Converted professor and author of Freak Factor shares how to turn your weakness into strength.For all of us weirdos, misfits and those who do not belong... stay passionate.David Rendall was a management professor with a doctor of management degree in organizational leadership, as well as a graduate degree in psychology, he just got freaky and left it all to help people discover their uniqueness by flaunting their weakness. He says ”Our passion is our strength, yet most people spend time working on fixing their weakness and trying to be someone else.”His advice if your passion is not aligned with where you are is to change where you are rather than changing whom you are. This takes off the spotlight from your weakness and highlights your strength.Its not time that drains your energy, its actually the activities that you do during this time, so look for activities bring you more energy and this will help you find and sustain energy. Passion brings devotion and makes it easy to stay disciplined and committed.So to all the passionate weirdos, misfits and those who do not belong… this interview is for you so enjoy it then share it and spread the love.Live Passionately,Moustafa HamwiMoustafa Hamwi: Hello everyone, and welcome back to Passion Sundays, the best way to end a week and start another. Our guest today is a bit of a weirdo; he is the author of the book “Freak Factor”. A converted professor who became a speaker, that shows people how to use their weaknesses and honor them to become strong. David, thank you very much for being here today, it’s awesome, very excited to be with the, with the freak man himself and obviously now how can we bring freaky passion into life?David Rendall: You know, I think one of the things people are always looking for is more energy, right, sometimes what I say at the beginning is how many of you would like to have more energy at the end of the day than you had at the beginning and everybody says yes, and I think the way to do that is to tap into our passion, and our passion is our strengths, the things that naturally give us energy, naturally fill us up. But too often we are busy instead of doing those things, we are busy doing things that requires us to fix our weaknesses, that requires us to be someone else, requires us to do things that we don’t like and that we are not very good at, umm, and so I think passion has a huge impact on the energy we bring to our life and our work and I think tapping into that and recognizing passion is directly related to strengths, often times, when we’re in our area of strength, when we’re in our area of passion, it can look like we’re disciplined, it can look like we’re dedicated but all we are is devoted to whatever is it that we are doing.Moustafa Hamwi: I like the word devotion over discipline.David Rendall: Yeah.Moustafa Hamwi: That being said, not everybody is as lucky to first know their passion.David Rendall: Yeah.Moustafa Hamwi: How do you find passion when you don’t know what it is?David Rendall: Yeah, so I think one of the things is to start with your daily activities, when are activities draining me, when are activities filling me up, when does time seem to fly, when does time seem to go so slowly, it seems like this is never going to be over, and just start tracking it. Right, when am I energized, when am I drained, when do things seem to be going well (1:40), what’s going poorly, when do I get praised, when do I get criticized for, and just tracking those things and starting to look for common themes and starting to look for common direction and start to daily, even if just in a small way. It doesn’t have to be about quitting a job or starting a new direction right away, it’s how do I start just changing it, having just a little bit more of those things that I am passionate about, involved in each day, even if it’s not at work, experimenting on the side with things that we might be interested in, our hobbies and in our free time, but just trying to identify those things, I think you are right, awareness is the first part if you don’t know what it is you can’t tap into it, so starting to look when am I energized, when am I feeling good, when am I feeling passionate and what are those things that I am doing, how can I reproduce that.Moustafa Hamwi: Amazing! You are talking about doing things on the side while you are at a job, if it’s not truly your passion, while you kind of build up towards your passion, but that journey must be draining also, so, we all run low on energy and for you to have had the success you have today, and then again you are a professor and for you to be doing what you are doing today must have been a big transformation, going from standing in a room as a professor, to wearing pink pants on stage and being paid for it. So,David Rendall: Yeah.Moustafa Hamwi: How do you find passion and energy when you’re actually going low?David Rendall: Well, I think it gives you, I think, just because it takes more time to maybe do something on the side, do something extra, if it does in fact, if it’s your passion it often times energizes you and fills you up, so let’s say you’ve a really long difficult day at work, if you leave work and then go do something you are passionate about you may find out that at the end of that activity you actually feel more energized than when you left work, so, instead of seeing time as draining our energy, or effort as draining our energy, it’s recognizing that often times it’s the activity that drains our energy and so sometimes the key to more energy is getting more involved in those activities even if requires extra time. So uh, I’m in a different time zone, I’m on the other side of the world, I’ve been traveling for two weeks, all these different kinds of things would seem to leave me drained and in fact right now I am tremendously energized because I just got done doing what I love to do. I am getting a chance to talk about something that I really care about and I feel super energized right now, I don’t feel drained. So, it’s not the time, it’s the activity and what the activity does to us, so even if we have to spend extra time or sort of stay up late to do those things we can actually find that it fills us up instead of empties us out.Moustafa Hamwi: I love it, so, I think I’ve got one more question to conclude with, which is relating to your “Freak Factor” philosophy. It’s that a lot of times our passions disagree with everyone and everything around us and a lot of times we are as far away from where our passion should be, I mean, in my case and I ended up having to buy a one-way ticket to India to find my passion.David Rendall: Yeah, yeah.Moustafa Hamwi: But what’s the way to find that, if your freaky passion is so far away from where you are today and how, what can you add to that?David Rendall: Yeah, it’s a great point, I mean one of the things to talk about is the alignment, right, finding the right fit in, sometimes the right fit isn’t, isn’t near to us, it’s not around us.I was talking to a guy one time in western Australia who wanted to be a fashion designer and he lived in a small town and he said “I am weird and nobody gets me” and I said “where do they do fashion in Australia?” and he says “Sydney,” I said “well you need to go to Sydney and you think you are weird here but when you went there you wouldn’t seem weird, and the people here don’t respect the thing you want to do, but the people there do, and there’s a place for you there, right, there’s a place for you there.” So I do think you are right, I think that sometimes people say I can’t be this because of where I am, well then the question is then, why are you there and how could you find that place to reward you for who you are, so that’s what I am being on, find that place that puts the spotlight on who you are, and the best things about who you are takes the spotlight off your weaknesses, the things you don’t have and it does require some effort sometimes but it requires a lot more effort to change who we are, than to change where we are.Moustafa Hamwi: I love it, so basically the simplest way to pursue your passion is actually change where you are, rather than changing who you are.David Rendall: Right, find that spot.Moustafa Hamwi: Awesome, thank you very much. This has been very practical, I am sure our viewers will love it, thank you very much and stay freaky.David Rendall: Thanks a lot.Moustafa Hamwi: Thank you very much, awesome.Moustafa Hamwi&David Rendall: Passion!!Moustafa Hamwi: What do you think? I would really love to hear your opinion. If you’d like to stay engaged, subscribe to our social media channels and if you want even more valuable interviews and tips and tricks on how to live passionately then go to Moustafahamwi.com and subscribe to our Passion Sundays newsletter. Until the next episode, live passionately!