oh, I solved this cool problem. and I've learned a little bit.

And so that's for me where I've always found that learning aspect or phase of any job, of any, anything I've done has been the most fun. And I think brings the most joy. Okay, five things to do to find your passionate challenge, right? Fir, first thing to think about and to journal about.

And so pull out your journals and take some notes on this to journal later on or take, pause the video after I ask the question to journal out and write something for a couple minutes. But first thing is to think about what are the big challenges or problems you are fascinated by. Are you currently super focused on ai?

Are you su super focused on cooking in in the French style or cooking Italian food? Or are you super focused on running right now or playing the guitar? There's all these different things that you could be focused on, but what are the big challenges or big problems that you really are fascinated by?

So if you are a guitar player you know what? You might think oh, I love rock and roll. There's not a lot of rock and roll in the us. They're coming out of the us. That's getting a lot of attention. Maybe you wanna write a song that fixes that that gets noticed in the ways that Nirvana did back in the nineties.

Or maybe you are super, super passionate about French cooking and you know how it's been taken over by the hipsters, and so you want to bring it back to its roots or whatever the, whatever that thing is. Finding that, that big challenge, that big kind of mission statement why this passion matters to you, right?

So what are a couple of things or a couple problems, or a couple things in your hobbies or the things that you're really super fascinated by? So take some time to jot that down, pause this video for a minute, and then hit play again. Second thing to consider too is what are the things you find fun and challenging?

For me in my software career, it all started back like I said, I was growing up, like we had access to computers in grade school, apple twos, and so I was always super fascinated on how that stuff worked. I was always like, we got hand-me-down computers from my grandparents, so I was always trying to figure out how to get them to work with certain video games, but it taught me how all the different components the CPU.

The graphics, card, memory, all that kind of stuff, all the basic things you need to know about hardware and how they work together. And that helped me going forward in my life and further that interest in computers. So what are those things that you find fun and challenging?

So for me, like the whole Software com interest came because I was trying to play games on computers. I could not play. But I figured it, I could figure out a way and I never did. But I, it I, that challenge of trying to figure that out pushed me again further along in that career. Okay. Third thing to, journal about, right?

What does the next level of your passion look like? Or what do you need to learn in order to be better at it, right? So maybe if you are a guitar player and you wanna play. You know your favorite songs, but you don't know how to solo. Cause you know that's a big component of a Led Zeppelin song say, right?

So what are the skills you need to learn how to solo? You need to learn scales, you need to know how to go up and down the fret boards, et cetera, et cetera. So that's the next problem you have to solve in order to advance. . And, so that's level of thinking of leaning into where your challenge level is versus being overwhelmed.

Cuz it could be really overwhelmed. How do you break it down is another way to do it. Fourth thing to think about is how does society or humanity end up better if this problem solved? . It could be something as simple as I'm just a happier person, so I treat people more kindly out in the world cause I'm more capable of that.

Or it could be that you're going to revolutionize the music industry. Why changing how music pop music exists right now. Or I'm going to change how the medical field works, right? It could be something that big. It could just be also, You raise really good kids, right? And they become productive citizens that do great things themselves.

So there's a different, a whole bunch of different angles on how to look at this. But so it could be super local and personal and in fact your family. It could be at a societal level. But connecting with that part of why this is an obsession for you, why this is challenging, why this.

Why you're, passionate about it can help pull you through some challenges when it gets when you get stuck. So that's why that question's there. Before we get to the fifth thing, I wanna let you guys know that I'm running a new three day challenge called the Meaningful Revolution Challenge, right?

So I have a podcast called The Meaningful Revolution, where I've been interviewing people about what they nerd out about and try to apply lessons to your life and inspire. To live into your personal meaningful revolution. So what is a meaningful revolution? It's a fulfilling transformation. It's a purposeful impact.

It's an authentic movement that helps you get more engaged in your life. That's how I help people as a coach through the podcast. Is to help people really engage in their life, and I'd love to help start your personal meaningful revolution. And so we go through a three day challenge. The first day we talk about getting clear on what you want for your future, what your meaningful revolution is.

The second day we help you build a plan to realize that revolution. And then the third. We talk about commitment and habits, strategies and tactics to make sure you follow through with that plan. So you make this next year your best year yet. So I love interacting with folks in this community during this challenge and seeing the ripple fats on people really getting focused on their personal meaningful transformations, fulfilling transformations, their meaningful revolutions.

So if you are interested, it's free to sign. The next time we're running, this will be on the page when you click the link below to learn more about it. But a lot of people have gone through it and have been really impressed with how it's changed their outlook for the next year. And so I want that for you as your coach, to cheer you on, to interact with you on a live type of event and to really propel your goodness out in the future.

So if that's you, click that link. If not, let's get back into what we're talking about today, which is finding your passionate challenge. And so the final thing that I wanted to, leave you y'all with is how do you change by solving that this big problem or changing how this particular cha this passion exists out in the world, right?

And this is like at Apple where they talk about denting the. You can't make an impact in co, in society, in culture, out in the world unless you yourself change from that experience and change for the better. And, so it could be that you are just a happier person to be around. It could be that you'll help you get into better shape and take care of your health cuz you're, you want to more you have more capacity to it.

It could be that you're role modeling. Your family members, friends, you are leading this movement that is super important to you At the end of the day, we are going to change through these passionate challenges that we give ourselves and that commitment to wanting to be a better human, to showing up as our best selves to solve this passionate challenge really can.

Add some oomph to motivation, to resilience to, make sure you follow through with facing and tackling your passionate challenge. With that said, y'all find your passionate challenge this year and get after it because we so often will delay doing something that we love, something that we're passionate about, something that gets us going in the morning and feeling excited for the day and making an important contribution and leaving the world just a little bit better than we found it, and just feeling a little bit more connected to our day-to-day life.

So that's my wish for. As we're recording this in January, so guys go out there live with more joy, more growth, and more impact in your lives, and we'll see you guys next week. Take care.