“Find Your Passion” Is Dumb Advice
“Find your passion.”
“Live your passion.”
“Let your passion find you.”
Passion, passion, passion.
If you’re like me then you’ve heard plenty about finding your passion in life. It seems like everywhere I turn, someone is talking about how to “find your passion”.
The problem is that there are many problems with this idea of “finding” and “living” your passion.
Finding Your Passion Is Not as Easy as It Sounds
When I first got into self-improvement, that was the single most important thing to me: finding my passion. I wanted a career that I couldn’t get enough of and that gave me everything I’ve ever wanted. Something I was passionate about.
I expected it to magically appear in front of me as I thought about what I wanted to do and even tried a few new things.
It never did.
The fact is, it is actually far more complicated than just “finding” it.
We are all so different, and passion does not appear as this single ‘Ah-Ha’ moment that suddenly pops into our minds like this beautiful vision of sunshine and rainbows and gold and happiness and…whatever the hell else is supposed to pop into our mind when we realize what our passion is.
Mark Manson makes an incredible point that your passion is sitting right in front of your face if you just look:
Seriously, you’re awake 16 hours a day, what the fuck do you do with your time? You’re doing something, obviously. You’re talking about something. There’s some topic or activity or idea that dominates a significant amount of your free time, your conversations, your web browsing, and it dominates them without you consciously pursuing it or looking for it.1
He’s right. But not entirely.
There is another essential component.
The Try It On Principle
You must try a bunch of different shit.
me
It’s as simple as that.
You might be asking: If my passion is right in front of my face if I just look for it, then why the hell would I go out and try a bunch of new things? That makes no sense, Scott! There is already something that dominates my mind all day!
Well, kind of.
Here’s the thing: your passion is right in front of your face. But you need to expose it, and the only way to do that is to drastically shake up your life. Like shaking a giant tree until a few apples start to fall.
Your passion (or should I say passions) are there, high up in the tree. They really are. You have some unique things you are good at and that you enjoy doing — you just can’t see them because you are “blind” to what your passions are.
How?
Because you spend all fucking day with yourself! All your time is spent with YOU! And you do the same things all the time. Every day. You’ve lost sight of yourself and what lights you up. You can’t “see” anything new. And that’s not good for finding your passions.
You need to get uncomfortable.
I know, I know. Another guy on the internet talking about “getting out of your comfort zone.” But this isn’t one of those Rah-Rah speeches to do the hardest shit possible to change your life (although, there is a lot to be found about yourself by doing that), but this is more of a get-uncomfortable-by-playing-and-having-fun kind of way.
Passion Doesn’t Always Come From Success. But Success Always Comes From Passion
Many would argue that passion grows from having success. I used to believe that. I don’t anymore. If you had me pursue my greatest fear in the entire world by getting up on a stage every night and trying to make people laugh with my “jokes”, all while conquering that fear by smashing it into tiny pieces, and then getting really good at it, and helping people in the process by making them laugh and forgetting their worries (if only for a moment), I don’t think I would be calling it my life’s greatest passion.
Oh, wait, that did happen—I did do standup comedy for a while. And I hated it.
It was brutal. Even with conquering my greatest fear in the whole world, having (limited) success, and making people happy, passion was nowhere in sight. Nowhere.
I’m sure. I tried.
There is more to a lot of this than just “finding your passion”, like, what other people share that passion with you? Do you enjoy those people? Can you enjoy your passion in safety? Are you good at it? Can you make progress? Are you in control? Does it provide security? Do you get to do it at the times you want?
The point is, it’s nuanced.
Finding what you love to do day in and day out is sitting right in front of you.
And many people miss it.
Because they’re waiting for it to “appear”.
It doesn’t.
You don’t “find” it.
It doesn’t “appear”.
You go get it.
Shake the Tree, Eat Some Rotten Apples
It’s an apple at the top of the tree, out of reach. You can kind of see it, and it might be a good one, but you can’t be sure. You’ve got to figure out how to get it. You’ve gotta shake the tree.
People don’t go out and shake enough trees and keep going.
But I shook the tree.
Hard.
And a few apples started to fall.
I picked them up and ate them.
One of them (ahem, standup comedy) was rotten.
No, thanks.
But I kept on shaking.
And that’s the thing: you’re definitely going to have to eat a few rotten apples to get to one that you really enjoy.2
In fact, even the apples you enjoy eating will have bruises on them. But you learn to enjoy that part of the apple just as much because the good outweighs the bad. And life is just going to suck some of the time. Welcome to life.
Sadly, most people quit eating apples once they get to the first rotten one.
They just…quit.
And not just that apple. All the apples.
They quit shaking all the trees.
They go back to whatever they were doing before and wonder why they haven’t “found” their passion yet.
No wonder so many people are asking how to find their passion in life. So many people just quit.
I get it: shaking a lot of trees is hard and uncomfortable, and rotten apples are brutal.
But you need all the shaking and the rotten apples to get to the good ones. There is no other way.
Geez, Scott, enough with the apple analogy.
So…app—. I mean, passion.
It Boils Down to One Word: Curiosity
Go out and try a lot of stuff. Pay attention to how you feel when you are doing the thing.
Does it put you in a state of flow where your skill level is stretched and you are being appropriately challenged?3
Does it incorporate your “signature strengths” as defined by Martin Seligman, which are your unique character strengths? When you use your signature strengths at work your productivity and overall job satisfaction go up.4
Do you want to improve at it?
Will future you be glad you did it?
Ask yourself meaningful questions about the things you are doing.
I would wager that about 50% of your passion is set — you aren’t born with a passion, but your upbringing, environment, and unique genetic code make you, well, unique in the way you approach the world. The other 50% is malleable — it’s up to you to choose what you want to focus on.
Have you thought about changing your passion?
Although your passion might be right in front of your face if you actually start looking for it, you also get to decide if you want it to be your passion or not. If you aren’t sure, then it probably isn’t for you anyway.
Passion is tricky business. I’ve obsessed over the concept for a while now, and every time I go down the rabbit hole, I find myself a bit more confused.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Create Your Passion
If you work a job, find ways to create the security you want. Make sure you feel as though you have some purpose — that you are working toward something worthwhile. Make sure you have a little freedom and control over what you do at work. Leave some room for play. Find ways to have fun. And even though you may not want to hear it, pursue greatness. Yes, even at your job. You will be more satisfied as you continue to grow. Progress is the key to life.
If you are a business owner or entrepreneur then you already know: you need a few screws loose. Passion is inherent here because if it isn’t, you will fail. You need to want that apple as much as you need your next breath. You need a level of obsession that goes beyond passion. It is almost unexplainable in its feeling. It’s chaotic yet clear. Stressful yet serene. It’s fun.
Whatever route you choose, you simply have to love what you are doing. Constantly challenge yourself and continue to grow. Have good work relationships. Work toward a mission, a purpose. Play to your strengths. Push yourself.
Intrinsic motivation beats external motivation. Every. Single. Time.
You need progress before passion can emerge.
Go shake shit up.
And…
Have fun.
Somewhere along the line of chaos into adulthood, fun gets lost.
Poof! Gone.
The idea of “play” and “having fun” is lost on so many people.
Whatever that is, or was, for you, go find it.
There are things you love doing because they are fun.
There are things you love doing because they are fun and you are good at them and the world needs and the world will pay you for.5
You need to go find that.
And “passion” will be right there next to it.
Before we go, let me ask you a question:
When was the last time you needed to “feel motivated” to do something that you thought was fun?
Never.
Go do that.
- https://markmanson.net/screw-finding-your-passion ↩︎
- https://markmanson.net/life-purpose ↩︎
- https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-9088-8_16 ↩︎
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1069072715580322?journalCode=jcaa ↩︎
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666606522000104 ↩︎
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