A client asked how to find your passion (in the context of relationships, as you’ll see). I wrote the following (slightly edited).

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You don’t find some single latent passion within you, if only you can find it. You create it.

What is passion? It’s powerful emotion. Emotion doesn’t come from out there. It comes from in here. How do you create something in here? Not by looking out there. By growing, learning, building, exploring, and developing skills in here. Stuff out there gives you something to work with, but your passion is inside you.

You have a zillion things you like, each of which could grow to into one of, or the, overarching source of passion that drives your life. Until I found out you could learn leadership skills, it wasn’t a passion of mine. Even learning the changes others were capable of didn’t make it a passion. At first all I knew was it was something I knew was worth my time and I could get better at. What made it become a passion was what I put into it — time, emotion, vulnerability, etc — and what I earned from my efforts — learning I could change professional relationships, overcoming great anxieties and fears, self-awareness, great friends, etc

If I hadn’t put the work and emotional effort in, what would I get back out? Not much. The value came from what I put in. I don’t see external things exciting much passion from their intrinsic properties.

Finding your passion is like creating art or learning a skill. You get out of it what you put into it. Or like great sex, as you described. If you expect great sex just to happen, you’re probably going to wait a long time. Maybe you’ll get lucky and come across someone you mesh with perfectly, but it probably won’t last and keep getting better forever (unless it inspires you to do the following) If you put yourself out there, take risks, develop yourself, share what you want, what you don’t want, exercise, … exude everything you want — you can’t exude without practice — great sex will seem to come your way. It may feel like it just happened, but you created it. You will have attracted a woman who is creating and wants to share the same thing.

Another big piece of finding your passion is finding or developing a supportive community, which could be just one other person. I don’t think it could only be only an online community. You probably need at least one person in-person. Community gives you support, holds you accountable, and lets you see what you’re capable of.

Looking to “find” your passion sounds way too passive and based in hope for me. I might have asked that question years ago, but no more. I create it. You hope for things when you don’t think you can to make it happen. I expect to create my passions.

“What must I do if I want to find what my passion is… right now, today, right this very moment…

Find something you like and build it. Devote yourself to it. Don’t try to find the perfect thing. The point is to develop the skills to bring out from yourself greater emotion and learn to overcome obstacles, especially anxiety and fear. If it turns out the thing you picked doesn’t become a great passion, pick up where you left off with the next thing. If you like rock climbing, go climb some rocks. If you get bored with it, that doesn’t mean rock climbing wasted your time, it means rock climbing took you to a new level of passion in life, you exhausted it, and only now do you realize this new level of life. Now you have a new perspective and you can pick something more than rock climbing. Maybe singing. Then when singing peaks, look from your new perspective at what you can use to reach a new level. Maybe you find becoming a chef can take you past where singing peaked. Eventually you reach something you dig so much you never want to do anything else. Say it’s being a chef — you start a restaurant, tour the world sampling cuisines, grow a garden, trade recipes, etc. Now you created your passion.

Sometimes one growing passion morphs into another. Like rock climbing might lead you to hiking, which might lead you to conservation, and next thing you know you’re on a Greenpeace boat saving whales and it resonates with every fiber in your body.

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