Having recently discovered minimalism through The Minimalists, starting with the blog and then following with a number of their books, I started to really internalize the ideas they had about living life intentionally.  Living intentionally meant focusing on 5 core tenets that bring them happiness and fulfillment: health, relationships, growth (which I interpreted as learning), contribution (giving), and passion.

I get the first 4, but passion…well that one threw me for a loop.  What’s my passion?  How do I go about finding it?  Can I ask some proverbial mirror on a wall what my passion is?  Do I have one or many?  Is my passion what I do for work or is it what I do outside of work?

So then, I did what any rational person would do – I researched as much as I could about the concept of passion.  The internet is wonderful for that kind of thing 🙂

I found tons of articles referring to Steve Jobs, information about how to sit and meditate on my passion, to regress to my childhood and see what inspired me most and maybe that was my passion, then I found an article by Cal Newport referring to passion which cited a video by Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs.  This one stopped me in my tracks because it talked about how maybe we don’t have a “pre-existing passion.”

So, maybe we don’t have a pre-existing passion?  For whatever reason, I couldn’t stop with that answer to my questions about passion.  So, I did more research.  I came across this post by Marie Forleo about finding your passion.  Stop searching for how to find your passion, and just try things.  Do you feel inspired, excited, engaged by what you are doing?

I think there is definitely more to learn about the concept of passion.