Where Exactly Do I Fit? The Ultimate Guide to Finding Your Place.

There is a place where your potential, passion and personality will be best maximized. It is your job to find that place and remain there.

At some point in my life, I was a misfit trying to fit in. Nothing around, even what everyone else found as fun and easy, was the right thing for me. There was always something missing.

I was this weird, confused guy…

Until I found a way out!

Stick around as I share “The Ultimate Guide to Finding Your Place” that I found.

The goal is not to change you so you can fit in, it is to help you find the place you are naturally fit for.

Why Find Where You Fit?

The feeling of lack of fulfillment is one that haunts many. This is especially painful because most people keep working harder, earning more money, making more friends and doing just anything to satisfy this feeling but like a graveyard, it never gets satisfied.

In one of my articles I explained how this feeling has caused loneliness for so many.

This feeling of lack of fulfillment puts one in a vulnerable position, making them easily susceptible to negative influences as one with this feeling will sway along with anyone who seems to find fulfillment in what they’re doing even if the sense of fulfillment is only superficial.

Life was not meant to be lived that way. The creator of the universe, I believe, is a purposeful creator. Science has helped us see how seemingly insignificant creations play significant roles in the environment: you can’t be any different being the centre of creation. Everything exist for a purpose, including you.

The purpose for which you exist for therefore determines where you will naturally fit. For example, a knife and a pen might have the same height but they won’t fit in the set. The knife being a culinary tool, will only fit with other kitchen utensils while the pen will fit with other stationeries. The difference between where these two tools fit is determined by their purpose.

This understanding should take away the desire of wanting to fit in where everyone else fits and push you towards finding where you fit.

To do this you have to get clearer about your purpose for existence and that can be achieved by looking at the makeup of your personality. Just like birds were created with wings so they could fly, you are created with certain personality traits so you could use them, and in using them, find fulfillment.

Now it’s time to examine some traits that make you up. Here is our guiding principle:

**What you should do (your purpose) is the overlapping point of what you love to do (passion), what you can do (potential), what you want to do (pleasure) and what you hate to do (pain).

Understanding Your Personality

1. Explore Your Passions

Passion is a feeling of intense enthusiasm towards something or someone. It is proved by a desire to pursue after such thing or person.

Run a cross-examination through your life, even while you are reading this, of the things you really love to do: things that look like work but you would do all day even without getting paid; things other people don’t understand why you do them, and you don’t understand yourself. These things might not be fun to you but you can spend so much time doing them.

Think of those things you are willing to pursue without any encouragement; things you can stay ‘a little longer’ on even when you are tired; I mean the things that have you.

These things are your passion. They are pointers to your purpose: write them down!

**I would like to point out at this point that there is no self-discovery without a journal. You wouldn’t get the job done in a day; it will take years and even your entire lifetime for you to totally grab your entire personality. In fact, you can’t fully grasp all there is to know about you.

So you don’t keep going in circles, do yourself good by documenting your progress. Now, write down your passions.

I mean all of your passions. Everything. Significant and insignificant. Serious and unserious. The ones you love and the ones you hate. The ones you are proud of and the ones you want nobody to know about.

The thing about moving in the area of your passion is that your life and career journey will come with tough times, trying times, discouragement times, times without results, times without relationships; and only your passion can keep you going at such times.

2. Explore Your Potential

Your potentials are the things you naturally know how to do. The things you do with little effort and ease. Things that other people find difficult but you always somehow find your way through it.

#ThrowbackTime. Are there times when you did something that was just like a reflex action to you but someone asked with surprise, ‘you mean you this this?’ Now, that’s one of your ability there.

You most likely might not have considered them as ‘abilities’ because of how natural they seem to you, but they are worth taking note of. And I mean including in your journal.

Your abilities are pointers to your purpose because every product is made with the ability to fulfil the manufacturer’s intent for such product. Same way, you were created with the abilities to fulfil your purpose— your Manufacturer’s intent for your life. No matter how unlikely and unlinking you think your abilities are, they are worth taking note of.

3. Explore Your Pleasures

These are the things you want to do. Pleasure differs from passion in the drive. Your passion is something you are always motivated to do even when you don’t really enjoy it: you always have the drive and staying power to keep at it.

Pleasure on the other hand, is just something you are excited about and you will do it as long as the excitement remains, but once it begins to get difficult and messy, you easily pull out. These pleasures are fickle. They come from your environment, orientation and circles and are worth taking not if too.

4. Explore Your Pain

These are the things you hate to experience: things that hurt you, things you wouldn’t want anyone to go through, things that stir up your compassion.

They might have developed through bitter experiences you have had in the past, events that left scars you can’t forget, or just natural desires you never knew how they arose.

Pains are a very strong birthing point of great ministries because you can feel the pain or have felt them and know what people who feel that same pain will need. People who have experienced hurts are mostly the most effective in helping hurting people as against people who are only passionate about it or have the ability.

Your pain may not have developed from something you experienced personally; it might be from something you kept on seeing in your environment that you hate so much. 

Whichever way, it is a pointer to your purpose. All the experiences you have had will help you in some way to find and fulfill your purpose and remember your purpose must be something that benefits humanity.

***Note that all these components (passion, potential, pleasure) are not your purpose in themselves. They are only pointers. You are taking note of them because there will be an overlap of all these components and in them you will find your purpose (the place where you fit).

Where Does It All Overlap?

If you examine the various items you have highlighted, you will find some that are common to all the list. There will be at least two or three things that will stand out among the list or you will just have this assurance that you can route something great through that channel.

The purpose for which you were created is already an impression on your heart. The reason you are highlighting these findings about you, is you that you can become more conscious of what exist within you and how you can create a perfect mix with what you have.

Be sure your decision is not being influenced by friends, your environment or your limitations. Ensure you are really making a choice of what represent your innermost being or desires. Be as wild as you can with your projections. Re-explore your childhood ability to dream without fear of failure.

Begin to consider the discoveries you have made about yourself under these four categories and begin to project how you can have a fulfilling future through maximizing all or some of them.

Your purpose is really not about making a name for yourself or proving a point to people. If you base your projections on that, you will still be caught in the web of trying to fit in.

Look beyond just having a career. Although your projections might need certain career path to be fully expressed, it is something bigger than any career.

You won’t reach a final conclusion within a week but your life will become more streamlined as you continue the process. Visit your list once and again, from time to time and strike out things that you can no longer relate with (things you are no longer passionate about or you no longer like).

Also update the list with your current experience: include the things you are now passionate about; the things you can now do. Doing this, after some time you will discover that some things will remain that you are always passionate about and you always want.

Build Your Life Around Your Discovery

As you continue to discover what represents your inmost desire, and maximizes your potential, build your life around it. Develop skills in that area. Read books in that area. Make like-minded friends. Choose a career path in that area. Let it guide all decisions

Conclusion

Staying in the place where your potential, passions and personality will be best maximized will save you the stress of trying to fit in. But you cannot find that place without first discovering yourself.