Why “find your passion” is terrible, confusing advice
When I sit down to write one of these, I try to pick something that I knowin my bones. That’s usually something that I’ve been wrestling with, a momentous decision I’ve made, or a topic I’m obsessing over.
When I was processing a breakup and contemplating the nature of love, I wrote about it.
After many months and about four full journals’ worth of self-reflection on my personal struggle with self-worth, I published some of my thoughts.
When I let go of a career aspiration/dream that had driven my decision-making and occupied the back (and front) of my mind for over a decade, I shared my thinking with you.
So after spending the past 2 months in a state of confusion, anxiety and (thanks to my tendency to think something to death before taking action) indecision, I decided to follow the same pattern. I decided to write what I know. I decided to write about indecision.
I know… so meta.
The Problem
Truth be told, it seems like a timely topic for more people than just me. If there’s one thing the majority of friends my age are struggling with, it’s indecision. A problem that’s only exacerbated by the fact that we seem to have reached peak “passion.”
There are 5 bajillion books, articles, videos, and seminars out there on “finding your passion.” You’re supposed to pretend money doesn’t exist, or that you have a lot of money, or ask yourself what you would do for free. You’re supposed to regress to childhood and find that one interest you “lost” along the way, eradicate the limiting beliefs instilled in you by your parents (jerk parents…) and your culture (jerk culture…), or identify something that comes so naturally to you that it’s also somehow invisible … to you … or something.
And it doesn’t stop there.
Telling someone to “find” their passion is annoying enough, but it gets worse. When they’re not telling you to “find” your passion they’re demanding that you “follow” it. As if it’s a given that everybody deep-down knows the ONE THING in the world they ABSOLUTELY MUST DO, but they’ve chosen a career as a marketing consultant instead because #noambition.
F*** YOU SUSAN, IF I KNEW WHAT I WANTED I’D WORK LIKE HELL TO FIND A WAY TO DO IT #THANKYOUVERYMUCH!
*clears throat*
Which… ummm… brings us back to indecision.
I think the often ignored and somewhat inconvenient truth is that many of us — maybe even most of us — don’t have one thing we absolutely must do. Or if we do, it’s a broad value or drive that doesn’t fold neatly into a career category or single means of expression.
So why does most “find your passion” advice out there seem to focus on identifying the particular career or activity that you’re “meant” to pursue?
There are very few people out there who are “meant” to be a writer, or a lawyer, or a painter, or a doctor. They do exist, and this narrative captivates us — we obsess about the little girl from that one TED talk who was clearly meant to be a dancer, or the pop star whose precocious talent proves she was bornto do this one thing — but culturally-speaking, these stories leave the majorityof us feeling lost, insufficient and painfully indecisive.
If every person is supposed to find their soul’s deepest and most true expression in a specific career path or artistic pursuit, the natural response to not having found that “one thing” is confusion. A life spent searching frantically for the experience or career opportunity that will “click” with you as nothing has before or will again.
Worse yet, occasionally something does click… but then something else clicks two years later… and then another thing three years after that. Where does that leave you? More confusion. More indecision. A tendency to jump from pursuit to pursuit, never dedicating sufficient time to mastery, feeling like a perpetual failure because you’ve clearly not found that one pursuit that should fulfill you more completely than anything else.
This kind of thinking leaves no room for curiosity, or choice, or (frankly) reality. It’s the professional equivalent of believing in soulmates — another dangerous and damaging belief that I’ll save for another essay.
The Solution
If you want to escape uncertainty and indecision, I think the solution boils down to two shifts.
First, stop looking for a specific career or activity that you’re “meant” to do, and focus on identifying 2–3 core values instead. (Here’s a list to choose from if you’re unsure what constitutes a core value).
The career you choose — or, more broadly, the activity you choose to fill the majority of your time, which for most of us is also our career — should be something that aligns with your core values. And since more than one career or activity will no doubt match that description, it means you have options.
It also means you will eventually have to choose one and stick to it.
This part really does mirror relationships. You can built a wonderful and fulfilling lifelong partnership with any number of people out there. But you’ll never do that if you don’t choose one person and commit to doing life only with them, through thick and thin.
Second, realize that clarity doesn’t beget action, it’s the other way around.
The mistake us over-thinkers make time and again is assuming that, if we can just figure out what we want with complete certainty, then we’ll feel comfortable enough to take action. But that moment will never come. Without first taking action, you’ll never have enough information, and complete certainty will elude you until the moment you croak.
Action begets motivation. Action begets clarity. Action, ultimately, begets something approaching certainty.
Maybe it’s a bit anticlimactic or annoying, but it’s also true: the antidote to indecision is to… well… start making decisions. These shifts just make that process easier by lowering the stakes and prioritizing action.
- By removing the pressure of finding your “one true passion” and focusing on core values instead, you accept the idea that you could be fulfilled doing any number of things.
- By prioritizing action over clarity, you give yourself permission to stop overthinking and learn by doing instead.
It’s probably not fool-proof, and maybe it’s not for you, but after months of crippling indecision, overthinking, and uncertainty, this is the solution I’ve come up with for myself.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
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