Why It’s Okay to Struggle When Finding Your Passion
3 alternative places to find your passion
Passion doesn’t have to be a fire that burns endlessly.
It didn’t matter how much I loved writing. After graduating from high school, I just couldn’t see how I could make enough money from it. I was briefly convinced that writing wasn’t my passion, and I needed to keep looking elsewhere. The experience was extremely frustrating and disheartening.
I focused on building a career in sales and marketing so that writing was still within reach. After years of wondering why I stayed up till 3 am writing stories, I realized my definition of passion was wrong.
There had to be a reason why I couldn’t stop writing poetry on my way to work on my phone, or just storing metaphors to use for my future stories. I’ve got two 30-page stories that are incomplete. I didn’t believe they would be successful.
In the journey of uncovering your passion, money and work can look like a key qualifier.
There are plenty of guides on building a business around your passion, doing what you love, becoming passionate about your work, and turning your hobby into a business. Most of these guides focus on marrying passion with a job, which can skew the perception that passion must be used to bring enough income to create your desired lifestyle.
After doing some research, you might even conclude that to satisfy the criteria of making money via your passion, what you love doing is also coated in a process that isn’t so enjoyable.
These can include cold-calling, website maintenance, invoicing, tax-forms, getting a license, learning tech-related skills, and other business-related processes.
And when your passion, or rather the parts you genuinely look forward to doing are pitted against a host of not so enjoyable actions, you might feel discouraged and annoyed.
The key is to worry about the business aspect after honing down on your passion. You will make it work if you deem it to be worthy, no one and no guide can genuinely convince you that.
Separating the business aspect of it will make it easier.
Here are 3 unconventional ways to look for what you are passionate about:
1. What can’t you give up?
You know you are passionate about something when you continue to do it after failing multiple times. You are willing to put the practice in, to put in the hours to research, to power through the frustration that comes with failure.
Passion isn’t necessarily what makes you feel invincible and full of exhilaration, it’s the path you will pursue regardless of its challenges.
Even if there are lapses where you’ve briefly given up due to personal circumstances, your passion will call for you no matter what. Over time, responsibilities took over how I prioritized my life. Coursework, full-time employment, relationships, socializing, and a host of other experiences demanded my attention.
Some weeks I lacked the discipline or energy to properly write. Some days I genuinely didn’t feel like writing at all. I ended up pushing myself anyway to write regardless of my mood. Every spare chance I got, minutes or hours, I would put my energy into writing.
I couldn’t get enough of how my journal entries, birthday speeches, hand-written letters, and stories entertained my friends over the years. Passion is the flickering lightbulb you will do anything to keep alight, it’s the thing you won’t give up.
2. What are you afraid of?
Your passion might be something that scares you. I mentioned not being afraid of struggling, but that isn’t to say you aren’t afraid at all. No one is completely immune to the thought of failure. What have you always wanted to try, or have done in the past but you were discouraged to continue?
I saw a lot of friends transitioning into full-time work immediately graduating, and they seemed content with having a stable stream of income, plans of purchasing a home, and a traditional career path.
What briefly stopped me from pursuing the craft wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy it, it was the fear not being able to be a successful writer, the thought that my talent and my works won’t ever be of value.
I was far too focused on the notion that every action, every second must mean something for my future, and writing just wasn’t going to cut it. Passion might be something you procrastinate from in reaction to the fear of achieving an unsatisfying result. Focus on an activity that you know you would do in a heartbeat if the fears surrounding it didn’t exist.
3. What problems do you enjoy solving?
What’s something you can’t stop trying to improve? It’s the problem you pour resources, time, patience, and resilience to fix. What type of issues genuinely draw your attention? These are things that no one has to convince you to look into it.
Think of something that you just couldn’t resist trying to refine with countless youtube tutorials, paid courses, mentor meetups, books, and other efforts. The higher the skill, the more problems you can approach with confidence.
Check your search history on Youtube, Google, Skillshare, Udemy, and Book Depository. Scribble down the topics and particular issues you wanted to solve or a skill you wanted to pick up and find the overarching theme.
You might start to uncover a list of areas that you have been unconsciously drawn to all this time. If you can’t put your passion into words, look at your behaviors and patterns.
When a friend comes to you looking for advice or collaborations, what is the nature of their request? Is it editing their graduation photos? Filming a travel video for a group trip? Coming up with ideas for your friend’s album cover?
The solution could come to you naturally, and if it doesn’t, you will pour in time and effort to uncover it. Life is built on an endless series of problems, and it is our job to solve them day by day. Look for problems you enjoy tackling, and you might uncover what you are truly passionate about.
Final thoughts
Identifying your passion requires backtracking and acknowledging the patterns in your actions. Being observant and reflective is important and our answer might even be buried in our history. What are some other methods for finding your passion? Feel free to write it in the comments below.
The Mini Post-Grad Survival Guide
A 5-day email course with amazing tips on budgeting, investing, and productivity for 20-somethings. Sign up for free.
