How To Find Your Passion In Life

Some find their passion at age 5. Others at age 15. Still others at 55. At least they get there.

When I launched Dear Blogger I had no idea it would become my life’s central passion. Little did I know answering blog questions would consume me in the best way possible. My passions, before this, were scattered: racket sports, travel, and new languages including a touch of code.

But by kicking into gear a new endeavor I always wanted to start, I scratched the coal, saw a little bit of diamond and only wanted more. In this post I’ll show you how to do the same.

What is passion?

Passion gives us an indescribable drive, beyond the need for money, perhaps even beyond the need for love. It is life.

Wikipedia describes passion as a compelling emotion, a word oddly derived from suffering. But when you think about it, perhaps passion is only found through suffering. Trial and error, and lots of failure.

The path we each take to find passion is totally random. Now, you’ll say everything happens for a reason and that’s true. Every single event in the universe is the result of another event whether we can see it or not. 

That was proven long ago.

What we do know, is that life feels empty without passion. It’s day after day of doing work, usually someone else’s work, for some trivial means to an end or a worthless paycheck. Emptiness, anyone?

So why not ditch the paycheck. Ditch the work. Ditch the nonsense that’s in between you and your life.

Here’s how to go about finding and securing passion that’s sure to fill your life with happiness.

Get to it

The first step is often the hardest.

Whatever it is, and you know what it is by now, do it. If it’s something easy like going to the gym, or something terribly hard like quitting your job and moving to Montana to teach white-water rafting like you always dreamed of, just, do, it.

If it’s in your dreams, it’s closer than you think.

“Just do it.” Experts will tell you this. What they may not tell you is how hard it is to just do it. We get so engrained in our comfortable routines that even ditching dinner plans to order a pizza becomes seemingly impossible.

Outrageous life? At the end of the day none of it even matters.

So, the answer? I love answers. The answer is to start small.

Start changing things in little ways you know how to. Personally, I find setting small, even strange goals, like “tell 5 people to go !$*# themselves” produces good, if not at least interesting changes in life.

But you don’t have to be mean. Try disagreeing. Try just being downright assertive, and force yourself to do so every day. There’s a great article here on being unreasonable you’ll want to read.

If you’re too lazy to read it (most of you will be) I’ll give you the synopsis. Being reasonable means agreeing with a lot of things in life we probably actually, in fact, disagree with. In over-agreeing, we’re hiding the best version of ourselves, which would actually benefit everyone in our midst.

So it’s all about being a tad more disagreeable. Well, sort of, as we’ll see.

Focus on YOU

The sad thing about most of our lives is we live for someone else.

Our boss, our spouse, our children. Children may be an exception that deserves utter selfless care, but let’s be honest. We’re our best selves when we’re happy with OURSELVES.

So aside from “just doing it”, “do you.”

Doing YOU can mean a number of things, but again, start small.

My personal recommendation? Start up a blog.

When you start a blog you get to focus solely on your passions, and on building a community around what you love. I’ve seen new bloggers take a small hobby and turn it into their dream passion with the help of a blog. They do this by meeting and learning from others blogging about the same thing!

With a new blog, you can quietly log in the hours all night then turn in. When you awake, you’ll see the great events that transpired, like comments or Facebook likes on your work, for example. All the rewards of blogging tie back to you.

And in today’s golden age of online publishing, it’s almost entirely silly not to have an online presence.

Doing a lot of you when you have the time (trust me, you can find the time) will allow you to be a much better, more selfless person when you’re around those you care about. It may totally rid your depression, if that’s a problem.

The odd thing is you only really have you in the world, despite how many social cues you operate and depend on. So make the you epic.

Compound success

Maybe you’ve already indulged in you and have great results. Maybe you took one yoga class, took 10 more, then became an instructor and started a whole business out of it. Now you love waking up to a bowl of granola and a day full of posing. Great!

For most of us, we’re not quite there yet. But, you’ve surely had successes!

One factor which distinguishes the greats from the goods in the world is the ability to compound on past success. What this means is reminding yourself of your achievements, and leveraging them into greater successes.

For me, it’s all about writing. Good writing, new writing, different writing. Writing for one major name blogging wasn’t nearly enough, so I went ahead and wrote for a lot more.

The thing is, nobody, I mean nobody in life, is going to be your personal cheerleader. People don’t notice success like they used to, because everyone is so caught up in their own lives (you know this).

So it helps to toot your own horn, blow up your successes. The world loves a success story.

Once you’ve found it, own it

I always tell people, if it works and you enjoy doing it, keep doing it. Find new ways to “do it”. And most importantly, don’t let anyone stand in your way.

Posted in: Happiness, Self Improvement