Struggling to find your Passion? Start with focusing on your Curiosity instead
We all want to find success. And the idea of following your passion and letting it lead you to success is one of the biggest guiding principles for the last two decades at least, if not longer. Larry Smith even gave a TedX Talk titled ‘Why you will fail to have a great career’ which emphasizes following your passions.
My hypothesis is that passion is an area of interest or activity that has received positive validation. This validation could come in numerous forms — internal or external. It could come from finding a community of other people who are engaged in a similar activity and you then end up building great relationships with. It could also come from finding success of some sort when you pursue an activity or interest. Further, it could come from people you respect who approve of your pursuit of an activity. And the list can go on. I also hypothesize that different people will need different levels of validation to start feeling passionate. But I won’t dive into that exploration just yet.
With this foundation, if we were to find ourselves in a situation in which we are struggling to find a passion. My hypothesis is that instead of trying to introspect and find your passion, you might want to start off with your curiosity. What sorts of things do you feel curious about? Indulge your curiosity, find different people who have similar curiosities. Collaborate with them, work with them. And my hunch is that with enough iterations you will find a curiosity developing into a passion.
I am eager and curious to hear how you feel about my hypothesis as well as what your curiosities and passions are! Drop a note in the comments here or send me an email at palagr2993+med@gmail.com or find me on Twitter (@palashagrawal29).
UPDATE (Jan 2021):
I wrote this article in October 2020. As I’ve been exploring this topic, a mentor of mine — Prof Miro Kazakoff encouraged me to read the book “So good they can’t ignore you”. This book builds a case against the Passion Hypothesis and emphasizes developing skills instead so that you eventually end up developing extraordinary things to offer to get extraordinary jobs. It also lays out a helpful distinction between a career and a calling — a career could eventually lead up to working on your calling and at other times you might engage with your calling in the form of a hobby or community service. What that book did validate for me was that focusing on curiosity makes you think of what you can offer to the topic you are engaging with instead of thinking how much the topic has to offer to you in terms of stimulating you. This basically boils down to the principle of thinking of your work as being in service of something.
