How to Make Money, Stay Fit, and Be Creative: Combine Your Passions

Combine Your Passions to Create Opportunity

When helping my clients, one thing I like to encourage them to do is get creative and brainstorm ways they can combine their passions.

An example of this is someone with a love for sports and for photography. They could parlay those passions into a part-time or full-time job as a sports photographer.

Or, someone who’s studying music but also loves children and helping people. They may want to consider focusing their career plans toward music therapy at a children’s hospital.

Taking Your Hobbies and Passions a Step Further

I recently saw this quote and totally agree…

“Find three hobbies you love: one to make you money, one to keep you in shape, and one to be creative.” Extramadness.com

…but I also like to ask the question,

“How can you take this a step further and find some overlap between the three?”

What if you found one passion or hobby that made you money AND kept you physically fit?

Or one that let you earn money while exploring your creative hobby?

My Own Example

I’ve worked hard to try to do the same for myself.

It’s taken a while to make each of my passions (spirituality, coaching, writing, and stand up paddle boarding) fit in a way that makes sense. But it finally came together for me.

Several years ago I discovered a passion for stand up paddle boarding. This is a fun way for me to keep in shape in one of my favorite places: on the water!

While doing this, I started seeing a parallel between the lessons I gained from stand up paddling and the lessons in Scripture. I decided to use my creative juices for writing to start recording those parallels in a blog, and later in a published book.

But I still had a desire to figure out a way to incorporate stand up paddling in my work as a career coach.

This took the longest to come together. But eventually it became very clear how I could accomplish this.

I could actually conduct occasional coaching sessions with clients on the water (using my spare SUP board), while translating the SUP beginner lessons into the things they’re dealing with in life and work.

For instance, how to achieve not just physical balance (obviously necessary for SUP), but also work-life balance.

The Results

I sometimes take clients out on my board and I’ve received great feedback from them.

One said that because she did crew in college, going out to the water felt familiar to her which eased her nervousness about trying SUP.

She said in turn, the career coaching helped ease her nervousness before job interviews.

Another client said,

“Just being on the water left me feeling rejuvenated both physically and mentally, and ready to take on life’s next challenge.”

For me, it’s awesome that I get to use my passion for stand up paddle boarding and my skill for teaching a new hobby to make money.

All while helping others, introducing them to something new, and getting a little exercise in at the same time!

How can you combine your passions?

Whatever your hobbies are, I encourage you to start getting creative about how you can combine your passions for maximum benefits.

Whether that means earning a profit, getting more exercise built into your routine, getting your creative juices flowing, or all three!

Use the examples above to spark your own ideas.

Talk to people who already work in one of your passions and find out what their other passions are. Ask them how they’ve found ways to overlap and combine their passions.

Another way to start getting ideas is by completing the 8-Step Goal-Achievement Plan. It’s available for free when you subscribe to the paNASH newsletter.