Volunteer to be director and musical composer of an original high school musical.

Be the mom who teaches golf to your child’s friends who come over for playdates.

Put on a puppet show with handmade puppets at a local library.

Be in charge of putting together a round robin of dinner over friends’ houses with a different international meal theme.

Remember, as we stated under career action path, an action plan starts to take shape when you start to involve others in it. Now that you have a well-thought out action-oriented hobby you need to come up with a list of contacts to help get your plan rolling.  Write the sub-heading “Network”. An action plan starts to take shape when you start to involve others in it.  And to get to the end result the quickest, you need the path of least resistance and where you have the biggest or highest quality of networks that can help you get there. Start by making a list of everyone you know who has some sort of connection to how you can involve your community in your hobby – friends, relatives, friends of friends, neighbors, community members, local businesses, schools, libraries, community centers.

Write the sub-heading “Action Plan Steps”. In this exercise, look back at the description of your inner passion, that you worked on in the last section, keeping in mind your hobby framework. Start off with a brief description of your proposed idea of sharing your passion hobby. Then come up with enough steps for your action plan using contacts from your network list where applicable, to formulate how to get your passion-related hobby off the ground. There may be some initial steps you have to take on your own before you can start to network, but you should have your plan outlined with your networking contacts included so your action steps can be fluid and you can be more confident in how your plan is going to be able to move forward. Here you need to come up with all the action steps you would need to take in order to make your hobby actionable and fulfilling, making sure to incorporate the contacts from your networking list. Try to be as specific as you can.

Example:

Self-publish a children’s book that is personalized to your child and share it with his class and town library.

1. Think of a theme for your story.

2. Research on-line photo gift websites. Find one that allows you to use your own pictures to create a book.

3. Download personal pictures of your child into the photo web-site.

4. Add your written content to each picture in creating your story.

5. Order your completed  book.

6. Ask your child’s teacher if you can come in and share the story with your child’s class.

7. Find the contact for the Children’s Room at your local library. Inquire if they have a program, or if you could start a program, where you can come in and read during story hour.

The action-plan list would continue. You need to be as specific as possible. Once you come up with your list, break any large steps down into sub-steps. Make sure you include steps that will make this plan “a reality” for yourself, no matter what that might be. For instance, in the above example, it doesn’t help to create the book if you don’t have steps in your plan to  share it with anyone. At the end of the day a passion is just a dream unless you take actionable steps to make it a reality.