Passion and Purpose
In our topic, passion, and purpose, Tumelo Chaka shares his personal story of how he started his career working as a tuck-shop owner. Tumelo is a son to a wonderful father who owned many retail shops. Growing up in that environment inspired Tumelo to later become what his friends dubbed the tuck shop executive as he helped enhance his father’s business. In this candid account of his successes and setbacks, from starting and pursuing his tuck-shop business to helping his family business, he reveals how one should not despise humble beginnings and the small steps because every choice and effort leads one to a greater accomplishment. Drawing on insights from this interview, the story provides an overview that passion and purpose shouldn’t always be self-serving , but that paying it forward and helping others often complete the bigger picture. This story is a story of a self-discovery process that is not always easy as we are often expected to be certain people with big titles. It offers insights into how one should have their own values that define who you are and what you stand for as a person. Besides his role as a tuck shop executive, Tumelo loves the outdoors, as such he has acquired himself some outdoor machinery that allow him to sleep wherever he finds himself.
Ok let’s get the basics right: What is Passion and what is Purpose?
For Tumelo, passion is what fuels him every day, it’s what makes him wake up and he could easily do it for free even if it meant him leaving a comfortable job. He would do it without anyone asking him to do it. Purpose is what one was designed for by their Maker. Everyone was designed to teach someone something. Your role here on earth is that you should leave someone else in a much better state than you found them.
Finding your passion and purpose!
For some and many, finding their purpose in life is not always so easy. They don’t know how to get to a point in their life where they can truly identify what their passion is and embrace the fact that they know their passion or purpose. Tumelo advised that one of the first ways to know and understand your purpose is by knowing yourself first.
- You need to spend time with yourself, learn to be comfortable being on your own, the more you know of yourself, you will know what you are not willing to do. What are your non negotiables?
- You have to have core values by which you live. These values can be:
- Collaboration
- Kindness
- Enhancing other people’s lives
- Empowering others
- Be resolute. Once you have defined what your core values are, stand by them no matter what, there should be no room for compromise. No amount of money or opportunity should flex or bend your values that drive who you are.
How do you align your values with whoever you might end up working for?
First thing is before you even enter any organization, understand who you are dealing with. And sometimes you will have to walk away from great employment opportunities if you know for a fact that you and the employer do not align. This also tests your bravery. You have to be brave to stand by your values no matter the cost.
Why is it important that we find our passion or the purpose ?
As mentioned, the purpose is why you were designed to be here on earth, and passion are those elements that drive you and who you are. These things are important in life. Human beings are sent into the world as a full cup and you must return to the Maker, whoever your Maker is as an empty cup.
- Your purpose is that you are given gifts which are aligned to your passion on earth. If you don’t go out there and use those gifts so that others can benefit from your gifts, your existence is basically in vain. We are all here to co-create each other into our next best self and if you can’t play your part in that then you have just wasted time, space, and oxygen to be here on earth.
- Your purpose is to be great so others can see and be inspired. You can come from the worst of circumstances but when you see someone for example a doctor, scientist, or anyone, you know that it is possible for you to be those things too.
- Because of you and what you do and how you do it someone will believe it’s possible and that could be your purpose, so if you if you mess that up you have messed up for other people who were reliant on you fulfilling your purpose for them to take or be able to see something that they naturally couldn’t see. Always strive to inspire people to be better and do better.
Taking responsibility for your own happiness…
Most people go into careers, especially as a black child, in order to get out of poverty and there is no time or room to think of passions. Its about what one can do to get out of poverty.
However, as you grow older you take time to know your own truths, that is your non-negotiables and once you can beat your soul to confess the truth about what your non-negotiables are, the proxy is on you and you can’t outsource to your mother or your father to say hey guys lead me.
You have to take responsibility for your own happiness, find that thing that makes your soul burn and light up and go for it. Spend your life chasing that which makes your soul spark into flames. Don’t waste time doing something you hate every single day because you are scared of losing an income. What’s the point of living a life if your soul is dying every single day. Remember you are the sole custodian of your happiness, it is not a communal thing where everyone has to share it. Do everything in your power to attain and keep that happiness bubbling and hot.
Open yourself up to new ideas and to new avenues whether you believe God or the universe or whatever your beliefs are, they kind of take care of you at that point but you need to make the decision and what we find is that most of us because we are stuck, we don’t even make the decision, we try and backpedal in that space where we are really feeling crappy. The minute you put your mind to it everything else just works around.
You only have you to take yourself to the next level, nobody else is waiting for you to do that for you.
Steps to discover your passion and purpose.
It helps if you already know what you want. For instance, for some all they want is to have fun and live a simple life that fulfills them. If you can be consistent in who you are it means that you can be anywhere in the world and still be ok. Our challenge comes in when we climatize to a situation so that you don’t feel like you are the odd one out. Some steps you can consider looking at to help you find your passion and purpose:
- Take time out to reflect: One of the reasons why you might not be able to find your passion or calling is that you are constantly busy with your routine life. If you take a closer look at your life, you will discover that you are constantly busy with other things that distract you.
- Try to look at the bigger picture of your life: If you can look at the bigger picture, you will understand why it is important to find your purpose, your passion, in life.
- Experiment to find your passion: Passion is developed and evolves over a period of time. You experiment with several things and evaluate your experiences, passion is spending your time doing something which is close to your heart.
- Share your story with others: How do you want yourself to be known or be identified by the world?
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