6 Ways to Find Your Passion & Live a FulFilling Life

life goals

Aug 2

“Follow your passion” is plastered everywhere. Car commercials, Instagram bios, wall decorations — you name it.

But what if you don’t know what your passion is? Does that mean you’re doomed to be in an existential crisis for the rest of your life wondering why everyone around you knows what they’re doing or who they are and if you’ll ever really live to your fullest potential?

Not exactly.

Instead, finding your passion is a lot simpler than you might think. (Simpler does not mean easier.)

1. You don’t need to make money from your passion

First thing’s first, there’s this widespread belief that if you’re not making money from your passion, you’re wasting your time.

Maybe it’s because in the age of social media, it seems like everyone and their mother is making money off of their passion, i.e. travel bloggers getting paid to travel and Mason Ramsey becoming famous overnight for yodeling in a Walmart. (Walmart really is another world.)

While it’s totally amazing that more people are ditching the 9-5 and working their passion full time, it can also be damaging for the people who aren’t making money off of their passion. It’s like damn, if everyone is becoming rich af at the flip of a switch but I’m still in the negatives with pursuing my passion, then that must mean there’s something wrong with me. That I’m the failure.

This just isn’t true!

For me, I’ve been doing this blog for like three-ish years now (shit, has it been that long?), and I haven’t made a profit from it yet (tried adding ads, but it didn’t work out). In fact, paying for this platform means I’m in the negatives. ♡ Yay! ♡

Does this mean my passion for this blog isn’t valid because I’m not making money from it and fully plan on working a 9-5 when I graduate? Hell to the no.

Because guess what?

Passions aren’t necessarily moneymakers — they’re first and foremost things that inspire you to find meaning in life and be hopeful about the future. This means it’s totally okay to take the job you need in order to pay the bills, buy groceries and, ya know, live? And it’s okay to still pursue your passions during your free time.

Like you can love soccer but never make money from it and still work an office job. Does that mean your passion is less valuable than a professional soccer player? No! If you love doing it, then that’s what you gain from it.

Passions are what you do because you like doing them; they’re what you do to make yourself happy and that’s your passion’s value — happiness and self-fulfillment.

2. You don’t have to broadcast your passion to the public

Another point to understand is that choosing to not publicly display your passion doesn’t invalidate it.

Let me explain.

Let’s say you like to draw, but you never post your artwork online or show it to other people. Maybe you’re scared of criticism, or maybe you just don’t care to display it publicly like that.

Whichever side of the coin you’re on, your artwork is for your eyes and your eyes only.

Then, one day you’re frolicking through social media, when you stumble upon a fellow artist’s Instagram and notice they have thousands and thousands of followers. You’re suddenly like, “Shit. Everyone loves them and their artwork. But I never show mine to people. Does that make me…inferior?”

Of course not!

Just because you choose not to showcase your art doesn’t make you less of an artist, nor does it make you less passionate than them.

Again, your passion is what you do to make yourself happy, and you have the choice to do whatever you want with it. You can try to make money off of it or not, just as you can showcase it or not. It’s up to you!

3. Be Honest With Yourself & Ask Questions

Another way to break that “I need to be making money from my passion!” belief is to ask yourself these types of questions:

If money weren’t a factor, what would I be doing?
What’s something I could do for years without being paid?
What could I talk about for hours and hours?

These answers are what you’re passionate about!

Love playing Sims? That’s your passion! Get excited when you talk about ice cream (@myself)? That’s your passion! Feel the need to photograph every yellow flower you see because you love them (really just @ing myself again, aren’t I?)? That’s your pas- okay, you get the point.

Again, this enforces the notion that your passion doesn’t have to be a monetary thing, and that your passion isn’t less important than those who are making money from theirs.

You gotta do what makes you happy, man! Every little thing you do to make yourself happy matters.

4. Forget the “Aha!” Moment

If you’re wondering “What am I even passionate about?” and waiting for that moment where the planets align, inspiration strikes and all of the answers plop onto your lap, I’m sorry to break it to you but guess what?

This isn’t going to happen!

Though I am totally that person who thinks “I can only do (insert creative project) when I’m feeling inspired,” waiting for that “aha!” moment doesn’t really get anything done, nor does it answer the question “What am I passionate about?”

Instead, finding your passion comes naturally and overtime.

For me, I knew I liked to write from a young age, but it wasn’t until I was a ☆ teenager ☆ that I slowly realized, “Hey, I really enjoy writing. Perhaps this is my p-p-passion?” 🤔

Even then, it took me a few years of thinking I’d become a pastry chef or a marine biologist (why did everyone want to be a marine biologist in their youth?) before I was really like “Hell friggin’ yeah. Writing is the One.”

As we get older, we experience more things and become better people (hopefully). This means we become more sure of ourselves and what we like/don’t like, which is a process that’s different for everyone.

Like just because Jerry from Chemistry 101 popped out of the womb with a lab coat yelling “I was born to be a chemist!!!” and you’re still undecided doesn’t mean you’re falling behind or failing at life.

Like I said, we’re all different! Good things take time, and there’s no rush to force yourself into finding a passion.

5. Work Out What You Don’t Like Doing

With self-discovery questions like “What’s your passion?” it can be difficult to find an answer when you just don’t know, which can be quite overwhelming.

It’s like that “Spongebob” episode, where Squidward is going through time and ends up in the “alone” dimension where a lot of voices repeatedly say “alone.” Not knowing what you’re passionate about is kind of like that, except replace “alone” with “I don’t know.”

So what’s the best way to figure out your “I don’t knows?” Work out your definite “I knows!”

This means when you don’t know what you’re passionate about, list what you know you definitely aren’t passionate about.

For example, I know I’m not passionate about cars or engineering. Right away, this tells me that maybe numbers and fixing things (who tf knows what engineers really do) aren’t for me.

By weeding out the things you know you definitely don’t like, it’s much easier to look at a smaller list of activities and choose what you’re passionate about.

6. Don’t Wait — Just Do It!

If you’re like me, you probably read that in Shia LaBeouf’s voice and imagined him crushing an egg. Although I really don’t know what that video was about, Shia was totally speaking the truth. Passions can’t really be figured out when you’re just thinking about it.

Instead, you need to go out there and do things. This means you need to try everything that interests you, and try everything that doesn’t seem appealing straight off the bat. Sometimes it takes a bit of time of doing something before you’re like “I like this” or “Yeah, this is definitely the worst thing ever and I’m never going to do this ever again for as long as I live.”

But at least you’re out there experiencing life in all of its trash and all of its glory.

Just think: there are so many things out there that you haven’t tried. How do you know if you like it and don’t like it if you’ve never tried it?

So…”Just do it!”

—

The point in all of this is this: passions might seem like a complicated thing to understand, but they don’t have to be!

They’re what you do to make yourself happy and feel fulfilled, which means they don’t have to be moneymakers, things that you do and/or post for the world to see or things that everyone thinks is cool.

And if you don’t know what your passion is yet, that’s totally okay, too! We all place a lot of pressure on ourselves to live out our youth to the fullest, because society thinks that once you hit 30+, it’s like you turn into a bag of bones. Like you can’t have fun or be successful, or something.

But life isn’t about restraining yourself to a set time limit (I mean, I know we all technically have a time limit, but you know what I mean), nor is it about being like “Well, if I don’t know what my passion is like that guy over there, I might as well be a piece of crap.”

Instead, take your time and let life take its course. There’s a lot of fun in figuring out what you like and don’t like, and there’s a lot of fun in committing to the things you totally love once you do find what you’re passionate about!

Your friend,
Jane

P.S. What are you passionate about? Let me know in the comments below. For more career tips, check out my blog!

Featured