“Follow your passion” – we’ve all heard it before, and for the good part of last year and throughout this year, even though I was happy with my job, I felt off-track because I just didn’t know what my passion was.
Hence, sometimes I can’t shake off the feeling of feeling lost, unsure of what direction to take. So, how do you follow your passion when you don’t know what your passion is?
There was a plethora of things I enjoyed doing and a select few that I excelled at but there wasn’t one thing that my inner voice was shouting for me to pursue and that made me feel inadequate. Am I missing out on life? Am I wasting my good years? Is there something else I should be pursuing? Am I on the right path?
When I was younger, I had this notion that I wanted to build an empire. I wanted a chain of restaurants, I wanted to write and be a published author, I wanted to sing, I wanted to have my own projects building shelters and schools to help the poor in the Philippines… I was clearly overambitious, bordering delusional.
Now, I manage the marketing for an Irish book publisher as my day job and I am nowhere near reaching my childhood ‘dream’ and because my anxiety means I have difficulty sleeping with my racing thoughts, I am now obsessing over figuring out what my passion is and I can’t seem to stop. I feel disillusioned and lost.
Isn’t that what most people should aim for? There’s even a saying to emphasise how important passion is.
Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.
I mentally listed down things I loved.
- Dogs
- Books
- Movies/TV Shows
- Cheese
If I did partake in any of the above, I definitely won’t be working a day in my life. I’ll be having too much fun, none of these will help feed me and I work hard to have a chunky body. I’ll have to rephrase the question.
What if you don’t know your passion/the thing that you love that will potentially make you earn a good income? How do you go about finding out what will make your life better?
After scouring the Internet for hours on end looking for advice, the general consensus of the public is that I suck and to forget about looking for my passion because I’m just one of those people destined to live week after week saying stuff like, “Thank God it’s Friday!” or “Weekend’s too short” on a fine Monday morning. I’ll just be one of those people wishing my life away until I’m too old to do something about it. GRIM!
Anyway, there are plenty of articles online and quizzes you can do to help you find your passion in case you’re on the same boat as me.
1) Question Prompts
This article lists the following questions to help you discover it. Question prompts like:
What drives you?
There are 6 common factors that motivate people in life. Which one is yours?
What did you always want to do?
This can be a childhood dream or a hobby you’ve always been good at but for some reason, you’ve never had the opportunity to develop further.
What brings fulfilment in your life?
Is it money? Is it fame?
What would you do if money weren’t a thing?
If money weren’t a thing and I had everything I needed, I think I would travel the world with my partner and my dogs. I don’t think I can live as a nomad for long though, perhaps a few weeks at a time. I’d just like to go to different places to learn, teach and help people and animals. I think that would make me really happy.
2) Passion Profile Quiz
This Passion Profile quiz from Clarity on Fire helps you determine the ideal relationship between your career and your passion in life. It gives you an overview of what you prefer or what you’re attracted to, your natural strengths, common challenges and it provides a generic advice on what to do next based on your profile.
3) Oprah’s 4-step guide in discovering who you’re meant to be
This last one is filled with 4 different activities and the goal of it is to find out your passion and your motivation. It’s Oprah’s 4-step guide in discovering who you’re meant to be. It helps you figure out what activities light you up the most and zero in on them.
Out of the three, Oprah’s 4-step guide is my favourite because it doesn’t solely focus on finding your passion. It includes your strengths, your talents, your motivations and your goals. It also aligns with what Steve Harvey has been preaching about all these years.
Follow your gift, not your passion. The gift is the thing you do best with the least effort. You don’t have to go anywhere to discover it. It’s instilled in you at birth. If you pursue that instead of your passion, therein lies your success. Your gift will make room for you. If you identify that gift, that gift is something that can make you great.
So maybe Mark Cuban was right when he said ‘One of the great lies of life is follow your passions.’
Maybe the advice, “Follow your passion” is simply overrated, that it may be a terrible advice for some, because it implies that we all have one. The truth is, many of us don’t have one single passion. For some of us who don’t have one, we just need to find what we’re good at and put in effort to be better at it. This notion also presupposes that by doing what we love, we’re guaranteed success or we’ll be able to monetise from it. Our passion and how we earn a living can be separate.
I might just take this advice from Ben Horowitz instead.
Follow your contribution. Find the thing that you’re great at, put that into the world, contribute to others, help the world be better and that is the thing to follow.
What do you think? Do you have a passion? Do you earn a living with your passion? How did you find out your gift/your passion/what you’re good at? If you have anxiety/depression, how did you manage it whilst trying to find your passion or your gift? Feel free to share in the comments below.
Great post. I have a lot of passions and trying to do more of my passion on the side outside of work.
This is such an important post! I think most millennials struggle with this idea of ‘passion’. I think whether or not you follow your passion and make a living out of it is very subjective. Some people can be perfectly happy doing something absolutely random to make a living and others just can’t function like that.
A blog worth reading and highly relatable. Thanks for the amazing write-up.
Passion means the things you love doing..yes! Find out what you love and even earn while doing it. Love the way you tell your story. Keep it up!
Thank you so much for writing this post. I believe everyone sooner or later tangles with this notion of being stuck or lost. You may be content with your current situation but it becomes challenging when you ask yourself “do you love it?”. I graduated college two years ago and I was convinced I wanted to work in the news world and be a journalist. Two years later, I realize that is not what my passion is. I am thankful for having work in the industry to learn this first hand. I am now in the process of trying to get into masters school for Screenwriting. I want to write TV shows and movies. That’s my passion. Again thank you for writing this extremely relatable post and good luck!
Thank you so much for writing this post. I believe everyone sooner or later tangles with this notion of being stuck or lost. You may be content with your current situation but it becomes challenging when you ask yourself “do you love it?”. I graduated college two years ago and I was convinced I wanted to work in the news world and be a journalist. Two years later, I realize that is not what my passion is. I am thankful for having work in the industry to learn this first hand. I am now in the process of trying to get into masters school for Screenwriting. I want to write TV shows and movies. That’s my passion. Again thank you for writing this extremely relatable post and good luck!
Love this post and the resources you’ve included. Thank you! I actually planned out a YouTube video for finding your purpose, so this is a topic I’m intrigued by as well.
To answer your question, I found what I love to do through trial and error.
This is really great and very very insightful. Thanks a lot for sharing. I remember going through the same journey before finding out what my real passion it. Awesome journey.
I love this article! I personally think that individuals don’t find their passion until God is willing to show them what that is. It takes some life experience to know what you truly love!
Great post. I shared this with my sister because she had been having a hard time finding her passion and she’ll soon be done. Thanks so much.