On Finding Your Passion: A Counter to the Passion Industry
The writer challenges the popular notion that success requires discovering and building a career around a singular passion. Drawing on the observation that passion is fleeting rather than permanent, the piece argues that passion is best understood as an outcome of skill and mastery rather than a prerequisite to achievement.
There is a booming industry of personal coaches and self help books centered around helping people find their passion - a new school of thought that success in life is about finding some singular obsession of yours and building a career around it. It is not uncommon for one to be asked these days about what they are passionate about. For many, that questioning is frightening and rightfully so.
When most of us finish high school and get into university, we do not spend much time choosing what to major in because we have had society guide us into what it thinks we are cut out for based on some standardized tests and the realities of times past. A few months after graduating, is when most people realize they should have studied something else, or not wasted the time in school at all.
If we were to go out and ask a couple of 50 year olds about what they are passionate about, most won’t be able to give you a clear answer. That is just because unlike what we might be tempted to believe, passion is a momentary (now) feeling rather than a permanent attraction towards something. So meanwhile you might be passionate about making music today, those feelings might change in the future and you may become passionate about something else. The idea, therefore, of trying to build a career around your passion cannot be a sustainable strategy for success in life - it it in fact, not a plan.
Based on the premise that passion is a fleeting feeling, it makes more sense then, for you to stop trying to find your passion and to rather start doing the meaningful work that is right in front of you i.e exploring the opportunities that come your way instead of sitting around waiting to find what you are passionate about. The notion that passion leads to success is unfounded. Rather, success leads to passion. If you have ever learned to play a musical instrument, you would understand this better. The early stages are not much fun, you really enjoy playing the piano only when you are good at it.
So stop looking for your passion and start trying your hands at every and any opportunity that comes your way when you have the time because the truth is - YOU STUMBLE ON YOUR PASSION.
- Tino Foy
This essay reflects a moment of deepening skepticism toward self-help culture and the "follow your passion" narrative that had become mainstream advice for young people navigating education and career choices. The writer addresses the disorientation many feel after formal schooling ends, when the institutional guidance that once shaped their path suddenly disappears.
In its time, the piece offered a grounded, practical rebuttal to an increasingly idealized vision of work and purpose. It remains relevant because it refuses false comfort: it does not promise that passion will arrive as revelation, but suggests instead that mastery and engagement emerge through sustained engagement with available opportunities—a quieter, more achievable framework than the singular-passion ideal still circulates widely.