I wandered for years wondering if I would “find my passion.” I often worried that I had found it & then let it slip away.
In college, I drifted through different parts of ministry & academia. After college, I research & compared graduate degree programs of all stripes. Even after I decided to strike out on my own, I kept looking for my one true love.
Finally, an idea that filled a need propelled me to action.
Action was the solution.
The danger of looking for your one true love, your one true passion is that there’s an assumption that there is a single purpose to your life and that that single purpose can be be fulfilled by a single interest.
Your passion is not “an interest.”
You have interests – maybe military history, orchids, or gluten-free vegan cookies – and some of those interests may stick with you your whole life. Others come & go. Sometimes your interests cultivate new skills and sometimes they are new skills.
Your interests may be hobbies or you may have incorporated them into your work or career. They may be solitary or things you enjoy with family or friends. You might be categorized or labelled by your interests.
But in the end, your interests do not define you. They are a channel through which you express yourself. Your interests provide focus and context for what drives you.
Your passion is also not “an opportunity.”
No one is coming to knock at your door with your passion packaged in the form of an opportunity, tied with a bow. It’s not a one-night stand that turns into a long-term relationship. In the end, passion creates opportunities; it isn’t defined by them.
So what needs to be discovered when passion feels lost?
Passion is movement. Action. Momentum.
Passion is life force. It’s drive. Ambition.
When you ask how to find your passion you are asking because you’ve either lost – or never had – the drive, action, and momentum that creates the big things you desire.
I know this feeling. It felt equally like settling down and giving up.
It feels comfortable.
But work & action in the midst of passion feels reckless. It feels dangerous. It hurts so good.
When was the last night you stayed up all night because you were so excited by what you were working on? When was the last time your friends had to tell you they wanted to talk about something other than your next big thing? When was the last time you practically vibrated with the anticipation of your “work?”
That’s passion. The tingling in your fingertips, the fizzling in your brain.
Your passion may spring up out of a multitude of interests. Or there may be one source of this drive. But, don’t confuse passion with the interest itself.
When it comes to harnessing passion in a venture, it’s not your interest that is most important. It’s the drive. Don’t worry so much about discovering what drives you as the drive itself.
Get swept up. Follow the current where it wants to take you.
And stop looking for your one true love.
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[...] Perhaps what we really need is more depth, more opportunity, more flexibility, more meaning. Almost always, the new surprise is that which will best facilitate our own personal growth. Besides, that new job or person might be perfectly sexy in their own right! See Tara Gentile’s related post on finding your passion today, The Danger of Searching for your One True Love. [...]
The Danger of Searching for Your One True Love http://t.co/eDcFPDXu <<What to do when passion feels lost.
The Danger of Searching for Your One True Love http://t.co/8fgQcy0v
Excellent article, I agree 100% as I have been here myself.
Tara nails it again. Follow the drive of your passion. The Danger of Searching for Your One True Love: http://t.co/LYkWeXXQ
I was sick to death of the word passion until the call with you and Amanda. I am passionate about eating M&M’s but who else cares and who would pay me to do so? (If you have an answer to that last one, please please share!)
Dude, it’s like you’re in my brain this weekend…
After what’s shaping up to be a pretty dramatic/traumatic/upsetting/life altering year, I’ve decided changes are order and am finally spending some time with Danielle’s “Firestarter Sessions” book. I found myself being able to define my passion/purpose/my big WHY?, but spinning my wheels and feeling like I had to clearly define EXACTLY HOW I would execute this, and more specifically, trying to see ahead to where this would lead to as far as income generating streams.
What I just got slapped in the face with while reading this was that, one I can let go of interests and things I’ve been holding onto that no longer serve that passion/purpose, and two, instead of attempting to plan out this all out to some endpoint, just start acting on my passion in ways that feel good RIGHT NOW and see where it leads me and what opportunities arise.
Thanks for pulling me out of the mud, chica!
RT @ThreeBySea: SO FREAKIN’ needed this! @taragentile talks about the dangers of searching for your “1 true love” http://t.co/3SsXmzFU
Yes! @taragentile: NEW: The danger of searching for your one true love http://t.co/szzbnHo7
thank you, tara. loved the line: It’s not a one-night stand that turns into a long-term relationship. zing
thank you for the reminder that i can just keep going, doing the next right thing. i once was stalled but now am moving; was blind but now i see.
The Danger of Searching for Your One True Love: http://t.co/SfQBWwRr – by @taragentile
@targentile has such wisdom. This time, it’s about NOT trying to find your one true love.Makes me relax! http://t.co/zQslEcIL
exactly what i needed to read. thanks @taragentile The Danger of Searching for Your One True Love http://t.co/azczfPG2
RT The Danger of Searching for Your One True Love: http://t.co/FKtvzhJw via @taragentile
The Danger of Searching for Your One True Love http://t.co/pPTA2ICA (via @StudioJewel)
Passion is life force. It’s drive. Ambition. @taragentile http://t.co/AitcmQYs <Agree! How will you focus yours?>
Wow, what an absolutely brilliant post, Tara!
Thank you so much.
I am posting and pasting this everywhere. LOVE it!
The Danger of Searching for Your One True Love: http://t.co/8Hys7Umj
What’s so dangerous about searching for your one true love? http://t.co/qwvFOTOQ
Tara,
You wrote this week’s blog post for me before I got to it. (Not fast enough action – I have to work on that :0))
Great post. I have been espousing this for a long time, that when we tell people to follow their purpose, it’s pressure and scary, like there’s only one right answer. Or as you put it -The danger of searching for your one true love – a fabulous title.
Also went to hair dresser (showing my age with that term) and showed them your on-line picture and said that’s the color and highlights I want. They did it. I’m a mini-you or a maxi-you or maybe I just look like your second mom now. Cherry
The Danger of Searching for Your One True Love: http://t.co/iRYjjB7i
“Passion is movement. Action. Momentum.” Love this from @taragentile http://t.co/mRD19tXg
Absolutely! I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have it (I was an extremely creative child!) but I can remember a time of temporarily losing it and instead looking for that one love… Another way of reminding myself would be ‘Stay in FLOW.’ I prioritise doing things that keep me in a state of yummy divine flow these days. Life is good
agree.http://www.jogosdoxmen.com