It’s the beginning of your last year of high school when the pressure starts to kick in: “What’s your passion?”, you have to choose your university degree and yet you have no clue of how you would answer the question. A few years pass and you graduate from university, as family members ask you: “The world is at your feet, what are you going to do now?” just to realize you still don’t know what your passion is. You go to your first job interview, rehearsing the answers you made up in case you would be asked again: “What is your passion? What do you want to be?”. To all of you folks who have had to awkwardly answer these questions with a shrug “I don’t know”, I feel you. The daunting pressure to find “our passion” follows most of us throughout most of our youth, especially in a generation where finding “our niche” has become such a core part of our identity.
Well, we have some news for you. The idea that passion equals dream job, equals great success, equals getting rich – is a total myth. Even if you feel deeply passionate about video games, it does not mean that you will necessarily be good at coding -not to say successful. Also, ever heard the saying that goes: “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”? Well, that is also a myth. Loving what you do and getting your “dream job” or “dream college” does not mean it will be easy nor will it always be fun. Work and studies will always include annoying and even terrible days, no matter how passionate you feel about it. These two myths – claiming that finding your passion will get you a dream job, which you will always love and succeed at- can lead to great disappointment.
That is why, we want to suggest to you an alternative way of looking at it: Find something that you are good at and learn to love it. Take pride in your success, figure out which parts of your job or your studies motivate you and challenge you and dive deeper into them. In other words, fake it till you make it. Although it might seem odd, oftentimes success drives passion more than passion drives success.
Passion is not a plan, it’s a feeling -and feelings change. It’s ok if the things that you feel passionate about now change over time. It’s ok not to know what you will be doing in 5 years. Not having a compelling answer to the question “What is your passion?” does not mean that you are less ambitious or less interesting. On the
contrary, the most fulfilling things in life are the ones that have the power to surprise you and to captivate you, so keeping an open mind to new interests is the best way to stay passionate.
In short, pursue the parts of your job that excite you, the subjects at university that intrigue you and the hobbies that fascinate you. It is about exploring the little things that ignite your inner fire and make that spark in your eyes shine✨. So stop trying to find “your passion” and strive to become a passionate person, with changing interests but a constant excitement for life.
