One of the most common questions people ask when choosing their career is how can I find my passion, and that’s a fundamental question. This post will detail 3 steps to show you exactly how to find your passion for living a motivated and fulfilled life.
Debunking a Common Myth About Finding Your Passion
Before we get started, let’s discuss a common myth about passions in life. Many people assume that there’s only one thing out there that can be their passion, that it is predetermined at birth, and that all we have to do is find it.
Frankly, that’s not how it works. The truth is that there are probably many things that could potentially be your passion. In fact, it’s entirely possible to have more than one passion. If you look at many very successful people, you’ll find that this is generally the case. For example, Tim Ferriss is a well-known author and speaker, but did you know he was also a competitive dancer, wrestler, and investor.
You can have many passions over your lifetime, which can change as you grow. This is the path of a growth mindset.
How to Find Your Passion
There are only three things you need to do in order to discover one of your passions.
- Decrease your Addictive Consumption
- Expose Yourself to Forms of Creation
- Get Started and Try a New Thing
Decrease your Addictive Consumption
The first is that you must change where you get your dopamine from. Dopamine is the chemical that is released by our brain that motivates us to do things. Without it, you will starve to death even if there is food right before you. The release of dopamine is also accompanied by pleasure.
The problem nowadays is that dopamine is very easy to get. It’s cheap, and it’s abundant. Previously one had a do stuff in order to get that dopamine. Most of the time, that meant creating something like a house, pottery, or crops. While you worked on these tasks, you were flooded with dopamine, and you felt good about the whole process. If you follow this route, you’d naturally become passionate about whatever you do.
Nowadays, it’s a little bit different. We can now flood our brains with dopamine without having to do much at all. You can instantly surf the web, binge-watch some TV shows, and order fantastic food at your front door. Methods like this have become the primary source of dopamine for the majority of people now.
What’s different about these sources of dopamine compared to the ones we use to get it from is that these are forms of consumption, and the ones we used to use are forms of creation. This is a crucial distinction.
For something to be your passion, it must stem from creation.
If you get the majority of your dopamine from a form of consumption, we call that an addiction. You’re addicted to watching TV; you’re addicted to smoking cigarettes; you’re addicted to eating junk food. On the other hand, if we get most of our dopamine from a form of creation, that’s called passion. You’re passionate about drawing; you’re passionate about dancing, and you’re passionate about farming.
The first and most important thing you have to do in order to find your passion is to turn back your consumption valve. When you turn back your consumption valve, you force yourself to start looking for dopamine from forms of creation.
Expose Yourself to Forms of Creation
The second thing you have to do to find your passion is to expose yourself to various forms of creation. This will allow you to get dopamine from these sources instead of forms of consumption. Truthfully, there’s no fancy trick to finding these things. You just have to approach it the old-fashioned way, by trying things out.
The first thing to get started is to come up with a list of potential hobbies. This can be found in a plethora of ways:
- Go on google and look up a list of hobbies
- Wikipedia through topics and see if anything seems even remotely interesting or fun
- Think about what you spend most of your time on
- Determine why you like the things that you do
- Look back at topics that you enjoy discussing with others
- Think about your strengths
- Discuss hobby ideas with others
- Consider what kind of connections you have already
- Reflect on something you liked doing in your childhood
Write down anything that comes to mind and create a list. This list doesn’t have to be perfect or all-encompassing. It’s just a way to help you start and move forward.
Get Started and Try a New Thing
Now that you have a list of potential passions look at the list and ask yourself which thing you want to try first. You should only try out one of these hobbies at a time. This is so you give yourself enough time to see whether or not you can make this hobby into a passion.
If you’ve successfully followed the first step, which is to drastically tone down the amount of dopamine you get from forms of consumption, what happens next should be automatic.
Let’s say you picked photography as something you might be interested in. You’ll naturally do some research on photography. You’ll look up some videos, start playing with a cheap camera or your phone, and then know whether you like this hobby. All of this is fueled by the dopamine you are no longer getting from forms of consumption because you are now getting it from a form of creation!
Let’s say you don’t find yourself interested in photography. All you have to do is move on to the second thing on your list. If that doesn’t work out, either try the third thing and so on.
If you continue to find yourself not interested in anything, then chances are you’re not following the first step correctly. You have to turn down the amount of dopamine you get from forms of consumption even more. Finding a passion isn’t as complicated as people make it seem. Honestly, all you have to do is tone down the amount of dopamine you’re getting from consumption sources and allow yourself to explore different forms of creation.
Common Passions and Hobbies
To help you get started, here is a list of common passions and hobbies as well as potential careers in each:
- Music
- Nature
- Movement
- Interpersonal
- IntrapersonalLogical
- Linguistic
- Digital
- Visual
- Teaching
- Spiritual
Music Passion
Starting off, we have a musical passion. People in this category enjoy listening to music, may learn better by listening, and have a sharp sense of what sounds pleasant to the ear. This means that they have a knack for rhythm, tones, and melody and can often memorize and replicate pieces of music quickly.
If you have a strong affinity for music, it probably means that you are good at playing musical instruments, singing, or even composing music. Although this is often a skill set that society dismisses as just a hobby – there are many career paths for people that excel in this ability. This includes becoming a music-related content creator, working on audio for films and videos, composing and writing music, and working on sound design in general.
Love for Nature
Next up, we have nature passion. People who score high in this category usually enjoy spending time in nature, love plants and animals, and understand how the world’s different compounds and elements interact.
Possible career paths include cooking, farming, working with animals, working with medicine, and even working in health. Because everything related to our body is technically part of nature plus, they can also work in any field related to the environment.
Movement Passion
The next category on our list is a passion for movement. People who score high in this ability enjoy moving their bodies, whether it’s large explosive movements or even the tiniest and most fine-tuned of activities.
Possible career paths for someone who enjoys and excels at movement are sports, dance, fine craftsmanship, personal training, and even martial arts.
Strong Interpersonal Abilities
Next up, we have interpersonal skills. People who have an affinity for this deeply understand the relationships between people. They can quickly read someone’s body language and get an idea of how they feel, and they are usually good at holding conversations. They understand human nature and how people interact with each other.
Possible career paths for someone who has a knack for this ability include sales, creating social content (like interviews and talk shows), event planning, relationship counselling, and even working in law enforcement.
Strong Intrapersonal Abilities
People who have an affinity for this have a deep understanding of themselves. They know how to look in the mirror to spot what needs work, allowing them to reflect and adjust. This is an extremely powerful ability that is crucial for self-improvement.
Professions like therapists, self-improvement coaches, and motivational speakers fall under this category to some degree.
Logical Passion
Up next, we have strong logical abilities. People who fall under this category can reason well. They may have some interest in math and the sciences. But most importantly, they are interested in the truth. They act on reason more than emotion.
People who score high in this category are excellent at solving technical problems and can usually predict whether or not something will work with reasonably high accuracy.
These people usually make great investors, scientists, inventors, leaders, and entrepreneurs.
Great Linguistic Abilities
Next up, we have Linguistic Ability. People who excel in this category have a deep understanding of their language and the emotions that come with certain words.
They are often articulate, and they usually have a vast vocabulary. They typically enjoy reading and listening to great speakers. But most importantly – they know how to craft messages engagingly – making them more influential than the average person.
People who have a knack for Linguistic Abilities can become writers, speakers, poets, copywriters, or even translators.
Digital Passion
Up next is digital passion. This is one of the newer abilities on this list because the digital world has only really risen in popularity in the last decade. Most people who fall under this category are the younger generations, who have grown up with the digital world being a huge part of their lives.
People with a digital passion tend to understand how the digital world works deeply. Social media, SEO, marketing, memes, and going viral are all things that fall under this category. Quite frankly, anything that can be done online requires some degree of digital ability. The demand for people with these skills is only going to increase yearly as more and more business is conducted online.
Visual Abilities
Up next, we have visual skills. People who score high in this category have a deep appreciation for aesthetics. This means they can spot what looks pleasant to the eye. They can tell which colour combinations and what shapes look good. They can also visualize and imagine complex images in their head, often allowing them to recreate these images on paper.
Possible career paths include architects, illustrators, animators, fashion designers, and graphic designers.
A Passion for Teaching
Next on our list is having a teaching passion. People who score high in this category can take complicated subjects and deliver them clearly so that even young kids can understand. They can spot what someone is doing right or wrong for the field that they specialize in. Most importantly, seeing their students grow gives them a deep sense of satisfaction. Teaching is a valuable learning tool which makes this passion extremely valuable.
Possible career paths for those who fall under this category are teaching, consulting, creating educational content, and parenting.
Spiritual Passion
And finally, we have spiritual passion. This is a unique category as it’s something that almost everyone gains interest in as they age. It’s the ability to think about the more significant questions in life. For example, what happens after we die? What’s the meaning of life? Is there a god?
People fascinated by this category can become philosophers, pastors or monks, or they might just spend a lot of time thinking about these things.