Today I want to talk about the four stages of chasing your passion or achieving your goals or your dreams.
I want to help advise you on how to get through and break those cycles, how to identify where you are in a certain phase, and just kind of guide you through step by step how people actually achieve their dreams.
I speak a lot about following your passion, I have had basically the same passion since I was very young, and I have made it kind of a side project until recently.
Over the past year, I have really put my passions a priority. And although it hasn’t been super easy and it hasn’t been a fairytale, I am currently doing everything I wanted to do.
I’m doing it confidently, and I’m doing it with stability.
If I can help you do the same, then that’s what I want to do.
Table of Contents
The 4 Phases of
Chasing Your Passion
Phase One: The Comfort Zone
The first phase is something you’ve probably heard before, the comfort zone.
This might be where you are right now, but it’s definitely where a lot of people retreat to in the process of chasing their passion.
If you’re in your comfort zone, it’s when your passion, your dream, or your goal is kind of just an idea, or maybe you spend a couple of hours on it a week or you’ve started planning, but you haven’t actually taken the step where you’ve had to invest a lot of time, energy and money into it.
You are still living comfortably while it’s like a dream that almost feels too far away.
You haven’t really told anybody about it, there are no stakes in it, it’s still very personal.
You’re not risking a lot. And that’s why it’s the comfort zone because you’re comfortable. But that’s also why a lot of people continue to get stuck here or retreat here.
Being in the comfort zone is obviously easier than any other zone you can be in.
It’s not the worst place to be, but when you start this path towards your passion, it’s kind of the worst place to end up because you want to reach your goals. You don’t want to end up where you started.
Phase Two: Uncertainty
If you have the guts or the time or the energy, or the money to make that big next step, that’s when you enter the uncertainty phase.
To break out of your comfort zone, you have to get a little bit uncomfortable. I think that’s pretty obvious from the name.
This is where you’re taking more chances on yourself.
Maybe you are investing a lot more time, maybe more money. Maybe you are making it public. You are really committing to this, and it’s actually a real thing now. You are investing in it, you are executing the plan, you are going all-in or some in. It’s not just an idea anymore and you’re uncomfortable and you’re uncertain because you don’t know where it’s going to go.
A lot of people get stuck in the uncertainty phase and then get dragged back to their comfort zone and they get stuck in this cycle.
You leave the comfort zone to start exploring something new, uncertainty overwhelms you, and you go right back to the comfort zone. It’s just that vicious cycle again and again because there’s something inside of you that wants more, but because more is scary and uncertain, you just go back to the comfort zone.
What I’ve learned most in my journey – and I know it’s easier said than done – but you need to find a way to take the uncertainty and view it as wonder, curiosity, and excitement instead of fear, doubt, and anxiety.
Sometimes you retreat there willingly, and you make the choice to go back. But other times you’re pushed there. Maybe you didn’t invest enough of your time, maybe you didn’t take it seriously, maybe you didn’t have the self-discipline, maybe it’s not the right time and you’re pushed back into the comfort zone.
It’s not the end of the world, but it is a cycle you can get stuck in.
If you really want to reach your passion, eventually you have to outgrow that cycle.
When you get back into your comfort zone, it might mean you need to plan, or maybe you need a wake-up call.
And for me, I needed a wake-up call.
A lot of people don’t achieve what they want to achieve because there’s no urgency to achieve it, because comfort is okay. So if you are someone who needs urgency, you may have to create urgency for yourself.
Getting through the uncertainty phase means that you push even when things feel like they’re not going right or things feel like they’re going bad.
And this is different than when things are bad.
A lot of times when we are in something that is uncertain, it looks like it’s not going to happen for us or it looks like this is going to be a dead end. We’re filled with that doubt that if we keep pushing, it’s just going to end up somewhere bad.
And the thing is, you worrying about that is not actually it being bad. Thinking it is not going to work out for you and it actually not working out for you are two different things. Thinking it’s not going to work out for you is the uncertainty.
That is what you have to push through.
That is the hardest realization.
Phase Three: Discovery
If you manage to push through the uncertainty, you get into the beautiful discovery phase.
This is where you discover what your life can look like, all the different opportunities. You start seeing abundance, you’ve kind of left a scarcity mindset of uncertainty and leaned into the abundance of opportunity and just different ways and different directions your project can take.
It’s not all positive because you also start to learn what doesn’t work or what you don’t actually like. But that is still in the discovery phase because you’re certain about things you don’t like, which leads you into things you do, or you are certain about things that don’t work, which leads you into things that do work.
But you can also lose yourself in this phase. Although it is a beautiful phase to be in, I personally find that I got faced with impostor syndrome.
And if it’s not impostor syndrome, you might also have too many opportunities. A lot of people have a lot of things they can do, but they don’t actually do them. That could do with self-discipline, doubt, or maybe you’re so indecisive and unsure that you never actually make a move.
If you let those feelings of doubt, imposter syndrome, and indecision, you can actually start going into the uncertainty phase, because that’s uncertainty.
Not thinking that you are capable or that you can do it is uncertainty.
That’s why the boundary of these two phases is a very blurry line.
When you’re in the discovery phase, it doesn’t mean you are certain about everything. It means that you’ve pushed through uncertainty and you reshape the way you view uncertainty.
But that’s also why it’s so easy to fall back into uncertainty and then back into that vicious cycle.
Another thing that a lot of people run into in the discovery phase is not actually just about their business, their goal, or whatever they want to achieve.
It’s about themselves.
In the discovery phase, you’re also going through a huge self-discovery. You’re finding out things about yourself and you may need to challenge them.
One thing about me is I have a huge problem with self-discipline and personal commitments to myself. Being creative, being self-employed, there’s no one to really hold me accountable besides me.
That’s an example of an obstacle I needed to face in the discovery phase.
Phase Four: Bloom
The final and most beautiful phase is the Bloom phase, and I really do think I’m nearing it.
When you are in the Bloom phase, this is kind of when everything is paying off.This is when you’ve pushed through the uncertainty. You’ve discovered all your opportunities, you’ve made a decision or you’ve moved in a direction and things are working out for you.
All these little snowballs that you started creating are just piling and piling and piling and things are starting to pay off.
You are seeing the results of everything you’ve put in now.
This is not to say you won’t see results all the way through these phases because of course you will! But this is where it’s like exponentially better.
You’re growing and you’re seeing the life you’ve always wanted. You’re seeing this goal you’ve always wanted.
That seems so far away sometimes when you think about it. But when you look at what I’ve just described to you and how you get there.
The main thing is about mindset and is about exploring your self-doubt and pushing through it.
Obviously, there are going to be other outer obstacles, but you cannot control that. That is part of the discovery phase.
Uncertainty also comes with external factors, but you have to realize that you are still in some power over yourself and you have to do something about it.
I’m not saying that in the Bloom phase or getting to the Bloom phase you have to have this hustle mindset, but you do have to actively put in work, whether it is who you are mentally, who you are in a workspace, or what your project is going to be.
As long as you are thinking and you are motivated and you are inspired and you are creative, it’s not about how much you work. It’s just that you’re doing something.
And although you’re in the Bloom phase, this is a cycle.
When you take whatever project you’ve reached and you want to turn it into something else, or maybe things change, or maybe you want something else.
You’re probably going to go right back into the comfort phase because your Bloom phase becomes your comfort phase because this is now where you are safe.
Then you can do it all over again.
But I do want to say when a dream feels so far away when it feels like you might never get it if there’s a part of you dreaming it, if there’s a part of you that is always thinking about it, there’s a part of you that believes it can be yours.
So that’s just my main thing. If you are dreaming it, there’s a reason for that.
There’s something inside of you that knows you’re completely capable.
I hope this explanation and kind of the way I view it and what I’ve experienced inspires you and gives you a little bit more confidence.
If you want me to go through any of the phases in a little bit more detail, like how to actually address uncertainty, how to get out of the comfort zone, or maybe you want me to talk about the best way to handle the discovery phase.
I’m totally open to doing that.
And if you want to share anything in the comments, you’re completely welcome to!
