How do you develop passion?

Identify a need in your life and pursue it. The more you do it the more you should become passionate about it….if not move on and try something else. You will know it the minute you find it…you will nod your head and smile. It also can help greatly if you have a mentor you look up to who can help you develop your passion.

look at your life and identify what you thinks wrong with it, or what’s missing from it. it could be something as simple as creating stronger bonds with family and friends. I’m a person of many passions, just a shame they change near enough every week! One thing i have identified in my life though is wanting to stay healthy and energetic. so i’ve stuck with the gym religiously. it’s also very good for stress relief!

In my opinion, I’m not sure that passion can be developed. It’s something you’re born with.

I happen to have a passion for acting especially in Shakespeare. I love it. When I hear about Shakespeare being done in my area, I plan my life around auditions. I rehearse for the auditions. If I get a part, I work diligently about characterization and the lines and really getting into the scenes.

In many ways, I have to act. I’m driven to do it.

I’ve never thought of it as something that can be developed – I’ve always just felt it…if you haven’t felt it, you haven’t found that thing that would you make you passionate.

Like Simone, I have always felt it.

The first passion I remember was when I was around eight years old. It was the height of the Vietnam War, and everyone I knew was against the war. Young men were being sent to fight in a senseless war, and everyone was worried about it. The Civil Rights movement was nearing it’s peak activity; there were all kinds of protests everywhere, and there was the blossoming of rock and roll and the sexual revolution.

With war and young men being killed and unfairness abounding in the nation, it was hard not to be passionate about change. There was so much badly wrong, and we had to protest and we had to get thrown in jail because we had to try to fix things.

Once you start caring about things, I guess it’s hard to stop. Of course, usually you lose and can’t fix what you are working on.

When I was nine, I was allowed to choose an instrument, and I chose the trumpet. That became another passion. It is just a magnificent instrument with a beautiful sound. It let me make music! I was good at it.

Over the years, I have worked for many causes—against nuclear proliferation; environmental causes of all kinds, renewable energy sources, stopping big oil from price gouging (I was wrong on that one), the equal rights amendment for women, farm workers rights, organizing health care workers, single payer health care reform, making government more accountable for how it spends it’s money, helping legal immigrants get access to Medicaid restored—I’ve been all over the place.

I wanted to save the world, and I felt that everything I did, from bringing up my kids to activism to writing to music was about that. Full spectrum passion.

Where did it come from? Well, my father was very interested in working on renewable energy. He was a physicist. He would talk about his work a lot. He also expected me to do something great. Nothing specific, just something great. And nothing I did was ever good enough to get his praise. Of course, not much that I did was ever successful at making change in the right direction.

I still care. I still want change. But these days it’s a little more personal. I know that I’m not going to get anywhere with the grand scale political things. So maybe if I tell a few stories and answer a few questions and love my kids and bring them up to care, too, and maybe if I can bring people together with music and dance…. maybe I will have helped push things forward. And if not, I will have had a hell of a time trying!

There’s passion and there’s a passion, and mine is movies, especially old ones. There’s a wonderful quote by Steve Martin’s movie producer character in the movie “Grand Canyon” that speaks to me: ”“ALL OF LIFE’S RIDDLES ARE ANSWERED IN THE MOVIES.” I believe that.

So how did I develop my movie passion? I was very fortunate to have inherited it. My grandmother loved movies and passed on her insight and knowledge to my mom when she was a little girl who in turn passed those on to me when I was a little boy. As I grew older, I looked at movies and studied movies (and movie-making) and wrote about movies, and the more I knew, the more my passion grew. Today, I write a movie review blog and act as the go-to for my family and friends when they have a question about a movie or actor or whatever. One of my former bosses, a man 10 years older than I, once paid me the best compliment I ever had. He said he’d rather go to a movie with me than anyone he knew because of how much he learned from me every time we went.

@lostinyoureyes, my friend, as others have noted above, you must go out and find your passion—that thing you enjoy more than anything else, whatever that may be. I don’t think you had to be born with it… just willing to find and nurture it. Passion… It’s one of those things that makes life worth living.

You are born with it and it either develops and flourishes according to how you are brought up or it simply doesn’t bloom.

Self reflection. And the urge to get to the bottom of things.