Do you feel like you’re meant to achieve something great in life? You’re up to the challenge and not afraid of hard work, but there’s one problem: you have no passion. If your lack of a clear life purpose is keeping you stuck in what feels like mediocrity, read on. We’ve put together a step-by-step guide that outlines what you should do if you’re very ambitious, but have no passion.
Do you really have no passion?
People often assume they have no passion when in reality they do. The issue is that your passion or life purpose looks nothing like you think it should, so it flies under your radar. Before assuming you have no passion, check if you’re falling into this trap.
A passion is something you have a compelling desire for. And as the Cambridge Dictionary explains, a compelling desire (a compulsion) is something you have little control over. This means that your passion or purpose is something in your life that you’re inexplicably drawn to. Regardless of where life takes you, this thing tends to remain a constant, always in the background and often something that feels like a homecoming when you reconnect with it.
Contrary to popular belief, your passion won’t necessarily be glamorous, exciting, something you’re good at, something that’s respected in society or something you can clearly turn into a job – so keep an open mind when pinpointing your passion.
And remember that we don’t get to choose our passion, it chooses us.
So pause for a moment and ask yourself, “What one thing in my life has always been important to me and feels like a homecoming?”.
Got it?
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Maybe you have lots of interests, but no stand-out passion
For some, the feeling that they have no passion stems from being equally interested in too many things, but obsessed with none of them. After all, how can you pick between lots of things you like, but don’t truly love?
If this rings true, there are two tactics worth trying.
Firstly, bring a little clarity to your life with the passion test. It’s a powerful way of identifying which of the many things you care matters to you the most. Once you’ve pinpointed this, prioritise satisfying this interest above all others – that’s if you really must choose between your many interests.
However, we don’t think you always have to pick one interest. If you’re someone who naturally enjoys change and struggles to focus on one thing for very long, it may be time to make peace with that and start to view your multipotentiality as a strength to nurture, rather than a weakness to overcome. Read more about being a multipotentialite.
Once you embrace the beauty of having multiple interests, you can focus on creating a multi-faceted job that works for you.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t always have to pick between multiple interests
But what if you have no clear passion and few interests?
Is it possible to really have no passion?
We don’t think so.
But, we appreciate that for some people, their life circumstances and beliefs may have put them so out of touch with their innate needs and interests that they truly can’t pinpoint anything they feel interested in or passionate about.
If this applies to you, your priority should be reconnecting with yourself. Once you do that, your passion, purpose and best next steps will become crystal clear.
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Avoid the temptation to ignore the inner work and keep searching for your perfect career because this doesn’t work – trust us. You’ll simply end up making job choices that bring you initial relief. But once the novelty wears off, that feeling of being unfulfilled and wasting your potential will return. The only way to find clarity about your life purpose when you feel well and truly stuck is to turn inwards.
Ignoring doing the inner work is a lot like building a house on quicksand because you think a storm is coming and you need shelter. You’ll feel safe and relieved once the house is built, but that house will soon come crumbling down – most likely as the storm hits – because you built it on such a shaky foundation.
So, how can you reconnect with yourself?
Start with these 10 small, but powerful, daily habits.
Then try asking yourself these 25 thought-provoking questions.
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2 comments
This was me back then! Where was this article when I was having this dilemma? haha But now I’m glad I can say I finally found my passion and I do hope to get a career out of it. Very helpful article!
Thank you! It’s great when you can look back and see how much progress you’ve made!