The Sh#% Your Parents Should Tell You

How Do You Find Your Passion?

How do you find your passion?

Whether it's discovering your own passion or helping someone else find theirs, there is only one thing you must inevitably and routinely do.

Listen.

My daughter taught me that lesson. When she was seven years old, I started taking her to piano lessons. Unfortunately, she didn't take to them. From the very start, getting her to sit still during lessons was a herculean task. Her fidgeting and inattention drove more than one instructor to drop her as a student. At home, getting her to practice was like carving granite with a fork – nothing pretty was going to come of that endeavor. I'd sit my daughter at the piano and ask her to practice. I would tell her how good she was at it, how good it was for her, how fun it would be, how it would be an amazing skill to foster, how lucky she was to have this opportunity. Invariably, she would cross her arms tightly, press her lips into a petulant pout, and give me a steely, "No."

Months of this struggle resulted in little progress. I was at my wit's end. In a moment of pure frustration, I asked my little girl why she wouldn't practice piano.

"Because I don't want to."

Finally...finally...it hit me like a punch to the face. In my zeal to ensure my daughter would have music in her life, to guarantee that she would experience the benefits of knowing how to play a musical instrument - in short, to craft my little lump of human into my personal vision of success - I had forgotten to ask her a very simple question:

"What do you want to do?"

oops.

Ask her is what I did. In a peaceful moment, when the demands of the world had settled down for the night, I sat next to my daughter and asked her that very question.

"I want to play electric guitar." Her eager reply.

"Okay. Electric guitar it is."

Thirteen years later, my daughter is still playing guitar. Not once have I had to ask her to practice. Not once have I struggled to get her to play. She just does it every day because she chooses to. Her passion centers her when the world around her is turbulent and uncertain. It provides endless challenges to her mind and body. It's something that every cell in her body begs her to do, even when it's hard, even when there's no immediate reward, even when the only audience she has to play for is her own two ears. She does it simply because it brings her joy.

All it took for her to find that passion was the willingness to ask...

"What do you want to do?"

Over the years, I've discovered that finding your passion is a lot like raising a child.

Your passion is not rational. It doesn't listen to reason. It doesn't care about your past or your future or your goals and expectations. It doesn't like being told what it should be or what it should do. It will not hesitate to tell you "no" if you're not listening and cross its arms and sit, pouting and unmoving, until you do.

So, do. If you want to find your passion, sit quietly with yourself whenever you have the time (make the time if you must) and ask yourself,

"What do you want to do?"

In the tender hold of your undivided attention, when you've hushed your "shoulds" and "should nots" and your unexamined demands for glory and gain, your passion will uncross its arms and drop its frown and tell you what it wants to do.

When it does, all you have to do is listen.