How can I find my passion?

Photo by Jordan Hile on Unsplash

Do you also often hear “Find your passion!” and “Do what you are passionate about!”? Does it feel as if finding your passion and being passionate is heavily linked to just being happy?

If you know what you are passionate about, — great — then this thlog might not really help you.

But what about if I don’t know what I’m passionate about? What if I’m interested in a lot of things but not really passionate about them? Finding your passion can be difficult. And, if you think you have to find your passion immediately — as I did — you can enter a never-ending cycle of distraction and frustration in which you constantly ask yourself “Is this my passion?” or “Could that be my passion?”.

I feel like the phrase “find your passion” has some urgency to it — every second you don’t know what your passion is, is wasted time and energy.

Instead of trying to find your passion and avoiding the draining cycle of questioning, focus on joy. By focusing on joy in the present moment, we can escape searching for our future passion.

Focus on joy instead of passion. It can be as simple as doing what you enjoy or enjoying what you do.

For things you want to do, it is quite easy. Since you want to do them, you already see the joy in them and would automatically do what you enjoy.

For things you have to do, it can be a bit difficult. Here the key would be to see the joy. I try to remind myself to see the music in the mundane. In everything we do, we should be able to find joyful elements.

For things you should do, just ignore them for now until you want to do them. If you want to do them, you will automatically see the joy and enjoy them.

But how does joy help me discover my passion? Joy can be the seed of passion. Something might bubble up and grow from these joyful activities into a passion. It takes time to develop joy into passion. Stay with joy long enough to see if passion grows.

Follow your joy. Enjoy what you do. Do what you enjoy.