How to Find your Passion

SUMMARY

• Ever felt pressured when you were asked the question "What are you passionate about?"? You are not the only one! Passion often feels like an intense commitment, an ideal that is not reachable or a deep engagement difficult to sustain on the long-term. And that is why finding a passion often becomes a struggle!
• Discover in this article the 3 " passion perfectionist" myths to break to remove stress and complexity around finding your passion!

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

“What are you passionate about?” is an anxiogenic question for a lot of people. I remember dreading it when I was going through job interviews!

Passion can be a big scary word particularly for those who have not found one yet. Many people associate passion with questions such as: “When is the last time I felt such an intense enthusiasm for what I was doing that I could use the word passion and not strong interest?” “When is the last I ran into something so fascinating that I could see myself do this for the rest of my life?” “When is the last time I was able to keep such an intense engagement for an extended period of time without losing the flame or getting derailed because someone did not support me?”

The problem with these questions is that they put the bar really high. And that is when “finding your passion” can start creating more stress, pressure, and panic than necessary. That is when passion starts feeling like an unreachable Saint Graal. That is when most humans lose confidence that they can ever find it and resign themselves to a vague interest and low level of aliveness.

If you have never been told that before, let me be the one! You deserve to feel more passion and to get more out of life. You deserve to feel more alive and have things lighting you up on a daily basis.

But before that happens, you need to drop the “perfectionism” mindset around finding your passion and stop believing these 3 myths.

Myth n°1 – Passion is coming your way on its own

No one is born with passion as a skill or character trait. A lucky few run into something that becomes a passion very early on in their lives, but most of the time it takes hard work and intentionality.

The first barrier I often hear with finding passion is “I don’t know where to start” and my answer to that will always be “Start anyway and be curious!”. No discovery can happen without taking action, pushing yourself out there and trying new things more regularly. That means maybe say yes to activities that you would not necessarily say yes to usually. That means maybe planning a couple of experiences that vaguely resonates with you and committing to do them with full engagement. That means maybe meet new groups of people that are different from your usual surroundings. That means trying again an activity that you enjoyed in the past but did not follow through on.

Once you get hooked on something, the key here is also to keep trying it for a sustained period of time, at least a couple of weeks – to discover different facets of the experience and confirm that it is something you would look forward to continue engaging in on the longer term.

Myth n°2 – Life is easy once you’ve found your passion

Passion is often mistaken for an outcome and what’s why most people put the bar very high on finding it. Often, it becomes an ideal – “Once I am there, my life will be perfect and super enjoyable. I am going to have so much more fire every day!”. But look passion up in the dictionary for a second and you will find that the original definition of passion is “a willingness to suffer for what you love”. Nothing “easy sounding” in that right?  

Identifying a passion requires intentionality and some patience, but the real work only begins once you have found it. Passion is a journey not just an outcome to reach, something that you will have to cultivate intentionally on the long-term. When you get passionate, you might start spending hours obsessing about the topic or working on it. You will sometimes put it in priority versus other things that might give you faster rewards or even versus relationships. You might have to sacrifice time to level up in this area or to create even more variety in what you do to keep yourself interested. Are the long-term rewards of your dedication to your passion absolutely worth it? Hell yes - more energy, more confidence in yourself, more enthusiasm bleeding across all areas of your life, more aliveness, more chances to build fulfilling relationships with other passionate.

The silver lining here? Passion is a journey, which means that you have time to make it enjoyable! You can choose to put yourself under tremendous pressure from the beginning by searching for an ideal outcome. Or you can choose to remove that pressure, enjoy the ride of discovering your passion and keep the same attitude once you start diving further into it.

Myth n°3 – you can only have one passion in life

What you love today is unlikely to be what you love tomorrow. Remove the pressure from your shoulders of finding something that you will be passionate about forever. Get less scared about “What if I end up realizing I don’t really like it?” and get more scared about “What if I never feel alive, engaged and enthusiastic in my life?”.

You are meant to change and grow as a human. It is perfectly okay to have your interests evolving as well and it is perfectly okay to look for more variety to not get bored. Sometimes, it will only mean going one step deeper in your current field of passion, taking on a new role or exploring different facets of this area. Sometimes, it can be starting totally over and discover a whole new world.

The bottom line here is – make sure that you keep yourself passionate no matter what and that you keep yourself accountable to feel alive every day!

Did you find this article insightful? Let me know in the comments!

?Clo - Your Expanded Coach