Screw Finding Your Passion

How many times have you been told to find your passion? How often have you been asked what you are passionate about?

Unfortunately, a Deloitte study found that only some people of the workforce is passionate about their jobs.

We are often told to pursue our passions in our professional and personal lives. We've all heard the saying "Find a job you love, and you'll never work a day in your life." But that’s easier said than done.

Passion doesn't really work that way. Before you can pursue your passions, you need to discover what your passions are. You'll likely have to work many days, in many ways, to discover the work that taps into your passion.

According to Merriam Webster, “passion” refers to a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement either for something or about doing something. Passions are often something you would love to do constantly. Traveling is a good example of a passion.

Sometimes our passion is something we would love to do for work. Sometimes we only think that's what we want. Having passion for our work is more specific than being excited or enthusiastic about something.

The Deloitte research describes "worker passion" as something that motivates us to dig into the tough problems and sustains us through challenges and setbacks. This type of passion brings out our desire to figure something out, to learn faster, to make an impact.

It’s important to understand the distinction between passions and core values. Everyone has their own set of core values that guide them and shape how they feel about their work or work environment. Strong core values might include discipline, perseverance, playfulness, learning, excellence, and resilience.

The degree to which your work and life align with these values will likely contribute in a big way to success in your career and personal life.

But finding and following your passion will be the spark that ignites the flame.

Researchers and occupational experts now know that there’s a golden thread that runs through finding and living your passions and the measure of success you’re likely to experience — both on a professional and personal level.

The interesting thing about pursuing your passions is that doing something you care about on an emotional and intellectual level will result in you wanting to do more of it. This means there’s a direct link between discovering and developing your passions and achieving growth in your career and personal development.

It isn't always as clear as finding a way to get paid for doing the thing you love to do in your spare time, though. You often have to practice imagination to find the threads of passion that connect a hobby or interest to a career or profession.

Once you’ve decided that your passion is findable, it’s time to look for evidence of what you already love to do. If you scan the landscape of your life, you’ll notice certain experiences peak up above the horizon. It’s so valuable to delve into these “peak moments” and extract the key ingredients.

Consider yourself a beach-trawler, discerning between the gold and the cheap metal. For example, one of my favorite jobs involved teaching English to teenagers. I might assume the key ingredient was the English language, or young people. But when I paid attention to my metaphorical metal detector, it became clear that the bleep went off when I was being a leader within a community and teaching that community something of great value to them. That’s exactly what I do now in my work—but without the teenagers, present-perfect tense, or vocabulary tests!

So think of all the experiences you’ve had that you’ve loved most—without limiting yourself just to work experiences—and investigate what made them so fulfilling. If there was a job you loved, what were your tasks? What kind of work environment was it? What was the company working toward? Who did you get to interact with? What was most exciting and/or satisfying? Or maybe you still reminisce about the trip you took to Europe after college. Did you love it because you saw new things and learned about new cultures? Or because of the people you were with? Or maybe it was the problem-solving you had to do to make it from one country to the other on the small number of Euros you had budgeted?

Look for themes that come up a lot or that you feel strongly about. These are your key ingredients.

It might be that, through this exploration, you fall head over heels in love with an activity that engrosses you—something that lights you up and makes your heart sing. But now you have to ask yourself the next question: Who would benefit from (and pay for) this?

Well, if you want to contribute your passion to society and make an income from it, you need to get realistic about whether this could actually turn into a career—and what you would need to do to make that happen.

So do your research. This is another step where networking and informational interviews are your friend. Talk to people who are following the same passion and find out if they’re making a living off of it, how, and what other skills and work go into making your passion profitable. There are also plenty of free online resources that can point you toward a plausible career that builds on particular interests. 

You should also think about whether you would enjoy doing these things for a living; for some people a passion is just fun, and turning it into work changes it from a “love to do” to a “have to do” they’re no longer excited about.

The bottom line is, passions ought to be fun, inspiring, and enlivening. Allow your mind and heart to open to the inspiration around you, and trust that the things you're passionate about will make themselves clear. In the meantime, cultivating self-awareness, mindfulness, and noticing the things that light you up will help you get that much closer to figuring it out.