Doing what you love is easier said than done. The things we love doing the most — spending time outdoors, traveling, falling down rabbit holes about obscure obsessions — are often not the kinds of things that help us pay the bills. But as any commencement speaker or successful startup founder will tell you, pursuing your passions is one way to ensure you make the most of your life.
Passion is ultimately what keeps us going through hardships and helps imbue our day-to-day life with meaning and clarity. Without it, we can feel lost or frustrated; with it, anything is possible. Passion is the driving force behind success and happiness, and it pushes us to reach our fullest potential. Perhaps your passion is meeting new people, perfecting an age-old recipe, discovering emerging filmmakers, or teaching yourself how to code. Regardless of what you’re passionate about, there are always ways to pursue it, even if not in a professional capacity. In fact, turning a hobby into a hustle can sometimes dim the excitement we have for doing something just because we enjoy doing it.
If we can find other creative ways of integrating passion into our lives, though, everything else will fall into place. These 13 quotes serve as reminders of why it’s important to not only identify our passions but also actively pursue them. Everyone needs a North Star, after all. If you haven’t yet identified your passion, try taking notice of what makes you feel alive and go from there.
You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you're not passionate enough from the start, you'll never stick it out.Steve Jobs
What really matters to you? The fact that you’re alive means you’ve been given a reprieve to think deeply about that question. How will you use what matters in service to yourself, your community, and the world?Oprah Winfrey
There is no passion to be found playing small — in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.Nelson Mandela
What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time? Most of our being is at rest, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self.John Boorman
My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.Maya Angelou
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.Walt Disney
If you can’t figure out your purpose, figure out your passion. For your passion will lead you right into your purpose.T.D. Jakes
If you don’t love what you do, you won’t do it with much conviction or passion.Mia Hamm
Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.Henri-Frédéric Amiel
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.Albert Einstein
Featured image credit: Mikki Ansin/ Archive Photos via Getty Images
