Finding What Lights Up Your Soul

For the last six months or so, I’ve been on a bit of a quest to figure out what my passion actually is.

I’ve listened to podcasts and watched YouTube videos about finding your purpose and discovering what lights you up. They were all wonderfully inspirational, but I kept coming back to the same question: How do you actually do it?

Is there some magical phrase I need to say? A special way I need to stand? Maybe if I find the right affirmation, suddenly—bam!—there it is. My passion!

Well, that certainly wasn’t how it worked for me.

I’ve always had lots of different interests. In fact, I could probably throw open my front door and start a craft shop with all the different things I’ve tried over the years. I’ve enjoyed many of them, but finding something that genuinely fills up my soul has been much more elusive.

I think part of the reason is that life has simply been so busy.

There has always been work to do, children to raise and all the everyday responsibilities that come with keeping a life and family running.

Questions like What do I really enjoy? What do I want? How do I want my life to look? were easy to push aside. I’d think about them when the kids were older, when life was quieter or I finally had more time.

Well, my kids are older now, and those questions have been nudging at me more and more and slowly, I’ve started answering them. Not with absolute certainty or some grand declaration that this is what I’m meant to do with my life, but with curiosity. I’ve given myself permission to play around with different ideas, try things and simply notice how they make me feel. And through all that experimenting, there was one thing I kept coming back to.

Writing.

I’ve written nonfiction before, but recently I decided to try something completely different and began writing my first fiction novel.

I had no idea whether I would be any good at it. I didn’t even know whether I would enjoy the process once the initial excitement wore off. I simply had a story in my head and wanted to see what would happen if I tried to write it. And somewhere along the way, something unexpected happened. I absolutely fell in love with it.

I began thinking about my characters when I wasn’t writing, wondering what they might do next or suddenly seeing how a part of the story could come together. I’d sit down intending to write for a little while and realise hours had passed. Even the process of learning how to do it better became exciting. I wanted to understand character development, pacing, relationships and all the little things that make a story feel alive.

That, for me, was probably the biggest clue.

Nobody had to convince me to keep going. I didn’t have to make myself sit down and write. I wanted to get back to it, I looked forward to it. The story was pulling me towards it, and somewhere along the way I realised I had stumbled across something that genuinely lit me up. It even brought out sides of myself I hadn't realised I had before and impacted the relationships around me in positive ways.

That highlighted something important for me.

Your passion is less about what you do and more about how you feel when you’re doing it.

It’s something you can lose yourself in for hours, where time seems to behave strangely, somehow stretching out and disappearing at the same time. It’s something you look forward to and find yourself thinking about when you’re supposed to be doing something else.

In my case, it can even become a reward: Once I’ve done the washing, cleaned the house and finished all the boring jobs, I can go and write.

We tend to talk about finding our passion as though it is something hidden inside us, waiting to be uncovered. If only we think hard enough, search deeply enough or ask ourselves the right questions, eventually there will be a wonderful moment of clarity when everything falls into place and we finally understand what will bring us joy and satisfaction.

But I’m not sure it works like that.

I think passion is often much quieter than we expect. It can begin with nothing more than a flicker of curiosity, an urge to try something new, or that lovely little spark of anticipation when you know you’re about to spend time doing something simply because you enjoy it.

For me, it has often started exactly like that. I’ll suddenly get the urge to try something after watching a YouTube video, or an idea will simply pop into my head, which I like to think is the universe dropping in a little inspiration from time to time and then, of course, there’s Pinterest.

If the idea involves anything remotely creative, Pinterest can send me down a rabbit hole of possibilities faster than you can say macramé. Before I know it, I’m looking at paints, patterns, plants or some new craft I hadn’t even considered a few hours earlier and thinking, I wonder if I could do that?

And I think that little question—I wonder if I could try that?—is often where passion begins.

The Pressure of Passion

The irony of being told to find your passion is that something meant to bring us joy can quickly become another source of pressure. We can start to wonder why everyone else seems to have discovered the thing that lights them up while we’re still sitting there thinking, I have absolutely no idea.

Instead of asking What am I passionate about?, maybe we could ask something much easier.

What am I curious about?

Curiosity doesn’t demand a lifelong commitment. It doesn’t ask us to be talented or successful, and it certainly doesn’t require us to know where something might lead. It simply nudges us towards something interesting and says, Why don’t you give that a try?

So follow it.

Take the pottery class you’ve walked past a dozen times. Buy a small set of paints and see what happens. Plant something, write a story, learn to bake bread, pick up a camera or go walking somewhere you’ve never been before. Return to something you loved twenty years ago and quietly forgot about when life became busy.

You don’t need to know whether you’ll love it before you begin. That’s the whole point of trying.

Then pay attention to what happens.

Do you find yourself looking forward to the next time you can do it? Do you become so absorbed that you lose track of time? Does your mind wander back to it during the day? Do you find yourself wanting to learn more, experiment and get better simply because you enjoy the process?

Maybe you come away feeling energised and excited. Or perhaps it gives you something quieter, a sense of contentment, calm or that lovely feeling of having spent a few hours doing something that somehow feels like you.

Those feelings are worth noticing.

Of course, sometimes curiosity will lead you straight into something you absolutely hate. The pottery class you imagined would be wonderfully relaxing might leave you wondering why anyone voluntarily spends two hours wrestling with a lump of wet clay.

That’s okay too.

You haven’t failed to find your passion. You tried something, discovered it wasn’t for you and learned a little more about yourself in the process.

Follow the next curious thought and see where that one takes you.

Finding what lights you up isn’t about getting it right on the first attempt. It’s about giving yourself enough freedom to explore and play, noticing how something makes you feel, and giving yourself permission to move on if it doesn’t feel right.

How Do You Know If Something Is a Passion?

I certainly didn’t discover my love of fiction by sitting down with a notebook and making a list of all the things I might possibly be passionate about. I found it by trying something that interested me, playing around and then paying attention to what happened next.

Did I want to keep doing it? Did I look forward to the next time I could spend on it? Did I think about it when I was doing other things? Did I want to learn more? Did I usually feel energised or excited to come back to it?

I think those are the clues we sometimes miss.

Passion doesn’t necessarily announce itself with a great flash of certainty. Sometimes it simply keeps drawing you back. You feel curious about it. You want to get better at it, not because you have to, but because you genuinely want to. Even when something is difficult or you’re still learning, there is something about the process itself that feels satisfying.

Can Our Passions Change?

I think one of the biggest misunderstandings about having a passion is the idea that we’re supposed to find the one thing that lights us up and then remain devoted to it for the rest of our lives.

If we lose interest and move on to something else, we can sometimes feel as though we’ve failed somehow or perhaps worry that other people will see us as fickle, always jumping from one thing to the next.

But why should our passions remain the same when we don’t?

We change throughout our lives. Our circumstances shift, we have new experiences, meet different people and discover parts of ourselves that perhaps we didn’t even know were there. The person we are at fifty is not the same person we were at twenty, so it makes perfect sense that the things that excite, inspire and fulfil us might change as well.

A passion might stay with us for six months, five years or half a lifetime. We might become completely absorbed in something for a while and then, one day, realise it no longer holds the same pull. Sometimes we leave it behind completely; other times we rediscover it twenty years later and wonder why we ever stopped.

None of that makes the enjoyment we found in it at the time any less real or meaningful.

I don’t think our passions are meant to define us forever. Instead, they can simply be part of the way we grow and change, inviting us to follow whatever makes us feel curious, excited and a little more alive in this particular season of our lives.

Time Spent Creating Is Not Time Wasted

I also think we can fall into the trap of focusing on the idea that everything we spend our time doing needs to lead somewhere. We need to be achieving something, improving something, producing something or, even better, finding a way to make money from it.

It even happens with the things we love.

Tell someone you’ve started painting, baking, making jewellery or taking beautiful photos and it often isn’t long before someone says, “You could sell those.”

And perhaps you could. Maybe one day you’ll even want to.

But what if you don’t?

What if you want to paint simply because you love the feeling of a brush moving across a canvas? What if you want to grow vegetables because there is something deeply satisfying about walking outside and picking something you’ve grown yourself? What if you want to make slightly wonky pottery bowls, crochet blankets that take far too long to finish, or learn three chords on a guitar and happily play them badly for the next ten years?

Does something really have to produce an income, an achievement or even a finished product before we can consider the time worthwhile?

I don’t think it does.

There's value in doing something simply because it brings us joy and satisfaction. There is value in becoming completely absorbed in something for an afternoon, letting the rest of the world disappear for a while and giving our minds somewhere different to go.

Sometimes the only thing we have to show for those hours is that we feel calmer, lighter, more energised or simply more like ourselves.

Not everything we love needs to become another goal to achieve or another opportunity to be productive. Some things can belong entirely to us, with no expectation attached to them at all.

Time spent doing something that lights you up isn’t time wasted. If anything, it might be some of the most valuable time you give yourself.

You Will Never Have Time If You Don’t Make It

We spend so much of adulthood doing the things that need to be done that somewhere along the way we can forget to ask ourselves what we actually want to do.

Work, family, appointments, housework and responsibilities have a way of expanding to fill our days, and when we finally find ourselves with an hour to spare, it can be very tempting to collapse onto the couch and scroll through our phones.

And sometimes that is exactly what we need.

But if we keep waiting until life becomes less busy before we make time for the things that light us up, we might find ourselves waiting for a very long time.

There will always be another load of washing, another email to answer, another job that could be done. Making room for something you love doesn’t mean ignoring your responsibilities or disappearing for three weeks to rediscover yourself in Bali—although I wouldn’t say no to that!

Sometimes it simply means deciding that an hour spent painting, gardening, writing, walking, creating or learning something new deserves a place in your life too.

Because having something that lights up your soul gives us more than just a way to fill our spare time.

It gives us somewhere to lose ourselves for a while. It reminds us that we are more than our responsibilities and the roles we play for other people. It gives us permission to become curious again, to play, experiment and do something without needing to know whether we’ll be good at it or whether it will ever lead anywhere. And perhaps, in the process, we get to know ourselves a little better too.

Right now, writing is that thing for me.

I have no idea whether it will still be my greatest passion ten years from now, although at the moment I find it difficult to imagine a life without stories in it. Perhaps another interest will appear beside it. Maybe one day I’ll pick up a paintbrush again, make another macramé creation or disappear into my garden for an entire weekend because suddenly that is where I want to be.

I’ve stopped thinking I need to choose.

There are far too many interesting things in this world for that.

So the next time you find yourself thinking, I wonder what it would be like to try that? don’t dismiss the thought quite so quickly.

Follow it.

You never know what might light up your soul.

Want to Create a Little More Space for You?

If this article has left you wondering what might light you up, perhaps the best place to start is simply by getting curious.

My Slow Down with Liz email community is a space where I share gentle reminders, practical ideas about slowing down, creating more breathing room and building a life that feels good not just one filled with things to get done.

Join the email community here

And if you’re ready to explore this a little more deeply, my book Stop Rushing Start Living is all about stepping away from the constant busyness, reconnecting with yourself and making more room for the things that genuinely matter to you.

Because sometimes slowing down isn't about doing less for the sake of it.

It’s about finally having enough space to notice what makes you feel alive.

Find out more about Stop Rushing Start Living 

Written by Liz Anderson

Liz Anderson is a psychologist, author and creator of Slow Down with Liz. With almost 30 years of experience helping people navigate the ups and downs of life, Liz is passionate about encouraging us to slow down, reconnect with ourselves and make more room for the things that bring us joy, calm and meaning.

She is the author of Stop Rushing, Start Living and writes about wellbeing, mindfulness, personal growth and creating a life that feels good to live.

For more articles, resources and free printables to help you slow down and create a little more calm in your everyday life, visit Slow Down with Liz.