10 Ways To Find Your Passion and Purpose In Life Today

Updated 8/30/24 

It can be difficult to find your passion in life. Everyone is passionate about something, however, it may not always be easy to differentiate between something that is driven by passion, or by interest and desire.

Passion has several meanings:

• One that derives from human emotion,
• and one that is philosophical and beyond how we ‘feel’.

Each person defines it differently, so it boils down to how you interpret it. How would you define passion? According to Wikipedia, this is the definition of passion:

1. Emotional meaning: Passion is a feeling of intense enthusiasm towards or compelling desire for someone or something.
2. Philosophical meaning: Passions are instinctive, emotional, primitive drives in a human being, which a human being must restrain, channel, develop and sublimate in order to be possessed of wisdom.

One of the best ways to find your purpose is to become inspired by reading others’ experiences, and the conditions, and in some cases, tribulations, of how they found it.

That’s what this article is about—to inspire and motivate you to find your true passion and purpose in life.

Let’s begin.

Here are 10 ways to find your passion and purpose in life:

1. Passion begins by exploring your curiosity

Let’s begin by pointing out a few things in regard to passion, and set straight your goals from the beginning. There are two aspects to passion:

1. Being passionate to fulfill satisfaction in your personal life, such as making clear your identity and purpose.
2. Finding passion as it relates to your professional life, for instance, creating goals to expand upon the infrastructure and technology of our world.

If you were to ask Mark Cuban, he’d tell you not to focus on your passion, because people aren’t always good at what they’re passionate about. For example, you may love playing basketball, but simply loving it doesn’t give you a pass into the NBA.

So you’ve got to ask yourself, what is it that you want?

Are you seeking happiness and intrinsic fulfillment, or are you trying to climb the corporate ranks, per say.

If you are looking for career advice and passion to work, you may want to consider if you’re in the right career. Otherwise, if the professional world is irrelevant to your pursuit of happiness, you need to seek your deepest desires.

Exploring topics of your interests by reading and learning new things is a great way to understand what it is you desire most.

Having the urge to dive into the nitty gritty of the unknown is a sign you might be passionate about it.

Perhaps you find yourself staying up late at night, getting lost in the world of robotics because you want to create the next big thing. You feel the need to innovate. If this is you, feed on this desire and pursue it to the fullest.

What’s the takeaway?

Finding the purpose in life has two parts: your personal desires and your professional goals. Pick which one you want to work on first—because they are separate, and go from there.

2. Find your passion through hobbies

Do you have any hobbies? Everyone should have at least one. They are a great way to invoke creativity, and are often an indicator of passion.

Do you read a lot? How about writing—is this something you do frequently to pass the time? Well, it might be a passion of yours. And if you love it that much, why not get a degree in writing and pursue a career in the field?

Take note of all your hobbies, and consider that you are drawn to these activities because they bring out the human values that define you.

Not only do your hobbies come from a place in your heart that drives your creativity, but they’re also an escape that can help to reduce anxiety and improve your social interactions.

What’s the takeaway?

Discovering the things you consider a hobby of yours is a great way to finding a passion. Often times, it turns out that these hobbies are the things which you are most passionate about in life.

3. The passion of generating income

To be able to pursue your life’s passion to the fullest, you have to free up your time. And to free up your time, you need to work less.

What’s the catch?

You’ve got to first, work a lot, and generate income, so that you can work less.

Unfortunately, for many, we work all day at jobs we hate. And so, you need to consider if your passions align with that job. Perhaps your passions aren’t being harnessed at your job.

Simply having passions doesn’t do much for you if you aren’t acting on them in every way possible, in every avenue of life.

It’s important that you have a job which can give you enough income to form a sustainable lifestyle, so that you aren’t burnt out and will have adequate energy to pursue an active passion.

You should try your best to create a revenue model that will help fund the things you are passionate about. But here’s the other catch:

Don’t chase the money. You need to have passion of the mind, not money on the mind.

Maybe you’re a musician at heart, but you don’t have money to buy nice equipment so you can be more serious about music. Sure, you could buy a sweet guitar. But you’re hindering your progress until you purchase nice strings, pedals, an amp, etc.

The point is that you need money to expand on your passion (most of the time), but if you ONLY focus on money, the passion will get pushed away. You may forget how to play guitar.

For now, focus on becoming super organized to build the foundation that your passions sit on—practice them, and save up your money to fund the organic growth of your progress.

What’s the takeaway?

If you desire passion in your life, you need to make enough money to build a lifestyle that will support your passionate endeavors. Just remember, you have to focus on both, at the same time. You’ve got to practice honing your skills, all while putting in time to generate an income for the resources necessary to bring those skills to the next level.

4. Find a purpose in life by having flashbacks

Some kids dream of being a firefighter, or an astronaut; some, digging up dinosaur bones. Then, they grow up, become an accountant, and haven’t heard the word passion in years.

(No offense, accountants! We love you.)

This person is now an adult, and fairly content with their job. But, deep down, they feel like something is missing in life.

What is it that could be missing? Well, it could be that they hadn’t followed their childhood dreams. Flash back to when they were ten years old, playing with their best friends and doing tea time with GI Joe, and it turns out they still would enjoy doing this.

Their childhood passion followed them to adulthood. The passion never went away.

Think back on the things you loved to do the most as a child. That’s not saying that everyone should be doing what they enjoyed as a kid, because sometimes we grow out of things. But it’s at least worth reflecting on.

Maybe this is the secret passion you’ve been missing out on your whole life.

What’s the takeaway?

Sometimes finding the passion of your life isn’t as evasive as you may think. Consider that the things you loved doing as a kid could be the very things that will still bring you happiness. Make a plan to pursue them, just as you did in your earlier years.

5. Review Pros and cons of your career to find a passion

When you’re trying to find your purpose in life, it’s important to look at what you do for a living. Do you enjoy your work?

If not, there’s a possibility you may have chosen the wrong career. One reason for this is that your work role doesn’t reflect with what you are passionate about. You need to have passion for the work you do, otherwise, your work is just that—work.

To find the passion that will give you long-term happiness, and so that you can prevail through tougher times in life, there needs to be a balance.

This balance of work and passion is something that causes you to become engaged and positive, and it’s a powerful motivator that inspires your coworkers.

Motivation comes from passion, and passion encourages those around you to do good.

I strongly suggest reading this article to help gauge your happiness at your job, and to see if it embodies your deepest passions.

What’s the takeaway?

Being in a career you honestly could care less about is an indicator that your passions exist beyond your career. Analyze your work, and use this analysis to draw a map to find the passion of your dreams. The last thing you want is for your boss to dislike you because you could care less about being there.

6. How to find your passion through consistency

Consistency is key if you want to be an effective leader and achieve something great. I know it’s cliché but, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

The truth is, you can only be consistent with something if you love doing it. You’re likely not going to be interested in cooking brownies every night if you don’t have a passion for baking.

Love and passion are the same. Love is the feeling; passion is the doing.

I really love this inspirational quote from a special someone who I have always admired:

“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” – Steve Jobs.

The idea is simple: keep at it long enough, and your dreams will eventually materialize.

Make a list of all the things which you didn’t give up on in life.

These could be things like an old business that’s sitting on the sidelines, but for some mysterious reason, you haven’t dissolved. Or it could be a stack of scientific research papers that you tucked in your desk, hoping that one day you’d find inspiration to complete.

Don’t fear failure or rejection. Whatever that thing is that you never gave up on, maybe it’s time to bring it back to life. Maybe now is your time to raise your passion from the dead.

What’s the takeaway?

If you’re wondering how to find your life passion, just keep searching for it. Don’t ever give up, because sometimes it just takes time. Sometimes it’s a waiting game.

7. Find passion through writing

In this section, let’s do something fun. Let’s make a list! It’s typically how I find my passion. After all, according to research at the Dominican University in California, you are 62% more likely to achieve your goals simply by writing them down.

Here’s how to figure out your passion by using a list. Write down the following:

• What top 3 topics do you research often?
• What are your hobbies?
• If you could make money doing any one thing, what would it be?
• What things did you love doing as a kid?
• What two things do you love most about your job, and hate?
• What personal project did you start in the past, but never finished, and that you think about almost every day?
• What one character trait do all your friends know you by?

Does that list sound familiar? It should. They are the key points of this article.

They’ve been carefully selected through extensive research and experience for teaching passion to someone who is troubled with finding it.

Diving into the details of this list will help your ideas become real, as they are forged directly from your own fruitful hands.

In order to grow the plant, you must first tend the seed.

What’s the takeaway?

Sometimes, finding a new passion happens when we sit down and write what’s deep within our minds. Creating a list is an excellent way to do this. Bear in mind, you must create the right type of list.

Writing has helped me to find the passion of my life, which, happens to be writing.

8. Ask honest friends for passion advice

Not everyone has an honest bunch of friends, or family, but if you do, then it makes your next task easier. If not, you could ask people you work with.

What are you going to ask them, exactly? Well, your questions to them are intended to help you understand what things you might be passionate about from an outer perspective.

To find your passion with outside help, ask them these three questions:

1. “If you could say I was really good at one thing, what would it be?”
2. “Which of my traits do you think everyone could agree on that make me unique?”
3. “If I died tomorrow, what would you remember me by?”

The responses you receive are helpful because sometimes we aren’t capable of comprehending things about ourselves, like our personality type and character qualities.

For instance, it can be difficult to know if people like you, without directly asking them.

Building self-awareness of how the world sees you is an important part of realizing your passion.

Why? Let this short scenario answer it for you:

You — “I’m a terrible singer.”

Them — “No! You sound amazing.”

Sometimes we hold these truths about ourselves, for whatever reasons, when in reality, they are far from the truth. The truths you create may sometimes skew your ability to understand what it is that makes you shine.

There are two types of truths:

1. Those you create and accept as true,
2. and those the world holds true, regardless of your place in the truth.

The point is, unless you have others to verify what you think is true, then what you think really doesn’t have much factual substance. You shouldn’t assume that only you can provide yourself with everything you need to know yourself, and, ultimately, to find the quiet passion hiding deep within you.

What’s the takeaway?

The information you get from other people can be very valuable in discovering your passion. Sometimes you may not realize there is something special about you until others tell you about it.

9. How to find a passion by testing possibilities

You should have a few ideas for your passions by now. These ideas came from the list you made in section 7, and the responses you got from your friends, family, and co-workers in section 8.

Now, it’s time for you to research those topics. Learn everything you can about them, getting down to the details to see if the day-to-day activities actually interest you.

The thing is—sure, it sounds awesome being an astronaut. But, do you actually want to go to space? Are you going to enjoy being thousands of miles away from Earth?

Focus on each idea, one at a time, and learn about what others have to say and their experiences. Then, try it out yourself.

Test the waters. Find a mature passion if you’re mature at heart.

If you have an old soul, research the interests of old souls and what their passion tends to be. And if you’re wild, research what wild people love doing.

They idea is to find out what people like you are passionate about.

What’s the takeaway?

Take the information you’ve acquired from sections 7 and 8, and create an outline of possible passions you might be interested in. This outline represents who you are, and it embodies the foundations of how, and why, you may be attracted to your ideal passion.

10. How to find the passion in your life: just start doing it

By now, you should have all the tools needed to discover your deep passion:

• A list of passion-related questions from self-reflecting (section 7).
• Excellent feedback from friends, family, and/or co-workers (section 8).
• An awesome blog article (cough) that you should share with your friends (cough) and family.

Remember: always trust your gut feeling.

Many people already know what they want, but are afraid to go after it. Maybe you have anxiety, and so you live on edge, preventing you from having a clear mind to create strong, smart goals.

You might feel like giving up along the way, like you’ll never be good enough to succeed. Or that you’re not confident that you’ll find a passion. Don’t buy into it—it’s just your ego trying to shut you down.

Take things day by day, at your own pace.

What’s the takeaway?

Getting through this article is an excellent step to progressing to the next phase to find your passion in life. After you do your research and find out what others like you enjoy doing, your next step is to test the waters. You won’t know if you are passionate about something until you try it out.

Conclusion

I hope this article helps you. Trying to figure out how to find a passion in life is a tricky topic, as it embodies essentially the core of who you are. Self-reflecting and meditating can help a lot if you are having trouble finding yourself, even for just 10 minutes per day.

What I like to do is lie on a hammock or swing and drink a cup of white tea—it’s a mood booster and can put you into a productive mindset. Make it one of your new years resolutions to analyze where you stand amongst your journey to finding a passion.

That is all, my friends. Good luck.

Here’s a quick recap of 10 ways to find your passion:

1. Explore your curiosity.
2. Discover your hobbies.
3. Find sources of income.
4. Have a flashback.
5. Review pros and cons of your career.
6. Consistency.
7. Write it down.
8. Ask honest friends.
9. Test your possibilities.
10. Just start doing it.

That’s all folks! Thanks for reading.

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