I like your point about adding “you” as part of the equation. Ultimately, we agree. When it comes down to it, passion is a choice. Your choice. Either way, it isn’t something you’re born with.

Sometimes pursuing something really is a question of possibility. None of us want to fail, so we tend to balance the realistic with what we’re interested in. Totally agree there.

Though what you describe as “leaning forward in the chair,” I label as “interest” instead of “passion”. I think passion carries a lot of unnecessary weight with it.

Everybody has interests and we must start with those, which evolve into passions as we engage with them over time.

Passion has a resilient quality to it that only comes from getting our ass kicked a few times.

However, I’ll note that from my experience people do generally know what makes them lean forward in their chairs. (Or at least they can easily make a few hypotheses to then test out.)

The actual issue many people face resides in the murkier water of wondering if what they want to do is okay or possible or noble enough or capable of generating income.

Reminds me of something Steven Pressfield always quotes, “We have a right only our labor, not to the fruits of our labor.”

Thanks for sharing Colton.

A lot of people are worried that in a few months or years they won’t be passionate about it anymore, but in my mind that is exactly the point! Losing your passion about something doesn’t change the satisfaction you got from pursuing it, and from that experience you learn one thing you know isn’t your lifelong passion and you had a great time doing it.

You can always make the decision to become passionate about something new. If you keep repeating the process you may eventually find a lifelong passion, but even if you don’t, at least you spent your time pursuing things you were passionate about. It really doesn’t matter whether or not those things are the same for your entire life.

It’s true, curiosity is a critical component. Though I think you bring up a touchy subject when you say, ” Mastery of any subject matter definitely makes it more fun, but mastery of a subject where you find yourself leaning forward in your chair to learn more about it is even cooler.”

I don’t think most people, especially students, actually know what it is that makes them lean forward in their chairs. Sometimes we like multiple things, which makes picking a passion a very difficult choice.

So I advocate picking now, and switching a few years down the road if we find something better.

In my opinion, the ‘curiosity’ component is really critical. Mastery of any subject matter definitely makes it more fun, but mastery of a subject where you find yourself leaning forward in your chair to learn more about it is even cooler.

However, as I think your article implies, passion is really a choice we make. I watched an interesting documentary recently, Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Jiro, the father, had a passion for sushi and devoted his life to it. His sons followed in his footsteps not because they were particularly curious about sushi, but because they had so much engagement with it from being their father’s apprentices. So the sons chose to be care about sushi, rather than following what they may have been more intrinsically drawn to. Seemed to work out ok for them.