It’s the beginning of your senior year of high school and the pressure starts to kick in: “What is your passion?” You have to choose your college major and you still have no idea how you would answer the question. Fast forward a few years and you graduate from college, with your family asking you, “The world is at your feet, and what are you going to do now?” This only serves to make you realize that you still don’t know what your passion is. You go into your first job interview rehearsing the answers you made up in case they ask you again: “What is your passion? What do you want to be?” For all of you who have had to awkwardly answer these questions with an “I don’t know” shrug, I feel you. The enormous pressure to find “our passion” follows most of us through most of our youth, especially in a generation where finding “our niche” has become a core part of our identity.

Well, we have a few things to tell you.

The idea that passion equals a dream job, equals great success, equals getting rich is totally a myth. Even if you have a deep passion for gaming, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be good at coding and become a millionaire testing video games. Also, have you ever heard the saying that goes, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”? Well, that’s a myth too. Loving what you do and landing your “dream job” or “dream college” doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy or always be fun.

There will always be difficult or annoying days at work and school, some even terrible, no matter how passionate you are about what you do. These two myths (claiming that finding your passion will get you the job of your dreams, that you will always love it and be successful at it) can lead to great disappointment.

That's why we want to suggest an alternative way of looking at it: find something you're good at and learn to love it. Be proud of your success, find out which parts of your job or studies motivate and challenge you and dig deeper into them. In other words, fake it until you make it. Strange as it may seem, many times success drives passion more than passion drives success.

Passion is not a plan, it’s a feeling, and feelings change. It’s okay if the things you’re passionate about now change over time. It’s okay not to know what you’ll be doing in 5 years. Not having a compelling answer to the question “What’s your passion?” doesn’t mean you’re any less ambitious or any less interesting. On the contrary, the best things in life are those that have the power to surprise and captivate you, so keeping an open mind to new interests is the best way to keep your passion alive, too.

In short, spend time on the parts of your job that you are passionate about, the college subjects that intrigue you, and the hobbies that fascinate you. It's all about exploring the little things that light the fire inside you and make that sparkle in your eyes shine.

So stop trying to find “your passion” and work on becoming someone passionate, with interests that change, but you maintain a constant enthusiasm for life.