Graduating and Looking for Your Passion? Just Be Patient

The New York Times:

For all their grandeur and euphoria, graduation ceremonies can be harrowing. Until that momentous day, you’re a student whose job is to do what your teacher asks. Now you have to ask things of yourself — but what?

If you’re relying on a commencement speaker to set your compass, you may still be confused at day’s end. In my experience, it’s common to hear “Follow your passion” from the podium. This is great counsel if, in fact, you know what that passion is. But what if you don’t?

Young graduates might imagine that discovering your passion happens the way it does in a movie: with a flash of insight and a trumpet blast. Before that flash, you were struggling to find yourself, and in the next moment, you know exactly who you were meant to be.

As a psychologist who studies world-class achievers, I can say the reality of following your passion is not very romantic. It takes time to develop a direction that feels so in-the-bones right that you never want to veer from it.

Thus, my advice to young graduates is not to “follow your passion” but rather, to “foster your passion.” Here are three suggestions for doing so.

Read the whole story: The New York Times