How to Find Your Passion: 5 Mindful Insights

1. Passion is a felt experience

Passion is a felt experience; it is a particular combination of body sensations, emotions and thoughts. For many when they are doing something that they are passionate about they describe a feeling of being completely absorbed in what they are doing. They are filled with joy, to such an extent that often there are no thoughts and if there are they are positive; ‘I love this’, ‘This is great’. Time seems to fly when we are doing something that we are passionate about and we often forget ourselves. These reactions are very similar to flow states which have been described by other authors such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi  and Steven Kotler. 

2. How to ’sense ‘ your passion may be a better question

If passion is an emotion, we can approach it as part of our mindfulness practice. The first thing we can do is to reframe the question; perhaps asking ‘how we sense our passion’ may be better. This question invites us to imagine a time when we have been passionate about something and then to notice the sensations, emotions and thoughts which accompany that experience. By getting a better understanding of this felt experience we obtain insight into the circumstances that bring about the passion within us.

3. Passions come and go

If passion is an emotion then, like other emotions, they come and go. This is one of the underlying challenges behind the question ‘how do I find my passion?’ Perhaps, it’s not so difficult to identify our passions, but how do we choose which ones we stick to? We can feel passionate about doing something but then as the passion fades we feel lost. Or another common situation is that we have ‘too many’ passions and we don’t know which ones we should pursue and which ones we should let go. These situations lead to the desperation to which the question of how to find your passion is often asked; we can get lost in the thought and rumination that the questions can lead us down. We realise that often we are reacting automatically to our passions, we are not responding to them.