How to Find What Drives You (Before You Retire and Wish You Had)

Earlier this week I asked a friend a question I ask a lot of people. What is it that really drives you? What gets you out of bed in the morning, and what keeps you up late at night? I get the same answer almost every time, and it's some version of "I don't really know."

That answer makes sense when you think about it. Most of us got into a career, or a job, or whatever paid the bills, and somewhere along the way the thing that used to light us up got stifled. In this post I want to show you how to find what drives you, why it matters more than the work itself, and the simple exercise I use with people who tell me they've lost their spark.

Why Did You Wait Until Retirement?

Here's something I see all the time. People retire, and they tell me, "I've always wanted to paint," or "I've always wanted to play tennis." Now that they're retired, they finally get to do it!

My question has always been the same. Why'd you wait so long?

A lot of it comes down to how we were raised and how we were taught. Get those crazy ideas out of your head, we were told. You'll never be a professional tennis player, so stop dreaming and go get a real job! And so we did.

My friend Mitch Axelrod wanted to play professional baseball. His parents never talked him out of it and let him go try out, and the team didn't pick him. Okay! But he got to live that part of his life, he's still a huge baseball fan to this day, and he can be involved in the game any way he wants. He never has to wonder "what if?"

This year marked 45 years since I graduated high school, and I've been looking at a lot of my old classmates on Facebook. Many of them are retired now, after 40 years of the standard 9 to 5. And the stories I hear from people at that stage can be really sad. "I had a horrible boss for 40 years. Now I'm retired, but I'm burned out, I'm tired, and I'm not healthy anymore."

That's NOT happy, and it makes me sad every single time I hear it.

The Spark Shows Up Early

When I was younger, I looked at that path and said, that's not going to be me! I had the spark very early on. At 12 years old, my dad handed me a camera, and the story pretty much wrote itself after that. You simply couldn't get that camera out of my hands!

I went on to become a commercial photographer, and I was the first student in the 20-year history of my school to graduate with a working studio already open in downtown Montreal. But before that, like a lot of people, I did work I didn't love. I worked in a liquor store. Me, a guy who has never enjoyed alcohol! A sip of champagne on New Year's Eve is about all I want.

The money was good, though, because it was government run up in Canada and they paid really well. Every two weeks, like clockwork, I'd take my paycheck straight down to the camera store and hand the whole thing over for gear, film and chemicals. They knew me so well that when I walked in the door, it was "here he comes!" That's what I was living for, because I always had this vision of doing something more than a 9 to 5.

Even through the several 9 to 5 jobs that came later, the passion never left me.

Dig Deeper Than the Work

Now, here's where it gets interesting, because when I asked myself what really drives me, my first answer was that I'm a builder! I love to create, to take an idea and bring it to life. That's true, and it's a lot of fun!

But it wasn't the real answer, so I dug a little deeper.

I grew up in a household where my parents fought all the time and there was never enough money. I was a sad kid, and in high school I walked around with my head down, I had four or five close friends, and most people walked right past me without seeing me. I was the head photographer for the yearbook in my senior year without ever having taken a photography course, and still, a lot of people from my class don't remember me. I blended right into the walls.

College was a game changing experience for me. That's where I realized what really drives me, more than any career and more than any thing I could ever own. I have a burning desire to put a smile on people's faces.

How ironic is that for a photographer? I did fashion, architecture, product and industrial photography, but portraits were always the most fun. Why? Because my job was literally to say, "Okay, now smile!" I shot parties, events and weddings, all places where people were in a good mood, and I loved every minute of it!

That's also why I do this show! If I can bring a little bit of light into your day, I know I'm doing the right thing. When I build a website, what I'm going for is "Wow, this is great!" When I help someone with a video or an event, the goal is to give people an experience they'll remember. Even my sense of humor works this way. I'm more Jerry Seinfeld than "two men walk into a bar." I notice something in the moment and find the funny in it.

Underneath every skill I have, and there are a lot of them, it's the same thing again and again. I want to make people happy!

How to Find What Drives You: Look Behind the Work

So here's the question I want you to ask yourself. You love the work you do? Great! But why do you love it? What's the reward, and what's the emotion behind it?

This is important to uncover, because that's where your spark comes from. Somebody threw a wet blanket over a lot of people's spark years ago, and it went out. The good news is that you can reignite it, and it starts right here!

Once you know what it is, it doesn't matter so much how you express it. You can do pretty much anything! And remember, not everything that makes you happy costs money. When I make somebody smile, what did that cost me? Nothing. A moment, that's all.

How I Learned I Was a Coach Before I Knew It

When I left the corporate world for good in 1995, it was my third try, because the first two didn't work out. This time I said I'm not going to let it fail, and I never looked back!

Part of that drive came from home too. My mother was very authoritative, always "do this, do this, do this," and I never wanted to be an employee taking orders. I wanted to spread my wings and make my own rules, and whether I succeeded or failed, it would be on me and nobody else.

I was director of marketing at the time, and I asked my boss for a 66% cut in salary. I'd come in two days a week and do everything else from home. He said yes, and he became my first client!

Then, almost by accident, I ended up starting a computer company, installing and maintaining computers for a lot of law firms and a couple of manufacturers. If you remember Windows 3.1 and WordPerfect 5.1, you remember blue screen central. Those two did NOT play well together! My clients would call me in a panic because their computer crashed in the middle of a case.

I could fix the computer, but I couldn't always recover their documents. They weren't happy, and I didn't enjoy that work at all, because at the root what I want is for people to be happy.

So I started coaching them. Hit that save button every three to five minutes! I'd calm them down, give them a different perspective, and help them see it wasn't the end of the world. They loved working with me so much that when I left New York, they were really upset and didn't want to hire anybody else.

That's when it hit me that anybody with the skills could fix a computer! What they valued was the coaching, and I had no idea I was even doing it, because this was before I'd ever been involved with the Tony Robbins world. That was the whole genesis of what I do today.

The "I Hate My Job" Exercise

People call me all the time and say, "I hate my job," so I take them back to the beginning. At some point you agreed to take that job, right? What was it about it that inspired you, or intrigued you enough, to say yes?

They'll tell me it looked like it was going to be this, or it was going to be that. Okay, let's go look at that! Let's find out where it got lost along the way.

If you can bring it back, or even some part of it, that job can feel very different. If you can't, then that job is not for you, and it's time to go find a different one.

Do This Before the Week Is Out

This is how to find what drives you, so take some time this week for a little introspection. Grab a pen and answer these honestly:

What is the thing that makes me happiest when it happens?
What is the emotion behind the work I love?
What have I been saying I'll do "someday"?
Could I start doing some of it now?

Don't wait 40 years to find out what lights you up. Find that spark, light it up again, and put it to work in your life starting today!

This is for you if you're an entrepreneur, coach, consultant, or creator who:

- Wears too many hats and never has enough hours in the day
- Knows AI *should* be saving you time but hasn't cracked how
- Would rather spend your energy on the work only you can do - not on writing every email, caption, and offer from scratch

 
If that's you, this library was built for exactly where you are right now!

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