Finding your passion and your why makes a huge difference in how much meaning and significance your life has. That doesn’t mean every little thing you do has significance, but your life overall will.
I never walked out of a movie that was meaningless thinking all movies were meaningless. And just because you have one failure doesn’t mean everything you do is meaningless.
But if your story isn’t as meaningful or significant as you want it to be, change it! That’s what I tell the kids we help with the Cavett Kids Foundation. You can change your story!
We challenge the kids, especially at our camps, and tell them that they are their story. Their story isn’t happening to them, they are the story. Your story can make a difference, but only if you own your story!
How do you own your story? You find your why so you can get passionate! When I talk to people about the work we do and how we help kids, I get passionate! I did that by finding my path, my why.
Finding your why and your purpose is like packing for a trip. How would you pack for a trip without knowing why you’re going? You have to know why to know what to put in your suitcase. You don’t want to end up with your suitcase looking like a mess, like it does for a lot of our kids at camp.
Knowing your why allows you to focus more on others. It gives you confidence. And by layering it, it gives you passion and keeps you in the game longer.
To find your why, first think about what makes you sad. What makes you cry? What makes you want to cause a change? Second, look at what makes you happy! What do you sing about? Third, what do you dream about?
Then comes layering. Layering is all about making a difference and knowing you’re making a difference. For me, that came when all of a sudden the stories of the kids we were helping started coming back. When I saw the outcomes, I started getting more passionate.
Passion is how we grew! We’ve always made a difference for our kids, but I started out just raising $5,000 a year for one camp. Now we raise $800,000 each year to help the kids. And it’s all because of the passion those outcomes caused.