If you’ve ever been asked the question “What makes you tick?”, you may have found that this question is harder to answer than you realize. But if we don’t know the answer to this ourselves, who else will?
We are all different. What may excite me, might bore you. The differences between our likes and dislikes are not important though. Not in this sense. What is important is you asking yourself the question: what is it that You do in your life that truly makes you come alive? What makes you brim over with passion for existence?
The difference between doing something you are indifferent to and something you are thriving on is like night and day. We harness the positive energy from doing things we love, while things that makes us indifferent don’t come to us naturally. In fact, we tend to force ourselves to do things we don’t enjoy and instead of getting the positive vibes out of doing them, we waste our precious energy.
That doesn’t mean that we should stop doing things we don’t like or feel indifferent to (because truth to be told, we all have to do things we don’t like — daily), but we should look for things that excite us and make those things the focus of our activities. Only then can we feel energized and motivated at the end of our day. Then, those petty chores that none of us enjoys won’t matter in the end.
How to find things that make you tick?
Think about all those times you were speaking to your friends about things that made you happy that day or that month, things that in the moment of speaking made you sound so passionate about them. Tell me, how many of your friends felt drawn into that conversation and how many of them wanted to hear you out and join you? How many more have felt motivated to replicate the same things you were doing in hopes of getting the same feeling?
When we are passionate about things we do, we shine differently. Our eyes glow, our movements are in sink and balanced, and we tend to draw people in with this energy. The feeling is just like being in love for the first time. Do you remember that? Feeling excited for the day to come, counting hours until seeing that special someone? Well, turn that special someone into special something and that is the thing that makes YOU tick.
Do you have such thing in your arsenal? If not, you’re not looking hard enough. Keep searching for that effervescent zeal in doing something that makes you happy and you will find your answer. Also, don’t think that you need to focus on only one thing. People can have many passions in life and as they grow, these things change and evolve with them. So listen to your inner self, explore and look for things that make you come alive. It is an exciting and never-ending journey but it constitutes the true meaning of life.