Trying to Discover Your Passion is Like Mining for Gold

I don’t know why it is so hard to decide what our passions. It should be the easiest thing in the world to just take a look at what we like to do, the things that we would do for free, the things that come easily to us, second nature so to speak.

I frequently take care of my granddaughter. She has been taking tap dancing lessons for awhile. I thought she would be really excited with her tap shoes, what little girl doesn’t love the tapping noise those shoes make. Don’t get me wrong, she does enjoy that, but in the entire time she has been taking dancing lessons, I have never seen her tapping those toes except at dance recitalsl. I of course don’t see her at her classes.

The winter was pretty cold and snowy here this year, and several of her classes were canceled. The dance studio wanted the kids to have the opportunity to make up the missed classes, so they gave them the opportunity to attend any classes on the schedule. The ballet classes were the ones that fit the famiy schedule, so she got to go to those classes instead of the usual tap classes.

Once You Discover Your Gifts and Talents, You Come Alive

The next time she came to my house, she was dancing all over the place. She walked around on her toes, was spinning and leaping. There was a cute tv show about a dancing ballerina mouse, and she begged to watch the show and she tried to follow all the steps from the show. It is obvious that ballet has really gotten her excited.

The next class she went to the instructor asked her mom if she could talk to her. She was wanting my daughter to consider transfering my granddaughter to the ballet class because she has a natural appitude paired with a strong desire to learn. I would say that she has already discovered one of her passions tied to her God given talent.

She is only five, and she was not trying to figure out what she was gifted at. It just comes naturally. I think it works that way for the rest of us as well. You can’t fake your passions, and who would want to. They light you up, you can feel them in your heart. The problem is the older you get, the deeper they are buried. Many of us have lived a life of keeping them boxed up. They are things that we are good at, they are easy for us so we don’t see the value in the things we can do almost without thinking.

We overlook the fact that although they are easy for us, that is not the case for others. I needed help realizing this. I had to let others tell me what they saw in me. I guess I really did know all of those things, but we were taught that bragging was not the thing to do. We have to get over that mindset when we are on the discovery path.

I took a class with Deb Ingino. She owns “My Wired  Style“. Her class was really helpful and she does a great job. The class uses the DISC profile in conjunction other exercises homework and input from Deb as you go through the process of getting in touch with your gifts and talents, and understanding how you can use them.

I highly recommend her class if you are trying to pinpoint you gifts and are struggling. This is a critical piece of actually ending up with work you love. Don’t skip this process, or you might deprive yourself of making the difference you were put on this earth to do.

Working With WordPress Can be Frustrating-There are Lots of Decisions to Make.

Building your website with WordPress is simple, but then adding content and customizing it is where things get pretty interesting when you don’t have a clue what you are doing. So many times I wished that there was someone I could just call to get me past the glitch I was stuck on. Don’t get me wrong, I was determined to learn how to use my website. Do you have any idea how many businesses have websites but no clue how to add or change the content? I had been there, done that, got the t-shirt. I was determined that this time I would learn how to manage my website. Does that sound familiar?

I need to just take a minute before I start talking about how to use WordPress to remind you that you really need to be very focused on your topic. There are millions of websites out there, so you have to build your website around something that will be useful to a very specific market. If you are not sure what that is, stop here for awhile and go back and work on that. It is the first step and it starts with you.

WordPress Theme-What in the World Is That?

Okay, back to WordPress. One of the things you have to decide when using WordPress is what theme will help you achieve the look and format you want/need for your blog. That will vary depending on your potential clients, your own personality, and what you want to accomplish.

For example, if you have decided to use your blog to connect with businesses as a consultant, your theme would be different from someone who is specializing in photography. Here are a couple of examples:

You can see that this theme would suit the need of a photographer well. On the other hand, take a look at the difference in the other theme.

This theme is  much more formal and would be a good choice for a consultant working with corporations.

There are other features that themes offer. The format, the columns, the built in things you can do, the layout. Color schemes, headers and footers, where the sidebars are places, and lots more. Somethng that is good to know is that themes can be changed. If you start with one that does not suit your needs, you aren’t stuck with it. On my other website I hated the limitations of the theme I started with, and later changed it.

Some themes are free, and will work initially if your budget is tight. Personally if you can afford it, I thing there are benefits to purchasing a theme tailored to your needs. I really like StudioPress themes, they offer a lot of flexibility, and have support available when you have questions. I am using one of their themes on this site. You will be able to watch as I build this site out, you notice that things will change as we go along, and I will explain the changes as they happen.

“Idea- to- Profitability” Plan

One of my goals with this site is to teach you while demonstrating, so this is sort of a work in progress. My aim is to hold your hand and walk you from idea to profitability. One of the ways you will be able to monitize your site is to find affiliate programs for products you use and love, and then tell others about them inside of content that will be helpful to them.

You may have noticed that the “StudioPress” is a link to their site. It is an affiliate link for me. I have a two fold purpose here, first I want you to click over there and look at the selection and features on the variety of themes. They can explain the benefits and features better than I can. I want to let you know that you have a multitude of choices, and that is just one company, there are many.

If you were at a point where it made sense for you to make a decision about a theme and you found one you love, you could purchase it and get ready to install it on your site. In that case, they would pay me an affiliate comimssion to me That would bless my family and I would thank you. It would not cost you an extra penny, StudioPress will earn less. They are willing to do that because you may have never found their site without my referral, and in that case they would have not made a sale.

I hope that you can see that by following a simple blueprint, you can take your site from idea to profitability and have fun helping other people in the process. There is no high pressure sales needed. I would never promote something that I would not be proud to promote to my mom, friends and relatives. Affiliate marketing is almost like taking a step back in time. Back then,TV ads and commercial advertising took a back seat to a friend letting you know about businesses, products and services they use and like. Guess what, the hype of TV and print advertising is loosing some of it’s effectiveness and the web is redirecting the power of referral back to you and me. We have to take care not to abuse that power.

I hope that helps you understand why choosing themes will be important for your website. The theme can determine the placement of things, how many columns, colors and much more. The theme can be customized, and that is a topic for another post. Some themes are free, and can work okay, but I would recommend making the investment in a theme that has more bells and whistles and security when you can afford to do that. Themes can be changed without a lot of fuss, so don’t stress too much. If you are working on a bare bones budget, start with a free theme and go from there.