Finding Passion: Listening to Soul
Finding passion can be very hard sometimes. Some people find it easily, and others struggle. I have been struggling a lot and it’s been over 7 years since I started it. However, here I am, finally figured out my passion and trying to feed that hungry bird.
I love thinking about passion. I grew up listening to speech of Steve Jobs and having taught myself that the most important thing is to find what I love and do it for the rest of my life. I have really pressured myself to find what I really, really loved. Yet, after 7 years, I think I was making a mistake all along.
See, pressuring myself to find what I love was indeed an intertwined path. As I have experienced myself, my genuine passion was encoded deep in my soul that was prominent when the soul was expressing itself. In other words, the genuine feeling towards what I love would only appear as instinctive, spontaneous, and habitual behaviors. Steve Jobs was talking about it in the speech he gave at Stanford, but the only words that stuck with me was “find what you love.” I skipped “follow your instincts” part.
So, pressuring myself to find my passion really pushed back my instincts and forced me to think logically. “Okay. I loved filmmaking since I was 14. Is that my passion?” I was trying so hard to think of what I liked doing and what would be best described as my passion. Yet, later I found that those logical questioning wasn’t leading to the answer I was looking for. I was looking for an answer that my heart starts pumping whenever I think about it. In my case, pressuring myself hard and forcing to think logically weren’t just working. I needed to change something.
Then, I thought why not look at my unconscious behavior? First, I started looking at my YouTube history. Next, what I naturally select to watch on Disney+. Then came the enlightenment. I was enjoying entertainments that were related to big ideas, big successes. I loved people who were doing big things. Take, for example, I was watching Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk… I was watching documentaries about Pixar animators. I was watching a show called Genius, which was about the life of Albert Einstein. All those people were betting their life on chasing things that were nonexistent before. I realized I was fascinated by their stories, their words, their attitudes towards achieving big goals.
Having realized whom I admire, I found that those people were all following their guts when it comes to finding their focuses and passions. They were just doing things that they felt genuinely passionate about. I should be doing the same thing, I thought.
Then, here I am, writing a blog.
Blogging was always at the back of my head really. But, I knew blogging wouldn’t bring much money, and thus financial anxiety ruled my head. I didn’t start it sooner because I was afraid of being broke. However, the more and more I felt about my inner self, the more it became obvious that all that I loved was thinking about things from different perspectives than people. I realized I was somehow foolishly confident in my thinking ability, and in the end, I decided to start sharing a piece of my mind with the world.
“What about those big people you admire?” I hear my inner kid yelling at me. “I know. I will be big enough if I keep doing what I love and believe is great, which is to think about things from unique perspective.”
So, I found my passion: thinking. I’m glad that I stopped looking at my past or trying to think logically, and started looking at things I do unconsciously. By looking at entertainment I consumed, I realized what my soul really wanted. If you are struggling to find your passion, look at the history of your unconscious behavior. What media do you consume? What texts did you send to your friend? What kind of books do you have in your shelf? Those are the voice of your soul and answers to your question.
Thanks for reading and good luck talking to your soul!
