012 Karen Putz on Passion

Career Tips & Trends with Tom McDonough & Deborah Burkholder

Welcome to Career Tips & Trends.
Internet radio for savvy professionals –
doing work you love, work that matters.

Our guest today is Karen Putz, a Passion Coach, writer, speaker and barefoot water skier. Tweet this.

Karen joins us to share part of her story of how she lost and regained her passion.

She was a barefoot water skier until she had a fall and went from being hard of hearing to deaf. That change in her life disconnected her from doing what she loved for over 20 years. It was in rediscovering her passion for barefoot skiing that she also discovered her calling to help others unwrap their passion.

From the show

The way I looked at it back then at that time was juggling and I was spinning plates as a mom. I think a lot of people can identify with that. You want one plate and you spin it and the other one starts to wobble and you move on to the next plate and spin that one too. Sometimes, in the whole process, you lose yourself. You lose your purpose. You lose the “why am I here and what am I doing”. It becomes very overwhelming at that point to try to juggle it all. That’s why I think it’s so important to be doing something that you really are passionate about doing. It makes that juggling and plate spinning that much more easier.

What happened two years ago was on my 44th birthday I was extremely down, quite overweight, very unhappy, out of shape. I was at a point in my life where I was sort of questioning everything that I was doing. One of the things I did at that point was I was thinking back on my life and what was the happiest time of my life. What was the point in my life before I started to fall out of joy and I was doing something that I really wanted to do? Waterskiing was the thing that came to mind.

My husband found a link to the station and on the Today Show was a 66 year old woman who was barefoot waterskiing. That video was not captioned but I didn’t need the captions. All I could see was a 66 year old woman waterskiing in her bare feet on the screen. I started to cry because if a 66 year old woman could do this, then what was my excuse? There was nothing holding me back from pursuing that passion again.

I got in touch with the woman from the Today Show. Her name was Judy Meyers. I got in touch with her through Facebook. I told her my story. She said why don’t you come to Florida and we’ll get you bare footing again? In the spring of 2010, my family and I flew to Florida. I went to the World Barefoot Center. It was there that I met the two time world barefoot champion Keith St. Onge. Keith took me down to the dock. We practiced all the steps to get back on the water again.

In fact, I was so hooked on it that two weeks later I went back again and barefooted a second time. When I went back a second time, Keith and I were sitting in the boat and talking. I asked him a question that I ask everybody. What are you going to do five years from now? That’s a question that I love asking people. What’s on your mind about your future? Keiths response was simply that he wanted to write a book and become a motivational speaker. The next thing I knew, he had just finished his book and it would soon be published and sold.

I’m a certified Passion Facilitator. One of the ways that I do that is to help people identify what their top five passions are. A lot of times we get so hung up on the how. How will I do this? Right then and there we stop dreaming. We get so hung up on the “how” that we forget about the “what” of our dreams. I teach people to identify the “what” and the “how” will take care of itself. One of the ways we do this is using a simple tool called the Passion Test. I take people through the Passion Test to identify their top five passions in life.

I think they do because a lot of times people will say “I don’t know what my passion is”. When people respond with that, we take it back to something that’s much more simple. What brings them joy? What makes the heart sing? What fires them up? We take them back to a time when they were happy and were doing something that they really like to do or something that holds their interest for a long time. We go back to the basics and dig deep down. People often find the answers there.

The more that I posted on facebook and social media about my passion; the more I attracted people to me. The next thing I knew, I had people from all over who were sending me invitations to barefoot water-ski. That’s true of anything in life. The more intense you are about your passion and the more you reach out, the more others will reach to you. The tribe and your platform continues to grow. The more you strut your stuff and the more you’re willing to learn from other people, again, that tribe and platform continues to grow bigger and bigger.

If there’s one think that I know from this whole passion journey is when you line your passion with your purpose, a lot of other things line up as well. Those four areas that you mentioned; very true from what I’ve experienced over the last few years. I have probably met 200 more people as a result and made new friends and had lots of new experiences. I’ve encountered different sponsors as a result. It’s been amazing. It’s amazing what happens when you unwrap your passion.

Listen to the full interview by clicking on the player above.

More About Karen

Karen Putz blogs at ChicagoNow and A Deaf Mom Shares Her World. She is the Director of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Infusion at Hands & Voices.

Resources

Additional Resources

*You can support the show by using our Amazon affiliate links above. Thanks.