Forget Passion.. Follow Your Curiosity!

First, identifying exactly what you are passionate about is often difficult. Recognizing what activities or ideas inspire us and make our hearts beat faster is not always easy. Not to mention that most people have more than one interest, and our passions change over time.

For these reasons, trying to pick one passion to center your career around can prove frustrating. Even if you know what you are passionate about, deciding to pursue one passion over another can close you off to other career paths that are worth exploring.

Passion is a consequence of effort. More often than not, we discover how much we actually enjoy doing something only after dedicating real time and energy towards pursuing it.

We usually get this feature of passion wrong. We try to use our existing passions as a starting point for what we should do next instead of acknowledging that our passions are meant to be cultivated over time.

As such, what we ought to do instead is seek out opportunities that require us to commit to learning a new skill or developing our expertise, because these experiences naturally teach us about ourselves and our professional talents, interests, and passions.

Frankly, your passions and your career will not always align. This is to be expected and totally normal! One trainee once told me, 'I'm passionate about writing, and because it means so much to me, I do not want it to become a job'. Sometimes caring deeply about something means you would rather enjoy that activity for pleasure and not turn it into a daily obligation.

What excites us can also be challenging to translate into our work. You may be passionate about something that you are not professionally-skilled at or that does not clearly translate into your particular field. Your passions are not misplaced. Instead, this situation suggests that we should be guided in our careers by something other than our passions.

Importantly, finding a job that perfectly matches your passion is not realistic. You will not love all of your jobs all of the time. Keep in mind many people work jobs because they are available and pay the bills. So, if you are feeling dispassionate about your current role, remember that having the bandwidth to consider your passions is a wonderful place to be.

Focus on building transferable skills, gaining new experiences, and working hard to do your job well. These efforts will actively set you on the path towards loving your work more and position you well for what comes next.

Being told to 'follow your passion' reflects a fixed mindset. This advice suggests that we must integrate what we are already good at and enjoy doing in order to make our next career move. More importantly, this cliche closes us off to the possibility that we could develop new passions by curiously exploring our interests and practicing our skills.

Instead, we should follow our curiosity. Everyone has something that they are interested in or curious about right now, so when it comes to career next steps, everyone has a place to start. Following our curiosity encourages us to try new things, develop our skills, and thus foster our passion.

After all, we are dynamic human beings who are constantly growing and changing. As we evolve, so will our passions and sense of purpose. We should be allowing ourselves to curiously discover our next steps, rather than waiting for the 'right' calling to appear.

If you have not found your passion yet, do not worry. You have things you are interested in right now. Pursue them!

Ask yourself: What am I interested in that I want to explore more? What am I doing now that I would like to do more of? What do others consistently praise me for? Start there!

Ultimately, our curiosity, not our passion, drives our career success. Those who curiously explore their interests and the effortfully pursue their development are the ones who find themselves in a passion-filled career. So, lead with your curiosity, and the enjoy the quiet satisfaction of learning and growing along the way.

**Adapted from Ana Martins Ribeiro, OITE, 2021 **