If you’re struggling aligning your passion with an affiliate business, you’re definitely not alone. A passion project is so much more inspiring than working for the sole purpose of making money.
When you’re aligned with a passion project, you love every minute and you could do it all day long. When you’re working for the money alone, it has a much more “weighty” vibe to it. There’s challenges of course with any endeavour. But would you rather choose a path with heart, or one which has no meaning to you besides the paycheck?
I’ve never been very good at working (only) for the money, without having some kind of love or connection to it. Over time, it simply wears me down inside somehow. Still, I’ve worked countless jobs trying to stay afloat. Maybe you’re in the same boat? But each job that I didn’t care about has brought me closer to realising what it is I’m actually passionate about.
So how can you align your passion with an affiliate marketing business?
Aligning Your Passion With An Affiliate Business – Ikigai
Ikigai is a Japanese term meaning “reason for being”. Ikigai is where your vision, mission and passion aligns with a way/means of making money!
I’ve always struggled with this and in large part I put this down to the programming of society. We are told, “you can’t make money doing this, or doing that”. You need to “choose a profession“, or “find a vocation”, or just “get a job” whatever it is!
So confused was I around this situation that in my 20’s I pretty much dropped out of society and went a lived in a ramshackled old house with a bunch of hippies! It was literally falling down! One morning I woke up to the sound of a collapsing wall – fortunately it was only the dry stone wall surrounding a nearby field – not the house falling down!
It’s since been rebuilt and you can now actually stay there as it’s a B&B:
During the 3 years I spent at this house, I realised something pretty important: time was worth much more than money and despite being broke for the whole time, I found an inner peace I didn’t manage to replace by re-joining society and “fitting in”.
Aligning Your Passion With An Affiliate Business – Forget The Money
Many people are frustrated with their working situation. A recent Gallop poll stated that 85% of people are disengaged at work.
That’s a pretty harsh statistic. But what’s the answer? While money is an important part of life, it’s worth asking yourself what you would do if money didn’t matter?. Separating ourselves from the ties which money makes on our very being is vital to understand out motivations outside of making money.
It is your intrinsic motivation which will give you the answer when trying to understand your passion project. Intrinsic motivation comes from within, while extrinsic motivation arises from external factors. Here’s a few other questions to ask yourself which might help you find your passion project:
- What lights you up?
- What subject are you most interested in?
- What’s the first thing you want to tell someone about yourself?
Here’s another way to consider your passion project. Imagine you’ve won the lottery. Think of everything you would buy. Perhaps you’d go on a few holidays, buy some nice cars and travel the world. Now, once you’ve done all those things, what will you do once you have exhausted all those material desires? What’s left?
Another angle is to imagine a future where money doesn’t exist! Look at your day through those eyes and think about how you feel about your chosen vocation, knowing that you must continue in your job, without getting paid! How do you feel about it?
Be Yourself – Everyone Else Is Taken
The deathbed meditation is a meditation to help you gain clarity around your life. Start by imagining yourself in the last few hours of your life. Perhaps you are surrounded by your family members who are saying goodbye for the last time. Ask yourself a few questions once you have spent some time getting into the meditation:
Ask yourself “What was I most happy to have done in life?”, “What did I regret not doing?”, “What is the most important thing in life to me, above all else?”.
The deathbed meditation might seem extreme, but it’s important to realise that we don’t live forever. Sometimes that’s the realisation you need in order to shift your thinking.
When you come to terms with the fact that you will die someday, it’s very liberating. From this perspective you can make much better choices than if you’re surrounded by the opinions of other people and the constructs of society which are unconsciously absorbed through the course of life.
Summary
Aligning your passion with an affiliate business can definitely take some time. Most of us have at least some programming which may not be helpful when approaching this topic. We are told, for example, that we “need to be realistic”, you must “choose a profession”, that you can’t make money “this way” or “that way” and so on.
With an affiliate marketing business you need to align your passion with a product of some kind in order to make it pay. But too often we think of the money first, and second guess our passion as a result, shifting into an area which perhaps we are less than passion about to make it pay. But with blogging, it’s a much harder and longer road if you don’t care for your topic so it’s a much better idea to choose a topic you can maintain your passion for over the longer term.
See also best niche for affiliate marketing.
