There are thousands of self-help books out there; books that tell you how to find your purpose in life; books that tell you how to find your soul mate; how to achieve financial success; how to become a millionaire by the time you’re thirty; even books on how to integrate your anima and animus and talk to persons of the opposite gender as if they were real people. In short, there are books on how to do anything and everything and each one of them wants you to believe that they have the answer that you look for; that by reading them you will finally achieve true happiness and personal success.

You want to know a secret? They’re all lying.

Well, okay, not lying exactly. I’m sure that the authors of these multitudes of books mean well, but when it comes right down to brass tacks, there is only one answer to living the kind of life you want; only one answer to true happiness; and only one way that you will ever achieve personal success, and that is by listening to and following your heart.

Was that a shudder? Did that sound too much like the ‘love and light’ authors that fill the New Age sections of the bookstores? Well, they actually did get that bit right.

Following your heart is not some sort of esoteric process and you don’t have to believe in angels or faeries in order to make use of it. Listening to your heart is no more or less than listening to your passion. By finding those things that motivate you; those things that truly inspire you, you can discover just what it is that you are supposed to be doing in your life. It does, however, require that you be able to pay attention to how you feel about something.

Take a look at your hobbies; at your interests. Is there something that you feel passionately about? Chances are that if you can identify those things you are passionate about and then lay them out side by side with your personal plan for success you will start seeing some very interesting correlations; aspects of those things that inspire you which, if tapped, would take you almost directly to your goal.

The problem that most individuals run into is that they discover their passions and then try to make some sort of logical sense out of them. They try to apply them to the norms that they have been working with, and when they don’t fit neatly into a success guru’s diagram, they give them up as wishful thinking. Nothing could be truer.

Your true passions will lead you in the direction that you are supposed to go and, though it may sound cliché, by following your heart, you will never find yourself being steered wrong, even if the direction you end up going is not one that you were suspecting. Only then will you find yourself living for true greatness.

Tawawn Lowe is a Personal Power Coach. She integrates personal development to identify and pursue passion and purpose. Tawawn helps to bring clarity to your life's purpose, unleash your personal power, confidence, commitment and inspire action. Are you ready to live a clear, directed and passionate life? –http://tawawnlowe.com/