172: The Smart Way to Follow Your Passion with Moustafa Hamwi

Pete Mockaitis
Moustafa, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Moustafa Hamwi
Thank you, Pete, for having me. I’m really excited.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you are excited, you sound excited even though it’s past midnight there in Dubai. Nice work. How do you stay up and at ’em?

Moustafa Hamwi
High in passion is all I can say. I don’t drink coffee. Actually, I woke up at 7 o’clock this morning today, I have not stopped and it’s the fasting month for us, so it means I’ve been without food or water up until probably 7 p.m. today. So I’ll have my first meal at 7 p.m. today so maybe that’s why.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy. Well, that is a testament to the power of your message. So you’ve got a little bit of a brand or association with you in terms of being The Passion Guy or the Passionpreneur. Can you tell us a little bit how did you come to claim that title and what’s mean exactly?

Moustafa Hamwi
Well, it’s a funny one because I didn’t claim it, it just came to me. So I had gone on a one-way ticket journey to India. I’ve been in events and entertainment for many years in Dubai, ran a successful business, a multimillion dollar business, and just one day woke up and found myself fed up with my life. I‘m not happy. I don’t enjoy what I’m doing. I don’t feel purpose. I don’t feel the passion for it so I bought a one-way ticket to India.

And when I came back I thought of doing these inspirational talks that were just about Kavali to Manali which is a story of my India journey, and slowly I started getting people telling me, “Oh, my God, you changed my life and all of this.” And I’m like, “Okay, I want to help people,” and I started doing these talks around finding purpose and finding passion.

And then one day a guy introduces me to a friend of a friend on a Saturday, and that friend of a friend goes, “Oh, my God, I need to go back to work. I need some of your passion.” And I go, “Oh, well, I’m going to launch a talk show called PassionSundays: The Best Way to End a Week and Start Another.” And throughout this show, it was a YouTube show and I interviewed all great speakers, authors and experts, and here I am interviewed Professor Tony Buzan, the inventor of Mind Mapping.

And after the interview we go to a private event, and I had heard his talk in the morning before the interview so I go backstage and off to hear the same talk and I start sending some emails. And somebody from the audience goes, “We’re passionate about what we do,” and Professor Tony Buzan goes around, “Oh, passion. I know who you have to talk to. The Passion Guy, where is he? What’s his name – The Passion Guy?” And he couldn’t remember my name, and because he couldn’t remember my name he just called me The Passion Guy.

So I come on stage and people, “Oh, so you’re The Passion Guy?” I’m like, “Well, I am The Passion Guy. If don’t remember my name so you can call me the Passion Guy.” So this picked up and people started calling me The Passion Guy. Next thing, the national newspaper here in the UAE, in Dubai, and they do an interview with me and they do a feature story, but now they don’t pick up on The Passion Guy element. What they pick up on is how I’ve built a business around my passion of helping people find passion and helping companies bring passion and became a great successful business.

Then they wrote a story with a headline: The Syrian Who Became a Passionpreneur, and then I became the Passionpreneur. So here I am being The Passion Guy and the Passionpreneur. I didn’t claim it. It was actually given to me by media and by Professor Tony Buzan.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Well, that’s better that way. I’m reminded of a Seinfeld episode where a character tried to give himself the nickname of T-bone and it didn’t work so well, “People call me T-bone!” So much better when it’s given to you as opposed to…

Moustafa Hamwi
It’s earned. You’ve got to earn it.

Pete Mockaitis
… grasping for it. It sounds like we’re going to say the word passion a lot during this conversation so maybe before we dig into the how’s and such I’d like to get your take on them. When you say passion what do you mean by this word? Do you have a precise view or definition for it or more like a vibe? How would you articulate it?

Moustafa Hamwi
Beautiful question, Pete. Well, here’s the thing. Once you get called the Passion Guy, guess what happens? People start calling you to ask you about passion.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright.

Moustafa Hamwi
So here I am, I’m like, “Well, I need to walk the talk. That’s a lot of responsibility. You get called the Passion Guy by Professor Tony Buzan, you’ve got to live up to the title.” So I started researching passion, and the dictionary definition of passion was any compelling feeling which simply means doing what you love.

So here I am calling companies, saying, “Hey, would you pay me money to come and talk to employees about doing what they love?” And they’re like, “Oh, not really. No.” I’m like, “Okay.” Everybody wants to do what they love. I’m like, “Yeah, they’re probably right.” And you know what, it’s not really a good definition to say doing what you love. I haven’t invented anything. I’m being the Passion Guy, I just say, “Do what you love.” That’s too shallow.

So I started doing research, and throughout my interviews on PassionSundays I’ve done about a hundred and probably fifty to 180 one-to-one interviews with global office speakers and experts talking about passion, and one of those interviews was with Brian Tracy. And Brian Tracy goes to me, “You will never be passionate about something that you are not good at.” And the definition of passion becomes doing what you love and you are good at. I’m like, “Okay, that’s a better definition now.” So you call a company and you say, “I want to talk to employees about getting good at what they love,” is okay.

Pete Mockaitis
Getting good at what they love. Yeah, that’s nice.

Moustafa Hamwi
And then I talked to Fons Trompenaars, he’s the world’s leading authority on corporate culture. He wrote the book Riding the Waves of Culture. And he says to me, “Watch out, for the wrong kind of passion can hurt the world.” I’m like, “Wrong kind of passion? What do you mean wrong kind of passion? There is no wrong kind of passion. I’m the Passion Guy and all passion is good.” He goes, “Think about Hitler.” I’m like, “Oh, my God, he’s actually right.”

And it was then that I realized that the quality of your passion comes from the quality of your purpose, and the definition became passion is doing what you love, what you’re good at and is a value and service to the world. And that became a much more solid definition because now companies are willing to pay me money, people are like, “Okay, that sounds a bit more than just doing what you love.”

But then something was still missing in this definition because I’d go to these talks, tell people its definition, and then people are still not performing, and I’m all about getting results. I changed my life because I wanted results so I want to get people results. And I realized that the key missing element was to be able to stay at it till you get success, because people get elated and excited about doing what they love, they might be really good at it and it’s a value to the world, and especially, for example, in job context.

Somebody starts in a company, it’s what they love, it’s what they’re good at, and the company wants it, but they don’t stay at it for long enough till they become super good at it and they become so in demand. And then the definition became consistently doing what you love, what you’re good at and is a value to the world, and that is a secret to passion is in the consistency. All the other three are there. It’s doing what you love, what you’re good at, and is a value to the world consistently. Consistently is what makes the difference between truly passionate people and those who think they’re passionate about something.

So this is the definition that I write and I teach now in all the work that I do and all the frameworks that I build are around what I call a common language. Because if I’m talking about passion as doing what you love, what you’re good at and is a value to the world and doing it consistently, and somebody else is talking about doing what you love then we’re not talking the same word passion.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. So you say one who has passion is one who consistently does what they love and/or good at and enriches the world. Do you have a verb form of the word passion for me, Moustafa? Like passioning?

Moustafa Hamwi
I don’t know. I have some talks that I have. I never thought about it in this way but I have passionovate, that’s one of my talks which is how passion brings innovate but, no, I haven’t verbized the word.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So this makes good sense and it sounds like something we want, “Yeah, I like some of that. Certainly more of that sort of in the daily experience of work.” I think I’d love to get your takes since you’ve done a lot of good thinking and talked to a lot of people about this topic about kind of the meaty question associated with whether or not it’s good or terrible advice to follow your passion. I know Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs here in the US did intriguing talk taking the counterpoint that it’s bad advice. Where do you come out on this one?

Moustafa Hamwi
Yeah, I have a lot to say about that piece that he did because I think that was just trying, in my opinion, to capitalize on the opposite opinion which is easy to do, saying, “Well, it’s bad advice because it’s about market opportunity.” But here’s the thing, market opportunity will always exists in every industry but guess who’s going to last longer on that opportunity? People who are truly passionate about what they do because if you keep jumping on every next opportunity, and you have a shiny object syndrome, you’re always going to find the next good thing. And guess what? You’ll always going to be overtaken by competition.

I don’t tell people just jump and pursue your passion because the way he’s talking about it is talking about doing what you love. But when I bring the two other elements, which is what you’re good at and is a value to the world, of course pursue your passion but, first, make sure you’re very clear on what you love. That’s the first step. That’s the clarity point. You have to be really crystal clear on what is it exactly that you want to dedicate the rest of your life to.

Number two, dedicate the 10,000 hours to get really good at it. And then, number three, here’s the thing, when you are offering value, guess what happens? You have market. But then you are in control because you know your product so well and your client so well and you are offering value and people pay you money in exchange of value that you offer to them. And when you keep doing it consistently, while others are just jumping on the market opportunity, guess who’s going to last longer? You’re doing consistently and you’re not going to quit.

So in his video that he did about “don’t pursue your passion” that was based on the definition of passion is doing what you love. But when I put this new definition of consistently doing what you love, what you’re good at and is a value to the world there’s no way his video stands there because I’ve already covered these points. So it’s a mismatch on the definition at his end, not the concept that he’s talking about.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Thank you. Well, so then, let’s dig into it a little bit. So you’ve got kind of four key parameters there. Could you share with us a couple of the most maybe powerful questions and practices to zero in on, I guess, first discovering these areas and then, two, living it out?

Moustafa Hamwi
Beautiful. Thank you very much. Well, here’s the thing, the process of passion discovery requires a lot of reflection and deep diving, and this is part of the work that I’ve done with myself when I’ve gone on my journey to India and then all the research that I’ve done over the years. And I’ve distilled what I think are two very powerful questions that can help somebody start finding the direction at least. It might not be the final answer but it’s definitely the first step in the right direction.

And the first question is a bit interactive so I’m going to need everybody who’s listening to this to either pause this and go grab their checkbook, if they’ve got one, I hope everybody does, and if they don’t maybe go open a bank account. Get your checkbook, if not just draw a check on a piece of paper in front of you, and on that check… if you don’t have checkbooks then just close your eyes and visualize unless you’re driving. So on that check, write your name, write today’s date, whatever that date is, and in the numbers space write $1,000,000,000, that’s one and nine zeroes. And in the letter space, write One Billion Dollars. Go ahead and sign that check, tear it out, look at it. You’ve got a check in your hand, in your name, dated today for one billion dollars.

Now, fold that check and put it in your pocket next to your heart, and take a deep breath, and ask yourself, “Now that you’ve got a billion dollars, what would you do with your life ?” You see when you take money out of the equation something shifts in the way we think because we suddenly escape the rate race. Everybody is in the rat race because they want more money, more money, more money. I think a billion dollars is enough money for you to do all what you want, try every business you have, you have no fear of failure, you have no fear of the future, everybody you love is taken care of. What would you want to do with your life?

I know some people say, “I want to travel the world. I want to do this.” Fine. Get all of this stuff out though. You’ve got enough money to do all of this. What next? How would you like to live your life? What would you want to do with this life? What impact would you want to have in this life? And this question is what I call the billion dollar question. And when you’ve got an answer for that question, you are set in the right direction towards your passion. Is that a good one?

Pete Mockaitis
I like it. Thank you. Yes. And so, okay, what comes next? Alright, I’ll hold the next question. It’s a great first step, what next?

Moustafa Hamwi
That’s a great first step. So, now, somebody asked me, I was on stage once at an event, I had Dr. Marshall Goldsmith and Fons Trompenaars actually both of them on stage with me, and a guy turns to me in the event and says, “Listen, you’ve got one minute to inspire me to live my passion. How can you do that?” Right on stage, on the spot, I had no clue.

And I looked at him and I just took a deep breath, and I’m like, “Can you guarantee living another week?” He goes, “No.” I said, “Another day?” He goes, “No.” I said, “Another hour?” He goes, “No.” I say, “Can you guarantee walking out of this room? I mean, you could just drop dead now.” He goes, “Yes.” I said, “So if today was the last day of your life what would you regret not doing and what are you waiting for to pursue that dream when you had the billion dollar check? How do you know you’re going to live till tomorrow?”

So those are the simplest two questions that I could give to anybody in a quick manner to help them quickly discover and live their passion because, first thing, get clear on what you want when you get a billion dollars and then get freaked out that, “I might not have enough time to make it a reality so I need to start today, not tomorrow. Just now, now, now.” And the question you need to ask yourself, “What’s the next step I need to take?”

You don’t need to think of a million things in advance, just one thing, “What is the next step I need to do today?” after answering this. So if you found the answer for the billion dollar question, at least hopefully you’d have some sort of a direction, start with that, and if not, maybe the first step is, “I need to take some time off for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes just thinking about this question.” This would be your first next step. And all you’ve got to do is decide what is the first next step, and after the next step, say, “What is the next step?” and this is how you can build the plan.

So, first thing is answer the billion dollar question. Second thing is get clarity. So let’s say you said, “I love cars.” What does that mean? Do you want to sell cars? Do you want to wash cars? Do you want to paint cars? Do you want to have a carwash? Do you want to have a website about cars? You see, people get lost into, “I love music. I love guitars.” What does that mean?

So you spend time. This is all a bit of extraction from the Passion Journey online course that we’re launching in a couple of months that helps people truly dive deep. So I’m trying to give you as much as possible with a nugget, bite size, golden nuggets kind of a thing. So get clarity. So if you say, “I love cars.” “I love podcasting.” You’ve got to get really crystal clear on what does that mean. So that would be step two.

Now, step three is people need to go and put a plan. Because guess what people do? “Oh, I love this. Okay, I’m clear I want to do this,” and they just go and they jump, either quit their job or just jump into opening a business. And guess what happens? Boom, they get smacked. Why? Because they haven’t planned it. They’re jumping on just the excitement of it, and you need to get grounded in pursuing your passion because, remember, passion is doing what you love. Great.

Now you’ve got crystal clear on what you love. You need to ask yourself, “Am I good at it?” And good at it comes from three key, I call them, trifecta or three circles that have to intersect. Because, remember, there’s doing what you love, what you’re good at and is of value to the world, are three circles and at the center of it is the passion work.

Now, if you zoom into getting good at it, three are three circles in that self itself. One is called talent. Talent is your God-given ability. So you’re born with a beautiful voice, you’re born with speed, you’re born with agility, you’re born with a certain mind for numbers, and people are stuck there because they’re, “I’m talented at that.” But the thing is, separate from the talent, you have to develop skills. Skills are a specific set of steps and procedures that you take to achieve your certain goal.

So you might be a talented speaker naturally but you have to learn what it takes to produce a good podcast. You have to learn what it takes to close a good sales deal. And then there’s a third element which is knowledge. Knowledge is the general body of information around a certain topic. So you have to understand what is podcasting, how many podcasts out there, what does it mean, where did it start, so you’ve got the history and backdrop of the whole topic.

When these three things intersect, this is what takes about 10,000 hours to master something. So then you’ve got to go and invest the time once you’ve got the clarity into mastering something, and you need a roadmap and steps and clear step-by-step approach into, “Okay, today I’m going to get good at this. Next week I’m going to launch this. Next week I’m going to do that.” And you put a three to five-year plan.

And here’s the other advice. People overestimate what they can do in a year. And the reality is it will take you three to five years to get anything up and running properly which is why you need to invest about 10,000 hours over that time of learning the skill. And in that, my advice would be don’t jump too quickly into turning it into a business. Make it a hobby first.

Because when you do it as a business, you are under pressure to perform and you lose the passion for it. Because if you’re not so good at it early on you start wanting to perform, you quit your job, you go and you try to start the passion. And guess what? You realize you’re not as good as you thought you are, or there’s so much competition in the market, or there’s no market for you, you’re too early. And then suddenly you’re under pressure to perform, and your passion doesn’t pay the bills, and then you get caught up in the whole cycle of, “Oh, my God, what am I doing?” Then you’re stuck and you can never go back to your job but you cannot proceed with your passion.

So turn it into a hobby first, enjoy it, play with it, have fun. When you’re having fun you learn better. Think of kids. How many times did you have to force a kid to play? “Look, you have to play. I really want to see you today finishing all your play before 9:00 p.m.” Kids like to play, and we’re all kids on the inside, and when we play we enjoy, and when we enjoy we get stamina, and when we get that stamina we get the energy and we learn better.

Versus when you turn it into another job and you end up leaving an employment into become self-employed, oh, my God, that’s torture because you are your own boss. At least when you have a boss and you have guaranteed salary at the end of the month you’ve got space to think. And that takes a lot of appreciation for what you’ve got today on your plate because people get so fed up with their current situation because they don’t know what they want in the future and they just neglect what they’ve got today.

And my suggestion is do not just jump too quickly. Build a bridge from where you are to where you want to be. And being passionate is about being resourceful and about using every single element in your environment to build that bridge. Once you do that, now you’ve got the plan, guess what you need next? You need to build a passion tribe around you.

A passion tribe is a group of people that are on a similar journey as you and usually they are not your family and not your friends. Because your family and friends are in their own space, they will project their fears on you lovingly, not because they hate you, because they want to protect you from failure, they want to protect you from disappointments. So they will tell you, “Don’t do this. Don’t do that. We think you should do this. We think you should do that.” And your all-time friends will only tell you what they know of you from before but they don’t know where you’re heading in the future.

So you need to build a passion tribe which is could be either people on a similar journey as you from the angle of, “Okay, we all want to quit our jobs. What can you do next?” or, “We all want to build our career in the same job because, look, opportunity is not always outside.” Your best opportunity is what you’ve got on your plate today. And if you can’t perform well in your current situation, what makes you think you’re going to do any better when you head somewhere else? That’s trying to change the outside before you change the inside.

Passion is an inside job. You’ve got to become passionate and so good at anything you touch, and then you can go and perform better somewhere else. So get good at where you are first. And then your passion tribe can include people that might not be exactly on the same journey but either have been on a similar journey or have similar aspirations. So maybe they like music like you. Maybe they’re not changing their job but they work in a music industry, they work in something that is close to you, or they can be professionals.

So somebody like coaches. So a coach is part of a passion tribe because they will support you. And guess what? They’d have no emotional attachment so they’re going to be blunt, they’re going to be straightforward and they’re going to tell you what needs to be done for you to get to the next step. So you need to build a lot of these circles around you that support you on that journey so you don’t get a lot of energy vampires attacking you along the way.

And then you just persist. You just stay consistent at it. Day in, day out, consistently, consistently, consistently. You get knocked out and you get up again, and you got to work so hard till one day your signature becomes an autograph.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you for laying out that sequence there. And so from a key question all the way to practices and support communities, and so that’s really cool. Could you maybe bring this to life in terms of sharing an example of someone who went through each of these steps and what discoveries they made? And, ideally, I’d love it, if I can be choosy about the example, that it was someone in the professional context in terms of navigating their career into a place that was significantly upgraded in terms of their passion and happiness after they went through all the steps.

Moustafa Hamwi
Beautiful. Now, just one thing though I have to make a clear distinction. I do not talk about happiness. If anything in my book, I talk about forget happiness.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hit that for one quick minute, shall we? Explain.

Moustafa Hamwi
Well, here’s the thing. You see, happiness, the pursuit of happiness is making you sad because happiness is, number one, a state of mind. So to start with, who’s stopping you from being happy? So if you sound not happy, the question is, “Why are you not happy?” And if it’s an external factor, why aren’t you changing it?

You can tell me, “Well, it’s not in my hands, it’s not in my control” No, that’s an inside job because you’re telling me, “I’m not happy because I don’t have a million dollars.” Well, either get off your ass and go work hard for the million dollars if it’s that important for you, or if your comfort is more important just enjoy being comfortable. It’s the gap between expectation and reality that causes frustration.

And then, number two, nobody can ever be eternally happy. That’s just a bunch of stories that they sell us in the media. The reality is, after every time you go out and have a big night out, guess what happens the next morning? You get a hangover. After day there is night. Yeah, and after life there is death. Duality is part of life. I know I don’t want to get too metaphysical here but it is. Duality is part of life. There is day and night, left and right, sun and moon, up and down, male and female. It has to exist. Every positive is followed by a negative, and negative is not a bad thing.

Have you ever seen a battery with one polarity? There’s always positive and negative. Have you ever seen a magnet with one polarity? There’s always positive and negative. And in the journey of pursuit of passion you’re going to have to go through pleasure and pain. You can never be happy all the time. So if you’re pursuing happiness, you’re pursuing an illusion that is already in your head and you can choose to be happy.

But on the pursuit of passion, along the way there are times that I’m not happy. I’m not happy when things don’t go according to plan. I’m not happy if somebody from relatives or families die. I’m not happy when I lose money but I’m fulfilled that I am fulfilling my true passion and purpose of doing what I’m meant to do in this world. So that’s why I don’t talk about happiness, and in my book that’s called Mastering Your Passion, it’s en ebook, I’m actually going to give it away to all your listeners, I talk about forget happiness. Happiness is a waste of time. You should focus on passion not on happiness.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Thank you. So I’m picking up what you’re putting down there. Great. So then, nonetheless, I don’t know what you would call it but going through these steps and seeing results that please you enhances a quality of your life – I don’t know what term you’d care to use for it – but you’re getting an upgrade of some kind in your…

Moustafa Hamwi
You get more fulfillment.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. We’ll go fulfillment. Got you. So walk us through. There’s someone who they’re struggling, they didn’t have clarity and they went through each of these steps, they made some discoveries and now they’re not in a more fulfilled place. Could you make that come to life for us?

Moustafa Hamwi
So I can give you a quick example. I’ve had hundreds of people run through this program, and each of them has chosen to apply that in different ways. So I’ve had people come through the program, The Passion Journey and The Passion workshop, and they’ve discovered that, for example, they like to get into food and to travel. And then they took some time and say, “Listen, I’m not in a hurry now. I’m in a good job that’s taking care of me, that’s giving me my financial means every month to pay the bills without the stress of pursuing the passion, and I’m going to play with it.”

Now, a year or two later, after they kept it as a hobby, they just got into cooking some stuff and trying with food, I just spoke to them recently and they’re building a business around food and travel. I would love to share it but they’ve asked me, because it’s still cooking, the business, but they said don’t tell anything about it yet, but the say, “Listen, now I’m actually still in my job but I’m probably going to be ready to leave the job within the coming six months to one year max.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Moustafa Hamwi
So they’ve taken it and they’ve played with it for a while. And here’s the thing, that person was working in an industry that was not directly related to their business but it was somehow indirectly keeping them in the surroundings because they were working for one of the distributors of drinks so that meant they were surrounded and able to access a lot of the restaurant businesses, a lot of the F&D businesses, and they started using their knowledge that they have access to to learn a bit better. Remember I talked about talent, skill and knowledge. Their current job gave them a lot of knowledge while they built the skillset required to setup a business in that direction, and that’s one example.

Now I had another person who was far off from what they wanted and they said, “Listen, I can financially afford to quit my job today. I’ve got enough savings that will run me for a few years. I’ve already bought my house and I’ve got enough cash, family money, and I really don’t feel I want to be stuck in a job that I don’t enjoy.

And they just picked up and took whatever that came out in the Passion workshop or Passion Journey because the Passion Journey gives them clarity on a lot of specific values, on specific things, and then they put the action plan, and they follow through on the Passion Journey plan by quitting their job and going and traveling around the world to build the pieces of the puzzle.

So that person says, “I want to upscale myself into the whole wellbeing and wellness space, and that means I can’t do it if I’m still in the job. I want to go and learn yoga, and I want to go and learn meditation, and I want to go and learn healing techniques,” because they wanted to build a business around wellness. So their situation allowed them to quit their job and go and pursue that plan of up-skilling themselves.

So you see, now that’s not a knowledge area. They’ve went into, “No, I want to gain skills to become a master of my area of work that I’ve got.” So you see two different examples. Each of them might’ve found similar things.

Now, a third person, that I can give you as an example, is a guy who works in an industry of supplying defense materials, so they supply armored vehicles and different kind of material to the defense industry. And his value system is so close to mine. My top three values are learning and development and sharing that learning. I love adventure travel and I’m very clear. When I say adventure travel I don’t like luxury travel. I don’t like to be sent into five-star hotels in this. I like to be adventurous. I like to backpack. I like to ride motorbikes. I like to paraglide, skydive. I like to do crazy stuff. So this is fun for me. And I like health and wellbeing.

So he has exactly the same three values. But here’s the difference. I chose to take that and build my whole business and my whole life around it because I don’t want to be doing anything that is not perfectly in my joy space and my fulfillment space every single day. I want to wake up at 7:00 and sleep at 12:00 and everything I do between is dedicated towards those three things.

This guy said, “Listen, I’ve got a nice successful business that I’ve spent years building up and it brings me good money, and I actually enjoy it and I don’t want to put pressure on my passion to be my source of revenue.” So he chose to turn that into his hobby, so now he’s very clear that he goes, “When I finish work, I do my best,” he’s a business owner but he says, “I don’t want to be a slave to my business and I finish work as early as possible, and I go spend a couple of hours a day towards building my passion.”

So he’s one of my best coachees because he takes time to do every exercise I give him, he takes time daily, he takes time weekly to reflect on all of these things and start building a business that frees him from having to perform in these areas so he can enjoy these things as a hobby and not as a business. So clearly three distinctive cases. One of them stayed where they are and they started building the career there. Another person says, “No, I’m going to totally leave and eject as soon as possible.” And another person said, “Listen, I’m going to stick to whatever I’m doing and I want this to be happening on the side.”

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Thank you. And so I must ask, and I’m sure you get this question, so those who’d say, “Okay, Moustafa, easy for you to say. What about I got kids, I need that income, that reliability in place, and I don’t see that my passion areas will turn into substantial or the required levels of income. So while the billion dollar check exercise is really liberating and it sparks all kinds of new ideas and possibilities, it’s sort of not my reality.” So what’s your head and thoughts?

Moustafa Hamwi
A very valid question which I’ve asked to a lot of the people that I’ve interviewed along the journey so the answer that I’m going to give you is not dependent on my point of view, it’s actually from the world’s best of the best, and some of them are in their 70s, some of them are older, some of them are younger. And here’s the thing, I am not selling you an illusion. I’m not telling you, “Take this magic pill and black is going to transform and everything is going to be the way you’d like it to be.”

If you’re 70 and you wish to become the world’s youngest body builder, it’s not going to happen. I’m sorry, that’s not in my hand. I cannot turn back time. All I’m telling you is, first, discover, “What is your passion?” I’m not telling you go and contemplate on the past that you have missed, “Oh, I could have done that, I could have done this.” Guess what? If you’re a family man and you got kids, my question to you is, “What’s more important: you playing guitar or you taking care of your family?”

If your passion is truly taking care of your family then, guess what, you’re going to service. You are going to service your family. And be clear that this is part of your passion. So if you’ve got kids and you’re telling me this, it’s one of two. You’re either genuinely passionate about your family, so get happy and excited that you are serving your passion because your family is part of your passion. Or this is just an excuse. So it could be either/or because some people use this as an excuse.

Guess the two most common excuses that I get from everybody saying why they’re not pursuing passion? It’s either kids and family or time. Well, here’s my question to you. Anybody has more than 24 hours? I don’t think so. So what’s the difference between a successful person and an unsuccessful person? It’s the way they use their time. For every case, somebody is going to give me an excuse of why they can’t pursue their passion now, I can give you 10 more of people who pursued their passion at every single step of their life.

A lot of the successful companies that are out there were built by people that were either 30, some of them 40, some of them 50, some of them 60. I don’t have all of them fresh off memory now but I can tell you one who started at 65, built a crazily successful brand today passed his death and that’s Kentucky. Kentucky Fried Chicken was built by a man who faced a lot of failures throughout his life, and at the age of 65 or 60 he launched Kentucky Fried Chicken.

You look at the story of McDonald’s. If you haven’t watched it, go watch the movie The Founder. The guy struggled a lot and he lost a lot of stuff. His marriage broke up, or whatever. You have to be honest about yourself but don’t use excuses. Don’t tell me it’s the family. Don’t tell me it’s the kids. If your family are your passion, you will do what you have to do to serve them. And if they’re not then you’ll probably going to end up coming short on serving your family and you will resent the family because you feel they’ve kept you away from your passion.

So I’m just saying be very honest and very clear. Don’t use things as excuses. Go and serve what is truly meaningful to you. So if your family – which I hope it is, because that’s hopefully why you built a family. Don’t go build a family and have kids if you’re not truly passionate about having family and kids. And be happy that, “Oh, my God, I am living my passion.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, now, can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Moustafa Hamwi
Well, it’s a quote and a mantra that I kind of developed over the years so it’s something that I teach all of my students, and that is, “I am a master of my destiny, not the victim of my history.” I want everybody to repeat that, “I am a master of my destiny, not the victim of my history.” Because we all face challenges. Whoever would tell me, “Oh, it’s easy for you.” Well, guess what? You don’t know my life story, you don’t know my journey. For every challenge you’ll tell me I’ll tell you 10 more that I had to bear with.

You talk to me about family and challenges and losing money or whatever, guess what? I’m Syrian and I lost my country, I’ve lost my business, I’ve lost health, I’ve lost all of that. But I chose to say, “I am a master of my destiny, not the victim of my history.” What happened in the past I cannot change, but I can control what’s coming today and tomorrow.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Moustafa Hamwi
Oh, PassionSundays. I think it’s probably the world’s longest standing research on the topic of passion. I don’t know of anybody who’s spent that much time interviewing face-to-face one-to-one every people from every walk of life talking about one word which is passion. And the beauty is I’ve done it in such a format that I’m not a researcher, I’m not an academic guy.

My researcher side of me is the media part of me which enjoys it fun, and I said, “Listen, I actually… people don’t know this about me but I hate reading. I love learning but I hate reading. I cannot sit and read a book. I love to listen to audio books and I consume anywhere from 30 to 50 books a year, and that’s about a book a week. Only this week I’m running short but it’s about a book a week.

And that naturally means that I was able to break down my dream of doing that research into bite size which is once a week and about five to ten minutes, and I’ve done it in a format that I enjoy doing. So I don’t enjoy it in a research-reading format, I enjoy it in a TV-interview format so I launched an online talk show. So this is a research that I love and I love to share.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Moustafa Hamwi
Oh, if there’s one book that I swear by is Think and Grow Rich. I’ve actually done a PassionSundays episode just about that book because I think this is bar none a bible of personal development. This book was a distillation of learnings from over 500 of the most rich, powerful and successful people in the US back in the time when Napoleon Hill was alive. So, imagine, I’ve done 180, he’s done 500 one-to-ones with old school, there’s no YouTube successes, there’s no internet. These are hardworking old-school people that made the success, so the learnings there worth gold.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite tool?

Moustafa Hamwi
I’m obsessed with anything that has to do with productivity because I realize there’s only 24 hours in the day and the bigger my dreams became the less time I felt I had in the day, so I have to get things as efficient as possible. So the tool I’m going to share with you are subjective to understanding how to use the tools.

So, first, what I would tell you is you guys need to go read two books for David Allen. David Allen is the inventor of Getting Things Done. So you read the book called Ready for Anything, that explains the concepts of productivity. And then you read a book called Getting Things Done, that’s the actual methodology and bible of how to do things.

And then to apply that, you can use many tools because David Allen actually is old-school. He likes to use pen and paper. He uses the thinking methodology using pen and paper. I like technology and I use Macs so I like to use OmniFocus.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me too.

Moustafa Hamwi
Yeah, so OmniFocus. But you see if you don’t understand the methodology behind OmniFocus then you’re using OmniFocus in a very flat manner. So a mix of OmniFocus, the calendar and Outlook, I organize my life psychotically.

Pete Mockaitis
Psychotically. Oh, that’s good. Well, David Allen, I am a fan as well. We had him on Episode 15, and it’s game-changing, so thank you. Good stuff. And how about a favorite habit?

Moustafa Hamwi
Meditation. Meditation. Meditation and yoga. I cannot swear enough by these two things. They have changed and transformed my life. I meditate every single morning for at least 15 minutes. Well, I don’t usually go above much but I make sure. Any day I skip my meditation in the morning, the day goes wrong. So I have 15 minutes of meditation in the morning. If you can’t afford 15 minutes it means you need 30. And if you can’t afford 30 it means you need 60, because it means your day is so messed up.

Think of it. You’ve got 24 hours a day. You cannot afford a quarter of that just for you to sit and absorb your mind and center yourself then you’re lost control of your life. So that definitely. And yoga because yoga is a bit of a more of an active meditation and it helps me physically, mentally, emotionally. It just does magic to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Thank you. And is there a particular nugget, something that you share that tends to really tend to resonate and gets note-taken and tweeted when you share it?

Moustafa Hamwi
Yeah, on my talks I’m always, as I’m reaching towards the end, I say, “Aspire to inspire before you expire.”

Pete Mockaitis
Clever. Thank you. And, Moustafa, if folks want to learn more or get in touch or check out the free book you mentioned, where would you point them?

Moustafa Hamwi
So my website is Moustafa.com and then what I will do is we will setup a special page for your audience, so it’s going to be Moustafa.com/ the name of the show which you can put on the show notes. And basically when they go to the opt-in page they put their name and email, they will get two things. They will get to download Mastering Passion which is very easy to read. It has my story about India travel, so it’s fun.

I talk about the swami, I talk about how to do the billion dollar exercise and I talk a little bit about why it’s important to pursue passion and how to do that, so very easy read like 10 pages. And then they will automatically be subscribed to PassionSundays and that’s a weekly newsletter which has a five to 10-minute video interviewing authors, speakers, experts, entrepreneurs, Olympians, Nobel Prize winners talking about passion.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Excellent. And if you had one challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs, what would it be?

Moustafa Hamwi
Answer the billion dollar question, go opt-in to the page, get the book and read it. And let me tell you one thing, if you do not do these actions, with all due honesty because your dreams get by. Because if you’re not going to take action within the coming 24 hours, life is going to take over and you’re never going to do it in three days, and life is going to take over and you’re never going to do it in a week, and you’re never going to do it tomorrow. And next thing you know, a year passes by and you go, “Oh, where did that year go?”

Take action now. If you’re not going to do this now, what makes you think you’re going to do it tomorrow?

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Got it. Thank you. Well, Moustafa, thanks so much for sharing these perspectives and good luck in your travels and inspiring before you expire.

Moustafa Hamwi
Thank you very much, Pete. And I’d like to wrap up by saying live passionately, go find that passion and live a life worth dying for. Thank you, guys.