How To Use Your Passions To Connect With Others And Grow Your Personal Brand
Your passions are fuel, they give you energy and make you attractive to those around you when you integrate them into what you do.
Passions. They’re one of the six drivers of your personal brand (along with values, superpowers, differentiators, purpose and goals). Your passions are those things that bring you joy. They’re the things you’d spring out of bed early in the morning to do. Your passions are fuel. They energize you.
Integrating your passions into what you do and how you do it helps keep you motivated and engaged. And although your passions may seem miles away from what you do for work, it’s always possible to pave a path between your personal passions and your livelihood.
There are three ways to connect your passions with work.
- You love what you do. That’s the simplest way—and it’s the ideal way. There’s perfect alignment between what you love to do and what you do for work. Bravo.
- You love some of what you do. For most professionals, there are parts of their job they absolutely love to do. They could perform these activities nonstop for the whole business day—and beyond. But other elements of their job fail to provide the same energy or excitement. Seek assignments and roles that allow you to do more of these activities.
- There’s little overlap in the Venn diagram that depicts your passions and your work. They don’t really intersect at all. But this doesn’t mean you have to quash your passions. Just making them openly visible is a powerful personal branding action. When we talk about our passions, we are attractive to those around us. We exude enthusiasm, which can be contagious.
Use your passions to connect with others
Passions are great for building relationships too. When you share your passions in conversations, in your bio, and through your social media posts, you find ways to connect with others through shared interest or a respect and appreciation for each other’s passions. Even if a potential new client doesn’t share your fervor for skydiving, they’ll likely be interested to learn more about it. Passions are a great conversation starter when you’re networking.
In my next article in this personal brand discovery series, we’ll focus on your personal brand differentiators—those things that help you stand out and get noticed. For now, identify your top passions and commit to integrating them into your work and sharing them with others.
