How to Develop Passion

Finding Your Passion for a Job or for Study

Think about your childhood hopes and dreams. If you’re struggling to identify your passion, you may want to consider what you enjoyed doing as a child. Make a list of the activities you lived for as a kid, from playing with legos to dressing up dolls. Consider if you would enjoy doing that activity now, but in a different context. If you were really into building with legos, for example, this could indicate your passions might lie in architecture or construction. If you enjoyed dressing up your dolls, this could indicate your passions might be geared more toward fashion or styling. Taking a childhood passion and translating it into a viable job or field of study could lead to a more fulfilling career and a more full life.

Identify your personal values. Your personal values are your core principle beliefs or the ideas that are the most important to you. Determining your personal values can help you determine if you are passionate about your job, your field of study, or even your relationships. You can search online for lists of core values or virtues and prioritize the top 5 in order of importance. You can also ask yourself some guiding questions to help identify your personal values: Consider two individuals you respect or admire. Why do you admire them? What characteristics do they embody that you admire or appreciate? If you could change or shift one thing in your community, what would you change and why? What world issue would you change if you could? What issues or problem get you the most charged in conversation with others? Consider a moment that was satisfying to you or made you feel good. Identify that moment and consider why you felt so satisfied in that moment. Look over your answers to these questions and try to identify any themes or common ideas. Create short, simple, clear definitions for the personal values that keep coming up to figure out what they mean to you and why they're important.

Do a best possible self exercise. Your “best possible future self” is a personalized representation of your goals and the future you envision for yourself. Doing a best possible self exercise can help you gain better insight into your goals, priorities and motivations. It can also help you to gain some control of your trajectory in school or in a career using critical thinking and self analysis. To do the exercise, use this prompt: “Consider your life in the future. Imagine that everything in your life has gone as well as it possibly could. You have managed to achieve all your life goals. You have realized your life dreams. Now, write down what you imagine.” Write to this prompt for 20 minutes a day for three days. On the fourth day, read over your responses. Highlight or circle any repeating themes, ideas, goals, or aspirations. These could be a good indication of where your passions lie and how you can pursue them.

Set personal goals. Another way to home in on your passions is to set personal goals. This can motivate you to pursue a certain passion that could then turn into a career option or an educational option. Writing down your personal goals requires you to be self reflective and consider what is meaningful to you. It also requires you prioritize and narrow down your ideas to form clear personal goals. Once you have formed your personal goals, you should create a schedule to determine when you will need to achieve these goals. You may have different timeframes for different personal goals, depending on how simple or complex they are. Creating personal goals will also allow you to identify what you are already doing in your daily routine to achieve certain goals and what you skills you need to learn or develop to achieve certain goals. This can be highly motivating and a very active way to determine your passions in life. These goals can be part of a larger strategy to consistently cultivate the values that are most important to you.

Lean on mentors or leaders in your life. If you are struggling to identify your passions and goals, you may want to reach out to a mentor or leader in your life that can offer advice or guidance. This could be a teacher, parent, community member, or even a sibling or friend. Have a discussion with this mentor about possible career paths you are interested in and how you can access this path. Sit down with your mentor and talk about your personal values and goals and how you can translate these into a viable career or field of study. Often, mentors that you are close with can give you some perspective on your options and encourage you to pursue goals or passions that you enjoy and may excel at.

Doing Fun and Exciting Things

Try a new hobby or activity. Maybe there is a hobby you’ve always wanted to try or pursue but never had enough time for in your busy, passionless schedule. Cultivate your inner passion by going after a new experience and learning new skills. Join a class that will allow you to get better at the hobby, like a class in guitar, drawing, or creative writing. Focus on a hobby that will force you to get out of your comfort zone. Get motivated to pursue this hobby by leaning on the support of a friend or a partner. Join the class together or have the person call you to remind you about the class every week. The support of someone else can help to validate your pursuit of passion in the form of a new skill and ensure you show up to class every week.

Join a club or a recreational team. Maybe there is a sport or a recreational activity you’ve always wanted to try like running, karate, yoga, or basketball. Or a sport you’ve always been good at or enjoyed but have been able to focus on. Join a club or a recreational team in your area and make sure you show up for practice every week. Set aside time in your schedule so the training session becomes a priority in your life. Participating in a sport or joining a team will also allow you to get to know new people and be part of a group that is different than your normal circle of friends. This could allow you to develop more passion for others by being surrounded by new people and new topics of conversation.

Include a fun twist to routine activities. Make familiar activities less humdrum and passionless by adding a fun twist to them. This will help make your routine more interesting and exciting. If you tend to sit at the same spot in your home, working on your laptop or reading your notes, mix up your routine by sitting a different spot or relocating to your local library or a nearby cafe. Studies have shown that a change of scene every few hours during an intense study session can actually improve your ability to retain information. As well, if you tend to take the same walking path during your daily walk, choose a different route. If you go to the same yoga class every week, change your routine by going to a different class that may be more challenging or teach you new skills.

Make a bucket list and try to achieve each item. A bucket list is usually composed of activities that you aspire to do. Your bucket list can contain dream items like “climb every mountain the world” or it can contain practical items like “learn how to knit” or “graduate from university”. A well rounded bucket list with an equal number of dream items and practical items can get you inspired and motivated to lead a more passionate life. Once you create your bucket list, you should motivate yourself to try to achieve an item within a set period of time. This way, you can feel a sense of accomplishment every time you cross an item off your list. You may start with the more practice items first and concentrate on those so you can start to feel accomplished as soon as possible. Don’t be afraid to put down big dream items, as these can act as useful aspirational tools. Though the dream items may seem impossible to achieve, they can help you to live your life with more passion and motivation. Pushing yourself to try something that seems impossible will at least get you out of your comfort zone and into doing fun and exciting things more often.

Focusing on Creativity and Imagination

Make time in your schedule to be creative. It can be difficult to actively pursue a passionate attitude, especially if you have a packed schedule and a list of commitments. Set aside time, maybe one hour a day or fifteen minutes a day, to be creative. During this allotted time, shut your door, turn off your phone, and focus on being creative. This will ensure that you actually focus on being more creative and passionate, on your own or with others. It may help to put down “creative time” in your day planner or your iCalendar so you get a notification every day reminding you that it’s time to be creative, even for a few minutes a day.

Create an inspiration board. In the fashion world, an inspiration board is called a “mood board”. Create your own inspiration or mood board to get inspired to be creative. An inspiration board can be especially helpful if you are stuck on a problem or issue and are trying to come up with interesting solutions or ideas, such as “what is my passion?” or “how can I cultivate more passion in my life?” To make an inspiration board, write the question you are trying to solve in the middle of a large poster board. Then, create a collage of images, words, articles, poems, and other visual inspirations, like graphs or charts, around the question. This will allow you to map out possible inspirations around the question and get you excited and motivated about answering the question. You can continue to add to the inspiration board as you find more ideas or visual elements. Over time, you may have a more complete picture of how you can answer a question or find a solution to a problem.

Do a free write. A free write is a technique used in writing courses to help individuals brainstorm and develop their writing voice. Free-writing can also be a great exercise for identifying your feelings, ideas, impressions, and thoughts on a particular subject or prompt. You do not need to show anyone the free write or share them with anyone, as the free write can also act as a mini journal entry or a personal reflection. Free writes are usually timed, around four to five minutes per prompt and the writer is encouraged to write for the entire duration of the free write, keeping their pen on the page and focusing only on the prompt. If you are focusing on developing passion in your life, for example, you may have the prompt: “I can develop passion in my life by…” or “Some ways to develop a more passionate attitude include…” Free writes can also be useful creative exercises, where you tackle a prompt that gives you the space to play around with your writing voice and access your creative abilities, if only for five minutes at a time. A list of creative writing prompts can be found here: http://www.writersdigest.com/prompts. You can also integrate free writes into your daily life by using a possible issue or problem as a prompt. Writing through the issue or problem can allow you to develop your ideas and thoughts in a positive and proactive way.

Have a brainstorm session with a partner or a team. If you are stuck in a familiar spiral of passionless ideas and solutions, it may be time to call a brainstorm session with a partner or a team. This could be at work, with your work partner or your work team, or this could be at home with your romantic partner or your family. You can brainstorm ideas using the clustering technique, where you write the main idea or problem in the center and draw lines from the main idea to possible solutions, creating a cluster of possible solutions. You can also pose a question to your audience and then have everyone toss out ideas, which you can write down in a list format. Once you have several ideas listed, you may then have everyone brainstorm on one to three ideas that seem viable and useful.

Draw or build one idea a month. Maybe you struggle with making your passionate ideas real and visualizing them as more than just an idea on a list. Be active with your ideas by drawing them out, especially if they are abstract. You can also use legos, modelling clay, or even cardboard to build an example of your idea. This will allow you to really see your ideas and demonstrate them easily to others. For example, you may struggle with how to answer the question, “How can I cultivate a more passionate attitude in my life?” After brainstorming or free writing, you may come up with one option: “Pursue a hobby, like guitar”. You may then draw out yourself playing guitar or learning how to play with a band. Or you may make a model of you playing guitar out of clay or cardboard.

Watch inspirational talks and discussions. Sometimes, passion is best found in the words of others, particularly thinkers and speakers who focus on a certain subject or idea with passion and enthusiasm. You may search online for inspirational talks on a certain issue or problem you are struggling with or a well informed discussion by a passionate speaker on a subject that you would like to know more about. You can find inspirational talks online through TEDtalks on a variety of subjects and issues. Many TEDtalks are no longer than 20-30 minutes long and provide a quick dose of passion and excitement around an idea or concept.

Interacting Passionately with Others

Give back to others with compassion and kindness. Foster passion in your life by focusing outward on others around you. Treat everyone you meet and know with compassion and kindness, rather than anger or ignorance. You can do this by expressing gratitude towards individuals that you think are not often recognized or acknowledged, such as your high school teacher, a parent, or a peer. Demonstrating compassion and kindness towards others can help you to also feel inspired and motivated based on their example.

Be an active listener. One of the best ways to be more passionate around others is to focus on active listening, where you listen and respond to someone with the goal of improving mutual understanding. When you practice active listening, you are viewing every conversation as an opportunity to get to know someone better and to learn. The goal is to make the speaker feel like you are engaged in what they are saying and are willing to respond to them with passion and enthusiasm. You can improve your active listening by talking to a friend. Listen to the friend talk about her day or her latest hobby and make sure you are focused fully on her. You should let her speak without interruption, being sure to nod and make eye contact to show you are engaged in the conversation. Once she is done speaking, you should try to repeat the main points of what she said to you back to her using your own words. You can phrase this by beginning with: “So, what I understood was…” or “I believe that based on what you told me, you mean…” If you are doing active listening correctly, she should agree that you have understood what she told you. If you did not understand your friend correctly, that's okay; ask for clarification. Asking questions is part of active listening. Once she feels you have understood her, you then have the opportunity to respond to her thoughts and offer commentary or advice. Your friend can actively listen to what you have to say, creating more passionate and engaged conversation overall.

Kiss your partner regularly. You can also show passion towards your partner or spouse by not being afraid to display affection towards them. Kissing and hugging your partner will signal to her that you care about her and are willing to show her how passionate you can be. You should also be okay with getting hugs and kisses from your partner, especially if you are trying to cultivate a more passionate relationship with her. You may also want to focus on displaying more affection towards your partner during sex, including kissing her, touching her face and body, and telling her that you think she is beautiful. Though you may feel shy or uncomfortable with these passionate actions at first, doing them regularly will help you become more comfortable with displaying passion towards your partner. While physical passion is important in a relationship, don’t worry if being physically affectionate doesn’t come naturally to you all the time. Work on letting your other qualities shine, like kindness and intelligence. Reader Poll: We asked 273 wikiHow readers what qualities attract them to a person, and only 10% named passion as the most irresistible trait. [Take Poll]

Embrace new experiences with your partner. Another way to develop more passion between you and your partner is to focus on building new and exciting memories together. This could mean setting up a surprise date where you both do something on your bucket list, or suggesting that you try a new cuisine at a restaurant on date night. Studies have shown that sharing a new activity with your partner can increase the level of passion in your relationship and lead to a more exciting partnership overall.

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