Finding your Passion

Of all topics discussed in this blog this is the one I have the most trouble with. I am still very much in search of my passion. Some people from an early age know exactly what they want to do with their lives. I’m truly envious of these people. If you’re a capable person and you know what you want it’s very manageable to create a plan and go out and get it. If you don’t know what you want achieving it becomes a lot trickier.

            When I speak about finding your passion I’m predominantly talking about what you do with the bulk of your time, likely your occupation. I listed in my personal constitution that I either wanted to earn money efficiently and find my passion outside of work or that I wanted the following criteria to be met:

i)                My work is challenging

ii)              I am continuously learning new things.

iii)            I am able to see purpose and meaningful contribution to society in my work.

iv)             I enjoy doing it day to day and look forward to going into work.

What I’ve Learned So Far

I’ve never been able to come up with something that I really enjoy doing that someone would be willing to pay me to do. Recently I’ve been thinking that a good starting point is to think of anything I’m passionate about independent of whether someone will pay me to do it. If I am truly passionate about it, that will motivate me to find the time in my life to do it. For now, travel is the closest thing I’ve got and I continue to make sure I do fair bit of it. Also, I find travel, and removing myself from the daily routine, grind, and distractions of life clears my head and gives me perspective to assess what I care about.

            So here is what I have so far for strategies. One, try and change focus from what you want to achieve to what achievement you would enjoy the process of pursuing. The key here is acknowledgement of the fact that happiness from achievement is short lived. After we achieve a goal we get a temporary emotional lift before returning to our baseline. It’s the day to day pursuit that we have to enjoy. So this change of focus is key but it still doesn’t get at the heart of the issue of what day to day pursuit would make you happiest.

            This brings me to my second strategy. In the absence of knowing what your passion is, be passionate about whatever it is that you’re currently doing. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “anything worth doing is worth doing right”. I used to look at many people and think they took themselves and life too seriously. I still think that’s true for many people but I am finding new merit in the degree of care some people put into seemingly trivial things.

Have you ever seen a waiter that is really enthusiastic and takes pride in serving you well? There is something really beautiful about it. There are tons of people with far more complex, potentially more stimulating jobs that don’t derive half the happiness from their day to day work. You can see it on a person’s face when they take pride in what they do. You can see it in their smile, in the energy they put into it and in the way they make others feel around them.

There is a certain degree of freedom that comes from not giving a shit but there is definite happiness to be found from caring. So I suggest this, if you find yourself spending your time doing something not that meaningful, find something more meaningful but until you find it, commit yourself to doing a kickass job at whatever it is that you’re doing.

            This strategy will have two benefits. One, you will be happier in your day to day life. Two, positive changes seem to naturally happen for people who live with passion and approach things with the right attitude. When you approach life and work with passion you tend to meet and forge relationships with the right kind of people and opportunities tend to naturally emerge.

            My next strategy is to try different things. When I was in high school I tutored other students. I started doing this because my other friends were doing it. It’s a stupid reason for doing things. However, from this I discovered that I love teaching others. Since then I paid for a trip to Asia by tutoring in College. I’ve been a baseball coach, and tennis and ski instructor. I’ve also made training and motivating others in my business career a key part of what I do. I would have never known I like it but for having tried something different.

I think it’s important to actively make choices. This is a really important one. If you don’t choose what to do with yourself and what’s important to you, your life will be guided and determined by external circumstance and often random chance.  This can work out well like in the example above where I discovered my passion for teaching but it can also turn out not so well. More to the point you are leaving your happiness up to chance. Much better is to take the time to figure out what is important to you and what makes you happy and to go out and get it.

            The last thing I’ll suggest for the time being is to find happiness from within. This whole blog gears around identifying gaps between the world you live in and the world you want. However, a key thing to recognize is that some people live in pretty objectively rough circumstances and are perpetually happy. Similarly there are others who are in pretty good shape in life but seem to be continually miserable. The point being that happiness is at least to some extent a choice (to say nothing about depression). I encourage people to work to improve their external circumstance to the best of their abilities but at the same time look to find appreciation, contentment and joy in their existing circumstance and any circumstance that may come about in the future.

“It’s no matter if you’re born to play the king or pawn for the line is thinly drawn between joy and sorrow.” Simon and Garfunkel