The Worst Question To Ask When Trying To Find Your Passion
Follow your heart. Have a passion project. Be passionate. Do what lights you up. But?????
Developing harmonious passions, i.e. ones that do not take over your entire life, can be one key to greater happiness. They can fill us with a sense of purpose and meaning and give us goals to work towards. Achievement and success help tick the ‘satisfying life’ box just nicely. This all makes sense but for some of us actually working out what our passion is can be tricky. We can understand that living a passionate life is what we want but when the answer seems to evade us we turn to asking questions to try and nut it out.
What Is My Passion?
This would be the most unhelpful question you can ponder in your quest to connect with your passion. It seems like the obvious go to and may come in a few forms like, What am I passionate about? or What should my passion be? But ultimately beginning here will keep you stuck for longer.
Why are these unhelpful?
Passion comes from experience rather than thinking.
We can’t think our way to our passion. We get to embed ourselves in activity and experience first. From here we can taste and see how it feels. We need to give it a go.
After we have had an experience we may want to ask these types of questions?
- Did I enjoy it?
- Does the thought of it excite me?
- Do I begin to research, save podcasts, read books, have conversations about it?
- Does it push me out of our comfort zone, make me think differently, or energise me?
Moving towards our passion with this type of framework of experience before analysis asks us to begin in a different headspace. We get to be people who live life in wonder and curiosity. We get to say yes to opportunities and be open to what might happen. We get to understand that some passions may last a month or 10 years and neither is less worthy than the other. It’s about the ride and what we discover about ourselves along the way.
