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We need to talk about the most expensive scavenger hunt ever invented.

The one where everyone sprints through adulthood like “Somewhere out there is my Passion,” like it is a lost set of car keys hiding under a couch cushion. And if you don’t find it by 25, you start assuming you are broken. Meanwhile, the truth is both ruder and way more comforting.

The “find your passion” myth turns your life into a casino game. You keep pulling the lever on random jobs, hobbies, relationships, and side hustles, hoping one of them lights up like a jackpot and suddenly you are a person with “Purpose” and a tasteful personal brand. And when it doesn’t happen, you do what any self respecting modern adult does.

You blame yourself for not having the correct soul.

But here’s what’s actually going on. Most people you envy for being “passionate” didn’t start that way. They started curious. Or desperate. Or bored. Or mildly interested. Then they did the unsexy part. They showed up again. They got a little better. They got a little less confused. People started giving them tiny rewards. Compliments. Progress. Momentum. Identity. And suddenly it looks like passion. But what you’re seeing is not lightning. You’re seeing friction.

Which makes perfect sense, because the early stage of any passion is basically a bad first date. It’s awkward. It’s disappointing. You’re doing a lot of pretending. And your brain keeps whispering, “This is not The One.”

The problem isn’t that you lack passion.

The problem is that you expect passion to show up before you earn it.

There’s a well known model in psychology that describes interest as something that develops in phases, starting with a triggered spark and then slowly turning into something stable through time, meaning, and repeated engagement. In other words, interest isn’t a magical identity you uncover. It’s a relationship you build. (STELAR)

Or said differently.

Passion is a loyalty program.

You don’t get the free sandwich on your first visit.

You get it after the punches on the card.

So if you’re waiting to feel passionate before you start, you have it backwards.

Starting is what creates the conditions for passion.

Henri Rousseau spent decades as a modest Paris toll and tax collector, which is not exactly the origin story of a visionary artist. He was self taught, started painting seriously in middle age, and kept showing work even while critics laughed at him. (The Museum of Modern Art) He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, kept going, and eventually retired from his day job in 1893 at age 49 to paint full time. Think about that. Most of us treat 49 like the age where you finally buy the comfortable shoes and accept that fun is over. Rousseau used it to double down on making strange dream jungles that later helped reshape modern art. He did not have a calling. He had reps. He had stubbornness. He had the kind of commitment that looks like delusion right up until it looked like genius.

Then there is John Grisham, who didn’t wake up at age 12 whispering, “I’m destined to write legal thrillers.” He was a Mississippi lawyer with a family and a day job, and he started writing his first novel in the margins of his life, in longhand, early in the morning before work. (TIME) Multiple profiles describe him waking around 5 a.m., getting words down before the workday, and grinding on A Time to Kill for about three years. (C-VILLE Weekly) That book barely landed. It was printed in a small first run, and it did not make him famous. But here is the important part for us dumdums. He kept writing anyway. Passion did not arrive first and then bless the process. The process created the passion. He built the muscle, then the identity showed up afterward.

Try this thought experiment.

If you walked into a gym and said, “I’m waiting to feel strong before I lift anything,” the staff would quietly slide the emergency exit map toward you.

Passion works the same way.

You don’t wait to feel it. You train into it.

You build skill. Skill creates momentum. Momentum creates identity. Identity creates the feeling you call passion.

Cal Newport makes a similar argument in a more career focused way. He basically says “follow your passion” is risky advice, and that mastery and rare skills tend to create the kind of work people actually end up loving. (Stafforini)

So instead of asking, “What is my passion?”

Try asking, “What could I get good at if I stayed long enough to stop being bad?”

That question is less romantic.

But it’s also wildly more useful.

(pro LEP sis)

Prolepsis is when you treat a future thing like it already happened. Writers use it as a literary move. Humans use it to sabotage their lives.

It’s when you say, “I haven’t found my passion, so I guess I’m not a passionate person.”

You just took a temporary moment and turned it into a lifelong identity. You basically wrote your own bad Yelp review after sitting down at the restaurant.

Try it in a sentence.

“I only tried pottery twice, so it’s safe to conclude, through advanced prolepsis, that my soul is not a pottery soul.”

This week, don’t find your passion.

Build one.

Pick one thing you’re even mildly curious about. Writing. Photography. Cooking. Coding. Comedy. Painting. Running. Whatever. The bar isn’t “This completes me.” The bar is “I do not hate this.”

Then do this for seven days.

Show up for 20 minutes. Every day. No big plan. No identity makeover. No pressure to monetize it into a personal empire.

Just reps.

And here is the key part. Pay attention to what happens after day three.

Day one is novelty. Day two is optimism. Day three is when your brain starts negotiating. Day four is when you learn whether you are actually building something or just chasing the feeling of newness.

By the end of the week, you will not have “found your passion.”

But you will have something better.

Evidence.

Evidence that interest can be developed on purpose, like a muscle, not discovered like a soulmate.

And if you want extra credit, tell one friend you’re doing it. Nothing builds passion faster than the mild social pressure of someone texting, “Did you do the thing or did you watch videos of other people doing the thing.”