3 Ways To Find Your Passion

1. Start With the Right Point of View

If you went into a restaurant with the strong opinion—“I’m not hungry. There’ll be nothing here I want to eat. I don’t want to be here”—the menu isn’t going to look appealing. You won’t explore it with due time or attention, and it’s unlikely you’ll find food you’ll enjoy eating.

The same principle applies to passion-seeking. If you’re convinced that finding your passion is hard, or that it’s not going to happen for you, you’ll remain closed to possibilities. You’ll block the little nudges, pulls, and signals that guide us all. After all, how can you expect to find fulfilling work if you don’t believe it exists?

Choose to adopt the perspective that you can do what you love with your life. One of the best ways to strengthen this point of view is to surround yourself with people who are living examples. How many of your friends and family are following their passions? If it’s not many, it might be time to expand your circle; associate with—and be inspired by—men and women who are inspired by their work.

2. Get Out Your Metal Detector

Once you’ve decided that your passion is findable, it’s time to look for evidence of what you already love to do. If you scan the landscape of your life, you’ll notice certain experiences peak up. It’s so valuable to delve into these “peak moments” and extract the key ingredients.

Make a list of the ingredients that truly mattered in your peak moments; don’t be distracted by the counterfeits.

3. Look for the Umbrella

When you look at all the ingredients that matter to you, they might at first seem entirely disconnected. Let’s say you love French, drinking coffee, playing with words, analyzing and categorizing, and being a leader within a community. How could you construct a career from these? It'd be like peering into your cupboard and seeing cocoa powder, tofu, and carrots and wondering: How could I possibly make something delicious that includes all of these?

This is the time to look beyond the ingredients and seek an umbrella; something that all of these ingredients can fit beneath. 

What might be your umbrella?