How to Discover Your Passion

I read an article by Jeff Goins awhile back that really resonated with me. In it he shared how his plans to become a professional musician fell through. He explained, “Before I could learn what was the right path for me, I had to get good enough at music to realize it wasn’t my true passion.”

I hadn’t really thought of it that way before, but I have a similar story. Believe it or not, I used to play classical and flamenco guitar. I was pretty good. In fact, I was good enough that I put myself through college teaching guitar lessons (and driving a 55-mile paper route twice a day, but that’s another story). I practiced and taught guitar all the time back then (75 students a week!), so I gained quite a bit of skill.

But in the end, I realized that as much as I enjoyed playing and teaching guitar, it wasn’t my true passion. However, like Jeff, I wouldn’t have realized that if I hadn’t spent all that time working on it.

“Turns out, we don’t find our passion and then practice it. Rather, practice is what helps us discover what we ought to be doing in the first place. Discovery accompanies dedication; it doesn’t precede it.”

Thankfully, at the same time I was playing guitar every day, I was also pursuing an education in something else that ended up truly being my passion: healthcare administration. Before going to college, I didn’t know healthcare would become my passion. It wasn’t until I dove into the education and experience that came with my residency that I really knew this was it.

Jeff sums this up well:

“Finding your passion isn’t just some fleeting feeling of pleasure. It means understanding the core of who you are and tapping into what lights you up inside. Typically, these pursuits are not new things, but old ones. They require us to listen to our lives, then take decisive action. It means looking at what you love, but also finding where that intersects with your skills and needs of the world.”

That’s exactly my story. I found the connection between what I enjoy, what my skills are, and what the needs of the world are. Then I put all that into practice, and that was how I discovered my passion.

Like Jeff said, you’re not going to suddenly just realize your passion without first practicing it. “Rather, practice is what helps us discover what we ought to be doing in the first place.”

It’s not always easy. It’s not always perfect. Sometimes we may doubt ourselves. But there’s no better way to discover your passion than to just start practicing it!

So how about you, what do you think you could be passionate about? Are you practicing it daily? If not, what are you waiting for?!