Why “Find Your Passion” And “Follow Your Passion” Are Empty Advises

Tomasz Drybala
Nov 6 · 5 min read

“Find your passion” and “Follow your passion” are empty advises that can lead us to anxiety. “Finding and following” suggests that each of us already has fixed the gift, skills, and talents for it. It indicates that you already have it, and you have to discover it within you. The truth is that most people don’t have it, so advising on “finding and following your passion” is very inappropriate.

Interact, Engage, Have Fun

Things that you love to do are not necessarily your passions. Many people confuse the saying, “I love my job” with “my job is my passion.” These are entirely different feelings, but loving your work is an excellent start to make it your passion.

Passion is a higher level of love. Love for another person is sometimes mistaken for that person’s addiction. Same way, you can also be mistaken for being passionate about your work with being addicted to something that you do for many years. Sometimes you can’t imagine that you can do something another, and you are fooling yourself with false feelings.

We do not fall in love by finding love. We fall in love by learning about someone interesting to us. Then we contribute, invest our time and energy. We interact, engage, have fun, develop our feelings, and become more emotional. We actively use our creativity and imagination. We build commitment and build our love. We were not born with a penchant for “Joanne” or “Jake” just as we were not born with passions.

We can’t find our passions by looking for some mystical and mysterious inner voice that sleeps deep inside us. We can’t find it by sets off alone on an emotional journey that magically turns into finding love and your passion and fills you with happiness and satisfaction. Believing that our feelings, interests, and emotions are fully formatted and fixed within ourselves will limit you from pursuing new areas in your life. And will lead you to give up when it becomes more difficult and challenging.

Be obsessed

Your future, fulfillment, life satisfaction, happiness, and passionate life depend on what you do today. It’s about choosing what you want the most over what you want now. Focusing on commitment instead of motivation, seeking knowledge, not results, and using your imagination.

To be passionate about something, you must first be obsessed with doing these things. You need to spend days and nights, weeks, and months developing your skills and knowledge on a specific topic. You need to pursue your interests to find your niche product or service and drill all your strength and power in it until you find your ways of creating the things you want do. Then develop your passion for everything related to it. Growing your passion and love is not easy. It is a process, and for most of us, it takes many years, worrying about an uncertain outcome and battling our fears.

If you do not know what you are passionate about, it is not because something is wrong with you. You are going through a creative process, and you have to trust this process. Some manage to create it earlier than others, and some take a lot longer. In my case, it took me 37 years to be able to define myself. Sometimes it can take even longer, and sometimes it may never happen, and that’s fine because each of us is the creator of our own lives, and we live it the way we want.

I didn’t find my passions magically when I turned into forty or because I go through an emotional journey. It took me four years, from when I started building my dream job, to the time when I realized what I’m passionate about and why. You have to try many things in your life to see what works for you, what gives you the most satisfaction, and what drains your energy.

Think of things that are part of your life for a very long time, things that you might struggle for many years, and you can find solutions to solve a specific problem that can help you and help other people’s lives. In other words, create higher values for your work and life. Build a community of people interested in the same matters, contribute to others, help the world to be better, and build your success in community with people for other people.

Feel your own life

You need to get out of the house from your comfortable zone, grab your inner in your hand, and shake it with all power and strength. Start creating your life. Make you want to fall asleep tired and fulfilled, make you want to wake up tomorrow early in the morning because you can’t wait to start the day.

Put on your shoes and do it today, do it tomorrow and do it the next day, then repeat it over and over again until you start to feel endorphins dancing in your blood. And then start sharing your gift with other people.

You must keep changing and trying, keep failing, and trying again and again. Do not cry for weeks or months after things that did not work, go ahead and try something new again, learn, and build your success on your failures.

Do It Your Way

Do not listen to people who have not achieved what you are trying to do. They don’t understand the process you’re going through, and even if you explain it to them, they still don’t understand it. People usually understand from their level of perception. They don’t know what your vision is and why you work the way you work.

Don’t listen to advice that it needs to be done on your own, that you have to go on a lonely journey to find your true self, that you don’t need anyone else except for yourself. A human was made to live in community, to live with other people, to be in a relationship. I will never manage to learn so much about myself without support from people being close to me daily, my family, and my real friends.

Don’t look for existing solutions and perfect receipts for a happy life, what is working for me may never work for you. Understand how you want to live, what lifestyle best fit to yourself and then build your career around it and develop all passions associated with it.

Tomasz Drybala

My name is Tomasz Drybala and I’m the ultra endurance athlete and adventurer, writer and speaker sharing inspiring journey and helping people to perform.

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