What is your passion and how do I find it?
I don’t know what I am passionate about. How do I find my passion?
These and many more are concerns or questions that I find people asking me about. It always begins like, you are a lucky guy, you have found something that you are passionate about bla bla bla…. I used to say “May God help you find yours” to those people.
But at one point in time when I sat down to discuss this issue with someone who needed my help with finding her passion, I realized what was going wrong with most people.
Yes ooo, there is something you need to fix in order to solve this problem. What then could be wrong and how do I fix it, you ask? I will tell you but before then let me correct an erroneous perception that you may have about passions. We don’t only discover passion but we can also develop passion. You have the wrong mindset about passion if you think you have to wait until you discover your passion. Now let’s get back to what is wrong with that and how to fix it.
I found out that my friend like many other people was waiting till she discovers her passion. In fact, she just didn’t know how she was going to discover it so she was just praying about it. To my religious folks, I know you believe the deity you know can reveal your passion to you. It may be possible according to your level of faith but most times it has more to do with working towards it than just sitting around and waiting for it.
You have to do something to find your passion. So, if you are waiting to discover your passion then you are getting it all wrong. In as much as some people discover their passion, the majority of people develop their passion. I can even argue about the discovery part but I want to give those believers the benefit of the doubt. Those who say they discovered their passion were those who found their passion when they were quite young.
Aside them, almost every other person, had to work to develop their passion. Unfortunately, sometimes, you have to try a lot of different things before you finally find something you are passionate about. That is actually the process of developing your passion. When you try a number of things, you find out what you don’t like and you begin to like certain things.
After trying out a couple of things, you will eventually land on something that is made up of most of the things that you like and that is where you “discover” that you are passionate about that thing. The truth is that you were developing the passion over time just that you didn’t see much of that when you started. Hence eventually you see it as a new thing you discovered.
You have to try out new things in order to develop your passion. What new things am I talking about? It really doesn’t have to be anything specific. Don’t wait for when you feel like you should try out something. So for those of you who are yet to “discover” your passions, here is the remedy:
- Look out for a minimum of 5 things that some people are doing that they are passionate about which catch your attention.
- Start with the first one, and try it out for a while. In the process try noting down all the things you don’t like about it. Then document the things you like about it.
- Go on and try the next one and do the same
- You may develop a passion for any of them so be on the lookout for it. It may also prepare you to find what you are passionate about when you finally meet it.
Have any questions? Comment it below
Dr. Ehoneah Obed (Pharmacist, Software Engineer, Health Informatician, Founder)
My work focuses on identity engineering, which is the deliberate process of designing and updating who you are, personally and professionally.
Most people experience identity as something fixed or accidental. It is shaped by parents, early success or failure, education, and society’s definition of what a “good life” looks like. They adapt to it rather than questioning it. What most people do not realize is that identity is not just something you discover. It is something you can actively engineer.
Personal identity engineering is about gaining control over how your beliefs, values, and self-concept are formed and reinforced.
Professional identity engineering is about translating that internal identity into skills, work, leverage, and visible contribution in the world.
When people feel stuck, it is rarely because they lack motivation or talent. It is because they are trying to change outcomes while leaving the underlying identity system untouched. Careers stall. Confidence collapses. Direction feels unclear. The system keeps producing the same results.
I learned this by rebuilding myself multiple times.
I trained as a pharmacist for six years. While working in hospitals, I began learning to code alongside my job. That led to building real software, selling products, transitioning into software engineering, completing a master’s degree in health informatics at the University of Toronto, and now building startups and systems full time. Each transition followed the same pattern. My identity did not change because I thought differently. It changed because I took specific actions that produced new evidence, and that evidence forced a new story about who I was capable of being.
That is the core mechanism behind identity engineering.
Identity updates when you intentionally generate evidence that contradicts your old self-image, then compound that evidence until the old identity can no longer run the system.
This blog is where I document that process. I write about how to design identity experiments that are small, controlled, and reversible. How to build proof-of-work that changes both how you see yourself and how the world responds to you. How to move forward without waiting for clarity, confidence, or permission.
This is not motivation and it is not coaching. It is systems thinking applied to human change.
I also write The Ledger, a weekly record of systems and experiments for building a life you own.
And I built the Identity Audit, a diagnostic tool that helps you understand your current identity state before you attempt to change it.
I am not presenting a finished theory. I am engineering this in real time, using my own life as the test environment. If you want more agency over who you are becoming, both personally and professionally, you are in the right place.
