How to find your Passion

‘Finding your passion’ It’s a bit of a cliché.  It’s a holy grail on the path to enlightenment.  It’s the punchline in a trust-fund-baby story.  And its possibly the most worthwhile search you can take to feed your soul.  However, it can be a bit confusing finding your whole way to adulthood and never realizing what is your passion.  What if I don’t have one?? 

I believe that we all do have not just a passion, but often many passions and they are often hiding in plain sight right under our noses.  We need to adjust our concept of a passion, be open to our senses, ask the right questions and embrace what we find. 

Elizabeth Gilbert in her book ‘Big Magic’ recommends that instead of following our passion, that we instead explore our curiosity, for there we will may indeed discover our passion(s).  Curiosity is innate and it pulls us with ease beyond our current level of knowing.  We are generally only curious for what interests us and that pulls us to it.  Look up your google search history.  You’ll get a good glimpse into what you are passionate about there. 

Further, the word ‘passion’ stirs images of fireworks and high emotion; an eccentric inventor or a neurotic painter… but outside of Hollywood, our passions are a much more personal thing; a flutter of excitement at an expertly designed to-do list, the joy of sharing some new piece of knowledge with a fellow enthusiast, assembling a new outfit or uncovering an old antique. 

That flutter of excitement, is the root to your passion and comes in all strengths and flavors.  It’s a message from your soul telling you that this is what you would love.  It’s hard to fake and it’s hard to consciously make.  Gretchen Rubin says that “We can choose what we do but we can’t choose what we like to do”.  I can choose to play golf because it’ll come in useful to play during corporate outings but it is very difficult to get myself to actually love it if it’s not true.  It is the constant bombardment of marketing messages telling us what we should and could do with our money muddies the waters. This is the source of confusion as the inner world buts heads with its outer environment. 

Ask yourself the question: what would I do in the morning if I could do anything in the world and didn’t have to worry about money, tune out the shoulda, woulda and coulda, and ask the question ‘WHAT WOULD I LOVE’.  Further, ask yourself why would you do that?  Explore deeply into what it truly means to you.  For example many people’s response to this is travel, but what is it about travel?  Is it meeting new people?  New cultures?  New surroundings all the time?  New food?  You love airports?  When you pinpoint the things you really yearn for it brings a lot of clarity.

Learn to listen for small rumblings of curiosities rather than waiting for a tsunami of passion. 

It may not have fireworks, it might be off kilter or mainstream, but pick up the small crumbs of evidence and it will lead you to something that fills your soul with joy and connects you to a world that you are seeking.